Slashdot Mirror
iPhone X Purchase Leads To Police, Battering Ram, and Handcuffs (cbslocal.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CBS SFBayArea:
On one recent morning, Rick Garcia and his wife Shannon Knuth woke up to a posse of San Francisco police officers at their front door. "I peered through the peephole and I saw a police officer and a battering ram," Garcia said. "We heard 'SFPD' and 'warrant,' and I was like 'what's going on?'" Knuth remembers. It felt like a nightmare yet it was real. Garcia says that within seconds he was dragged into the hallway of his apartment complex, handcuffed, then whisked away to the Taraval Station.... Meanwhile Knuth, who had just got out of the shower, was ordered to sit on the couch... After rifling through the apartment Knuth says the officers finally told her what they were looking for: Her husband's iPhone X.
According to the warrant, it was stolen but Knuth showed them the receipt which proved her husband bought it. Once the officers realized their mistake they called the police station and a squad car brought Garcia home. "They gathered their pry bar and their battering ram and they left," he said. So how could a mistake like that happen? It's still unclear but it turns out Garcia and Knuth bought the iPhone at an Apple store at Stonestown Galleria just a few weeks after 300 iPhone Xs were stolen from a UPS truck in the mall parking lot.
One former police chief says the way it was handled "kind of boggles the mind...
"This was clearly an incident that should have just been a knock and talk, a couple detectives come to the door, knock on the door and they would have gathered the same info that they gathered after they put him in handcuffs and hauled him off to jail."
According to the warrant, it was stolen but Knuth showed them the receipt which proved her husband bought it. Once the officers realized their mistake they called the police station and a squad car brought Garcia home. "They gathered their pry bar and their battering ram and they left," he said. So how could a mistake like that happen? It's still unclear but it turns out Garcia and Knuth bought the iPhone at an Apple store at Stonestown Galleria just a few weeks after 300 iPhone Xs were stolen from a UPS truck in the mall parking lot.
One former police chief says the way it was handled "kind of boggles the mind...
"This was clearly an incident that should have just been a knock and talk, a couple detectives come to the door, knock on the door and they would have gathered the same info that they gathered after they put him in handcuffs and hauled him off to jail."
It will be interesting to see what the cops claimed in their application for a search warrant, such as their reason to suspect the phone was stolen. Somebody screwed up royally here.
I wonder if the police would launch an assault against a residence on my behalf if someone stole my iPhone... But oh no, taxes are far too high for rich people, we should totally have a flat tax to make things "fair".
"Nobody's got beaten over an Android"
Table-ized A.I.
As far as I can tell, most police intend to be helpful. But there are a poisonous number who aren't, and the police forces seem to protect and encourage them rather than actually discipline or fire them, or, in some documented cases, charge them with appropriate crimes.
This makes it difficult to trust "police", as opposed to trusting some particular policeman that you happen to know. There are also documented cases where policemen have been disciplined for *not* being abusively belligerent.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
but don't arrest innocent people.
Innocent people are being arrested every day. The legal requirements to get an arrest warrant are very narrow, there is no need to proof "beyond a reasonable doubt".
That said, I'm sure SFPD will find themselves in court pretty soon, as the amount of force used was pretty unreasonable, not to mention the way that the lady was treated by the police.
In the end, there is only one question to ask: was this a reasonable thing to do, considering the type of alleged crime? I'm quite sure this will result in a six figure, of not seven, payout.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Apple effed up as well. They were the ones that gave the info to the police. If it were me, that would be the last Apple product that I would ever buy.
Convicted felon, here.
I mostly agree with you.
I would just point out that as the judges get tougher, the stakes get higher. At some point you start to incentivize behavior that you really don't want. Not too bad at the lower levels. At the higher levels, though, perpetrators will start to rapidly escalate violence because they feel they have more to lose by getting caught. This is known in prison as holding court out in the street (apparently this is a movie reference?).
When I got caught coming out of the bank, I surrendered peacefully because I knew it would not be the end of my life. When you make a guy feel that it is the end he may decide differently.
At some point I think we need to be looking at outcomes.
FTFY. But if you had a line item for police brutality on your taxes, you might just be motivated enough to do something about it.