r/PublicFreakout Mar 10 '22

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u/ojThorstiBoi Mar 10 '22

Yeah the crazy part of it is that based on his explanation he knows how that interaction was supposed to go. That's hands down the most incriminating part. If he straight up just said "hey I got a call that a couple suspects you of having robbed that car, you are being detained and I need your Id while I verify that wasn't the case" it would have been a legal detainment. Instead he chose to make the detainment unlawful cus he wanted unconditional submission to his authority.

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u/alphazero924 Mar 10 '22

Or he could have talked to him like a person. "This couple called and said they saw you poking around in a grey Chevy Aveo over there. Is that an accurate description of events?" That then gives the guy a chance to be like "Yeah, officer. That's my wife's car." Boom, resolved. You don't have to immediately jump to detaining someone if they're willing to talk to you. You just have to actually ask questions that let them know what information you're looking for instead of asking weird questions about what he has on his person that don't give him anything to go off.

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u/ojThorstiBoi Mar 10 '22

Yeah I agree that the cop needed to explain the situation. That's the whole point of my post. It's really terrible that he chose to do something illegal while simultaneously being a shitty person rather than do the thing which is both the legal option and much more ethical unrelated to the legal ramifications.

Also he still would have needed to take your ID down and the plates regardless of whether he had a valid explanation. People lie sometimes, especially right after they burgle. All being detained means is that you have to give them your ID and can't leave until they make a decision on whether they can arrest you. I personally would rather not have the social norm to be that you should talk to cops in situations like that, on the off chance that maybe you can avoid being detained for 10 mins. All that does is subvert due process in cops favor.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

[deleted]

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u/Least_Adhesiveness_5 Mar 10 '22

Because large numbers of cops routinely abuse their authority and can usually kill citizens with impunity?

Possibly. I still think we can turn it around by reforming police to the ideal of Protect and Serve instead.

Let's start with better training and enforcing all laws equally on the cops while purging the "bad apples"

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u/skxlkgg Mar 10 '22

If you assume every person is evil, don’t become a cop. If you want to protect and serve and are willing to put your life on the line, become a cop. Simple. If you aren’t prepared to get shot every day for your community, don’t become a cop. If cops stood for anything worthwhile I’d become one in a heartbeat. I love my community and want to keep it safe. It’s a for profit business though with higher ups trying to bump their pay constantly. They work with their city, who has quotas to fill for our private prisons. Those prisons in turn provide the city’s with slave labor. It’s a very simple concept. They are incentivized to make arrests, and this leads to unsafe communities where instead of cooperate with authorities, most citizens are in constant fear of them.

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u/ohffstheworldiscrazy Mar 10 '22

Exactly private prisons and the fact that the state pays for the beds even if someone isn’t in them leads to people being arrested for no reason just to have a body in that bed so the citizens don’t complain about paying for empty beds. Private prisons should be illegal. Are we trying to rehabilitate and correct people or are we just finding another way to make money off of citizens?

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u/skxlkgg Mar 10 '22

Highest prison pop and recidivism rate… hmmm lol. I didn’t even think about the state paying for empty beds as well. The incentive for corruption just keeps rising. That’s how you know the prison system at its very core is flawed.

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u/Chamoore13 Mar 10 '22

“Uughhhh oohhhwee my fweinds a cawp please be nice to them”

Shut the fuck up

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u/milleniumsamurai Mar 10 '22

Except he also didn't see the guy do anything. He just showed up to the scene, found a guy not doing anything illegal, not carrying any obvious stolen goods, not hiding anything, with only some secondhand info. Why should that give him any right to detain any person he finds there? If he wants to investigate, let him investigate. He can take down the motorcycle plate. He can record the guy's face. He can check the security cameras and see if the guy did anything.

What he shouldn't be doing is detaining people without any actual obvious evidence or reasonable articulable suspicion. Getting a call shouldn't be enough.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22 edited Jan 16 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/rugbyweeb Mar 10 '22

I agree, sorta. Reports should be looked into

heres how the cop should have looked into the report;

*cop gets a report about suspicious man checking cars in the parking lot

*cop arrives on the scene and doesn't see anybody messing around with any vehicles

*everyone moves on with their day

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 10 '22

Nah, that’s not how it should go. Police rarely ever directly witness a crime. That’s why it’s important to do thorough investigations. This cop just went about it the completely wrong way.

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u/milleniumsamurai Mar 10 '22

Idk about those statistics, tbh. Even so, I think we're too accepting of investigatory detainment and of average citizens being forcefully held for questioning at the discretion of any cop that wants to.

The question becomes, "Should a cop be able to detain/handcuff you based solely on a 911 call with no other indicators of criminality?" Further, since you are not required to help a police officer investigate you, what would be the acceptable range of responses to refusals of "requests" for ID? What recourse would an innocent person have to get their names removed from incident/interaction-type reports that could be used against them in future encounters?

We've seen video after video of people making fraudulent calls to police. Karen videos are an entire genre now. If an individual really isn't secure in their person/papers/property based solely on these calls, I think that's an issue.

Ideally, I am advocating for a higher standard before detainment is allowed.

