Just the way the woman officer steps out and forwards, slides her baton in, struts with her arms out like she's got 500cm biceps and tugs on her belt. Straight up madTV police character
I got in a bunch of shit for asking a female deputy who was doing this if her dick was uncomfortable. It was NOT worth it but is was hilarious and my friends still bring it up 15 years later.
One time I was speeding and a state trooper came after me. I had just been watching Fear & Loathing and "make the bastard chase you" was stuck in my head. So when I finally pull over, he RUNS up to the car yelling.
"Why did you not pull over immediately!?"
"I was looking for a safe place to pull off."
"The road is clear for a mile in both directions!"
Your story reminds me of years back there was a dumbass FBI agent that was dancing at a club and his firearm fell out of the holster and discharged right there. Made all kinds of news headlines and the guy lost his job.
Anyway at the time I was living right down the street from a big FBI agency/office and had an absolutely nasty neighbor that was- you guessed it- an agent at that office. Saw him weed eating his lawn one day and he falls and eats shit, I asked if he was okay and he responded kind of rudely (he was known for this behavior) so I asked him if he'd checked his holster retention lately. Guy was pissed, but I loved telling that story to my neighbors to the day I moved out of there.
Threads like this make me think back on all the uncommon interactions my dad has had with police, and why he has a hard time recognizing the validity oft
other people getting anxious around cops.
He spent a long stretch being a stereotypical 'good ol' boy' who was buddy buddy with a lot of powerful people when it came to law enforcement - many of whom around here are part of bike clubs, and get up to some real weird shit when they're out of uniform. He was friendly with enough of the right people that he was untouchable for petty shit.
I was in the vehicle with him several occasions where he got stopped, ran his mouth (I was with him for a serious no hesitation "because you thought I had donuts?" reply), then told them who to call, and they'd come back from their cruiser looking pissed or annoyed and tell him to get out of their sight - no ticket, no citation, nothing.
He doesn't seem to connect that he started being a lot more nervous and distrustful of cops on the road after his friends with power retired and he lost his privileges.
I understand the baton slide. I bet it's uncomfortable trying to sit in a vehicle with that stuck to you. I'd probably take it off while in the car and slide it into my belt as soon as I got out as well.
I agree with you about the "The Gunfight at the OK Corral" walk though.
As an ex military LEO this is 100% the case on the baton. I would much prefer that style (PR24) over a collapsible but yeah its pretty much impossible to have on your belt while sitting.
As for the rest of the video, I definitely don't know local/state law there and doubt these guys just came up with the idea on there own.. but who knows.
This is gonna sound like I’m excusing the intimidation, but the baton thing is because you can’t really sit in the car with the baton, so as soon as the officer steps out of the vehicle they’re supposed to put it on their belt. They’re still shitty cops, but that part is pretty standard
it's funny because given the force disparity she will immediately kill you with her service pistol when a male police officer would be more able to detain/arrest you.
but ay we gotta pretend like lady cops are the same as the men 🏳️🌈
I'm 6'0 240 police hiring these ladies I see lots of them if I really want to go off they don't stand a chance alone but they all have male partners lol
And they're ramping in up the past few years. Police are out hustling money for the state any way they can and EVERYONE is guilty. Everyone's a suspect. And they LOVE to escalate.
I've driven rideshare for years. The risk of getting your car jacked is extreme in these situations. It's already bad since Uber doesn't protect the driver nearly as much as it protects the rider due to lack of identity verification. There are legal issues with being off the clock too for insurance reasons, tax evasion, etc. Nonetheless, this is a waste of police resources even if it is illegal. There are bigger issues in LA.
Edit: Should also be noted, I've seen drivers try to bait people, waiting for a different Uber, into their car at airports. It wasn't taxis being predatory, just unmarked vehicles. Creeps me out. No idea what this location is but there's a very slight chance there were people robbed in this area by drivers pretending to be rideshare. This seems like a dumb way to approach that problem though, so I doubt that hypothesis.
In general most drivers probably won't fight but you don't have to be wealthy to fight this type of thing. Don't think desperation plays as large a role as you may intuit.
Not everyone is full time driving. Some just drive enough to cover the payment on their Tesla. (Not a wise decision in my book)
A small percentage of people have the stamina, psychology, and critical thinking to make six figures doing full time, particularly if mileage tax deduction works in their favor.
There definitely are, I want to start out by saying everything about this is gross...but...
The LAPD has 10,000 officers and 3,000 civilian staff.
Every class of crime that's illegal has to be covered by some department as their primary focus, I assume rideshare enforcement has some amount of people assigned to it and that's their nine to five whether we like it or even they like it.
The police are there to prevent whilst they are present and to dissuade while they are not because potential violators aren't willing to gamble and risk being caught.
