Footage Shows Cop Stalking Woman After Surveilling Her with a LPR(www.404media.co)
104 pointsby Tasseographer4 hours ago8 comments
  • throwaway274483 hours ago
    > the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID

    It continually surprises me that these tools operate on basically trust. Why cops have direct access to these databases is baffling. I don't have much hope for florida to regulate its police but at least mandating providing a reason to use the database seems like a very reasonable thing to legislate.

    • belorn19 minutes ago
      This seems fairly common in most countries, and I would guess the reason is for practical reasons. When police are out they have a fairly high probability to stumble onto more than just the specifics things they was sent out to do, and so they need to have access to check up people and vehicles.

      What my country do (and others?) is to keep a strict records of every lookup, with different levels of auditor, some which checks every record in a shallow way and some which do random sampling with more deep checks. The punishment for misuse of the database is also fairly harsh.

    • samrus44 minutes ago
      Its a tradeoff between efficacy and accountability. Its tough. What access syrem would you propose? Genuinely asking
      • thomastjeffery28 minutes ago
        How about accountability? How could that possibly be too much to ask?
    • FireBeyond2 hours ago
      Beyond that.

      Flock knows what inter-agency data sharing is legal and not legal in what states. So you think they'd have the functionality to disable forbidden data sharing when they sign a new agency in that state. They don't do that. "That's not our responsibility." And not only that, but:

      Agency: Could we get training on how to do [forbidden data sharing]?

      Flock: Absolutely. It's illegal in your state. Now that I've said that, here's how you do it in the app.

    • Cider99862 hours ago
      That's mass surveillance for you.
    • mothballed2 hours ago
      This guy only got punished because he wasn't enough of a bullshit artist to come up with an implausible but not-provably-false accusation against her, and he actually said the quiet part out loud about how this is used for tyrants. If he had just stuck to the story he overheard she was slinging crack or something he'd have likely gotten away with it with little more than side eyes and maybe some refresher class for appearances.
    • doobiedowner2 hours ago
      Because republicans continue to fight each other over how much they can lick authority boot. Gone are the days of fiscal conservatives or small government… no sir they are all on board for locking this place down.
      • WillPostForFood2 hours ago
        Like the evil Republicans running San Francisco!

        https://www.sf.gov/news--san-franciscos-new-public-safety-ca...

      • parineum2 hours ago
        > Because republicans continue to fight each other over how much they can lick authority boot

        Because Americans think everything is a partisan issue, despite things like this happening under multiple federal administrations of differing parties and in States that are, effectively, single party of both major parties.

        • mywittyname2 hours ago
          Just because a party is in power doesn't mean that party hasn't worked towards reform or correcting an issue. Lot's of arguments of "it happens under both parties" completely ignore corrective actions taken under one party and subverted by the other. Police in particular have an insane amount of political power and it would take decades to clean out the rot.
          • parineum2 hours ago
            So, by this logic, it wouldn't make sense if programs like this hadn't been _started_ under administrations of both parties, right?

            I'm looking for what evidence it would take to convince you that this isn't a partisan issue.

            • mothballed2 hours ago
              Republican Chester Arthur signed the Pendleton Act / civil service reform, which arguably virtually assured the way to gain power in the civil service was to add people or resources, meaning each president after had to grow the apparatus in order to implement their campaign promises or favors rather than just shit-canning all the previous people and regrowing it to the old size.

              Before that the "spoils" system was able to check size of the executive branch as the people were allowed to elect someone to shit-can the previous servants. As it stands now the people have been essentially ripped of their previous voting power to elect an executive to make significant reductions of the civil service.

              So I'd argue the Republicans did start it.

              • parineum2 hours ago
                And Democrats are fighting against it, right?

                https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/10/newsom-vet...

