Think? We know this is the case. We also know they're coached on what to say in court. It shouldn't be surprising that when we officially give them different legal standards based on yelling (or testifying) certain magic phrases, they opt into the lower standards.
Body cams would tell this entire story pretty well especially since 2 officers were involved. Are we supposed to believe that San Fransicso doesn't collect enough taxes to have working body cams on all officers running for the whole shift?
Everyone wants more body cams. let's get them to stop the speculation all the time.
on the police side though, more people need to understand that the cops ask people all the time for ID and they say they don't have it. In WAY TOO MANY cases they don't want to produce it because they have warrants for other things. Cops get people night after night on small offenses and they have warrants for bigger ones. Constantly. That's why he called in, because his experience is the guy is likely hiding something.
I can't imagine not carrying my ID around if I'm an adult. I have to produce it to make transactions.
Do you live in the United States? In the U.S., despite what officers tell you, you do not have to identify yourself when asked. The only exceptions are if you're in a vehicle or in an airplane. And in some states they can demand if you they believe you are connected to a crime (California is not such a state)
I am assuming SF considers a bike a vehicle so fair game I guess. But you cannot just beat up or arrest someone just because they refuse to show their ID. You cannot assume suspicion because they won't tell you who they are. You're essentially saying if you got nothing to hide, you shouldn't worry about telling police who you are.
One time I found a wallet on a sidewalk, I picked it up, saw there was ID. The police station was nearby so I drove to turn it in. When a cop showed up (the station was closed for the night), I explained to him that I found a wallet and was turning it in. He asked me a couple questions and asked me if I wanted to leave contact information, I hesitated, and eventually after the officer assured me he didn't care, I said, "no." But during that moment I seriously considered whether or not I had to assert my right to remain anonymous/not show ID, especially since I was just trying to be a good Samaritan, and didn't want to deal with any possible accusation of stealing money from the wallet (it was empty).
I think it's questionable to have an analysis or perspective of the law that principally considers the letter of the law. What people can or can't do follows another kind of law, a subtle law, a subtle calculus.
That's the real law everywhere in the world. It's the law in China and it's the law in the US.
Can you refuse to show your ID to the cops? Can you say to the officer, "Am I being detained?" Don't just regard what the letter of some document says. Regard the subtle law with the subtle calculus.
> In the U.S., despite what officers tell you, you do not have to identify yourself when asked.
This varies state to state. In many states you must identify yourself at the level of providing your name and address, but you are not required to produce any documentation.
That's why he was stopped in the first place, for (allegedly) talking on his phone while riding. Doing so is a Vehicle Code violation. In CA, a bicycle on a public road is a vehicle subject to most provisions of the Vehicle Code.
Without probably cause, demanding ID is not just a right the police have (in the sense of fundamental human rights, I'm not talking about case law here.) Demanding ID without probable cause (or more strictly, a warrant) is a violation of fourth amendments rights, and would make the cop who did it, if armed, a felon under USC 18-242.
There's a saying about how bad the german cops got in the nazi era that you may have heard "papers please"-- this is literally asking for someone's id, usually without cause.
Or as the article states and links to if you're cycling and pulled for a traffic violation, which using a cellphone while driving is in California iirc, you have to provide identification. Not justifying the force used afterwards but requesting ID was perfectly valid here.
What transactions are you making where you have to produce ID? Unless you're constantly buying alcohol or tobacco, it really shouldn't come up. I always carry mine, but not because I typically need it.
In any case, this is all beside the point. No matter how much you think people should carry ID, it's not a legal requirement and certainly not a justification to beat someone so badly you put them in the hospital.
In fact, BART sought, and was allocated, funds specifically for security cameras... not unlike how PG&E charged ratepayers in San Mateo County for gas pipeline testing and replacement that never happened.
Confusing title. I was expecting an article about a race to deliver a burrito between a courier and a police car. What I found was a shocking story about the abuse of police authority.
I know how this will sound, but I'm going to say it anyway; if this had happened in almost any other western country there would be genuine surprise. But this is the US, so although people are upset there is no real sense of surprise. The US really needs to get its law and order officers to respect the people they are paid to serve.
Getting the police to pay out takes time and money, though. If this really would count as a work-related injury (I'm skeptical) then this fellow would collect from the employer, and the employer (or their insurance) could then go after the police to recover the funds.
