I've lived on an American military base with a crime rate so low that the military police spent months determined to track down some guy who robbed the liquor store because it was the most exciting thing that had happened in ages.
There can be a real downside to police officers overzealously looking for someone to bust just to have something to do.
I'm ok with the dog poop one. Cleaning up after your dog is easy, and if you're so lazy that you can't do it you deserve to have someone in authority ruining your week.
Yup; my girlfriend is a gardener and while she's fine with handling poisonous plants (there's a lot of those) she is NOT fine with (other people's) dog / cat poop - there can be parasites and other nasties in there that will make you blind or dead. The plants need to be consumed and/or prepared in some way in most cases.
True, especially when children are involved. I do not know what to do when I find stuff in my yard that I know the toddlers/kids will play with if they find it. Thankfully the fly exist.
When I was young if some guy picked up dog poop in a park and took it home in a bag he would have been locked up as crazy. Nowadays if you don't pick up dog poop in a park and take it home in a bag you're locked up as criminal.
Yeah, how horrible it is that people are now expected to pick up their trash and not leave piles of shit lying around where other people might step on them. What a world.
The city near me bans animal waste from landfill and composting. You're required to take it home and flush it. Signs in the parks issue that directive and quote the appropriate bylaw.
Me, where I walk my dog he squats in the ditch between the pile of bear scat and the dead raccoon carcass. We lack the delicate sensitivities of sophisticated city dwellers.
They are often disallowed as a result of dog owners not cleaning up after the dogs. Other considerations are whether horses are allowed in the park, if there is wildlife that is threatened by dogs, or if there are things like soccer fields that might be torn up by a dog.
> - Dogs off leash in dogs-allowed parks
Leash reactivity is real. Google it. Leaving your little Fluffy off-leash in an on-leash park is a recipe for disaster. I'm not a lawyer, but you'll probably be found liable if a fight starts out, even if the dog on leash 'starts it'.
> - Dog poop infractions
Good! Bag your poop. Carry it with you until you can dispose of it properly. And that doesn't mean using a private person's garbage without permission.
>Leash reactivity is real. Google it. Leaving your little Fluffy off-leash in an on-leash park is a recipe for disaster. I'm not a lawyer, but you'll probably be found liable if a fight starts out, even if the dog on leash 'starts it'.
I had this conversation in a park with another dog owner just last night. The park has two spaces - a developed area where dogs are required to be on a leash, and an undeveloped area with trails through tall grass where dogs are allowed to be off-leash as long as they are responsive to their owners.
He was sitting on a bench on the developed trail, with his dog on the ground next to him, with no leash. No surprise, his dog lunged at mine as we walked by, and he couldn't comprehend why I was upset that he didn't have a leash handy for his dog. It's incredibly frustrating that folk can be so selfish and short-sighted.
There are reasons for every ordinance. The enforcement resources dedicated to them are incredible, though, especially when neighboring municipalities can barely keep up with violent crimes short of murder.
Until you reach age 18 in the US you have very limited civil rights. Freedom of speech, assembly, bearing arms, due process, and privacy are restricted. On the up side for kids, the amusement park tickets are cheaper and the prisons are slightly nicer.
And in the US, parents would face criminal charges for things Japanese parents routinely do, like sending their kids to the store alone. Unfortunately the US is filled with plusungood sexcriminals (citation needed) and weapons (price of freedom) so we can’t do it in the land of freedom.
Charlotte, NC or Mecklenburg County curfew age was 16 and under when I was growing up.
Also the 17 year old age restriction for "R" rated movies is a suggestion. I hope Regal Cinemas as a business continues dying off for changing their policy to be 18+ when I was 17, and then reverting their policy back to 17 when I turned 18. My stepfather would buy a ticket, escort all of us into the theater, walk back out to the ticket box, demand a refund for his ticket, and leave us to watch. Silliest company policy ever.
The American convention is that the police are not a military force because we call them a different word. As such, they cannot impose martial law, regardless of what the law is or the means by which they enforce it.
You're free to vote into law such local ordinances and for local politicians who support such ordinances. You're also free to vote for politicians who will repeal such ordinances. I don't understand your apparent disdain...
