Not The Onion

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (16 children)

Yeah, and I've faced a couple of those potential nightmares... unfortunately, my experience has been: the cops act a lot worse when you have "anti-cop tech" visible in your car, for instance I got the most bogus speeding ticket of all time when a radar detector was visible. Times I've been "at their mercy" where they could plant anything, claim anything, do anything, no witnesses around just me and them, they've always been more decent - almost never wrote anything up, just waved me on about my business after the stop.

For awhile, I ran around with 10 old registrations in the trunk but "couldn't find" the most recent one, even though the sticker on the tag was updated. I must have gotten 3 written warnings for "no valid registration" when I thought I was going to get a speeding ticket. They got a free look inside my trunk, got to write something up, and didn't have to hit me with a speeding fine. It's far from ideal, in the ideal world everything is on audio/video record and we base everything on the actual truth, but cops being human (and subject to human pettiness) sometimes having that record just makes them want to show you everything they can do to you without you being able to effectively fight back - including dragging your ass in to court for no reason whatsoever, they don't even bother to show - or maybe they do and they lie when they get there and they know (and in some towns are related to) the judge... If they know they have nothing of substance to present in court (like that radar detector cop) they just don't show up.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (15 children)

A radar detector is very different from a dash cam, including in law depending on your area.

I think you're just doing mental gymnastics to make a reason for not getting one. Just be honest with yourself and say "I don't feel like it."

It reminds me of the people who point out that seat-belts trap people in cars so they won't wear a seat-belt. They don't think rationally about the very remote odds of that, they just latch on to it as an excuse to do what they were already going to do.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (14 children)

Agree to disagree. I have all kinds of tech from GoPros with mounts for the car to phone holder that can make my phone serve as a dashcam in 5 seconds flat. I also have several exterior facing cameras around our home, and the software ready to switch on and archive all the footage, and multiple 2TB drives laying around doing nothing at the moment. If I wanted to record looping video at the house I easily could - and do what with it? Fight in court. Do you enjoy fighting in court? I don't. I'd rather not do things that encourage fighting in court, and so I don't record the video. It's a deliberate choice - maybe "I don't feel like it" - but not because I can't push a button on Amazon and get one delivered.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (13 children)

I'm not saying I like going to court. I'm saying losing in court is worse than winning in court.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (12 children)

Staying out of court is the real win.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (11 children)

You seem to think that's more likely without a dash cam. I don't.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (10 children)

I agree to disagree - most times I have ended up in court I could have made choices to stay out, on balance I feel that even when I have won in court by preparing and going I still lost overall and so, most times those were bad decisions to go, fight and win.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (9 children)

Sounds like you've had unusual experiences with the courts. I can't force you to base your opinion off of more typical experiences, in large part because you haven't lived other people's lives (or looked into their court cases).

Back to my metaphor, if a seat-belt trapped me in my car, I wouldn't decide that must be normal and I should never wear a seat-belt again.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (8 children)

I agree about seatbelts - though if I lived 3 or 4 near-death experiences where seat belts made my outcome worse instead of better, I'd probably say to hell with the odds...

I know a lot of people who have spent time in the court system, other than ambulance chaser backed situations, I don't know many happy with the outcomes.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (7 children)

I'm not saying you don't have cause to be a bit silly about this, I'm just trying to get you to realize you're being a bit silly about this.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (6 children)

Not only the courts, I find many areas of life where "right and wrong" are best treated as a sort of ideal, aspirational thing, not something to invest a lot of energy in upholding - if you're interested in overall quality of life. Especially when dealing with our (disabled) children and the school system, but also medical malpractice and other situations, there are fights we could have taken to court, fought hard - at great personal expense not only of legal fees but also time and emotional energy - and won the court case, but lost overall in terms of achieving the things we really cared about - that time and money was put to much more productive and life enhancing uses than "making a stand and proving the injustice." You can argue that we "shirked our duty to society" by allowing the injustices to continue, I argue that society shirked its duty to itself by making tthe injusticies so individually costly to expose and correct.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

I don't know what to tell you other than that we live in a brutal, unfair universe and are forced to do our best.

The only thing worse than having courts (which by nature of being comprised of human beings, often get things wrong) is not having courts.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

The only thing worse than having courts (which by nature of being comprised of human beings, often get things wrong) is not having courts.

I agree to that, 100% - they do make life overall better by their existence. Where I disagree is: they don't usually make individuals' lives better by participation in them. There's a certain "civic duty" aspect to participation in the system, but I strongly believe that taking cases to court, and winning the trial decision, but failing to make a real difference to society going forward - failing to ensure that the injustice will happen less in the future - is just a waste of time and irresponsible enrichment of lawyers.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago* (3 children)

I guess you may not know that court can still levy judgements against you ex-parte (generally, civil), or just put a warrant out for you to force you to come (generally, criminal).

"I don't want to go to court" is like saying "I don't want to pay taxes." The government doesn't really care if you want to do it or not.

Yes, not putting your matches next to your lighter fluid is a great idea (we should focus on "making a real difference" to prevent needing court), but you still need fire hoses for when you get unlucky and you have to fix a problem outside of your control (court).

