[lazyguy2]

If you hide something on my car to spy on me then it's not reasonable to expect it back if I find it. Charging somebody with theft for something like this is effectively rewarding the police for being incompetent.

One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else.

They should have less.

[dbcurtis]

> One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else.

The correct term to use here is "powers". The people have "rights". The people delegate, through the constitution, certain "powers" to the government. The government, in turn, delegates some of those powers to the police. The police do not have "rights". The government does not have "rights". The government and police have "powers", and are supposed to exercise those powers within specified limits.

What is under discussion here is the limits of those powers.

[x220]

Police de facto have more rights because they can expect lenient punishment (or no punishment) for crimes they commit even when out of uniform. You can argue until you're blue in the face about de jure rights but those don't matter very much when a cop pulls you over and fears for his life.

[Aloha]

Not by intention however, but I'd mostly agree they do in practice.

[roenxi]

Linking cause and effect in the big picture is too slow to stop and worry about intent. History is replete with horrific injustices that didn't happen because anyone intended it to turn out that way.

Intent is a reasonable yardstick to assess who goes to jail and who doesn't. It is a terrible way to deal with systems and processes. There isn't time and it isn't productive to defend a system with bad incentives and outcomes because it wasn't intended to be that way.

[tehwebguy]

It is entirely intentional.

[imtringued]

Where is this intention written down? Can you show me the relevant law?

[tehwebguy]

Qualified immunity laws and case law is what you are looking for.

[coldtea]

>The people delegate, through the constitution, certain "powers" to the government.

Did the people vote to delegate those rights? Were the people ever asked?

[dbcurtis]

Why yes, yes indeed they were asked, and yes indeed they did vote. Look up the voting procedures around the ratification of the US constitution. They are rather interesting. The vote was put directly to the people, intentionally bypassing the statehouses so that the vote would be directly by the people. (Where the definition of "people" is white, male, and I believe also had to be a landowner -- but still, considering the times, a radical level of democracy.)

[coldtea]

>Where the definition of "people" is white, male, and I believe also had to be a landowner -- but still, considering the times, a radical level of democracy

So, at best the "people" of 3 centuries ago where asked. And not all the people, just the white, male, landowners (and rich -- poorer white male people only got to vote 1.5 centuries later or more in the US, even in general elections).

And why is this binding for people, including poor, non landowning, women, blacks, latinos, asians, etc, 3 centuries later?

[freeopinion]

I'd settle for experimenting with "same".

If a regular citizen can't plant a bug, neither can police. If police can conduct a stakeout, so can regular citizens. They just have to follow the same process. That might include going in front of a judge and getting a warrant.

If a regular citizen could break up a bar fight, the police should be able to take the same actions. If police can set up a sting operation, so should citizens be allowed.

Obviously, we don't want everybody running around conducting sting operations or traffic stops. So we set some bar for regular citizens that makes it less likely. But police should have to face the exact same bar. The difference is that we pay for their time, training, equipment, etc. If a certain level of training is required before anybody can make a traffic stop, that training should be open for anybody. We just pay the admission and the salary for police to take the training. Regular citizens foot their own bill.

Edit: poor proofreading

[L0stRegulator]

So the obvious question then is should we be allowed place trackers in police cars, so we can track them on Waze (for example), and it would be a crime for them to remove it.

Equivalencies of Powers/Rights is a good thought experiment that would keep the powers of the enforcers from multiplying without limits.

[dbdjfjrjvebd]

If authorized by a judge then yes.

[fargle]

amen.

and if magnetic shit falls off my car, that's the breaks, suckers.

[DagAgren]

So which do you think makes more sense: Police are not allowed to arrest people, or everyone is allowed to arrest?

[icebraining]

Everyone being allowed to arrest is actually not far from truth in many places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest#United_Stat...

[Frondo]

Former private security guard here: in our training, we were told that we, as private citizens, could "arrest" someone, if you're willing to sign your name to an arrest warrant. You'd want to have the cops on the way, and be willing to face a false arrest lawsuit for detaining them, so you'd better be really 100% sure you caught them in the act of doing something illegal.

We were also taught it's almost never worth doing this; basically, if someone's shooting people and you're doing an armed job, yes, use your gun to try and stop them or detain them, but if it's just property damage or theft, call the cops and let them do their thing. The risk to you isn't worth it, nor is the risk of a false arrest lawsuit.

[vonmoltke]

I think that hints towards freeopinion's point. You, as a private citizen, should have exactly the same legal liability with respect to false arrest as a police officer.

Then the question is, is such a good idea?

[kevin_thibedeau]

Everyone is allowed to arrest. Police only get that power as an extension of their citizenship.

There was a curious case a few years back of a non-citizen who had been a military police officer and became a civilian cop because nobody checked his documentation. His military activities were perfectly legal but all arrests made as a civilian were invalid.

[freeopinion]

There's also the case of the lady in Florida who pulled the police officer over for speeding.

[m463]

> the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else

I was told the difference between a policeman and a citizen (via citizen's arrest) is that a policeman can arrest someone for a misdemeanor.

[icebraining]

According to Wikipedia, misdemeanors are OK too, as long as they were committed in the presence of that citizen.

I think the real difference is that the cops have qualified immunity, meaning they aren't at fault even if the arrest turned out to be unjustified, and regular citizens do not.

