Citizen gets 15 years for videotaping cops

<blockquote>

<p>If you turn the sound off you're on much better ground. Most of the time the "eavesdropping" laws relate to audio recording, not video.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Great point.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>unlegitimized power</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Leo: What a spectacularly grotesque euphemism, marinated in moral relativism. A rape, a murder, a violent robbery - these are not "unlegitimized," a mere wave of the political process magic wand away from being a legitimate action. You've used a word that suggests only trivial separation between two polar extremes. Use the "un" prefix where it's appropriate (like, the car is still <em>unwashed</em>).<br /><br />The large jump in gang violence in our area (really, you're thinking about the <em>mafia</em>? Have you read any news at all for the last 25 years or so?) is due not to <em>race </em>(really? where do you get this stuff? or are you projecting, here?), but <em>culture</em>. In my area, we're dealing with the ascendancy of gangs like MS-13, who prey on the cash-only economy of illegal aliens (though I suspect that you prefer the term "<em>un</em>documented immigrants," the better to scrub from them any culpability for their actions, and proclaim that the only moral difference between them and someone who waited their turn, passed the tests, and demonstrated their suitability for residence in the country is ... a bit of paper), traffic in prostitution and protection rackets, cultivate teams of underage (and thus less jailable) break-in, robbery, and car theft specialists, and the like. They like to use machetes on people who cross them, or who resist joining them, or who try to leave them.<br /><br />The morality of lopping off someone's hands with a machete because they've chosen not to join your gang of thugs isn't determined by <em>politics</em>. It's derived by simple reason. The <em>criminality</em> of the act of assaulting someone in that way depends on a law that recognizes the unacceptability of deliberately maiming people whom you've failed to compel into a particular act. But you don't need such a law to delve into motives to that degree. Deliberately assaulting and maiming somebody has been considered unacceptable and deserving of punishment for a very long time, throughout most cultures - even those with wildly different politics.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>(really, you're thinking about the <em>mafia</em>? Have you read any news at all for the last 25 years or so?)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Look at the graph again. Facts are more stubborn than you are.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The morality of lopping off someone's hands with a machete because they've chosen not to join your gang of thugs isn't determined by <em>politics</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Always fascinating to speak with someone who thinks the dominant politics is apolitical. Why don’t you just engage the point? You are making a case for punishment, but I’m not challenging society’s prerogative to punish antisocial behavior, so unless Americans are dirty rotten scoundrels compared to other nationals, your reply is a non-sequitur. If trust and cooperation in society decreased with inequality (and they do), then reduced economic opportunities would track incarceration and crime rates (check), the flourishing labor market for people employed to protect property and impose discipline on others (check check), the popularity of Batman comics, and so on. In that way crime, punishment, markets, and comic book morality are all political, because inequality is political. Get it? It (the fact that the US incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any other country) is a freedom problem, not a morality problem.</p>

<p>Nuts, that's what that law is.<br>

You folks down there in the US of A grow some real dandies.<br>

I lost most of whatever respect l had for your government with Hurricane Katrina;<br>

saw how inhumanly you treat your own people.<br>

Now 15 years in the can for filming cops?<br>

Yikes.<br>

Glad to live in Canada , thanks.<br>

And no, l don't care to visit or beg to get across your border for a shopping excursion.<br>

They might see my camera and think it's a gun or a bomb, <br>

and do the 100 bullet thing.<br>

I need my car tires.</p>

 

<p>"Now 15 years in the can for filming cops?" Mike, he didn't get fifteen years, he didn't get any years in prison for filming the cops. "Glad to live in Canada , thanks." Not everyone is cut out to live in the US, got to be on the adventuresome side. "And no, l don't care to visit or beg to get across your border for a shopping excursion." Can't believe you never sneak down to NYC to see a play, visit the Met or do some street shooting (photography that is) eh?<br /><br /> <br /></p>

<p>I just don't think it's necessary to film any law enforcement in action, as long as the Police action is not directed towards people who are not taking part in activities to harm them, others or property. Their job is crap as it is, and it's getting worse. Especially nowadays when they want to cut the Police force to balance a budget and their understaffed and overworked. This bs about everything is fair game for the internet is a load of bull, and this crap about people trying to make money online with hits over a certain amount while showing human nature at it's worst, or most vulnerable, is a moral dilemma.</p>