Cop: "You're Recording Me? I Will Pull My Gun On You."

[PickelledEggs]

Nonsensei. You just made our point. There isn't a reason for the guy to start recording if he didn't think he would need it in trial. He seems like he was thinking he would need it in trial for his defense. And from a cop's perspective, if a guy is collecting evidence before anything even happens, there is something to at least check out.

When the cop tells  the guy to remove his hand from his pocket and the boat guy yells "I didn't do anything wrong. NO." That adds to the suspicion and also adds a reason for caution.

[PickelledEggs]

To expand:
I think anyone that thinks that a cop is going to be arresting them would start a recording for evidence to use for their defense, if they could. But that begs the question "why did this guy think he was going to be arrested?"

To the cop, it looks like there might be something that needs to be checked out. *"why is this guy recording from all the way over there"*

Also. How did this guy know to have the camera ready by the time he drove on to his street? Did someone call the cops on him and he knew it? He said the cop was patrolling the area, but can we really take his word for it? The boat guy also says that the cops "bother his family all the time". Maybe one of the reasons he was patrolling the area is because they know his family is a constant problem...

There is a family a town away from me that the cops are always over and patrolling the area. It's a nice town and a nice area, but the family is fucked in the head. The daughter even at one point stabbed the mother, so the cops are always being called to their house and constantly patrolling the surrounding block. Not saying the family was involved in a stabbing, it could be something as simple as constant noise complaints. I don't know if that is true or not, that the cops even hate the family or constantly go to his house... but these are things we have to consider.
All we know is that he started recording the cop before he even got around to the house, which is at the end of a dead end. And he started recording at what looks like where the cop turned on to the street. That looks suspicious, or at least like something worth checking out.

[widdershins]

For an argument like this I am going to do something I rarely do: demand numbers. You say tons of crimes are prevented this way. Are there any statistics to support your assertion or are you saying this merely because it makes sense in your mind?

How many crimes are prevented by cops defining probable cause as whatever they damn well please?
How often are cops WRONG about this sort of thing?
How often do cops spark a situation that otherwise would not have existed if not for their intervention based on their personal opinion of the way a suspect looks or acts?

I always get super suspicious when people start telling me that anything at all prevents "tons" of crime. Our police officers are not all that fucking wonderful at actually preventing crime. Out criminal justice system is, well, desined to mete out JUSTICE. As in legal retribution for crimes committed. Cops cant be everywhere. In fact cops are almost nowhere in relation to all the places people are. I find it difficult to accept that cops engaging in undefined profiling dont create just as many situations as they prevent, and the situations they do prevent are just a drop in the bucket to how many crimes are committed in aggregate.

Is that worth giving what amounts to (often) thinly trained, poorly screened regular people with guns even more authority to do whatever they please on the street? I say fuck no.

While I do admit specific statistics are difficult to find, I can easily point out that Terry v Ohio, the case which made it specifically legal for police to investigate suspicious people, involves two men doing nothing more than walking back and forth on the street, perfectly legal, but "suspicious" behavior since they were walking back and forth in front of a jewelry store.  I can also point to a 2013 FBI report giving details of officers killed in the line of duty which specifically lists "investigating suspicious persons" among other things one would more commonly associate with police officers being killed, including arrest situations, traffic stops and tactical situations  Yes, it’s in the same list as “tactical situations”, which suggests it’s pretty common.  I can point you to a police article which call checking out suspicious people a "bread and butter part of police work".  I would say that this claim falls under the category of "common sense", but apparently not.  I will continue seeing if I can dredge up actual statistics for you, but I do find your request to be a little ridiculous.  There is obviously behavior which warrants at least a quick check to make sure everything is on the up and up.  If this isn't obvious to you it's because you don't want it to be, which is easily confirmed here in just a little bit.

Now, is this "suspicious activity" thing abused?  Are there officers who use it to harass?  Of course there are.  We're talking about human beings, not robots programmed to serve.  Power corrupts.  I'm not stupid.  But in THIS VIDEO, I don't see that and you can't judge THIS OFFICER by what "some officers MIGHT" do.

