Police State
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The rare wise move from the APD
Finally the Atlanta Police department cracks down on the idiotic critical mass rides.
After years of looking the other way, Atlanta police recently cracked down on a monthly bicycle ride through the city streets that includes blocking cars and flouting traffic laws.
At least 10 officers, eight on motorcycles and two in patrol cars, followed more than 300 bicyclists through downtown Atlanta, Little Five Points and Virginia-Highland on June 27 from about 6:30 to 8 p.m. Most of the bicyclists stopped for red lights they normally would have ignored. At least two bicyclists were ticketed for disobeying traffic laws.
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Highsmith, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, said Critical Mass would not be the same if the bicyclists followed the rules.“The little bit of disruptiveness and the civil disobedience is a part of raising awareness [about bicycles] in a more conspicuous way,” he said.
The group wants both better infrastructure for bicycles, including bike racks and lanes, and to show drivers that they, too, can hop out of the car and onto a bike.
Now honestly, if the cyclists are lobbying for better infrastructure, how does NOT using the infrastructure that’s already there help matters? Why should anyone pay for more bike lanes when the existing lanes aren’t being used and the people agitating for them are as boorish as possible?
Not that many people will care about this, but it’s been a pet peeve of mine for years…
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Talking to the police
Watch this video – it’s a lecture by a law professor and a detective, both of whom agree on practically everything, it’s weird.
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Saturday links
- Deputy dumps man out of wheelchair – man then gets ahold of courthouse videotape, it reaches the media, and now that deputy is charged.
- Danish media reprints controversial cartoons, and show far more courage than American media outlets.
- Drunken Orgies Tainted System says Florida prison boss.
- Police Chief accused of improper chats retires – this is interesting. The police department in question was famous for find people trying to entice minors. Relevant quote
Lindsey said Murray used his city-owned computer to chat online with women during an ongoing investigation into local massage parlors used as fronts for prostitution.
All the department’s computers, except for one used for the continuing Internet child sexual predator sting operation, are monitored by a keystroke program.Why would the only machine in the department that produces intentional evidence NOT have the keylogger installed?
- Tax me more fund raises little revenue
- The law and economics of pirates
- An aerial photo of San Francisco in the age of Earthquakes
- Fake cops rob family – this will be a growing problem I fear.
Most of these factor info my coming law enforcement meldown/feedback mismatch post I’m going to write one of these days…
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This is no ordinary Tuesday
My predictions are Obama and Huckabee here in GA. On a related note, I met my first Ron Paul door to door guy on Saturday, he seemed very nice. He gave me a bumper sticker too.
Before I go vote, here are some links that caught my eye:
- Barstool Economics
- Leading denominations by location
- Your tax dollars by at work – Atlanta cop and Duluth cop in shoot out
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Monday night rapid fire
- A photographer in Seattle wins a lawsuit against police for eighty thousand. His offense? Taking pictures of police doing public work in a public place. I think law enforcement is heading for a meltdown that will leave everyone worse off, which will be the topic of a much longer post as soon as I get time.
- David Friedman with more on the Ron Paul affair, it’s a good examination of self selection and rhetoric.
- David Friedman again with one of the best blog posts I’ve seen on religion in quite a while.
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Sunday morning links
Sorry for the light blogging work, getting the condo ready for sale is taking up quite some time. Here are some links for everyone
- From the Agitator – Sheriff: SWAT Team Necessary Because Man Is a “Self-Proclaimed Constitutionalist”
- I’m feeling a strong urge to install this in my library
- This is interesting (new alt energy that could conceivably work)
- Why must the media not do their homework on plug in hybrids? If you’re getting some some of the energy from gasoline, and some from the power grid, then miles per gallon is a bad measure of energy efficiency. Nonetheless, check out this CNN piece. FYI – CalCars has been doing this for years.
- Top Giuliani staffers go without pay, a lame thing to do.
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It’s been a light blogging week
But a heavy work week. For your reading pleasure, check out
- An NYPD detective commits perjury for no obvious reason, the matter seemed inconsequential. It’s a bad omen for the current state of law enforcement.
- Check out this Ron Paul post, featuring the interesting line, “Rubble doesn’t make trouble“
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Scary quote of the day
From the AJC article Clayton may seek records on all renters
“This is not to say Big Brother is watching,” he insisted. “It says Big Brother is helping.”
It’s not the most intrusive thing that could happen, but bear in mind that in the past 10 years we (the Atlanta Metro Area) have had
- 1 Mayor in jailed on corruption charges
- 1 political assassination of a sheriff
- 1 ex-sheriff convicted of said assassination, along with several deputies
- 1 police shooting of an 87 year old woman based on a perjured warrant
- The creation of a “Tupac Shakur Arts Center” funded by the taxpayers
- Cynthia McKinney’s entire political career
And we should give the government more power?
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Local drug war update
Today’s newspaper brought mixed results. The Atlanta Police Department does seem to be cleaning itself up, indeed, much more than I expected. However, I haven’t read anything about any sort of judicial accountability; they’re the ones who approve the warrants, seemingly without even looking at them.
Rant Starts
Meanwhile, people like this guy send exactly the wrong message with his “How not to get busted” DVD series. The point of drug legalization is not to evade the law or get high, it’s to live in a free society where people can make their own mistakes and take responsibility for them. Instead we revive the notion of demonic possession in the form of “addiction” which is a “disease”, which is at the same time pitiful and criminal and a reason to treat us all like children in the hands of an all-knowing state.The end result of protecting people from the consequences of their actions is to fill the world with fools, and that seems to be what we’ve done.
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Videotaping police
Radley Balco, in a column on FoxNews.com has an interesting and scary article video taping police at work. Basically there have been a string of incidents recently where people videotaping police at work (in uniform, in public, performing their duties) have been charged with crimes.
It’s ridiculous. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for a private citizen in public view, which is why traffic cameras and the legion of private security cameras are legal (recording audio is considered different by the law). Why on earth would public servants (who are supposed to work for us mind you) be immune from this?
All this would change if we made all government agencies were funded from the public treasury and weren’t self-supporting, but that’s a topic for another time I suppose.
