Being Unreasonable

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You are demonstrating exactly the kind of attitude that fosters corruption. I am a fan of police not making up the law and breaching the rights of citizens. I'm not a fan of corruption and abuse of power in letter or spirit. The tow-truck driver, jerk or not, has legal rights. No police officer has the right to unlawfully strip any citizen of their rights, and what you suggest necessarily requires the officer do this to a tow truck driver. Jerks are as entitled to basic rights as anyone else. If the outcome is not acceptable to the community, then they can authorize police officers to legally intervene to cause different outcomes.

So, everything needs to be spelled out in detail? Is a little common decency really too much to ask of people without explicitly requiring it by law? I consider the restrictions on freedom that mandating decency would require to be far worse than letting the police take a little initiative when someone needs a reminder of what acceptable behavior is.

Not everything, but most certainly the scope and limits on the authority of police officers to exercise the state's monopoly on force.

We are not talking about the law requiring courtesy, we are discussing is whether or not an officer of the law should break the law, summarily deprive one citizen going about their lawful business of their rights, without due process, all to make another citizen feel better.

I consider when people attack straw mans while ignoring the actual arguments and positions they pretend to respond to, that this is a strong indication that they have no actual argument or valid objection to posit.
I am not requiring decency be legislated, as for freedom, as for freedom, you are the one advocating police officers should be able in the name of politeness and niceness, to strip people of their rights, on the spot without due process. If do you cannot perceive how failing to have hard limits on the authority of police is necessary to freedom, then clearly it's not a point you will appreciate, but it remains my position precisely because I prefer freedom to politeness if a choice must be made between them.

^
What I'm actually advocating is that society should not tolerate obnoxious behavior, in my OP I somewhat facetiously argued for shooting the occasional jerk as a warning to the others. When I say that the deputy should have done something, I'm not arguing for police corruption but against rigid thinking enabling jerks to abuse people because they are technically within the rules or the law. What I don't like is this attitude that if something isn't explicitly forbidden then it must be OK, whether it's used to justify corporate malfeasance or simply abusing retail sales people, it seems to becoming more and more pervasive these days. I would prefer that social pressures alone be enough to keep people in line, but with the increasing impersonality of society, those alone no longer seem sufficient. What I'm not suggesting is some sort of government mandate, but a shift in public opinion about what is and isn't tolerated.

I thoroughly agree with your intent, but how does one shift public opinion? You don't even seem to be able to persuade the so-called independent minded aspies here in your direction.

I think you have become too caught up in the detail of what I suggested to see the mood of what I suggested. What I was saying is that the officer should have used his initiative to prevent the event. Be it through bending the law, threats, coercion, or whatever. The detail is irrelevant. I was just suggesting possibilities, based on the way law usually works in western society. There is usually a case for crime scene disturbance, confiscation or whatever.. interfering with police business is a very vague and suitably useful area perhaps... who knows? I'm just making suggestions here.

I don't even know that I'm trying to convince anyone of anything, this was one of very few posts that I've made because I had an emotional reaction to something. I was more interested in seeing how my admittedly odd-ball philosophical musings fared among the denizens of PPR than I was in trying to make a case for something, I've just gone where the thread went with it. I think that the reason that some Aspies are coming out against this so strongly has much to do with the fact that I'm recommending that a law enforcement officer take some initiative and act outside his titular authority. I surmise that I'm butting up against that famous Aspie mistrust of authority, which anyone who's seen my posts in the wrongplanet.net discussion knows that I'm very personally familiar with.

Which requires that society further restrict freedom, which is why I feel your immediately prior post hypocritical, dishonest and unfair. You try to argue for curtailing civil liberty and freedom by arguing that those who disagree with you are trying to restrict freedom.
The only way for the outcome to have been any different would be if the police man, sworn to uphold the law, in fact broke it, to summarily step outside the authority conferred on him, to remove the rights of a citizen, based on the officer's subjective view of what is the nice or moral thing to do. That constitutes police corruption. It is corrupt to step outside the authority invested in you by the state and community, to violate their laws when you've been engaged to uphold them.