You're free to vote into law such local ordinances
Well, it's not quite as cut and dry as that. There does seem to be some legitimate question on First Amendment right to peaceful assembly grounds. Much of the case law has generally upheld these ordinances, however it has shaped them so that municipalities have to be careful to construct the ordinances correctly.
It is a stupid cheap halfway enforcement because of parks at night being a good place for vice activities which leave unsavory evidence later (used syringes, condoms, booze bottles).
I know because that was a shift taken after a few incidents of prostitution at night and unsavory hazardous litter prompted the change.
The alternatives are obvious (open but larger patrols at night to make it unsuitable) but that is more expensive for what is a fringe activity.
The ordinances that close public parks after twilight are generally to provide cops with a pretext to confront anyone in the park who may otherwise have no-reasonable-suspicion opsec for their...
...sale or use of prohibited substances.
...prostitution.
...homeless campsites.
...public intoxication or underage drinking.
...pretentious indie filmmaking.
...spray-paint tagging.
...logging.
...poaching.
...dumping.
...lewd behavior.
While some municipalities were forced to close parks at night, due to actual evidence of these activities, so the cops could move in and roust anyone they find, others preemptively closed their parks as cargo-cult ritual, hoping to prevent those activities from occurring in the first place.
Are you suggesting we don't have that already? All the big tech companies that do anything with location already know your age and whether you're out after curfew or have a dog (for example), and Snowden revealed that the government (via PRISM) also has access to this information.
When I was young - before 18 - kids wound up in juvenile all the time for being out after curfew, which was 11 during the week and 12 or 1am on weekends. you were supposed to be allowed out to work a job, but folks got harassed nonetheless. There was no other crime other than being young and out past a certain time.
Now in Indiana, supposedly one is supposed to be allowed out with parental permission, but I don't know if it is like this in the rest of the country or if places have re-written their juvenile curfew laws to account for this sort of thing.
In addition, folks on house arrest or parole often have curfews as well.
You'd think they could come up with something constructive. Have the officers do community service among the residents while on the clock and in uniform. You'll have even less crime that way.
On a military base, it's not so bad. They genuinely need to police drunk driving because you have a lot of young people with decent incomes on their own for the first time. Most American military bases are pretty aggressive about policing traffic issues, and it's apparently all to the good.
They do things like place some crumpled car as a billboard somewhere prominent to remind you daily what your car might look like if you drive drunk, then post a count that gets updated daily "Days since last deadly accident" or something like that.
And on the base in question, we had on base housing. One of the duties of the police was to let you in your house if you locked yourself out accidentally. (I did once.)
But this article starts with a stake out actively trying to tempt someone to steal something. It's essentially entrapment, or not far from it.
That's not entrapment. At least in the US, entrapment has to pass two tests:
1. Was it a crime the suspect was unlikely or unwilling to commit otherwise? (The "subjective" test.)
2. Did the actions of officers cause a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime? (The "objective" test.)
In other words, entrapment is when the police actively cause somebody to commit a crime they wouldn't have otherwise committed in similar circumstances.
In the article, the police just left a case of beer inside a car. The police created a passive opportunity, but that's not enough for entrapment... the act of steeling that beer was entirely self meditated.
That sentence has two qualifiers. I still have two people telling me I'm wrong.
In my youth, I would have agreed that a thing should just not be touched if it's not yours because maybe they will come back for it. Someday.
I'm still inclined to generally err in that direction, but I'm less judgy than I used to be of people who would be inclined to feel that a perishable -- like beer -- left out in the open for days on end must be basically abandoned and up for grabs because people don't typically buy consumables like that and leave them sitting out for days on end.
It's not normal behavior. It was intended to be temptation. Whether it meets the legal definition of entrapment or not, it makes for a town I don't really want to visit. There's no telling how far down this slippery slope they will go to keep themselves entertained and prove their paychecks aren't simply a waste of money.
I raised two kids. I've thought quite a lot about such things. I think setting up a "test" of that sort to see who will fall for it isn't nice behavior and shouldn't be done, especially not if your real motive is merely because you are bored.
I don't understand how you think this way about ownership. If it's not yours and you don't enter into a transaction (the transaction can be implied in the case of give-aways) wherein the previous owner grants you ownership, then it stays not yours. Things in a car are pretty unambiguously not up-for-grabs to anyone who doesn't own the car.