And that second to the last sentence there shows that you're actually not interested in any facts yourself.  You say, "I find it difficult to accept that cops engaging in undefined profiling don't create just as many situations as they prevent, and the situations they do prevent are just a drop in the bucket to how many crimes are committed in aggregate."  Forgive me for being obtuse, but doesn't the accuracy of that particular claim hinge on THE VERY STATISTICS you asked ME to provide?  You ask me for statistics to prove what I say in one breath and then simply assume numbers favorable to yourself in the next?  Not only that, you start out that sentence by saying essentially that, until I can prove otherwise, you simply cannot be persuaded to believe that cops engaged in undefined profiling don't "create just as many situations as they prevent".  This is a clear bias on your part.  You accept that it may sometimes work, but if it does it is probably completely canceled out by the harm done.  You have NO REASON to believe this as you admitted you DO NOT HAVE these statistics, the ones you asked me for but feel no need to provide to back up your own claims.

Now, can you give me some statistics showing the average level of police training to prove they are generally "thinly" trained?  Or the average level of screening for a police officer to prove that they are generally poorly screened?  I happen to know for a fact that the officers in my tiny town had to go through quite a bit of screening, including psychological profiling (The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, to be exact).  You ask me for statistics, but then you make multiple claims without backing them up yourself, INCLUDING one claim which would require that you had THE VERY STATISTICS you asked me for.

I’m sorry, but this is just not an honest argument.  You can’t ask me to prove myself with statistics and then make claims which require those self-same statistics, along with a bunch of other assumptions you make about the general state of police training and screening.  If we’re going to go all “prove it” here on my claim, which I see as common sense, then we’re doing the same with your multiple claims, so see if you can find those statistics for me.  I was having trouble coming up with anything other than racial profiling statistics.  Thanks.

[widdershins]

You know, I just thought of one more thing here that really is ridiculous.  If I saw a man on the street filming me, I'm likely to stop and ask what is up with that.  It's human nature.  Why should human nature change because the human involved is wearing a uniform?  What did the cop do in the beginning, really, than what any ordinary person would do?  He got out of his car to talk to the guy.  That was it.  Why does this make him an evil, confrontational man when he was doing the EXACT SAME THING I would do in that situation?  Yes, things quickly escalated.  But I'd get out of the car and talk to the man and this is a secret, but I'm going to share it with you anyway, police officers are ordinary human beings.  That blue, it's just a uniform!  True story, I swear!  They get angry and happy and sad and annoyed just like you and me.  Some of you here act like they should stop being human beings, susceptible to human weaknesses and failures, and that their reactions to a given situation should automatically be better than mine or yours when they put on that uniform.  It's unrealistic, to say the least.

[Nonsensei]

While I do admit specific statistics are difficult to find, I can easily point out that Terry v Ohio, the case which made it specifically legal for police to investigate suspicious people, involves two men doing nothing more than walking back and forth on the street, perfectly legal, but "suspicious" behavior since they were walking back and forth in front of a jewelry store.  I can also point to a 2013 FBI report giving details of officers killed in the line of duty which specifically lists "investigating suspicious persons" among other things one would more commonly associate with police officers being killed, including arrest situations, traffic stops and tactical situations  Yes, it’s in the same list as “tactical situations”, which suggests it’s pretty common.  I can point you to a police article which call checking out suspicious people a "bread and butter part of police work".  I would say that this claim falls under the category of "common sense", but apparently not.  I will continue seeing if I can dredge up actual statistics for you, but I do find your request to be a little ridiculous.  There is obviously behavior which warrants at least a quick check to make sure everything is on the up and up.  If this isn't obvious to you it's because you don't want it to be, which is easily confirmed here in just a little bit.

Now, is this "suspicious activity" thing abused?  Are there officers who use it to harass?  Of course there are.  We're talking about human beings, not robots programmed to serve.  Power corrupts.  I'm not stupid.  But in THIS VIDEO, I don't see that and you can't judge THIS OFFICER by what "some officers MIGHT" do.

