[maxlybbert]

I don’t understand the problem. Police saw something they thought was suspicious, took a closer look, and then decided there was nothing illegal happening.

I don’t think there’s a constitutional right to know when you’re being tailed. Or to be notified every time a police officer does a double-take.

[ceejayoz]

Part of the problem is it leads to stuff like this:

https://www.404media.co/footage-shows-cop-stalking-woman-he-...

> The cop, Lamar Roman, wasn’t trying to pull over a suspected criminal. He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey, which he had worked a security detail shift on a few weeks prior to pulling her over. After meeting the woman, catcalling her and harassing her for her full name and Instagram details, the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID, a Florida Department of Motor Vehicles database for law enforcement. He then put her license plate details on a surveillance “hotlist,” meaning he would get a notification in real time anytime she drove by an AI-powered license plate surveillance camera.

Or this: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/georgia-deputy-charged-with...

Or this: https://fox11online.com/news/crime/tehrangi-chapman-milwauke...

Or this: https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2026/07/10/pasadena...

[scoofy]

You are describing a crime. The solution to police committing crimes is police oversight, not neutering policing powers completely.

[ceejayoz]

> The solution to police committing crimes is police oversight…

Yeah, when we try that, they… commit more crimes.

Riots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrolmen%27s_Benevolent_Assoc...

Doxxing the mayor's kid: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/twitter-suspends-account...

Or even bombing the mayor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_San_Francisco_P...

> The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn. On August 21, Mayor Alioto advised the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that they should concede to the strikers' demands. The Supervisors unanimously refused. Mayor Alioto immediately then declared a state of emergency, assumed legislative powers, and granted the strikers' demands.

[scoofy]

Again, you sound like someone who has never read an ounce of political philosophy. The policing of behavior will exist in any society, whether it is held by the state, the church, private security firms, organized crime, or vigilantes. The entire point of putting the police under the authority of a democratic public is because the alternatives are all much worse.

The policing arm of the executive branch can be difficult to manage, the point is once it leaves the purview of the state, it is impossible to manage.

[ceejayoz]

> The entire point of putting the police under the authority of a democratic public is because the alternatives are all much worse.

Yes, I agree.

I just think we're in that "much worse" scenario now, with police unions, qualified immunity, pardons for brutality, and police punishing attempts to rein them in.

American cops are out of control, and emboldened by their success.

[nozzlegear]

IMO the solution is asking why police need these powers in the first place.

[scoofy]

The executive branch is tasked with law enforcement.

[nozzlegear]

That doesn't mean they need the latest and greatest surveillance tech.

[maxlybbert]

That’s a valid concern.

Of course, the example chosen for the article didn’t involve anybody abusing their authority. It involved police doing what I’d expect them to do. But I’ll acknowledge that if all of the relevant details were different, then I’d also be concerned.

[ceejayoz]

> I’ll acknowledge that if all of the relevant details were different, then I’d also be concerned.

Relevant detail: Cops have done this with every new tech they're given.

[greenleafone7]

The problem is that police misuse every single power they have been given and public trust is very low for years now.

I do not want to live in a world where random drones/cameras control my every move, and if your response to that is "I don't understand the problem" then we cannot live in the same society. It has been proven for thousands of years now that more laws do not fix society, and especially the problems we have now. Usually the laws increase in size and absurdity proportionally to how close said society is to its fall. Yet people never learn, and we just add one more line to the list.

[maxlybbert]

Yes, it is true that police have powers that can be abused, and police have abused them.

It’s also true that they have those powers because we’ve decided the alternative is worse. The example used in the article was a case where police did not obviously abuse their authority. If you want to get me worked up about police overreach, you’ll need a different example.

> I do not want to live in a world where random drones/cameras control my every move

How did the drone control anybody’s move in the example? It seems that the drone wasn’t even noticed.

[nozzlegear]

> It’s also true that they have those powers because we’ve decided the alternative is worse.