I was raised to be extremely upstanding and responsible etc. But you can take that too far, which is why we have and need laws that cover when certain things end: statutes of limitations, laws declaring when property is deemed abandoned, etc.
Every state in the US has laws in place that spell out under what conditions the government or another party can claim your real estate. The local government typically claims it if you haven't paid your taxes in X amount of time and resells it. If it is mortgaged, the bank can claim it if you fail to pay for X amount of time.
States also spell out when a total stranger can file legal claim on your real estate. This usually involves them openly living there, getting their mail there and paying the utilities and the like for a number of years.
Most states require a period of between ten and twenty years. The most liberal states only require five years. The most conservative -- Texas -- requires 30 years.
Countries that don't have solid processes in place for returning seemingly abandoned real estate to use by allowing some other party to establish legal claim to it wind up having extremely thorny problems, including intractable poverty for large swaths of the population.
Problems with trying to establish clear legal ownership in countries with overly conservative laws or traditions in that regard is one of the biggest challenges faced by Habitat for Humanity. Lack of ability to readily and easily say "We don't think they are coming back for it, and if they do, too bad so sad, time's up" actively undermines a functional society far worse than the occasional petty crime (such as some swiped beer).
I'm personally excessively conservative about such things. But I'm old enough to recognize that different people draw those lines in different places and that people less conservative than me don't necessarily deserve to be viewed as bad actors. They certainly don't deserve to be tricked into committing a crime so that bored police officers have something to do.
Simple: you inform the police that you think that car has been abandoned, and you let them deal with it. You can't just jump-start it and drive away because you think it's abandoned.
Ownership is just a notion. It's a custom our society has invented, probably pushed by people who had things, and then tried to convince everyone that this was the norm.
In more tribal societies it's not uncommon that people have no notion of ownership, or that it's less transactional. People who steal who I have met generally believe that it's the fault of the victim to have left that item up for grab. Just to say that the notion is quite fluid between people.
I think most people in the places that I frequent have very similar training on customs pertaining to personal property and ownership as I do, and that differences in how they act on that training is less to do with different customs and more to do with allowing yourself to shape your moral framework to match your desires rather than the other way around.
I need help with this one since you have some experience.
School bus 6am with its blinking lights in Mountain View CA about 8 years ago my wife got pulled over for driving past (she slowed down but didn't stop and wait). So if this happened at 8 am it would have been kinda legit. This was at 6am where there are no kids outside, taking buses.
No. You don't get to make that call. A stop sign (or in this case a school bus that obliges you to stop) means stop, so you stop.
Perhaps a school started early because of a special event? Perhaps a driver in training was making his rounds with an empty bus? You can't know. Don't try to water down reasonable traffic laws because you think you know better.
It's not entrapment, because no decent driver would be tempted to ignore a school bus with its blinkers on.
> You don't get to make that call. A stop sign (or in this case a school bus that obliges you to stop) means stop, so you stop.
Suppose you're on a motorcycle, you come to a traffic light, and it's red. It's the middle of the night, there is no traffic, and the light will never turn green, because your motorcycle isn't heavy enough to trigger the sensor in the road.
This is a pretty common case. Do you need to leave the bike there until day comes and car traffic arrives to save you?
All traffic lights I've encountered that are triggered use magnetic triggers and work with bikes. Additionally their failsafe for night operation is to go into yield-traffic mode; the yellow light blinks, indicating that the intersection is no longer governed by the light but by the normal right-of-way. As a last option, you can trigger the pedestrian light manually by getting of your bike.
This is absurd; you so clearly have not ridden a motorcycle in California or maybe at all; the number of lights that aren't triggered by a motorcycle is quite large; so large that there is an accessories market for adding a "larger magnetic field" to bikes; getting off the bike is just asking for someone to run you over because they weren't expecting a pedestrian on the roadway (one of those roadways I can think of off the top of my head had a light that wouldn't trigger on a winding freeway off ramp; I was always fearful that a motorist would kill me at this particular light).
No, I haven't ridden motorcyles in California, since I live in Germany. We probably just have better traffic lights. They even trigger when I use my bicycle!
Why are you fearing being run over when walking along a red light?
You have better traffic lights then. Many US states have laws the specifically allow motorcycles to run red lights as long as they stop and wait a certain amount of time.