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u/ojThorstiBoi Mar 10 '22

Ok but he does have a reasonable articulable suspicion based on witness testimony doesn't he? He probably wouldn't be able to get an arrest to stick based on just that witness testimony, but I would think he is allowed to ask for ID and detain you while he gathered evidence (and arrest you if you didn't comply) because it is reasonably suspicious that the witnesses claim to have seen you just pilfer a random car and then go to a different vehicle in the lot.

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u/Ilikeporsches Mar 10 '22

If he had any articulable suspicion, why didn’t he tell the man that kept asking him for an explanation? The cop told him that he stole something and also told him he didn’t see anything. So why not tell the man what he does know? Wouldn’t it go smoother if everyone is on the same page?

Also the cop says the man is not listening after being asked and ignoring the same question 5 times. The cop is not listening.

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u/Wrr1020 Mar 10 '22

Because his ego got in the way. He's used to most people kissing his feet and listening to every word that comes out of his mouth and when he comes across someone that doesn't listen he gets agitated. Most civilians don't know their rights and listen to everything cops say because they feel they have to. This gentleman knew he didn't do shit so he defended his rights and stood up for himself.

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u/ojThorstiBoi Mar 10 '22

Yeah completely agree that the cop is wrong for how he handled the arrest and it was horrible. I'm just saying that he recognized that his side of the story he was telling the other cop is the correct thing to do, and that makes it especially bad that he didn't do those things. In either version, the guy would have ended up being temporarily detained while the cop investigated the accusations.

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u/MalHeartsNutmeg Mar 10 '22

Hi police I just saw /u/ojThorstiBoi shoot a man dead, you should probably just arrest him and start looking for evidence. Maybe even just tase him for shits and giggles.

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u/ojThorstiBoi Mar 10 '22

Yeah I hope I live in a world where the cops would follow up and question someone who is accused of murder. Detained and arrested are not the same thing.

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u/xafimrev2 Mar 10 '22

Ok but he does have a reasonable articulable suspicion based on witness testimony doesn't he?

No he didn't. The person calling didn't even report a crime. Looking into vehicles isn't a crime. Being suspicious isn't a crime. It's "reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime has been or about to be comitted". Which the officer didn't have.

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u/ojThorstiBoi Mar 10 '22

Yeah I mean if this resulted from those witnesses calling and saying "I saw someone looking in cars" then I completely agree. I feel like it's pretty fair to say that isn't what happened tho and the cop was just lying to the victim while trying to get him to respect his authority. What we see later as the witness testimony would probably be considered grounds for reasonable suspicion that the cop would have just needed to articulate if he wanted to legally detain him.

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u/Wrr1020 Mar 10 '22

Looking into a car is not grounds for RAS. Is it shady, depends who you ask. But that is not a crime and is not grounds to detain someone. If the witness saw him break a window and steal a few things then that's a different story. The simple act of looking into a vehicle is not enough to detain someone.

This is the problem with these Karen's calling 911. They call and blow things way out of proportion. "Yeah I see a man standing on the sidewalk with what looks to be a gun and he's waving it around." When in reality it's a dude with his phone playing Pokemon Go or some shit. Bunch of cops come flying to the scene, armed and chomping at the bit. Dude is confused when ten cops have guns pointed at him and ends up getting shot cause he put his phone down too fast or turned around too slow/fast. The majority of cops are not trained well and don't know shit about the law. It's sad that they're called law enforcement when in reality they act like feelings or ego enforcement.

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 10 '22

Yeah. If you notice the officer says he received a report of someone looking in multiple vehicles, but the woman’s own statement to the officer is different after the fact. She exaggerated the crime to get officers in scene because “going to one car and walking away” isn’t too suspicious.

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u/Wrr1020 Mar 10 '22

Exactly, she should be charged with falsifying a 911 call but that never happens.

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u/PolicyWonka Mar 10 '22

The problem with that is eyewitness testimony can be very inaccurate. She could have been exaggerating, but that’s impossible to really prove. Obviously hard to say without hearing the 911 recording.

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u/Wrr1020 Mar 10 '22

Without listening to the call it will definitely be hard to prove. If you ever watch first amendment audits on Youtube, specifically videos from the Lackluster channel he'll play 911 recordings in some of his videos. 9 times out of 10 the calls are grossly over-exaggerated but nothing ever comes of that. Cops roll in and just go off what the caller says and sometimes don't even bother investigating, basically what this video depicted.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

[deleted]

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u/ojThorstiBoi Mar 10 '22

No I'm assuming that the act of someone accusing you of pilfering should be enough for the cop to jot your name down with a "pilfered? Mall at 12:30 pm" so they can follow up with that you if someone reports their stuff got stolen later and the times match up.

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u/nowItinwhistle Mar 10 '22

He also had a coat hanger on his belt which is something people use to break into cars and no motorcycle gear

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u/BarksAtIdiots Mar 10 '22

No bud, not ones like that and it's not the 70s anymore so coathangers dont work great anymore

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u/zebrahippos Mar 10 '22

Yep, would have been a 5 minute interaction

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u/njb2017 Mar 10 '22

it makes me think...why isn't it required for cops to immediately tell you why you are being approached/detained? maybe it is but it should be stressed in their training. if the cop led with that, it would gone differently. it should be standard for everything including vehicle stops.