padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
It may be worth considering that Padraig has had to deal with armed and extremely aggressive cops his entire life, and probably has friends or acquaintances who have been the victims of police violence. In Europe, the cops can easily ruin your life, but if youre relatively law abiding and non-political (and certainly if you're the right demographic) then theyre probably not going to beat you up or kill you, and for most people the risk of being murdered by a random cop as you drive down the street is extremely low.
thanks droid but

1) I don't want or need anyone to make excuses for me

2) and I made this distinction above but just to be crystal clear: despite having lived in relatively high-crime, highly policed neighborhoods for much of my adult life, I'm at little risk of violent crime or police violence. being white and not a drug addict (and not looking like I'm trying to buy drugs) basically eliminates the risk of police harassment. and despite Chicago's reputation for violent crime, a large portion of it takes place in a handful of concentrated areas and is perpetrated by and on a relatively small group of people - like most cities, I believe.

the police violence I've experienced has been exclusively political, when I was younger. I got whacked a couple times at demonstrations, and suffered bullshit arrests a couple other times. I do know other people who got much worse. I also experienced police harassment in my itinerant youth for social undesirability, and was locked up a couple other times for nonsense like vagrancy or loitering (of the five times I've been in jail, I'd say one was a valid charge), and got to witness and experience the huge racial and class iniquities of the American justice system. those were eye-opening experiences after a relatively sheltered childhood - most of my extended family are middle-class white people at virtually zero risk of police violence or harassment.

but the entire point is that this shouldn't be about personal experience, it should be about what policies are both effective and morally right. militarization, pretextual stops, stop and frisk, gang databases, expecting police officers to function as social workers and addiction specialists - these are all bad and immoral policies.

this is not an abstract issue to me. it was the core issue of Chicago's mayoral election - which took place last week - and it is the single issue defining the upcoming two-candidate runoff (which occurs when no one gets over 50% of the vote): what to do about the triangular relationship in Chicago between citizens, crime, and police? one candidate, Brandon Johnson, is a young Black progressive who wants to focus on the root causes of crime - invest in creating economic opportunities for young people, violence prevention, reopen mental health centers, etc - and create more detectives from within the existing police force to solve crimes rather than just crack heads. the other is a conservative old guy endorsed by the FOP who, surprise, is full of dog whistle language about "taking back our streets" and such bullshit. so yeah this is happening where I live (literally, Brandon Johnson and his family live a neighborhood over from me), right now.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
and for the record if I post here these days it's cos it something I care about i.e. I'm mainly just posting for me

I don't give a shit about likes or banter or whatever and I give less than zero fucks what @entertainment or luka or whoever think
 

droid

Well-known member
thanks droid but

1) I don't want or need anyone to make excuses for me

2) and I made this distinction above but just to be crystal clear: despite having lived in relatively high-crime, highly policed neighborhoods for much of my adult life, I'm at little risk of violent crime or police violence. being white and not a drug addict (and not looking like I'm trying to buy drugs) basically eliminates the risk of police harassment. and despite Chicago's reputation for violent crime, a large portion of it takes place in a handful of concentrated areas and is perpetrated by and on a relatively small group of people - like most cities, I believe.

the police violence I've experienced has been exclusively political, when I was younger. I got whacked a couple times at demonstrations, and suffered bullshit arrests a couple other times. I do know other people who got much worse. I also experienced police harassment in my itinerant youth for social undesirability, and was locked up a couple other times for nonsense like vagrancy or loitering (of the five times I've been in jail, I'd say one was a valid charge), and got to witness and experience the huge racial and class iniquities of the American justice system. those were eye-opening experiences after a relatively sheltered childhood - most of my extended family are middle-class white people at virtually zero risk of police violence or harassment.

but the entire point is that this shouldn't be about personal experience, it should be about what policies are both effective and morally right. militarization, pretextual stops, stop and frisk, gang databases, expecting police officers to function as social workers and addiction specialists - these are all bad and immoral policies.

this is not an abstract issue to me. it was the core issue of Chicago's mayoral election - which took place last week - and it is the single issue defining the upcoming two-candidate runoff (which occurs when no one gets over 50% of the vote): what to do about the triangular relationship in Chicago between citizens, crime, and police? one candidate, Brandon Johnson, is a young Black progressive who wants to focus on the root causes of crime - invest in creating economic opportunities for young people, violence prevention, reopen mental health centers, etc - and create more detectives from within the existing police force to solve crimes rather than just crack heads. the other is a conservative old guy endorsed by the FOP who, surprise, is full of dog whistle language about "taking back our streets" and such bullshit. so yeah this is happening where I live (literally, Brandon Johnson and his family live a neighborhood over from me), right now.

Ah, it wasn't mean to excuse you, just to point out that you had direct experience and knowledge of these things, so your opinion should carry more weight.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Harper gives the example of Bethany and Paul Eaton, whose house in Chislehurst, South-East London, was burgled while they were on holiday in 2019. When a neighbour spotted the break-in and called the police, the call handler said that since the neighbour hadn’t made an appointment, officers wouldn’t be able to attend the scene that day. When the Eatons later called the police to ask why officers hadn’t been to visit, they were told that the handler had closed the case.

No doubt the appointment has to be made using an app called Burglr.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
This is a good one. A few months back I'm driving my car late at night, randomly stopped by the police, they breathalyze me, all fine and ask to see the documentation for the car. Now I bought it in Liza's name so fucking Barnaby has a flash of genius and realizes I'm not Elizaveta V******* they get mad suspicious and think I've nicked the car. They search me against a wall, search car everything. But when I can give all her details easily and correctly they realise my story checks out, they give me the wallet that contains the docs and I drive off.