I don't ever remembering getting the option to vote on whether my police department could use drones and surveillance tech or not. We can't possibly conclude that society has decided the alternative is worse – society never got a choice, the police departments are just spending their budgets on cool military shit and then going on to abuse it like they always do.

[maxlybbert]

I was actually thinking at a different level.

When I drive on the freeway, any time a police car gets behind me and turns on its lights, I have to stop. If I don't stop, I can ultimately be charged with evading arrest, or fleeing police, or some similar offense. I can be fined and even put in jail, even if a judge decides that the officer didn't actually have a valid reason to stop me.

If a police officer approaches me (when I'm not in a car) and tells me that I'm under arrest, I don't have the legal permission to leave. Even if I know I didn't break any laws. Even if I happen to know why the officer wants to arrest me and I know that it's not a valid reason for an arrest.

Why? Why does the law require me to obey without question, especially when honest mistakes that I might make are treated very differently from honest mistakes the trained officer might make? Fundamentally, because we have decided that the alternative is worse.

Do officers abuse their authority? Of course they do. But we've decided that toothless police departments aren't worth anything (and, in fact, lead to more vigilantism and crime). And we've decided that "self help" solutions (e.g., giving people the right to violently resist arrest if the officer is in the wrong, while punishing people who resist valid arrests) are worse.

[tim-tday]

The videos in question are full of actual crimes being committed and criminals being arrested.

San Francisco used to not investigate or prosecute any of those crimes. Laptop stolen out of a car? Nothing to do. Now they catch video of it happening, follow the license plate, arrest the perpetrators. Catalytic converter stolen? We don’t investigate that.

Yes, police have shitty track records of abusing authority and technology. Does that mean we throw out all authority and technology? If you do we get the chaotic lawlessness San Francisco experienced for years.

So what’s the middle way? 1) Use the tech to fight crime. (Check! They’re doing it) 2) prevent abuses of that technology and authority (in progress, let’s see how it goes)

[pllbnk]

I think it's an important distinction whether crime stops happening after all criminals are locked up or after preventative measures are taken to prevent criminal activity happening in the first place.

When criminals are locked up, they will get released and many of them don't have anything else to do other than returning to do crimes, with gained experience from the previous failures.

But it's possible to reduce crime by preventing it. Do not let dangerous districts form, build communities, reduce access to weapons and so on.

[ieatcandlewax]

This is one of those ideas that gets thrown around and fits into one of two categories:

- Massive money sink that shows no results: See SF during covid and a bit after - Dystopian policies that tank crime but flagrantly violate peoples rights: see stop and frisk, El Salvador, etc

Some people are going to be criminals no matter how much money you give them. I would argue that especially in functioning countries, the returns on carrot approaches to crime reduction are magnitudes weaker than stick ones.

[ryandrake]

What made the police think they were “suspicious”? Anybody can be suspicious if you want to tail them for another reason. When you leave the judgement entirely to the person who gets to initiate the surveillance, then you are saying anyone can be surveilled.

[tim-tday]

Yes, that’s what police do. They drive around and use their judgment to match known criminal activity to behaviors they see around them. Hopefully instances of false positives like two kids going to play basketball get dropped without undue interruptions of the lives of people just going about their lives. (As happened in this case)

[nozzlegear]

> Yes, that’s what police do. They drive around and use their judgment to match known criminal activity to behaviors they see around them.

See also: racial profiling and Driving While Black.

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

[maxlybbert]

Police drive around in patrol cars. They don’t call judges every time they look at other cars. There may be problems with this system, but adding drones hasn’t created a new loophole.

[cyanydeez]

if you were a minority in America, you'd understand where suspicious leads to murder. so kinda understand where _you_ dont see a problem and so many other people will.

Generating false positives is not something society should actively cultivate, nor does it make anyone safer.

[fortran77]

I'm a minority in America. I have no problem with Police drones.

[cyanydeez]

congrats; I'm sure we can now ignore all other minorities.