And that second to the last sentence there shows that you're actually not interested in any facts yourself.  You say, "I find it difficult to accept that cops engaging in undefined profiling don't create just as many situations as they prevent, and the situations they do prevent are just a drop in the bucket to how many crimes are committed in aggregate."  Forgive me for being obtuse, but doesn't the accuracy of that particular claim hinge on THE VERY STATISTICS you asked ME to provide?  You ask me for statistics to prove what I say in one breath and then simply assume numbers favorable to yourself in the next?  Not only that, you start out that sentence by saying essentially that, until I can prove otherwise, you simply cannot be persuaded to believe that cops engaged in undefined profiling don't "create just as many situations as they prevent".  This is a clear bias on your part.  You accept that it may sometimes work, but if it does it is probably completely canceled out by the harm done.  You have NO REASON to believe this as you admitted you DO NOT HAVE these statistics, the ones you asked me for but feel no need to provide to back up your own claims.

Now, can you give me some statistics showing the average level of police training to prove they are generally "thinly" trained?  Or the average level of screening for a police officer to prove that they are generally poorly screened?  I happen to know for a fact that the officers in my tiny town had to go through quite a bit of screening, including psychological profiling (The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, to be exact).  You ask me for statistics, but then you make multiple claims without backing them up yourself, INCLUDING one claim which would require that you had THE VERY STATISTICS you asked me for.

I’m sorry, but this is just not an honest argument.  You can’t ask me to prove myself with statistics and then make claims which require those self-same statistics, along with a bunch of other assumptions you make about the general state of police training and screening.  If we’re going to go all “prove it” here on my claim, which I see as common sense, then we’re doing the same with your multiple claims, so see if you can find those statistics for me.  I was having trouble coming up with anything other than racial profiling statistics.  Thanks.

We both have a bias here. Mine is that I don't want police officers to have even more power over us than they already have. I'm not entirely sure what yours is.

However my argument, while not any better than yours in the area of statistics, is superior in the area of probability. Because "tons" of crime is not prevented at all, its unlikely that unrestricted, person to person profiling prevents "tons" of crime. Once you acknowledge that, the question becomes a cost/benefit equation. Is the unknown, but likely insignificant amount of crime prevented by (what I consider to be) overzealous profiling practices worth the power citizens cede to police in order to enable it? And before you ask me exactly what power they are ceding, how about an example like, say, the freedom to record a police officer on a public street without being investigated for it (and countless other examples of totally legal activities that are now open season for profiling based on nothing more than the whim of a given police officer)

There's no objective answer to the question of whether or not the profiling is worth the social price to enable it simply because there is no objective data to examine. However in the realm of probability, I think I have the advantage. When you compare the pool of crimes prevented by this open ended profiling, which is  a subset of the total number of crimes prevented overall, which is already a subset of the total number of crimes committed it becomes clear in a subjective way that the value of this profiling is likely not worth the price society has to pay to enable it.

But thats not even the real comparison to be made. The REAL comparison is how many crimes are prevented by open ended profiling as compared to profiling which has hard rules about what can and cannot be considered probable cause. Rules that respect a person's right to, say, record a police officer on a public street while still allowing police to step in for truly obvious suspicious situations that actually point directly to crime rather than just being "weird". Again, theres no data to examine, but now we are down to the tiny sliver of crimes prevented by open ended profiling versus hard rules profiling and it seems even less worthwhile than before.

[Nonsensei]

You know, I just thought of one more thing here that really is ridiculous.  If I saw a man on the street filming me, I'm likely to stop and ask what is up with that.  It's human nature.  Why should human nature change because the human involved is wearing a uniform?  What did the cop do in the beginning, really, than what any ordinary person would do?  He got out of his car to talk to the guy.  That was it.  Why does this make him an evil, confrontational man when he was doing the EXACT SAME THING I would do in that situation?  Yes, things quickly escalated.  But I'd get out of the car and talk to the man and this is a secret, but I'm going to share it with you anyway, police officers are ordinary human beings.  That blue, it's just a uniform!  True story, I swear!  They get angry and happy and sad and annoyed just like you and me.  Some of you here act like they should stop being human beings, susceptible to human weaknesses and failures, and that their reactions to a given situation should automatically be better than mine or yours when they put on that uniform.  It's unrealistic, to say the least.