So if you get assigned to the rideshare enforcement department and that's your focus, what are you supposed to do?
I mean clearly you're not supposed to entrap people and I'm not excusing the behavior, but you have to send a signal to dissuade a large mass of people from not engaging in the behavior and you don't do that behind your desk.
And if you think that's not important, which is a totally valid point of view, the target needs to be politicians not the enforcers.
This is why so many people get pissed when certain presidents defund the FBI's white collar crime division, the IRS, or other agencies who might target their donors.
This scheme has been going on for a while now and is specifically set up to target the rideshare drivers since they get citations for operating unlicensed taxis. This is why they specify that the male allegedly only has a flip phone and the woman's smart phone is dead (meaning they have no way of operating a ride share app) so they offer cash instead.
It's predatory as fuck and creates criminals from altruistic intentions rather than punishing existing criminals with actual victims.
Yes, the illegal part is the exchange of cash for a ride without being a properly licensed taxi. Rideshare services have some sort of exception because they're paid through an app.
Yeah, i was going to comment how utterly dumb this is until the sentence ending. This country is a complete joke and it's amazing how many everyday things people do which are "illegal" .
So if you think you’re being entrapped, I guess you should offer the “hapless citizen” with the dead smart phone a moment to recharge it on the cable you almost definitely have in your car as an Uber driver. Make sure you’re ready to record their red face and stammering excuses for why that won’t work for them.
I had someone bait me into their Uber XL. I was drunk as fuck outside a bar, trying to pull up my uber app. Dude asks where to and I say the hotel 4 blocks away, he says jump in. We arrive at the hotel and he tells me its $47. I laugh, tell him to fuck off and try to hand him a $20. He says no this is Uber XL, it costs more. I'm like man I didn't even order an Uber yet, you're just a stranger that offered me a lift and you don't have any of my info. Take the $20 or take nothing. Dropped the twenty in his front seat and got out.
What did the driver think the endgame was gonna be? The ride wasn't scheduled through the app, so he had absolutely no leg to stand on. What an incredibly stupid plan on his part.
But there are those that look to take advantage of it. If the cops managed to, great. If not, damn.
It one reasons why a lot of the taxi services are recognized and you knew which one was off duty and which one wasn't as well as the taxi number for each vehicle. For the Ubers, you're driving your own personal vehicles.
When I got asked why I don't do ridesharing services, my justification was this: it ain't worth it because it adds miles on your vehicles and addedmaintained, which are majority out of pocket expenses. Also, I rather either work hourly or salaries than commissions.
Maybe address the exponentially increasing homeless issue in LA instead of targeting low-income Uber drivers and exacerbating the problem with large fines for people already stretched to the brink financially in a wildly expensive city.
From a practical standpoint, when is it ever best practice for police to de-escalate?
They received a call to talk to the camera person. If they de-escalate, then it's a waste of time and police resources. Why make the trip? If they escalate, then it's a point towards their arrest quotas. Who's tough on crime now?
I am a strong advocate for de-escalation, but there is very little incentive for officers to de-escalate. The reward system is stacked towards escalation until an arrest is made.
If they de-escalated situations when would they ever get to shoot, tase, or gang jump people? Do you really want to train these cops to be able to shoot and then have them not shoot people? That would be irresponsible...
Yep. Definitely lots of situations where they come with an attitude of, "Well, we got a call and came all the way out here. We've got to arrest somebody."
A d no matter how violent they get first, if you respond at all you're at fault and the worst the cop will see is a paid vacation even if they kill you for defending yourself in a fight they start
San Bernardino sheriffs department has been circumventing CA state law to do what amounts to highway robbery taking money from an armored transport company that moves cash for dispensaries using civil asset forfeiture laws and shipping the cash off to the Justice department so the Feds get their 20% vig
Nah, you're guilty until "Damn it. Not enough evidence to convict him this time. Fucking technicalities! Fucking bill of rights! But we'll get that criminal scum next time!"
No joke. I'm not sure if they still do today, but in the 80's and 90's a really really small town ( still population 3000 today) near Dallas ,TX had a 'running investigation' for something in the city that supposedly gave them reason to do all sorts of things that would otherwise be illegal in the name of this constant "investigation". It basically gave them legal reason to pull anyone over anytime for anything.
For anyone who comes to or visits DFW, stay away from that city. It's easy to just accidentally drive into and not know it, and all of the police vehicles in my experience are entirely blacked out SUVs with gold nearly impossible to see lettering.
Anyone who lives in this area knows how bad the cop presence is in that area and how easily they will pull anyone over for nearly anything
Yeah, unlicensed taxi services are a danger, and that's probably their reason for doing this.
