So keeping all of his computers for a year sounds like a major pain in the ass since he's innocent (I'm not that surprised they did it, it's understandable if you're the head detective, perhaps, but being in tech myself I'm more understanding of "I just clicked a link" and wouldn't consider that much of evidence). I'd lose sleep too just at the thought of the pending investigation and the headache that inherently is even if you're innocent of what they suspected you of. But honestly it's refreshing to read a story about a police raid where the police knocked, the warrant was in order, they were polite and sat down to talk, they explained what was going to happen next, and an agent even acknowledged in front of him that his story was reasonable. I've had a few police departments around me that routinely do none of those things.
Yeah that was the thing I was most impressed with too. Cops in the US generally don't know anything and they are unsympathetic to any perfectly sound and rational expertise you have simply because they don't know...and frankly don't care.
Not whom you're replying to, but I have had a fair amount of dealings with police in and around Chicago, mostly from traffic stops, but also from calling them/having had them called on me.
Most of the traffic stops have been for speeding (and I was speeding). It's been about 50/50 on whether I get a ticket or a warning.
I had one traffic stop in Chicago, south of the Loop on State Street, where I was pulled over by CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) for failing to signal while changing lanes (he lied; I always signal, kind of a pet peeve of mine, though I admittedly speed all the time). The same officer illegally ran a red light in front of me w/o his police lights on. What proceeded during that stop was an outright interrogation. Who am I, where was I employed, what I am doing here, etc. I told him that was none of his business and not relevant to the traffic stop. Told him I wasn't answering anymore questions without a lawyer. He threatened to arrest me. Didn't utter another word, just kept both my hands on the steering wheel at 12 o'clock. While he wrote the ticket, the other 2 officers that were with him apologized on his behalf, yet did nothing to prevent the ticket from being written. Guess I just found a dick of an officer on the wrong day. Also think I was profiled a bit. White kid, out of state plates driving through the projects. Pretty sure he thought I was trying to score some drugs, when in reality I was just going to college to take a final. The kicker is, they confiscated my license as bail. I was supposed to fly home for Christmas vacation a few days later, and my license was my only valid ID to fly at the time. I had to get a state ID that cost only $4, but I was in college and broke. I had to pay that $4 in dimes from my change jar because that was literally all I had.
I've also been pulled over by a sheriff's deputy in Montana before. I was visiting my parents around Christmas and I got pulled over for "an aggressive pass". I accelerated rapidly and passed on the right someone that was driving 10 under the limit in the left lane (illegal in MT, btw, slow traffic in the left lane must pull over tot the right). It was somewhat comical because the deputy turned on his lights at me, and I went to pull over, but it was in an area with next to no shoulder. I literally had to drive about 4 miles further, with my signal on as the deputy kept calling at me over his loud speaker to keep going until there was a proper shoulder. The deputy gave me a warning, despite my bloodshot eyes and breath smelling of whiskey (I had been up since 4am CPT, had been travelling all day and it was now 7pm MPT and I'd had a single drink with an old high school friend and I was still wearing contacts at the time).
When I've had to call the police, I've generally been treated fairly well. Most often, it's been because of a traffic accident (I've been in probably 20 accidents in my lifetime, only 1 of which has been my fault). Other times, it's usually been due to noise complaints against neighbors very late at night. One wasn't terribly late, but I was reading a book quietly in my old apartment and I could hear a woman screaming bloody murder. Literally heard through the ceiling "Help! He's going to kill me!". I don't like to get involved in other peoples arguments/disagreements, but yeah, I definitely called the police on that one. Another time, same apartment, I happened to be up late watching TV at like 2am when I noticed a ton of police lights out in the drive/parking lot of my apartment complex (at least 8 cop cars with lights on) and officers wandering around with shotguns, assault rifles and pistols drawn. I live in a pretty affluent suburb of Chicago and this is pretty unheard of around here. I asked the dispatcher what was going on, and initially they wouldn't tell me anything, but later relented a bit and told me that at an adjacent building, there was a domestic dispute and the suspect had fled and they were searching for him (it happened to be snowing pretty heavily at the time, so they were following tracks in the snow).
All in all, I'd say me experience with law enforcement has been positive with one really sour experience. But, then, I'm an affluent white male. That said, I think if you're generally compliant with instructions, you probably won't have issues (this doesn't extend to answering questions - you don't and shouldn't have to without a lawyer present).