Yesterday stopped again. They ask for the docs, I give em the wallet and this time I anticipate the problem. I say "Yes I know it says a woman's name but blah blah" but they looking through looking through, they say "there's no document for ownership here". I'm thinking they're crazy, what you on about, I know it's in there look.... except it's not. Seems the other guys forgot to put it back. So unless I can produce it by Monday - which is gonna be impossible cos the only way to get a new one involves going to a notary, which I've just done, and then they send it off and it comes in the post whenever - I'm getting 200 euro fine or something's. Cos the police lost, or in fact stole, my fucking documentation.

I told the story to the notary, I said "I think the police lost it for me" and she says "yeah probably" completely unsurprised.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
This is a good one. A few months back I'm driving my car late at night, randomly stopped by the police, they breathalyze me, all fine and ask to see the documentation for the car. Now I bought it in Liza's name so fucking Barnaby has a flash of genius and realizes I'm not Elizaveta V******* they get mad suspicious and think I've nicked the car. They search me against a wall, search car everything. But when I can give all her details easily and correctly they realise my story checks out, they give me the wallet that contains the docs and I drive off.

Yesterday stopped again. They ask for the docs, I give em the wallet and this time I anticipate the problem. I say "Yes I know it says a woman's name but blah blah" but they looking through looking through, they say "there's no document for ownership here". I'm thinking they're crazy, what you on about, I know it's in there look.... except it's not. Seems the other guys forgot to put it back. So unless I can produce it by Monday - which is gonna be impossible cos the only way to get a new one involves going to a notary, which I've just done, and then they send it off and it comes in the post whenever - I'm getting 200 euro fine or something's. Cos the police lost, or in fact stole, my fucking documentation.

I told the story to the notary, I said "I think the police lost it for me" and she says "yeah probably" completely unsurprised.
Fucking twats! Reckon it was 'just' a mistake, or they did it for shits and giggles?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I reckon it was a mistake.
There is actually one other slight possibility. End of January I took the car for the MOT (inspeccao it's called here), which means that I take it to a local officina and leave them the keys and the docs, they take it to some place and they test it and declare it roadworthy or not.

So my first thought was that it was them (either the shop or the inspector or somehow between them) that lost it. But I went there yesterday and they looked through the wallet and saw the old owner's doc which was still in there and I could see them kinda remember and they said "oh yeah your document wasn't there and so we had to use that one just as a stopgap for the inspeccao" - basically I deal with them all the time, they are nice guys, I believe them - especially so seeing the way they saw the old doc and reacted to it.

So I suppose that theoretically it could be them, but I'm sure it was the filth.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well they're not an organisation well known for giving one the benefit of the doubt, so I think it's fair not to give it to them.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It's fucking serious, fines are adding up. Sure I shouldn't have been texting in the first place but from that grabbing me for that it turned out that I hadn't opened the letter with the insurance sticker in it cos it was addressed to her (clearly my fault) and so that was out of date, and then with the police themselves stealing the property thing it's mounting up, gonna at least try and appeal that one...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
On the way home got stopped by the police again again.... bit of a nasty trick they had this massive "Easter drinkers" roadblock set up in Marvilha where you could see it from miles away but had no way to get around it or turn around so you had to really slowly drive into the jawd of their trap where you would be greeted by some guy holding a rifle or shotgun or something with his hand in the middle of it like you see in gangster films... they were pulling random people over, and obviously that included me.

In Arroz the bar was so crowded I didn't bother getting one drink so obviously i passed the breathalyzer test, still they seized my passport and spent twenty minutes searching the whole car for drugs, then they were like, fine you can go, passed the passport back, I was just getting into the car... and one said, oh wait up, one more thing, and they grabbed the passport ran a load more checks on my name... twenty more minutes before they let me go.

Now that "you can go... oops no you can't" was an accident I reckon, although if they did wanna sort of keep someone off balance that would be a decent enough way. I do think that the show of force - big van blocking the road, several squad cars, and about fifteen men at various ranks, dressed differently and carrying various weapons, including the guy brandishing the rifle - seemed excessive. I get that it's a good idea to visibly test for drunk driving on public holidays, but why do you need to be so heavily armed to do it?
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
If asked about drinking and driving during a polis stop, i always say one pint early afternoon despite barely ever drinking. Polis focus will then move on to breathalyzer results so you know the process is going to take 20mins. Relax, get comfy, don’t ask if you can smoke

”Quiet/busy night, officers?” gets you a reduced cunt approach post-test while the result comes, you pass the breathalyzer, they start getting bored and you drive off. Avoids mouth swab requests for other compounds, don’t know what Portuguese polis are like but there are approaches to bringing some lost human presence out of potential belligerents
 

catalog

Well-known member
I got stopped on way into fusion festival in mecklenburg a few years back. We had the heads up it happened to everyone so I hadn't drunk anything. Passed the breathalyser fine, bug then they did this thing where they asked me to count to 40. You do the first 10 out loud then the rest silently. I failed that one 3 times but they let me go anyway, felt like they could not be arsed dealing with me any longer.

The situation with that festival is that it's a private site, so there's no police or security on site but they get you on way in and out. So there were loads of leaflets there explaining how long all the different drugs stay in your system and people would just stay on site til everything wax clear.
 

version

Well-known member
This is odd. Wonder whether they were in one of the rumoured gangs:

The suicide deaths of four current and former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department employees over a 24-hour span have prompted a plea from Sheriff Robert Luna urging deputies to check on the well-being of their colleagues and friends.

 
Top