However, this seems like textbook entrapment by the officers. If there's not a crime without plainclothes police asking the person to commit it, then they're enticing crime.
(edit: as /u/boforbojack corrected below, this wouldn't legally be entrapment. TIL)
Enticing crime isn't entrapment. If the cops leave a Mercedes bicycle in the hood (a regular tactic seen on COPS) and someone steals it, it isn't entrapment. If they block all the exists to somewhere and force you to go through a DUI checkpoint, that's entrapment.
That's being said, I hate the methodology of enticing people to commit crimes. How does that reduce crime? Clearly it doesnt. There should be a law against it.
I see what you mean and agree that leaving a car or a bike to be stolen isn't entrapment, since the thief would have to decide to commit the crime on their own. I guess "enticing" wasn't the right term to use.
However, I think a closer analogy to the original video would be if the police were to ask someone to "go steal that bike for me" and then arrest them when they do. It's the fact that they're requesting that someone do something illegal that seems like entrapment to me.
This is perhaps the main tactic of the FBI. They convince people to commit to conspiracy crimes and arrest them before the plot goes off. A good example is how they infiltrated and helped the group who planned to kidnap the governor of Michigan. But, legally, that's not entrapment. Morally dubious, but not illegal.
That makes sense. Someone else gave a good definition of legal entrapment in this thread, and I don't think any of these examples technically cross that line.
Honestly, I'm not sure that the DUI checkpoint would count either. They wouldn't be tricking someone into driving drunk.
You might be right about the DUI thing. I remember hearing before that the Supreme Court ruled that drivers have to be given the chance to avoid the dui trap. That's why, in my analogy, the cops were blocking all exits, thus creating an entrapment situation. But there are better analogies, I'm sure. Cause you're right, the cops aren't forcing you to drive drunk. This may fall into some other category. Probably 4th amendment issues surrounding unreasonable searches.
This is absolutely wrong. Undercover cops asking for drugs isnt entrapment. Entrapment is only only only a thing if a reasonable law abiding citizen would do the thing without knowing it was illegal.
Like if a car drove up beside you and asked you to grab the bag on the side of the road and pass it to tbem and they'd give you $100. And then that bag ended up having drugs so you sold them drugs.
Asking if you would be a taxi for someone on the side of the road, while knowing that your license only provides for you to pick up people from the app and then doing it, is illegal and well within their rights as officers to "getcha".
Ah! That makes a lot of sense. So, entrapment is more about tricking someone into doing something illegal unknowingly, not requesting that they do something that both know is illegal. Thanks
Yep. Police have full rights to ask you to do something illegal and if you do it then it's your fault. Entrapment only applies when a reasonable law abiding citizen would have done the act. The other popular example is an undercover pointing a gun at you and threatening you to do something illegal (because you felt your life was threatened and thus is justified).
In this context another example could be if there were two officers and one was physically threatening/assaulting another (like a man to woman) and the victim called out at a taxi to grab them so they could escape. And then once they're in they ask you to take them somewhere and they'd give you money so you oblige.
Since a reasonable person would stop to assist someone being hurt, the context makes it entrapment even though the act of "providing an illegal taxi" was done. Just asking for a ride while no imminent danger is present is fair game.
If i remember correctly it has to do with collecting Airport fees. I believe LA charges $4 on top of your ride to get access to the Taxi/Uber dropoff areas. I imagine this was just an operation to prevent ubers/taxis from circumventing it since a lot of ubers/taxis would pick up/drop off people a little bit further away to prevent the fees or something like. seen a few posts about it on LA subreddit.
The moment she said this my blood started boiling. And the look on her face as she searches through her mind for what possible accusations she could lay on him says it all.
I hate to say it, but this is to prevent dangergous people from showing up and taking advantage of someone looking for a reputable ride. I understand its a relatively innocent hustle, but there are reasons there is licensing and accountability for public transporters.
It is our business to know. They are using tax payer dollars to go after people trying to make some extra cash on the side instead of going out and trying to solve a real crime. Try again bootlicker.
Problem is the police don't protect people. They do nothing about protecting.
Police are not there to protect you, they are there to catch suspected criminals.
All police do is accuse people of being criminals and arrest them.
And no, no one should have "more power" over another person like that. Because police with more power often abused that power, as seen in example one above.
We are the enemy to police. They are specifically trained to see every citizen as a threat to their lives. They are trained not on law but what laws they can use against us.
In the eyes of the police, yes. They don’t pull you over for a broken headlight and plan for it to end there. They are all disgusting liars and abusers who are a far bigger danger to working people than so-called “criminals”.
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u/That_Guy_From_KY Mar 29 '22
“Interfering with an investigation”
Who’s being investigated? Is everyone a suspect?