A bit of advice if you get a traffic stop: don't immediately get your license and registration out. Just pull over and leave your hands on the steering wheel, in plain site. When the officer approaches your window, explain to them exactly where each requested document is. i.e. "my license is in my wallet in the left rear of my pants and my insurance document is in the glove compartment." And make sure they acknowledge that before you make any movements to retrieve said items.
Edit: forgot the bit about them being called on me
When the police being called on me, it's always been a noise complaint and only happened once or twice.
Both times, I was drunk and didn't realize how drunk I was and how loud my music was. Turning off/down the music solved it without any issues/fines/arrests.
The same thing would happen in the USA too. If you were suspected of hacking into the Democrat or Republican party websites, the FBI would come and confiscate your computers and hold onto them until after your trial had finished. This would easily take a year or longer.
Would it happen the same way though, with a polite knock on the door, a calm chat and orderly evidence collection? In the US they'd probably break the door, pin the guy down on the floor while armed men ransack the house. Call me cynical...
It's true, the jails are so clogged that pre-trial offenders can be held for months and sometimes years without a conviction in the U.S. Not to mention the indeterminate number of people who just disappear out of the computer system and end up being held for months beyond their release date.
What's worse, you could be thrown in jail if you're a witness, even if you're not even suspected of a crime. Some witnesses have been in jail for years.
You learn something new every day! I'm going to start using this. Not because I care (unaffiliated), but because I'm astounded that anyone could be seriously offended by this.
I don’t know if anyone gets offended anymore so than they would to a “your mom” joke. Saying it is mostly just funny to one group while being annoying and juvenile to another.
Generally speaking, I avoid name-calling and ad hominem attacks no matter how good they feel. Folks are doing enough trolling. We need more civility.
> It it a noun vs adjective thing that I'm missing?
Yes, you'll notice they never use the singular "Democrat". They describe democrats, the Democratic party, etc. but only Republicans started using this bizarre "Democrat Party" or the "Democrat nominee" thing.
This confuses me. I've discussed politics for over 10 years online, both in very conservative forums and very liberal forums, and have never once seen a person mention this before. Sometimes I have even been on forums where name calling was quite direct. Yet I've never heard of this before.
A quick google search shows a number of mentions, but it feels so odd that I could've missed this, especially since a person who isn't in the know can easily make the mistake of thinking Democrats belong to the Democrat Party.
Has it historically not been an issue enough to call out? Is this only in some circles and not universally agreed upon? It just seems so odd for me to have missed this being a thing. It is like if one day someone told you 'fish' was a loaded negative term to refer to people who went to college.
It's definitely an intentional thing among prominent Republicans, but especially the "Fox News" set.. like I doubt you'd see Justin Amash saying it, but the Devin Nunes's of the world love it;
Donald Trump speaks about Democrats in a pejorative manner. Sometimes it's even using "Democrat" as a noun in the grammatically correct way. Film at 11?
Nitpick: The singular “Democrat” is still standard if used as a noun, as in “Nancy Pelosi is a Democrat.” It’s only using it as an adjective that’s nonstandard.
I doubt anybody uses "democrat party" for reasons related to the demon-rat moniker.
It seems to be more about disputing that the party is in fact democratic. Among other things, the superdelegates make this clear. It's also the matter of the party making a name-grab for democracy itself, which is a more valuable trademark than anything associated with the republic.
> It seems to be more about disputing that the party is in fact democratic. Among other things, the superdelegates make this clear. It's also the matter of the party making a name-grab for democracy itself, which is a more valuable trademark than anything associated with the republic.
Yes, I'm sure the pejorative use by Republicans of the term that Democrats use to refer to themselves is rooted in Republicans' sincere concern with the structure of the DNC's primary. That must be it.
> burfog 19 hours ago | parent | flag | favorite | on: Iran attack: US airbases in Iraq hit by ballistic ...
> Democrat voters may oppose war, but the same can not be said for democrat politicians.
I could see this being very confusing if you were a non-native English speaker. "Democratic" = OK. "He's a Democrat" = OK. "The Democrat party" = NOT OK.
Nouns can't modify nouns like adjectives can, but they can be modified to be adjectives.
Friend = OK
Friendly = OK
He's a friendly person = OK
He's a friend person = NOT OK
He's a friend = OK
This should be something most speakers learn early, though, maybe they won't know all the rules for modification and will make up an incorrect adjective. I.e., He's a democratly person.
