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If you hide something on my car to spy on me then it's not reasonable to expect it back if I find it. Charging somebody with theft for something like this is e

• freeopinion 7y ago
  I'd settle for experimenting with "same". If a regular citizen can't plant a bug, neither can police. If police can conduct a stakeout, so can regular citizens. They just have to follow the same process. That might include going in front of a judge and getting a warrant. If a regular citizen could break up a bar fight, the police should be able to take the same actions. If police can set up a sting operation, so should citizens be allowed. Obviously, we don't want everybody running around conducting sting operations or traffic stops. So we set some bar for regular citizens that makes it less likely. But police should have to face the exact same bar. The difference is that we pay for their time, training, equipment, etc. If a certain level of training is required before anybody can make a traffic stop, that training should be open for anybody. We just pay the admission and the salary for police to take the training. Regular citizens foot their own bill. Edit: poor proofreading
  • fargle 7y ago
    amen. and if magnetic shit falls off my car, that's the breaks, suckers.
  • L0stRegulator 7y ago
    So the obvious question then is should we be allowed place trackers in police cars, so we can track them on Waze (for example), and it would be a crime for them to remove it. Equivalencies of Powers/Rights is a good thought experiment that would keep the powers of the enforcers from multiplying without limits.
    • dbdjfjrjvebd 7y ago
      If authorized by a judge then yes.
  • DagAgren 7y ago
    So which do you think makes more sense: Police are not allowed to arrest people, or everyone is allowed to arrest?
    • icebraining 7y ago
      Everyone being allowed to arrest is actually not far from truth in many places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest#United_Stat...
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • Frondo 7y ago
      Former private security guard here: in our training, we were told that we, as private citizens, could "arrest" someone, if you're willing to sign your name to an arrest warrant. You'd want to have the cops on the way, and be willing to face a false arrest lawsuit for detaining them, so you'd better be really 100% sure you caught them in the act of doing something illegal. We were also taught it's almost never worth doing this; basically, if someone's shooting people and you're doing an armed job, yes, use your gun to try and stop them or detain them, but if it's just property damage or theft, call the cops and let them do their thing. The risk to you isn't worth it, nor is the risk of a false arrest lawsuit.
      • vonmoltke 7y ago
        I think that hints towards freeopinion's point. You, as a private citizen, should have exactly the same legal liability with respect to false arrest as a police officer. Then the question is, is such a good idea?
    • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      Everyone is allowed to arrest. Police only get that power as an extension of their citizenship. There was a curious case a few years back of a non-citizen who had been a military police officer and became a civilian cop because nobody checked his documentation. His military activities were perfectly legal but all arrests made as a civilian were invalid.
• m463 7y ago
  > the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else I was told the difference between a policeman and a citizen (via citizen's arrest) is that a policeman can arrest someone for a misdemeanor.
  • icebraining 7y ago
    According to Wikipedia, misdemeanors are OK too, as long as they were committed in the presence of that citizen. I think the real difference is that the cops have qualified immunity, meaning they aren't at fault even if the arrest turned out to be unjustified, and regular citizens do not.
    • Clubber 7y ago
      I think police can be at fault, it's just the individual police officer doesn't typically pay the fine, it's their jurisdiction (city/county), i.e. the citizens. I don't mean to sound pedantic, just having a conversation.
• dbcurtis 7y ago
  > One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else. The correct term to use here is "powers". The people have "rights". The people delegate, through the constitution, certain "powers" to the government. The government, in turn, delegates some of those powers to the police. The police do not have "rights". The government does not have "rights". The government and police have "powers", and are supposed to exercise those powers within specified limits. What is under discussion here is the limits of those powers.
  • x220 7y ago
    Police de facto have more rights because they can expect lenient punishment (or no punishment) for crimes they commit even when out of uniform. You can argue until you're blue in the face about de jure rights but those don't matter very much when a cop pulls you over and fears for his life.
    • Aloha 7y ago
      Not by intention however, but I'd mostly agree they do in practice.
      • tehwebguy 7y ago
        It is entirely intentional.
        • imtringued 7y ago
          Where is this intention written down? Can you show me the relevant law?
          • tehwebguy 7y ago
            Qualified immunity laws and case law is what you are looking for.
• wodenokoto 7y ago
  So police and firefighters shouldn’t be allowed to run red lights?
  • nothrabannosir 7y ago
    Not OP, but: not per se, no. Only in the pursuit of some specific task which requires them to do that. Just like a citizen can run a red light if they have to rush someone to a hospital. Or at least I’d hope they can.
    • thomasfedb 7y ago
      It's probably a defence rather than being directly permissable.
      • nothrabannosir 7y ago
        Sure, but in the context of an ethics exploring thought experiment, those are the same. This is about what the law should be (if I understand the game correctly).
  • Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    Well, this depends. On the way to an emergency? Of course they should. And people should pull over. And only sometimes while on the job. For example, if they catch someone for speeding and happen to go through a red light, I don't find that to be a grave thing. Speeding is easily a public hazard. Going off to investigate a theft where the thief has left the property, though? No need to run the light as the delay won't make a difference. Going to a car accident, especially with hurt folks or that is blocking traffic? Yes. Car accident in an open section of parking lot? Rarely necessary.
    • Spooky23 7y ago
      They have protocols for that and generally follow them.
• logfromblammo 7y ago
  Cops should not be allowed any power that is not available to every person, by virtue of their automatic eligibility for the county posse under authority of the sheriff, and for the state militia under authority of the governor. Cops are supposed to be professionals, with keeping the civil order of their state and/or county and/or municipality as their full-time job, but the authority to arrest criminals historically extends from the sheriff of the county, to every person whom he or she may designate, either orally or in writing. If the sheriff asked for assistance from an ordinary person, and they effected an arrest, that was legally an official act of the sheriff. Similar extension-of-authority constructs exist for a municipal mayor/council, state governor, and federal president. Without a preexisting order to assist, as one might have as a municipal cop or full-time county deputy, there is no official cover for an arrest, and the person making one would have personal liability, if they made a mistake. That privilege of immunity for mistakes made during establishment or maintenance of civil order is supposed to keep professional cops from being too fearful of civil liability lawsuit to do their jobs effectively. I would argue that they are now not fearful enough to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with their positions in the community, as part of it, simply being persons who have been given a standing order to assist the office of the president/governor/sheriff/mayor in their duty to keep civil order. They have now set themselves apart from the communities in which they live, behind the cordon of their thin blue lines, as adversaries to those whom they see as enemies of civil order. As such, they have become blind to those occasions on which their actions are actually upsetting to the civil order. In other words, they get into some crazy bullshit legal arguments, and sometimes get away with it. The privilege they enjoy is actually in having their personal actions taken as extensions of a higher lawful authority, rather than as their own. It is established that the state has the authority to require that motor vehicle owners permanently affix a license plate to their vehicles, which remains the property of the state, and not remove it, and to return it to a designated authority on demand. But this is all written into public law. You can't just arbitrarily extend that power to some cop shop's magnetic GPS tracker. If you want it to be a crime to remove it, you have to write that into its own law. Otherwise, you have to follow the same law for theft (or unlawful conversion) as everyone else. And that opens up a reciprocal liability for putting your property on someone else's property without their authorization. I suppose the opsec moral of the story is to drop found trackers onto the public road, or report it as lost property, instead of leaving it inside a locker. Putting a classified ad for lost property in the public notices section of the local paper for three consecutive weeks might have been a fun experiment in "fruit of the poisoned tree" lawyering.