[Clubber]

I think police can be at fault, it's just the individual police officer doesn't typically pay the fine, it's their jurisdiction (city/county), i.e. the citizens.

I don't mean to sound pedantic, just having a conversation.

[wodenokoto]

So police and firefighters shouldn’t be allowed to run red lights?

[nothrabannosir]

Not OP, but: not per se, no. Only in the pursuit of some specific task which requires them to do that. Just like a citizen can run a red light if they have to rush someone to a hospital.

Or at least I’d hope they can.

[thomasfedb]

It's probably a defence rather than being directly permissable.

[nothrabannosir]

Sure, but in the context of an ethics exploring thought experiment, those are the same. This is about what the law should be (if I understand the game correctly).

[Broken_Hippo]

Well, this depends.

On the way to an emergency? Of course they should. And people should pull over.

And only sometimes while on the job. For example, if they catch someone for speeding and happen to go through a red light, I don't find that to be a grave thing. Speeding is easily a public hazard. Going off to investigate a theft where the thief has left the property, though? No need to run the light as the delay won't make a difference. Going to a car accident, especially with hurt folks or that is blocking traffic? Yes. Car accident in an open section of parking lot? Rarely necessary.

[Spooky23]

They have protocols for that and generally follow them.

[Broken_Hippo]

Ambulances, sure. Firefighters? Yeah, usually. Cops? You'll have to convince me if you are talking about midwestern American cops. I know they go through lights... because. Or they'll hurry to something non-vital, where there is no one getting hurt, yet scurry none-the-less. I never realized how common this sort of thing was - lights and freaking sound - until I moved away.

[Spooky23]

Are you listening to the police scanner or something? How do you know where or how they have been dispatched?

I live in a small northeast city off of an avenue where there are two trauma centers, a firehouse that does about 5,000 calls/year and a police HQ. I see and hear plenty of these vehicles. When you see it enough, you can spot the different patterns in how police, ambulances and fire trucks respond.

[Broken_Hippo]

1. I know the cops do the light thing simply by knowing a few cops.

2. I don't know where they are dispactched or anything. I could tell the difference between sirens though.

3. I know not all dispatches are emergencies that need lights, sounds, or running lights. If someone has broken into your business, for example, and the person is no longer there, there is no need for speed, lights, and so on. I'm in a larger city in another country now... and there are less sirens and stuff here. It is really weird. I know they respond and the crime rate is probably lower, but... priorities are different as well. I generally didn't see the same patterns with fire trucks and ambulances in the states, and honestly never had a complaint about them. Just the police.

Edited to add an afterthought.

[bluGill]

Those protocols are why something like 95% of the time when you see an ambulance with the lights on there is nobody in the back. (The worst case of a broken leg is serious internal bleeding that only an expert can detect, then they get there and it is just a broken leg)

[kevin_thibedeau]

Not unless they are operating an emergency vehicle. That requires lights or siren to be active to qualify. Emergency flashers on a civilian vehicle do the same thing for everybody else.

[logfromblammo]

Cops should not be allowed any power that is not available to every person, by virtue of their automatic eligibility for the county posse under authority of the sheriff, and for the state militia under authority of the governor.

Cops are supposed to be professionals, with keeping the civil order of their state and/or county and/or municipality as their full-time job, but the authority to arrest criminals historically extends from the sheriff of the county, to every person whom he or she may designate, either orally or in writing. If the sheriff asked for assistance from an ordinary person, and they effected an arrest, that was legally an official act of the sheriff. Similar extension-of-authority constructs exist for a municipal mayor/council, state governor, and federal president.

Without a preexisting order to assist, as one might have as a municipal cop or full-time county deputy, there is no official cover for an arrest, and the person making one would have personal liability, if they made a mistake. That privilege of immunity for mistakes made during establishment or maintenance of civil order is supposed to keep professional cops from being too fearful of civil liability lawsuit to do their jobs effectively. I would argue that they are now not fearful enough to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with their positions in the community, as part of it, simply being persons who have been given a standing order to assist the office of the president/governor/sheriff/mayor in their duty to keep civil order. They have now set themselves apart from the communities in which they live, behind the cordon of their thin blue lines, as adversaries to those whom they see as enemies of civil order.

As such, they have become blind to those occasions on which their actions are actually upsetting to the civil order. In other words, they get into some crazy bullshit legal arguments, and sometimes get away with it.

The privilege they enjoy is actually in having their personal actions taken as extensions of a higher lawful authority, rather than as their own.

It is established that the state has the authority to require that motor vehicle owners permanently affix a license plate to their vehicles, which remains the property of the state, and not remove it, and to return it to a designated authority on demand. But this is all written into public law. You can't just arbitrarily extend that power to some cop shop's magnetic GPS tracker. If you want it to be a crime to remove it, you have to write that into its own law. Otherwise, you have to follow the same law for theft (or unlawful conversion) as everyone else. And that opens up a reciprocal liability for putting your property on someone else's property without their authorization.

I suppose the opsec moral of the story is to drop found trackers onto the public road, or report it as lost property, instead of leaving it inside a locker. Putting a classified ad for lost property in the public notices section of the local paper for three consecutive weeks might have been a fun experiment in "fruit of the poisoned tree" lawyering.