I guess there's a real difference here between us then. I wouldn't confront the guy, largely because he is free to record whatever the hell he wants, even me. If it bothered me I would leave. Leaving really is the quickest, simplest and most effective solution to ending the entire situation with no harm done to anyone. You walk up to the guy and demand to know what hes doing and you are taking the chance that you start something. Maybe he will explain it to you. Maybe he will tell you to fuck off, and then we're off to the races.

Personally, I think this is a police officer reacting the same way cops all over the nation have been reacting to the new norm of literally everyone walking around with a video recorder in their pockets. It terrifies them. Back in the old days they could choke slam a suspect while arresting him and it would be fine. After all hes a fucking criminal, who would believe him. But now it could be recorded from a dozen angles by anyone who happens to be nearby. For some cops it must be a fucking nightmare not to ever be sure your misconduct isn't being recorded.

I mean fuck, whats the world coming to when you cant even empty your clip into the back of an unarmed fleeing black suspect without it appearing on youtube?

This is cop camera phobia, not probable cause to suspect. This cop was paranoid about being recorded and, being a cop, decided to try to do something about it (he failed, of course).

[Nonsensei]

Nonsensei. You just made our point. There isn't a reason for the guy to start recording if he didn't think he would need it in trial. He seems like he was thinking he would need it in trial for his defense. And from a cop's perspective, if a guy is collecting evidence before anything even happens, there is something to at least check out.

When the cop tells  the guy to remove his hand from his pocket and the boat guy yells "I didn't do anything wrong. NO." That adds to the suspicion and also adds a reason for caution.

Sorry but thats just not how this works. Either the guy is committing a crime, which means he wouldn't be recording anything because it would be used in evidence against him, or he isn't committing a crime which means theres no reason for the police officer to approach him to begin with. You can't have it both ways.

When did it become normal in your minds for criminals to record police officers rather than run from them? So normal that just some random dude on the street recording a police officer is now halfway to being guilty of undefined criminal activity? You guys are reaching hard on this particular aspect of the argument.

[PickelledEggs]

No reason for the officer to approach? You must live in some sort of utopia that I don't know about. The officer came to check things out and that is the police's job. Unless that guy's property is the entire street, he has every right to drive down that road. And if he sees something, like a guy recording him, he has his right and obligation to check it out.

And checking it out was all he was doing, until the guy got overly defensive about pulling his hand out of his pocket when he approached the patrol car with his hand in there.

[PickelledEggs]

From now on, I'm just going to record and yell at every cop for driving down my street. He has NO RIGHT!!!! *sarcasm*

[aitm]

I guess this is where we say we just disagree.

[aitm]

Here, get outraged over something that deserves it:

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2016/03/25/82269088/

[aitm]

Okay that was a bit silly of me..so here is a REAL case where you have the right to be a bit pissed:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-mailman-handcuffed-in-brooklyn/ar-BBqUeTx

[SGOS]

His argument that he was doing nothing wrong is irrelevant:  "I won't take my hands out of my pocket, because I have done nothing wrong."  It looks like baiting a cop to get on Utube.

[Nonsensei]

His argument that he was doing nothing wrong is irrelevant:  "I won't take my hands out of my pocket, because I have done nothing wrong."  It looks like baiting a cop to get on Utube.

Maybe it was baiting, but he really did do nothing wrong, which is the only thing a police officer should be concerned about.  Or us, for that matter

[Nonsensei]

Okay that was a bit silly of me..so here is a REAL case where you have the right to be a bit pissed:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-mailman-handcuffed-in-brooklyn/ar-BBqUeTx

Yeah I heard about this last night. This is an example of why I can't trust cops to make rational judgments on ambiguous issues.