Is Lemmy full of sovereign citizens now days? In all countries including China when you drive dangerously you get a ticket.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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US Authoritarianism
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I’m not driving, I’m traveling!!!
https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-cash-from-innocent/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/18/civil-asset-forfeiture-explained/74802279007/
Those are just the top 3 search results for "cops steal money".
People should still be punished for driving dangerously. Civil forfeiture is another issue.
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Well yeah. If you search for a topic, the top results should be relevant. That's how searching is supposed to work.
That was my exact first impression of this post.
Basically Sovcit nonsense
We started by making fun of sovcits, now we make fun of anyone who criticizes police. What the fuck is happening on Lemmy.
well sovshits are genuinely hilarious.
but lampooning them should not come at the cost of critiquing law enforcement.
In addition to issuing tickets officers all over the country take the opportunity to seize what they in their sole judgment regard as suspicious amounts of cash without benefit of a trial or charges. Many such seizures are in the mere hundreds of dollars with the average seizure only $1200 and the legal cost to reclaim such is usually in the thousands so people are left without recourse. Even when the money is reclaimed there is no punishment for officers for essentially robbing the populace.
In the last 20 years they have taken about 70B from citizens mostly without actually charging the person they stole from and disproportionately from minorities.
Regarding the victims, many people especially contractors prefer to deal in cash and frequently carry a significant amount of cash on hand to purchase goods and pay help. Others transport large quantities of cash from their business or to make large purchases particularly used cars purchased from owners instead of dealerships.
Woah that's a lot. Source?
Civil asset forfeiture used to be all the rage in outrage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States
I mean depending on the state or even the town that officer is going to take any cash they have on them and might shoot them if they don't comply...
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Getting a ticket for driving unsafely around others, while on a public road provided by the government for the people to use to get where they want to go... yes, surely this is authoritarianism /s
If we could count on unsafe drivers getting tickets, then maybe that would be acceptable, but that's not how it works. It's really hard to quantity "safety". It's really easy to quantity speed. It's difficult to quantify what speed is safe, so in most cases, we pick an arbitrary number, which damn near everyone ignores. At least where I live, 5 over is a minimum, 10-15 over is common. So cops can pretty much pull anyone over at a whim. And they do. But they don't make a dent in actual unsafe driving.
I wonder how many times throughout history someone was caught doing something that the “authorities” didn’t like, but then some lawmaker was like “damn that’s clever” and then they legalize that action for themselves, their friends, or the police
NYPD officer cites ‘courtesy cards,’ used by friends and family of cops, as source of corruption
Though not officially recognized by the NYPD, the laminated cards have long been treated as a perk of the job. The city’s police unions issue them to members, who circulate them among those who want to signal their NYPD connections — often to get out of minor infraction like speeding or failing to wear a seat belt.
In a federal lawsuit filed in Manhattan this week, Officer Mathew Bianchi described a practice of selective enforcement with consequences for officers who don’t follow the unwritten policy. Current and retired officers now have access to hundreds of cards, giving them away in exchange for a discount on a meal or a home improvement job, he said.
In the Staten Island precinct where he works, a predominantly white area with a high percentage of cops and other city workers, Bianchi said multitudes of people he pulled over for traffic infractions flashed him one of the cards.
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In most states nothing happens. If they have you on body camera then they can match it to the driver's license database. You're going to get your ticket and another for driving off, in the mail.
Doubt. The amount of cops who are either going to A give chase or B open fire regardless of the local laws is going to be far beyond statistically relevant. Maybe even a large plurality.
Never, never assume that a cop knows the law. Their job is to enforce, not to know. That's the DA's job.
On stuff like whether they're supposed to be chasing people over traffic infractions it's very much their job and expected knowledge. If you want to have a talk about state sanctioned violence you don't get to detour to rogue officers.
I don't usually go "in my country it's different", but that affirmation is absolutely wild to me.
Guessing this is US-centric, but you are saying if you recklessly drive away from an officer stopping you, they are likely to give chase and potentially open fire ?? What ?? Would the chase not be more dangerous than whatever you are being fined for ? Would them opening fire not make the whole (armed) country you are living in more likely to shoot back ? Are you guys playing cops & robbers IRL ? Sheriffs & bandits ? What is this about ?
Where I'm from the cop has already written your registration plate down, and possibly got your id. The last panel of this meme would be "well no one is stopping you, but it's going to become a lot more expensive". "Also I really don't care enough to chase you or anything, my lunch break is in 20 minutes". "Btw I am not allowed to carry a weapon when handling traffic".
Not saying there aren't assholes that will waste your time with a more tedious procedure than necessary, but nobody is going to chase, and nobody is going to shoot...
US, yes. Yes, they do give chase or open fire with surprising frequency, often creating far more dangerous situations. 5 months average training time, additional training given through unions with a focus on "officer safety" (see, how to pull your gun before the other guy does) creates an ecosystem that creates a bunch of fucking cowboys rather than actual peace officers. Yes, a non-zero amount of them think they're playing cops and robbers for real.
It depends on where you are, the cop, and a lot of other context. It's one of those cases where America is more like 50 different little countries than one big country.
My state police force has a policy to only chase if there's an active danger to public safety.
That doesn't apply to the sheriff's of the 83 counties in the state, or the approximately 500 other police agencies, although many counties mirror the policies of the state police.
Weirdly, I generally trust the state police more than any of the others. They tend to be significantly better trained and more focused on public safety than making money for the county.
I've only been pulled over by one once and he just wanted to make sure I was okay, which was fair considering my car was failing and it sounded like a shitty old lawnmower that was also broken.
In general our police are powerfully undertrained, underpaid, over funded, improperly screened and with a radically unhealthy attitude on their relationship with non-police. We also lack enough uniformity for that assessment to be universal.
Would the chase not be more dangerous than whatever you are being fined for ?
It's not just cars, just recently cops in New York City shot each other and several bystanders on the subway trying to hit a guy with a knife they had been following over a <$3 fare evasion. Land of the free, home of the brave.
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Monopoly on violence is literally something good. The biggest problem in the US is that this just doesn't exist (see gun legislation), which leads to all the school shootings and a more militarized police.
Violence doesn't just become good because you legitimize it through the state.
But there can be less of it, if it is exercised by a monopoly.
Nah, it just institutionalizes it and perpetuates it in a different form -- namely structural violence. It's oppressive and coercive in nature, ultimately used to protect the interests of those with property and further instantiate inequality.
You can't eliminate violence through violence. You have to meet people's basic needs. A society that coerces people to act a particular way -- especially in regards to meeting their basic needs -- through the threat of force could not have been built on freedom, or compassion, or mutual solidarity. It's unjust, imo
This doesn't look like a post promoting concealed carry for those with a batman complex, but I could be convinced.
LMAOOO im fuckin dead
no, it's not something good, look at Honkong, Tibet, Russia, Iran, Belarus, etc.
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