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Authorities Arrest Activists Instead of Those Responsible For CA Gas Leak (inhabitat.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the who-would-have-thought dept.

MikeChino writes: The California State Patrol has arrested two people in connection with the massive methane leak in Southern California's Aliso Canyon. Instead of busting company executives and engineers that caused the leak, the CSP arrested protesters who had draped banners on the headquarters of the California Public Utilities Commission. The banners highlighted the lax regulatory environment that enabled the spill.

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. What do you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Authorities aren't going to arrest themselves.

  2. Yes by OverlordQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Instead of busting company executives and engineers that caused the leak, the CSP arrested protesters who had draped banners on the headquarters of the California Public Utilities Commission.

    Because the corporation has already been charged. What's your point here? You're saying if somebody does something illegal, everybody else gets a free pass to do illegal things to them? That's stupid.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:Yes by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Insightful
      The corporation has been charged but none of the people at the corporation have been charged.

      Corporations can't go to jail. All they can do is pay fines or be dis-incorporated. Historically the fines charged tend to be minute - small fractions of the cost to make whole - and they are almost never dis-incorporated.

      Charging a corporation is like giving a warning to a person - it does nothing.

      If you want to truly punish wrong doing by corporations, you HAVE to press criminal charges and not at low level either. If the head of the corporation does not personally know the guy going to jail (or go to jail himself), he's just going to do the same old crap all over again.

      --
      excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  3. Is this Slashdot? by ichthus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What the fuck is this story doing on Slashdot? How is this, in any way, tech related?

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    sig: sauer
  4. Re:There is no "California State Patrol" by Obfuscant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, it's not "shocking" that authorities would arrest someone who knowingly committed a minor crime rather than investigate

    And it is even less shocking that the police would arrest someone who is currently committing a crime in public while still investigating a potential crime committed by the officials of a company. As in, they can see the protesters committing the crime, but it may take a while to examine documents to determine liability in a corporate environment.

    Where did we get the idea that arresting protesters in the act meant that they were arrested INSTEAD of someone else who allegedly committed some other, corporate crime?

  5. socialism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    socialism is public libraries, public healthcare, public roads, public schools, public parks

    if you are really a pure libertarian, all that should be private.

    or perhaps you are a little libertarian, and a little socialist, and you like some public services, but not all.

    There is no pure capitalist, libertarian or socialist government. Governments built on fixed ideology fail quickly.