Should Postmates be more careful about where they send their non-employees? Why are they sending people to areas where beatings are known to occur?
He really shouldn't be using his phone while riding a bike though. Know your area and know your destination first. Postmates is sending their non-employees out on bikes on to streets with massive vehicles, with sometimes careless drivers, which can result in severe injury and death. It is probably best to be fully alert and capable of quick responses when sent to those areas.
Do we really want companies refusing to service areas because the police in those areas are too violent? This seems crazy to me, basically accepting and working around the problem instead of fixing it.
> Do we really want companies refusing to service areas because the police in those areas are too violent? This seems crazy to me, basically accepting and working around the problem instead of fixing it.
On the contrary, I think that would be a good way to address the problem. I imagine you'd get more pressure from the community if customers called up to order and were told, "sorry, we don't deliver to your neighborhood because the police have been known to assault our delivery couriers."
This isn't a case where the police are attacking couriers and leaving everybody else alone. This stuff affects everybody (or at least everybody who looks a certain way). If frequent beatings by the police don't create sufficient community pressure, I hardly see how being cut out from some delivery services is going to tip the balance.
> If frequent beatings by the police don't create sufficient community pressure, I hardly see how being cut out from some delivery services is going to tip the balance.
It depends on how much of the local population the frequent beatings affect. If it's only directly affecting a marginalized portion of the population, the rest might not notice. The point of this protest would be to reach additional people, if it increases the fraction of the population that's affected (directly or indirectly), it might just tip the balance.
In the Philippines, police shoot suspects in custody and say the (handcuffed) suspect tried to grab an officer's gun, thus necessitating the (always fatal) shooting. People then applaud how tough on crime the police are, and anyone who brings up human rights are derided as bleeding-heart idiots.
Throughout China, the chengguan have a reputation for brutality. If you meant to say "Asia (except for China)", is it possible you stated your point too flippantly?
Well, except for China, Malaysia, India. In India the cops will do whatever they want and get away with it. I'm wealthy enough to bribe the police as needed, but many folks aren't.
A fellow I met in Kuala Lumpur told me they are starting "black lives matter", though the word "black" doesn't identify any particular ethnic group. Migrants from poorer islands/regions are more commonly targeted than locals, however. (Kuala Lumpur is quite wealthy, roughly US poverty level. However rural areas are significantly poorer.)
I think that is already happening. Will Postmates service deliveries to ISIS controlled territory?
The questions here are:
1) If Postmates knows that someone will, or may, be at risk due to following their instructions, should they still give those instructions to that person?
2) What liabilities does Postmates have when a person is injured after following their instructions?
I've looked at the video and I honestly do not see anything that would support the events that this person is claiming to have happened.
I'm just curious, but does anyone else here have the same opinion?
I mean ... only 8 or 9 out of the last 10 of these types of stories turned out to be everything but what the perpetrator + media claimed them to be initially.
Most Americans would name large northern cities like Chicago, NYC and Philadelphia as hotbeds of police corruption. San Fransisco's police force is pretty bad, though. They were just filmed shooting a slowly-walking man a couple months ago, and it wasn't too surprising an incident.
Southern states have corrupt police but tend to be known for using drug trade suspicion to confiscate cash and vehicles from immigrants. This is especially the case in Texas.
Generally, the view of police in any state is dim, though. Only the very smallest/low-density states seem to have few issues that make the news.
I definitely have complaints on both sides of this. Mostly toward the cop. Where I understand the cops strong desire to get ID from people, vet them, they really need to pick their battles wisely when they can't get what they want, especially for piddly shit. When you're in a big city, this piddly shit is worthless. You just know that at that same time, a 911 call came in for something significant such as a stolen vehicle and the dispatch probably said "we'll have somebody there in an hour" while 3 cop cars roll up for a biker using a cell phone and refusing to identify.
In the audio the cop is talking about taking the guy to jail for using his phone on a bike. Even if it were illegal, it's a misdemeanor traffic infraction at best. A traffic violation isn't something you go to jail for. And the cop is willing to do an unlawful search. I guess I see the cops point of view. Sometimes these stops yield people with warrants. Letting go a guy who might have a felony warrant is not good either. But nobody with a felony warrant is going to make an easy time for you.
