[dahart]

What a dismissive, unsympathetic response.

His computer was temporarily seized & searched without his consent, under immediate threat of force with a weapon. He was prevented from even voicing concern or asking questions through threat of violence, and forced to comply with actions that were not backed by a probable cause or even a reasonable suspicion of a crime having been committed.

In the US, there are laws against this. What happened there was illegal, with or without an arrest or charges or jail time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United...

And he was presumed guilty until the search was completed, that sounds like 'guilty until proven innocent' to me.

Innocent until proven guilty doesn't mean only if it takes longer than 5 minutes to prove. It means you start with the presumption of innocence.

[mcphage]

> Innocent until proven guilty doesn't mean only if it takes longer than 5 minutes to prove. It means you start with the presumption of innocence.

Innocent until proven guilty does not mean police aren't allowed to investigate crimes. And it does not mean they are't allowed to detain subjects.

[dahart]

Your first sentence is correct, you're right there. But it does mean they're not allowed to point weapons at people and threaten violence without probable cause or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. That's what presumption of innocence means, you treat innocent people like they're innocent. Pulling a taser on someone is not presumption of innocence, that's presumption of guilt.

Police are allowed to investigate, and that's exactly what they failed to do in this case. They should have done some basic investigation before they drew weapons and detained someone. The fact that they didn't investigate, and didn't attempt to find probable cause, is precisely why what they did was illegal.

Your second sentence isn't right. It is not legal in the US to detain people for no reason. Arbitrary stop-and-frisks are illegal, arbitrary traffic stops are illegal, arbitrary searches are illegal. That is precisely what the 4th amendment is saying - you have a right to privacy and a right to not be harassed by police without them having a specific reason. And those things are illegal even when weapons aren't involved, but when police draw weapons without reason, it crosses another line.

I'm really not sure why you're still defending the actions of the police, who clearly did something wrong in this case, and dismissing the experience of a citizen who did absolutely nothing wrong and was threatened. What would you do, and how would you feel, if you were surprised and stormed by police and detained with weapons pointed at you while you were minding your own business? Do you want that to be allowed and normal? We've already decided as a country we don't want that. I don't want it, and I think you don't either. So why are you arguing?

[UVB-76]

> Police are allowed to investigate, and that's exactly what they failed to do in this case.

This stop was part of their investigation. How else are they supposed to eliminate the seller from their enquiries into the stolen laptop?

A person can be lawfully detained with reasonable suspicion alone, and it sounds like the police had it in this case.

In the process of detaining someone, the police can use reasonable force. The use of Taser was probably not necessary, but it could well have been reasonable.

The article is silent on the robbery in which Derek's laptop was stolen, but if it were aggravated, and the police had reasonable suspicion they were detaining the person responsible for that robbery, then the use of force is all the more reasonable.

[mcphage]

> I'm really not sure why you're still defending the actions of the police, who clearly did something wrong in this case, and dismissing the experience of a citizen who did absolutely nothing wrong and was threatened.

Because I don't think it's clear (or even true) that the police did something wrong in this case. A crime occurred, through their investigation they believed the author to be a suspect, they investigated him and found out he was not.

> What would you do, and how would you feel, if you were surprised and stormed by police and detained with weapons pointed at you while you were minding your own business?

Obviously it would suck—but that doesn't mean that the police aren't allowed to do that.

> Do you want that to be allowed and normal?

Do I want police to be able to investigate crimes? Yes, I do want that.

> So why are you arguing?

Because this article jumps from "this thing happened to me and it sucks", to "this thing should not be allowed to happen".

[dahart]

Okay, I understand where you're coming from. The police should be allowed to do their jobs, and I don't think the article is claiming otherwise, nor am I.

"This should not be allowed to happen" isn't saying the police can't investigate. The "this" that's being discussed is whether they should be able to storm the situation SWAT style with weapons drawn, not whether they should attempt to locate a perp, verify stolen property, or do the proper paperwork.

The problem I have with your argument is that you're glossing over the threat of violence and use of weapons. You're calling that "investigate" and painting it as something demure. I don't feel like you're being completely honest by insisting on calling it "investigate". Drawing weapons is not an investigation, that's a detainment of a suspect. The investigation could have happened another way, it could have involved asking first, it could have involved checking the serial numbers they already had access to, it could have involved everything without the taser, it could have been conducted in private, the police could have announced their intentions and their names and not tried so hard to scare the guy into submission.

Regardless of what the article said, and whether you like it or not, "this" already isn't allowed to happen under the law, it's just not enforced much. The law is already clear that police can't pull a weapon on someone or detain them unless they have reason to believe that specific person was involved in a crime. We already decided this, it's a done deal. So the article is right, it should not be allowed to happen this way.

[coldtea]

So, let's see how content with you'll be with technical platitudes if it happens to you...

[UVB-76]

Your timeline doesn't match his account.

He consented to the search of the laptop before being detained. He did not know it was an undercover police officer conducting the search, but that is not relevant.

He was subsequently detained, until such time as it became obvious he was innocent, and then released.

[dahart]

That's weird; I didn't present a timeline.

> He consented to the search of the laptop before being detained. He did not know it was an undercover police officer conducting the search, but that is not relevant.

I'm not sure you know what "consent" actually means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_search

A consent search requires the individual whose person or property is being searched to freely and voluntarily waive his or her Fourth Amendment rights, granting the officer permission to perform the search. Where consent is obtained through "deception" on the part of government personnel, the search may be determined to be an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

[UVB-76]

The matter of consent is much more nuanced than that, but as another comment on this thread points out, the search was not conducted by a police officer, so Fourth Amendment arguments are moot.

He consented to a stranger searching his laptop, and the Fourth Amendment provides no protections against that.

[philh]

The prospective buyer wasn't a police officer.

[UVB-76]

That's an even better point. The Fourth Amendment doesn't protect you from letting a stranger search your laptop.