What you do not like is completely irrelevant. You only know what you mean by OK. If OK is being creatively defined by you, such that if someone argues that they do not agree a police officer should summarily strip one citizen of their rights, in contravention of the law, just because in the subjective opinion of the officer, the citizen is being obnoxious and/or some other citizen stands to suffer a perfectly legal but not necessarily nice consequence if the officer does not break the law to strip one citizen of their rights, that therefore they are arguing that everything forbidden must be OK, you are certainly not employing any definition of the word with which I am familiar.


What you are suggesting is that police officers should be able to make up the law as they go along in accordance with either their own personal views, or what they imagine constitutes the moral views of the 'public'. This is a scope of authority that goes beyond that even given to a judging presiding over a court of law, but with no ability to vote them out of their job if they are very poor at making such judgments, nor any provision for review of their subjective, on the spot, rushed decisions, potentially made without proper hearing to one or the other parties. Talk about 'street justice'! I do not want to live in such a society.

Yeah, and look at what fate befell Ghandi, he was Shot DEAD by a hindu fanatic who opposed his preachings of tolerance!
The EXACT SAME FATE was suffered by Martin Luther King Jr and Oscar Romero, who both followed Ghandi's example. I guess that love really doesnt conquer all, because its increasingly clear that it will NEVER conquer power.

Had I been the deputy I wouldve told the towtruck driver to leave and that if he were to tow the car he would be interferring with law enforcement and then hauled off to jail.

What I see is that you advocate a police officer abusing their authority and position of trust to break the law in order to strip one person of their rights, to that person's disadvantage, because it would be nice for someone else.
When someone who disagrees suggests some other means by which the outcome you claim is the issue of concern could be effected in line with what seem to prefer as a result, this is still not good enough. I provided a suggestion by which the event could be addressed without incurring the detail of your suggestion, yet still you are arguing. I find your behavior inconsistent with "the mood" of your suggestion that I am caught up in detail. I am no more 'caught up in the detail" than is contextually appropriate given your continuing objection can only be about that detail.
I have already made it clear I would prefer a different outcome, yet you continue to argue and object to my views about the detail of how a better outcome should be achieved.

And what I am saying is that such conduct by a police officer is in my opinion not acceptable.
The way the law works in such societies, it is more than a mere tangential detail that what you suggested breaks the law and arbitrarily and without legal justification strips someone of their rights to that person's disadvantage.


There are formal means of going about restricting access to an area, and taking possession of property for the kinds of purposes you refer to. It is fraud (a serious crime) to obtain possession of property using deceit of the kind you are suggesting if the officer simply pretends the vehicle is to be taken into police custody or that police are legitimately restricting access to it for evidence purposes, and it is a serious crime to dispose of possession of items in such custody without following the formal process for doing so. It's not a mere detail that what you suggests requires the police officer to break the law. Is it fair to ask someone to expose themselves to risk of criminal prosecution with possible lengthy prison sentences given the outcome if the officer did not take this risk on themselves? The outcome seems less harmful to everyone than the harm to the officer if he broke the law and Internal Affairs found out.

I also suggest it is not a practical suggestion. It seems likely to me that tow truck drivers do know their rights because they regularly tow cars for money. If they do not know what the limits on police authority are, this leaves them vulnerable to unnecessary loses of income. There is a good chance that they know in very practical terms, the scope of a police officer's ability to prevent them towing a car.

You might want to believe that these things are mere detail, but in the real world, results depend on detail. What is the purpose of talking about the mood of suggestions while ignoring the detail if the detail renders the suggestions impossible to realistically and reasonably achieve in the real world?