My complaint about the delivery guy is why doesn't he give his name and get it all over with? And later why does he resist the cops, kicking his feet etc. Clearly he's getting detained at that point. Why would he put up a fight, like he's going to win? Does anyone ever really get away from the cops? Not so much. Heck these days you risk getting shot in the back too. If the cops were more evil, all they'd have to do is shoot the kid and say the he was going for their gun.
Once the other cops get the cyclist wrangled, Out of breath, the cop runs to the cyclists delivery partner friend across the street. The friend asks the cop why he did that and the cop said "All I wanted was his name, Do you know his name" and the friend says "yes" After that brief exchange the cop goes back across the street saying "everything I did was lawful"
Hmm, not sure about that. If I were his chief, he'd be on 2 week unpaid leave and in 16 hours of scenario training paid out of his own pocket. Of course the union would fuck that up somehow, because that's what unions do.
> I definitely have complaints on both sides of this.
I don't know which video you're watching (I'm watching the very one that you linked).
But I'm listening a guy screaming in pain on the ground held down by three officers, while a third is hitting him with a baton. There is no absolutely no reasonable complaint on the other side of this. This is assault and battery of a defenseless man.
Agreed. I would caution against taking the poster seriously.
>... A traffic violation isn't something you go to jail for. And the cop is willing to do an unlawful search. I guess I see the cops point of view. Sometimes these stops yield people with warrants. Letting go a guy who might have a felony warrant is not good either. But nobody with a felony warrant is going to make an easy time for you
The incoherency of this statement is a classic example of trying to introduce doubt where none exists.
> If I were his chief, he'd be on 2 week unpaid leave and in 16 hours of scenario training paid out of his own pocket. Of course the union would fuck that up somehow, because that's what unions do.
A handslap for beating people to a pulp. How quaint.
The mental gymnastics for excusing cruelty are pretty rote. Start by saying that X was slightly less culpable for a crime against Q, X's victims, even though 99% of historians or experts say X was completely culpable for it. Keep chiseling away at everything about and surrounding the crime. Perhaps by saying that X was under the influence of Y, or that maybe there was Z situation that caused X to do it... and once your audience agrees with every small twist logic along the way: say X did nothing wrong. And then say Q, the victims, deserved what X did. And then say that we should all do what X did to Q, again. And again. And again...
This is the mentality of an apologist, a revisionist, and of course, a monster.
Edit: off-topic UI question—my comment was a reply to a comment that its author subsequently deleted. Is that unclear to the reader?
I've noticed that replies to comments marked [flagged] or [deleted] seem to get downvoted more, and am wondering if that's because it isn't obvious that there was a parent comment and it's no longer there.
Edit 2: Thanks for all the replies. It's clearly a problem and I've put it on our list to fix.
Good point. Ok, I think I have an idea for fixing this: make the display of flagged and deleted comments look just like ordinary comments, with only the text body replaced.
"I've noticed that replies to comments marked [flagged] or [deleted] seem to get downvoted more, and am wondering if that's because it isn't obvious that there was a parent comment and it's no longer there."
Definitely. I often find myself doing a bit of a double-take when the topic suddenly shifts, and then I find the little greyed-out "[Deleted]".
> I've noticed that replies to comments marked [flagged] or [deleted] seem to get downvoted more, and am wondering if that's because it isn't obvious that there was a parent comment and it's no longer there.
I'm pretty sure that's the case. It's not as bad when the deleted comment is at the top level, but it's anywhere farther down in the thread, it's difficult to figure out where in the hierarchy it is, in my experience. Perhaps keeping (but blanking the info in) the comment post header would better delineate the deleted comments without disrupting the visual thread?
I assume that many times, the problem instead is that replies to deleted comments are downvoted because the comments lack the context to appropriately judge the content. Other than people quoting from the comment they're replying to, I'm not sure what is a good way to deal with this.
I think it might be preferable either to disallow deleting a post that's been replied to, or to automatically mark replies to a deleted post as dead (or pruned the way "off topic" threads are.) Comments that follow a deleted post lose a lot of important context.
https://www.facebook.com/CopBlock/posts/10153729801870507
https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/06/california-cops-c...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/police-dash-cam-video-...