| ▲ | Papazsazsa a day ago |
| One of the most compelling aspects of American governance is the latitude local law enforcement has. They can be both an ally and enemy to freedom. |
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| ▲ | thephyber a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Your comment reminds me of a post I read on a popular police forum about J Edgar Hoover (the infamous Director of the FBI for half a century). He created a professionalized police / intelligence force, but he also abused the rights of many citizens and elected political officials with that force. Supposedly he even used it to blackmail some of the Congressmen who were legally obligated to oversee his department. And the comments in that post were a Rorschach test of where the commenter fell on how "necessary" the abuses of the FBI were. |
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| ▲ | SoftTalker a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Too bad the congressmen he blackmailed didn't know he was gay. At the time, that would have been powerful information. | | |
| ▲ | thephyber a day ago | parent [-] | | It's important to understand that the FBI's power was very asymmetric. J Edna Hoover could assign a team to gather kompromat on a person and to surveil them or harass them. A Congressperson has no equivalent ability to threaten the Director of the FBI. At best, they could spread a rumor, but a rumor doesn't catch fire when journalists / editors had too high of ethics to repeat unverified rumors. |
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| ▲ | helterskelter2 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, he did try to blackmail MLK into suicide. Even if it wasn't his personal doing, the letter was found in his confidential files. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter | | |
| ▲ | thephyber a day ago | parent [-] | | Right, but if you ask J Edgar Hoover supporters, MLK was an adulterer and a Socialist / Communist agitating the American populace (during a time when mass protests and riots were spreading like wildfire). The thing is, there is some truth in those claims. Also, American society in the 1960s was not nearly as supportive of MLK Jr when he was alive as much as they are now that he was martyred. You and I are looking back and projecting our modern values on people who were still largely racist in a time when racism was both a de facto and de jure truth. That is to say that lots of America would likely have supported the effect of the blackmail letter, if not the method itself. It was a different time. The frequent threat of the USSR, encroaching Communism, and the specter of nuclear war was suffocating and the "Law and Order" marketing of Nixon and J Edgar Hoover were appealing to many people, even if they suppressed the freedoms of many. | | |
| ▲ | coryrc a day ago | parent [-] | | I think everything you wrote is correct except "It was a different time." | | |
| ▲ | thephyber a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes and no. We did change the laws and provide more de jure rights since the 1960s. I think there's lots of conflation of the more traditional definition of "racism" with the contemporary definition, which is not a direct correlation to the older one. The older one was a descriptor of the attributes of an individual's beliefs whereas the contemporary is a descriptor of the societal system / incentives. Companies with deep pockets aren't throwing advertising dollars at Nick Fuentes or Kanye West when they are deep in their racist mania arc. It is no longer socially acceptable to be associated with what used to be common, the societal norm, and legally enforced. We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. | |
| ▲ | thephyber a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I will, however, completely agree that the time of Nixon's presidency is remarkably similar to Trump's terms. Im enjoying watching HBO's The WhiteHouse Plumbers and CNN's Ticky Dick. There are soooo many references thick rhyme with Trump's rhetoric, actions, and policies. | | |
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| ▲ | throwaway27448 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| One of the least democratic and accountable institutions in america, btw, along with the courts. |
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| ▲ | mindslight a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This right here. If we're going to oust this anti-American Flock and its less prominent "competitors", then we need the police to realize they're not friends, but rather foes. Extra work arresting motorists with frivolous/incompetent warrants from distant cities, civil suits for violating rights where the police department is left holding the bag, spending budget that could instead be spent on actual policing, defiant disobedience when they're asked to take the cameras down or make changes, making your city more likely to be a flashpoint for federal action, etc. Of course this is in addition to state-level political action against flocks and other types of surveillance to preserve our freedom uniformly. The point is that we want the police lobby to be neutral or even on our side, rather than having to fight against them. |
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| ▲ | AngryData a day ago | parent [-] | | The problem is many departments profit off being able to pull people over for bs reasons so they can try and catch them for other crimes. False positives gives them additional reasons to pull people over and find drugs or probation violations which is the bread and butter of many police department's and court's funding. |
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| ▲ | dmos62 a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Are they elected? |
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| ▲ | jfengel a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Some are. Usually on a campaign of "law and order", which makes Flock cameras an easy sell to their voting base. Because they let you keep an eye on the sort of people who are likely to be criminals. You know. Those people. They themselves generally don't mind the invasion of privacy, at least not until it catches them specifically. In general they are much, much more afraid of the "crime wave" than of the police. (A crime wave which never seems to diminish, despite more and more policing and punishment. And which is contradicted by crime statistics.) | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The absence of cameras necessitates much more a reliance on "those people" profiling style policing than their presence. Do people feel the same way about speeding cameras? I find the backlash against ALPRs wildly disproportionate. It earnestly saddens me that our political focus has flowed to these issues, datacenters, college sports rules, etc. while we remain incapable of confronting far more consequential structural problems, like an inability to tax and redistribute wealth. | | |
| ▲ | doctorwho42 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I feel the same way about speeding cameras. As I found they impede the flow of traffic. Ultimately this is due to the fact that the systems are used to generate revenue from citizens trying to live from day to day. Speed cameras don't really impact the wealthy the way they do the working class. Same goes for video surveillance. So why should we the people give up our right to privacy for some fake sense of safety and huge bill | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I would rather revenue raised from speeders and dangerous activities than from my income. I don't think the evidence is very strong that cameras impede the flow of traffic. | | |
| ▲ | doctorwho42 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | So you are saying you do not regularly go over the posted speed limits anywhere? Even by accident when you are not fully paying attention to your gauge? And it's not a question of one or the other. It's a imposition of both upon the citizenry. | | |
| ▲ | whimsicalism 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm saying that I lived in a city with speed cameras for years and never got a ticket whereas I saw plenty of dangerous drivers get camera ticketed. To the extent to which we expect people to violate speed limits in the normal course of safe driving, the limits should be raised. Speed cameras typically give you leeway over the limit. And yes, I support interventions that measurable reduced serious injury and death while still allowing you to drive to your destination. |
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| ▲ | rdiddly a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | If it makes you feel any better, data centers and Flock cameras ARE manifestations of the wealth imbalance. |
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| ▲ | Libcat99 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The law and order people are nuts. On a local thread complaining about our township budget it was pointed out that we spend 45% of tax revenue on policing and that if we want real cuts, some has to come from there. And a repeated response from a certain kind of person was "Well, if we're spending 45% on policing, we must need it right..." | | |
| ▲ | antonvs 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's like my tiger-repelling rock. I haven't seen a tiger in our suburban neighborhood ever since I got it. |
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| ▲ | throwaway27448 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The police and flock cameras are there regardless of how people vote lol. Who would bother to pitch flock cameras to people and why? |
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| ▲ | Loughla a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Depends on the type of police. Sheriff's are, I know. But I'm pretty sure city chiefs and state chiefs are just appointed by other elected officials. So I guess one step removed? | |
| ▲ | thephyber a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Generally the county Sheriff is elected, but the city police chief is usually appointed by civilian government. | |
| ▲ | andsoitis a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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