                • mothballed2 hours ago
                  I think at this point both parties love the effects of civil service reform. Any handwaving about DOGE notwithstanding. It assures that the size of government can really only ratchet up, at least without stars aligning in congress, and bigger civil service means more executive power.
        • mothballed2 hours ago
          To get the party nomination you need to promise lots of things to lots of people, "I'm going to bankrupt the party favors to those who get me into power in order to help the little guy" might be a decent campaign slogan but you damn well better be pushing to put the peasants in debt/inflation as fast as possible if you actually want to get into office -- or else someone else will and snatch the nomination from you.
    • bluGill2 hours ago
      If you require a reason that is bureaucracy which people complain about for good reason. Requiring a reason adds great cost and we would rather not pay it. We might be forced to because not everybody is honest, but it is much better if we can trust others and so not have to do this.
      • throwaway274482 hours ago
        Who on earth is complaining about bureaucracy in the police station? Maybe the VA, maybe the DMV, maybe the fish and wildlife service, but who wants the men who run around with guns and shoot people to do so without any administrative oversight?

        Edit: anyway, the "bureaucratic" overhead of providing a reason seems to be unlikely to impede police work if indeed there is a legitimate reason to access these databases.

        • samrus42 minutes ago
          People do complain about bureacracy with the police. They dont phrase it that way. What they say is that when they need the police, its never able to help. People dont realize that in addition to the police being corrupt and lazy, its also because the systems to help can be slow and cumbersome to use effectively and quickly
        • Macha2 hours ago
          People who’ve consumed some of the decades of hollywood movies and TV shows where the hero is portrayed as having to break the rules to get their guys and people enforcing rules are portrayed as officious bureaucrats.
      • pavel_lishin2 hours ago
        > which people complain about for good reason

        But bureaucracy itself exists for a good reason. The hard part is finding a balance.

        • bluGill2 hours ago
          That was my point. Finding the balance is hard.
  • smalltorch3 hours ago
    I think it's intresting to read about the guy who made yolo. Take a look at his website and later, his thoughts about the monster he may have created.

    https://x.com/pjreddie/status/1230524770350817280

    https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/

    https://medium.com/@graham.wallington/the-evolution-of-yolo-...

  • dabinat2 hours ago
    What an absolutely terrifying situation for that woman. It reminded me of a story from the UK where a police officer pulled over a woman, arrested her (for no reason) and raped and murdered her. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do in that situation because the law says you’re supposed to submit to police officers, not resist arrest, etc.
  • epoxia3 hours ago
    It's worth mentioning that the ALPR's in the Florida keys are unavoidable due to it basically being 1 road.
    • alexpotatoan hour ago
      ALL car traffic in or out of Manhattan is subject to ALPR b/c all of the bridges and tunnels have ALPRs.
  • xnx2 hours ago
    Rare good news story about a cop facing consequences (arrest). Was he fired as well? I couldn't tell from the article.
  • beej713 hours ago
    The penalties for police abusing the power we grant them should be severe.
    • iAMkenoughan hour ago
      Best we can do is a paid vacation and taxpayer-funded settlement, maybe transfer them to neighboring jurisdiction if they were real bad.
      • GuestFAUniverse15 minutes ago
        Doesn't make sense.

        As a federal system administrator I face up to 5y prison, if I misuse my permissions. (And I do not carry a weapon.)

        Why would any police force be so negligible if I comes to punishment of crimes in their own ranks?

      • alexpotatoan hour ago
        Apparently in the military, special forces in particular, this is even worse.

        If you have a terrible soldier in a Tier 1 unit and you are trying to get rid of them via transfer to another unit, when asked why he is transferring you can just say "sorry, that's classified". The receiving unit then has no idea of the problems associated with that soldier.

  • smalltorch3 hours ago
    Hey, maybe we shouldn't build out this infrastructure so aggressively?
  • ojbyrne2 hours ago
    I immediately thought this was like something from a Carl Hiaasen novel, then read “He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey.” Bad Monkey is based on a Carl Hiaasen novel.