But that's all just fluff if you think that cops seeing a dash cam will make them want to take you to court. I really think that's an incredibly rare cop that feels that way, and you seem to really think that's very common; I suspect if I polled a hundred cops I'd get roughly 0 that feel that way, but you'd probably insist those were an unusual 100 cops, or the ones in your area are different. I can't reason you out of a position you didn't reason yourself into.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

Of course all those things are true, which is why you generally want to live your life in such a way that doesn't get you dragged into court by others, either.

However - should you ever consider dragging anyone else into court and getting a civil monetary judgement against them, you may also want to consider that an awful lot of the type of people who go around doing things that would make such a judgement relatively easy to obtain, also live their lives in such a way that collecting any actual money from such judgements is exceptionally difficult. Again, making court a waste of time and energy.

cops seeing a dash cam will make them want to take you to court.

You're missing a subtlety here... cops don't take you to court, they send you (or your lawyer) to court. Rub a cop wrong and they give you a bogus citation which all they have to do is get a tsk tsk about not showing up to court for, but you either A) pay the citation, or B) pay a lawyer to show up to court to fight the citation for you, or C) spend your time and effort going to court yourself to fight it. Option B being more expensive than option A and option C being most expensive of all if you value your time in the least.

I really think that’s an incredibly rare cop that feels that way

Well, I've been around since the 60s, and interacted with a few cops over the years, and most of them have been pretty great people on the whole, the vast majority I'd say, on duty and off. Still, I have interacted with several who did get petty and vindictive and have been tweaked by signs of "anti-cop-paraphernalia" in one's possession, and I suppose when you offset those against all the "good cops" I have interacted with, I get that feeling that "anti-cop-paraphernalia" really does piss them off. All the online videos of cops in the 2000-2020 era trying to beat up people filming them with cell phones doesn't help either.

I can’t reason you out of a position you didn’t reason yourself into.

Likewise.

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[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

However - should you ever consider dragging anyone else into court and getting a civil monetary judgement against them, you may also want to consider that an awful lot of the type of people who go around doing things that would make such a judgement relatively easy to obtain, also live their lives in such a way that collecting any actual money from such judgements is exceptionally difficult. Again, making court a waste of time and energy.

"Only poor people commit crime or injure others."

Nope.

You’re missing a subtlety here… cops don’t take you to court, they send you (or your lawyer) to court. Rub a cop wrong and they give you a bogus citation which all they have to do is get a tsk tsk about not showing up to court for, but you either A) pay the citation, or B) pay a lawyer to show up to court to fight the citation for you, or C) spend your time and effort going to court yourself to fight it. Option B being more expensive than option A and option C being most expensive of all if you value your time in the least.

You start off by puffing out your chest in an attempt at pedantry and then just use synonyms in this context. Besides, literally none of that contradicts anything I've said and just largely ignores it.

Well, I’ve been around since the 60s, and interacted with a few cops over the years, and most of them have been pretty great people on the whole, the vast majority I’d say, on duty and off. Still, I have interacted with several who did get petty and vindictive and have been tweaked by signs of “anti-cop-paraphernalia” in one’s possession, and I suppose when you offset those against all the “good cops” I have interacted with, I get that feeling that “anti-cop-paraphernalia” really does piss them off. All the online videos of cops in the 2000-2020 era trying to beat up people filming them with cell phones doesn’t help either.

Neat anecdotes, but nobody should be convinced by anecdotes.

For the dozenth time, you are generalizing from a very small data set and acting like that makes you wiser; it doesn't.

See if this makes sense to you:

"I crossed the street and stubbed my toe, therefore crossing the street results in stubbed toes, so I don't leave my house any more."

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 point 2 months ago

also live their lives in such a way that collecting any actual money from such judgements is exceptionally difficult. Again, making court a waste of time and energy.

“Only poor people commit crime or injure others.” Nope.

You don’t have to be poor, you just have to have your assets legally protected from seizure via civil judgement. Cross the wrong line in the woods and a wildlife officer can confiscate your boat and the truck and trailer you brought it in on. Do all kinds of terrible things ending up in judgements of virtually any amount, and if your primary residence is a million dollar mansion, the courts can’t touch it. I rented a room in a very nice compound while at University, paid $400 per month to the landlord who lived in “the big house” - turns out they only still had the house because it was protected under law from seizure - dad was in jail for fencing stolen cars, my rent, and the two women who rented the tennis cabana… free and clear to the family.

you are generalizing from a very small data set and acting like that makes you wiser; it doesn’t.

Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Your superior data set, you got provenance on that data? You trust it implicitly beyond your personal experiences? That’s a comfortable place to live, until it isn’t. My parents both taught science for 40+ years at various levels. They quit counting the number of times that “facts” they had been taught were overturned by newer, better, more solid findings - after less than 10 years of teaching. That’s the nature of science, and life. Data surrounding public safety officers has been, in my personal life experience, of wildly varying quality but almost always slanted in the direction of improving trust in our sworn officers of the law - improving it beyond what it actually merits.