You suffer from a problem with over-exaggeration something awful, don't you?
Police officers CAN AND DO have a great deal of leeway in how they act, and what they do. They can exercise a great many options in order to achieve an outcome. They can choose when to warn, when to ticket, when to tase, and a multitude of other options. It is quite feasible that there are ways the officer could have conducted his business in a satisfactory fashion that lie wholly within the law. Perhaps "wasting police time" or "obstructing the course of the law".. who knows? I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of US statute. Or maybe he would have to operate outside the law in some fashion.. Again.. I DO NOT KNOW because I am not a holder of a degree in American Law. However, telling this tow-truck driver to sling his hookhardly constitutes "stripping a citizen of his rights" or any of the other harshterms you favour. You seem to be implying something akin to a "Rodney King" beating is taking place.. the kind of abuse of power that a fascist nation would have.

How about this.. there have been several cases in several nations of people speeding in order to get their pregnant partner to an Emergency Room. Legally, when pulled over, they should be arrested and charged. One or two have.. but the greater number instead receive a full blown police escort to the nearest medical facility, and no charges placed. These are cases of the moral imperative rising above the law. It does happen, and there is no reason why it could not have been done here. Mitigating circumstance can and do apply.

I wonder.. do you consider all legal authority to work in such absolutes? Would you ignore a "Do not Trespass" sign in order to catch a thief, or avoid a beating? Would you break into a house to prevent an assault?

Finally.. an exercise in empathy.. consider YOU are the victim of this crime. YOUR car is about to be towed. What would YOU want the officer in question to do?

Allowing police officers leeway to enforce the spirit of the law died when community did.

Without the influence of being part of the community they are hired to protect and serve there is little to prevent bending the rules slightly for good to slide into outright abuse of their authority for personal gain or benefit.

..

Last edited by claire-333 on 24 Dec 2008, 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It isn't as clear cut here by any means. Generally the police do the right thing, but there have been events where the police have endangered or even caused lives to be lost by jobsworth attitude. They are not legally obliged to assist in medical emergency.

If you define over-exaggeration as not kow-towing to your opinions in everything, then sure.

I am aware of this fact, and further aware that the leeway does not include the leeway to do as you suggested the officer should do. It is a limited not limitless leeway, and it happens that what you suggested is on the wrong side of those limits.


Not legally they cannot. If a police officer tickets someone the officer knows has committed no infringement, that is illegal. If what you are claiming is true, then a police officer could tase you just because they do not like the colour of your shirt. That is obviously not something they are allowed to do and they might face legal action if it could be proven that they had done so.

I do. The truck driver was not obstructing the officer in the performance of that officer's duties, nor obstructing the course of law, nor wasting police time. I would be very surprised if the officer did not also know this, I expect the tow truck driver might also have known, you can be sure any judge presiding at the tow truck driver's trial would know, and I expect Internal Affairs might have a clue too.

Neither do I, but I do have enough to know that none of the suggestions you have made are remotely legal.


I stated exactly what I stated, I am not responsible for any non-implied and wild inferences you might choose to make.

Irrelevant. Police officers do have some discretion that they are allowed to use. An important element in exercising such discretion is whether or not to do so, strips someone of their rights. Who is being stripped of their rights when someone is assisted to get to a hospital in a medical emergency?
I know that the law works by absolutes, it's not always absolutely clear which absolute applies, but the principal of law is that it is absolute. Of course another way to describe legal principals is 'legal fiction'.
No and yes. You see the absolutes of the law includes an absolute right to protect oneself. As to the first, in my country (although this does not apply to all countries) the protection of property is not protected in law as the protection of persons is.

I doubt it, I cannot see how my breaking into a house would prevent an assault.


Abide by the law of course.

Perhaps the title of this thread should be "Being Reasonable". A person in severe personal distress such as the woman who sought help and comfort after a horrible personal experience requires much more leeway than a person carelessly parking a car in a forbidden area. The law was passed to control people who refuse to accommodate themselves to normal regulations out of a form of personal defiance. The circumstances of this case are obvious in requiring extraordinary flexibility because of their extreme abnormality. It is quite obvious the police and tow truck operator treated the parking violation in terms of an ordinary situation which this was very much not. It is the law which was behaving unreasonably and basic human decency would have recognized that and accommodated reaction properly. The cop and the tow truck operators were behaving like programmed robots. That is not a worthy human reaction.