I don’t see how this is transparency. Either way, the cop can just lie.
I mean this is nonsense:
California’s new law promotes these elements of procedural justice. During a traffic stop, for example, an officer who immediately shares the reason for the stop is being transparent. This allows the motorist to directly engage with the legitimate, legal reason for the stop rather than feel as if they are being interrogated for no reason or an ulterior motive. This more respectful form of communication makes police officers more accountable to those they wield power over.
If a cop pulls a black guy over for ‘speeding,’ it’s still the cop’s word against theirs. The only difference now is that the cop doesn’t have to make the black guy guess which lie the cop is going to use.
This seems like a clear upgrade.
Cop pulls you over, and immediately states the reason. They lied about you speeding? That’s ammunition for a defense. They said you were swerving? Dash cam footage might tell a different story.
The effect on cops will be the biggest piece. They’ll stretch the truth or lie in court, because they have a script. They might not even remember the event.
But suddenly, they have to choose to lie in the moment, they might even be caught in the lie before a judge
It’s not everything, but it’s certainly something
That and the dash cam.
If you’re worried enough about police integrity, have a dash cam and have it on. I’ve seen videos (rare) where the cop lied about speed and the dash cam was used to knock it down.
Even cheap ones could be used to figure out speed based on landmarks and time stamps. GPS speed would be more conclusive, though.
I got a dashcam a few months ago and it’s already paid for itself several times over. I’ve been hit twice and it’s pretty easy for insurance to get the other party to pay when you’ve got video evidence that they’re in the wrong.
How have you been bit twice in a few months? That sounds insane to me. 12 years since my last even bumper scuff.
For that scenario all you’d have to do is pay a lawyer to file a motion of discovery, and the charges will almost certainly be dropped. You could probably talk a paralegal to do it for cheap, or your jurisdiction might allow you to file it yourself.
It costs more to gather the evidence than they’ll get from the fine.
If a cop pulls a car over for speeding, and the motorist says “because I ran a stop sign”, the cop can now give two tickets. Removing the fishing question still makes the driver’s situation better.
The Texas state troopers (who investigate police misconduct) are actually pretty hard ass about it. They see regular cops as inferior, so there’s no ‘thin blue line’ going on.
It’s probably because their training is like 9 months versus 6 weeks.
This seems like a strict improvement over the old situation, in a way that should be directly felt by lots and lots of people every single day.
I don’t get the urge to take a needlessly cynical take on news like this. Yes, the system is still flawed, but yes, it’s better than it was before. Take the win and move on to the next reform.
Absolutely this. If anything is going to change, we’re going to hear about those changes like this. If the reaction is always “fuck you -ACAB!” the change won’t work.
I actually strongly feel that ACAB, but I’d like to live in a society that could have fair and just policing, not one without police.
Unfortunately you won’t get that. ACAB has lost its original meaning completely. It should be about police reform, but instead it’s about shitting all over the institution, regardless of if there are improvements. This post is the perfect example of that. An actual improvement, but it’s just people spouting ACAB. The circlejerk is annoying.
>ACAB has lost its original meaning completely. It should be about police reform, but instead it’s about shitting all over the institution
i think you are making that up
Any system of government will require some way to handle unlawful/harmful conduct, yeah. It’s just a matter of making it not complete shit.
No idea if it would work in practice, but I once heard an idea where policing is a (mandatory?) duty for all citizens, but in regular rotation. Meaning, at any given time, some % of the population is now cops, and once your turn is up you’re back to a regular person with no enforcement obligations or privileges. No idea if that would work in practice, but it would give people real consequences for being a shit cop. Nobody could just be a terrible cop in perpetuity.
I think doing police work properly requires more training than we can expect from random citizens in a rotation.
I would, however, support this kind of arrangement for legislators, where it’s called sortition.
Just make working in retail a mandatory service. That would fix society in a few years.
Yes. We need police in a society, as a force to prevent and stop crime. But what we have now across the US as police are shit. We need them to be rebuilt from the ground up as community policing with a focus on protecting people, not just enforcing violations.
ACAB makes sense with the system we have. But I kinda doubt we’re going to get many tear down-rebuild efforts. Our best bet is to focus on stuff like this: institutional change in huge areas that change how police think and operate.
I prefer PEB: Policing Enables Bastards.
Shorter and more accurate, given the US alone has 800k cops and there must be some podunk department of two officers who treats the ten citizens in town well and just has to pull cars out of ditches and calm down drunk spouses or something a few times a year.
Also if all good cops get fired so the rest are bad, there are some cops they’re working to fire as we speak and I want to respect them.
Even if the legislation falls short of the ambitions of its supporters, however, it does hold promise for furthering community trust in police by promoting what’s known as procedural justice. In simple terms, procedural justice is the perception of fairness in interactions with authority such as traffic stops.
So, not actual fairness?
I mean, they said right there that’s in simple terms.
https://law.yale.edu/justice-collaboratory/procedural-justice
It needs to not only be fair, but appear fair.
If you’re speeding, and you get pulled over, and the cop acts confrontational and then gives you a ticket, it doesn’t appear fair.
If you’re speeding, and you get pulled over, and the cop says they pulled you over for speeding, asks if you had a good reason to be going that speed, and then gives you a ticket when you don’t, that appears fair, as well as being fair. The cop acted impartially, gave you a chance to explain yourself, and the outcome matched what you actually did.
“Is it because of my ligma?”
Was it because my vehicle exceeded the weight limit with all of this updog I’m transporting?
I was out at a bar the other night with a bunch of fellow dads. I mentioned how I just got my son with the dikfore joke, figuring everyone knew what I was talking about.
One guy is like “I havent heard that one” and it was like time stood still. I was once again a middle school boy about to drop an embarrassment bomb onto someone, from which they would never recover. Everyone else seemed to sense it in the air because they all went silent too.
“You don’t know the dikfore?”
We all know what comes next, and he realized what he had walked into the second it came out of his mouth. We all started cracking up, thinking it had been 30 years since the last time we were able to get a peer with that joke.
He still hasn’t lived it down. He never will, as long as I’m still breathing.
This is beautiful. David Attenkokra Attenborough couldn’t have made it any better
Do people usually give an answer to “Do you know why I pulled you over?” other than no?
Unless you have the ability to read minds how would you know why you were pulled over?
I guess if you wanted to be nice/polite you could say “No, officer.”
So do I, but I could have a tail light out, maybe I’ve still got something hanging from my rearview, maybe a passenger isn’t wearing their seatbelt.
As others in the comments mentioned, police can usually find a number of reasons to make a stop. There’s really no reason to answer anything other than no to that question.