But if the phrase "friend person" caught on (similar to, I don't know, the phrase "my bad"), we wouldn't consider it a "secret handshake" or "dog whistle". Especially since "members of the Democratic party" generally consider Republicans to be less well educated on average. Ascribing this to some kind of intentional, coordinated malice in all cases seems ludicrous to me.
Someone like US Senator Josh Hawley went to Stanford, then to Yale Law, he clerked on the US Appeals Court and then for the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was then elected as the Attorney General of Missouri and won the race for US Senator in 2018.
Do you honestly think he doesn't know the proper name of one of the two major parties in the USA, or the body that organizes their elections? It's not subtle. Just super juvenile 'own the libs' silliness.
> Today on Fox & Friends Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said the Democrat National Committee ...
> “Essentially the Democrat Party bought themselves ...
And it's not remotely unheard-of for the FBI to execute that in the form of an escalated no-knock raid. Paul Manafort is one example that immediately comes to mind, and his was in the middle of the night IIRC.
> Paul Manafort is one example that immediately comes to mind, and his was in the middle of the night IIRC.
Nah, that story was just propaganda to make people feel sorry for a dude who evaded like $20M in taxes by offering political services to corrupt governments and oligarchs. You need special permission from a judge to do a 'no-knock' raid or a night one. (First page here clearly shows it was a daytime search warrant: https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/180626...)
The FBI knocked repeatedly, and then used a previously provided key to access Manafort's condo sometime after 6am, which is early but still after dawn in Virginia in August so even the "pre-dawn raid" people were wrong.
Maybe the inhabitant only weighs 80 pounds, and that is all the floor is capable of supporting. The basement holds a large collection of glass containers holding venomous animals.
Your house would be condemned and you would be civilly and criminally liable for any injuries the officers may have. The joists need to support 40 pounds of pressure per square foot in habitable rooms, 10 in non-habitable rooms (e.g. an attic)
I'm in a fairly average US state and previously lived in Africa. As a Libertarian, I tend not to be the biggest fan of those who idealize Europe's policies, but they sure seem to have avoided dysfunctional government employees better than the rest of us. (And honestly if a typical government employee in the US was of that calibre, I'd be less opposed to bigger government).
As an American, police in Europe seem to be more like "Beat you with a stick but keep you out of jail type" and treat citizens in a rational way according to how the industrial world works (as well as protecting workers from losing their jobs, especially when innocent until proven guilty). In the US, it's basically the lottery that nobody wants to win. Cause if a cop wants to ruin your day, month, or year, he absolutely can with 0 recourse.
That's why I'll always view the US government's approach to policing as repressionary unless they actually give workers rights preventing them from being fired, and actually funding the legal system to be more efficient. They run it like a business and intend to keep it that way.
* (disclaimer) for people who have the time and money to actually go through with a lawsuit.
* (disclaimer) cops almost never get convicted so it can be a fruitless, expensive waste of money and years of time.
We had to waste a lot of money and years of our time just to get an offense stricken from my mom's record: a sociopathic dick of a cop in a rural area made up trumped up charges to place on my mom in an escalation with a local school district. Compensation? Haha, good joke! We were lucky to have the money to fight the charges, but that cop received no punishment. Furthermore, my parents run their own business so they had no problem with the amount of time needed.
Lawsuits may as well not exist for a large portion of the population.
I can jump in on this bandwagon a bit. A cop, not on active duty at the time, took a retired German Shepard police dog as a pet. He lived near a college and had his dog running around in his backyard. An event was going on at the college so there were large crowds. The cop didn't watch the dog and it jumped out of his fenced in yard and started attacking the students. My brother got bit pretty bad and had nerve damage in his arm.
It's been 2 years since this happened and the cop has not admitted fault, hasn't had to put the dog down, hasn't been written up, or had to pay a dime. Although the city has agreed to pay because it was their officers fault, the funny thing was, no lawyer would take the case if my parents wanted to sue simply because they know suing the city is impossible (which is frankly ridiculous), and because it involved a cop not on active duty. I mean the city is still dragging their feet paying for his hospital visit and everything, meanwhile my brother is basically in collections for something he isn't supposed to pay for.
If anything the event has really taught me to despise the US government and cops more than ever. Cops individually may be nice people, but that badge and union suddenly turns them into some of the biggest repressionary forces to regular lower income people.
The police in the UK are, on average, pretty damn polite compared to any other country I have ever visited or lived in. I honestly think it’s because they (typical beat cop) don’t have guns, so there is no overwhelming force escalation during an encounter.