The situation you sketch is not comparable to the school bus case. Most traffic laws have exemptions for dealing with a force majeure; either explicit or implicit by condoning any reasonable behaviour necessary to mitigate the problem.
You're not stuck in the school bus scenario unless the cops who put it there maliciously keep its blinkers on for an unreasonable amount of time until you do pull up again after stopping (which then might be classified as entrapment). rhacker's wife didn't stop.
> The situation you sketch is not comparable to the school bus case.
So what? The argument I responded to didn't use any aspect of the school bus case. It was "You don't get to make the call. A stop sign means stop, so you have to stop."
And that argument is obviously bunk. A red traffic light also means stop; it is perfectly comparable to a stop sign.
It depends on the state, as a number of states have "safe on red" laws for motorcycles.
In the case of Virginia, motorcycles and bicycles can proceed through the red light after the light cycles twice (skipping their lane) or two minutes. They still have to stop. They still have to yield the right of way.
I have taken a school bus at 6am (on a Saturday, no less) to a regional school event the next state over that started at 9am. My old high school had a "Zero Hour" during weekdays that started at 7:05am for those who had to work after school to support their families, or other obligations like sports in the afternoon. Busses serviced these kids. Combine that with the fact that children are high risk to cross the street without looking both ways for oncoming traffic, and school busses (and only school busses) are traditionally painted yellow as an alarm to the community to be very careful around them as there is a good chance it is hauling children and exceptional caution is to be given.
Government property on a military base that isn't locked down/guarded is pretty much fair game since everyone will reallocate resources if they are mission critical...and everyone knows this so if you really want to keep your stuff you need it guarded.
Personal gear exempted from this rule since Joes typically don't steal from other Joes unless they enjoy painful retribution.
> On a military base, it's not so bad. They genuinely need to police drunk driving because you have a lot of young people with decent incomes on their own for the first time.
The stereotypes about boots buying Dodge Chargers, Mustangs, Camaros and such on 21% interest rates are very real.
source: personal experience, former civilian military contractor
That would be nice. Unfortunately having less crime is not a goal of many police departments, DAs, prosecutors, prison guards and employees, bail bondsman, and basically the entire American criminal "justice" system. The more people they have to harass, the more money they can generate for themselves and all the sketchy for profit companies involved
The most common example I see of missed opportunities to improve safety over increase revenue is with traffic cops. They often hide, wait for a person to speed by, then pull out and give them a ticket. 10 minutes at least from the time they're pulled over, and who knows how long lying in wait. And it gets one car to drive safely for a day to a month after the incident.
Compare that to a situation I just saw on a major highway. One state trooper driving exactly the speed limit in the passing lane. For at least 20 miles, he kept a dozen cars at a safe speed. Not to mention preventing any other unsafe driving. Sure, it only lasted 20 minutes from my point of view, but if he just drove around for a few hours in plain sight, that's a lot of cars driving safely. Sadly, it doesn't generate revenue.
While there is significant overlap between driving lawfully and driving safely, they are not identical, so please do not use them interchangeably.
When a cop is doing that pace car thing, the safest thing to do is just get off that road, at least for a few minutes, because all of those drivers will be paying more attention to their legality than to their safety. For 20 miles, that example cop kept a dozen cars bunched up together, afraid to pass.
It is likely that a pace car cop will pull someone over eventually anyway, so don't even spin that wheel of chance.
There are different theories of what "safe driving" is, and the one you subscribe to will affect your opinion of pace car policing.
Generating revenue through fees and fines is excellent politics: you satisfy the voters' demands for both low taxes and robust services at the same time. The people who end up paying aren't happy, but they're not going to vote.
I don't recall/don't know. We had a 7.1 earthquake at some point as our latest Exciting Thing, and I think focus probably changed after that.
But for ten months, you would have thought they were looking for a mass murderer by the way they were blanketing the area with fliers looking for any leads in the case.
1) The OP to which you responded is confusing peacefulness with being civilised. Japanese are not particularly peaceful, but they are highly civilized. Much more so than western countries (in particular the USA seems to have rather low standards in terms of politeness and civilization), because the Japanese culture places much more value on such things than the various western countries.
2) You are conflating the disposition of the foreign policy of a country with the cultural accepted practices by the population of that country.
There can be a real downside to police officers overzealously looking for someone to bust just to have something to do.