Tom C wrote:
The problem often is, that the person doing the QUESTIONING, are
themselves acting with motives that are not pure or are warped. I
hear what you are saying, though.
In this country, if someone accuses you of something, and if that
something, if true, means you broke a law, or in the case of civil
cases a situation is created where the authorities would need to act
for someone's protection, than the judge must hear the case. (I know
my wording is clumbsy, but the point is there).
You've moved on from questioning to accusing. I was already complaining
about people jumping from questioning to sentencing! And I'm sorry, I
made a poor choice of words. I didn't mean "questioning" as in, taken
into the police station and interrogated. I meant questioning as in
being approached and greeted with, "Good evening, sir, may I ask what
you're doing?"
If a bystander sees a person doing something she thinks is questionable,
and passes her concerns along to a police officer (who, as part of his
job, most likely has a better idea of what's legally permissible than
the bystander does), then shouldn't the police officer make inquiries?
And isn't it a better idea for the police officer (again, armed with a
better handle of the law than the average lay person) to make the
inquiries than leave it to a perhaps larger and more ignorant bystander?
Isn't that one reason for the existence of police? (one of many?)
According to the two news stories I read regarding the high-school
football team incident, this is what happened. The police then made
inquiries of the man. They found some troubling things (according to the
stories. Let's just assume for purposes of argument that police at least
SOMETIMES tell the truth and this is one of those times.) Finding things
that represented probable cause to charge him with "improper
photography," they proceeded to arrest him.
If, having interviewed the man because of the concerns of bystanders,
they hadn't found all these troubling materials and perhaps a story that
didn't hold water, they'd likely have said, "Sorry to bother you, sir;
have a good day" and that would have been the end of it.
What I've been reading in this thread is several people who are
convinced that he should never even have been approached by the police,
and at least one who's convinced that the guy MUST have been totally
innocent and evidence planted on him by the police to justify their
existence. Which, upon consideration, doesn't make a lot of sense.
There's plenty of crime around to keep the police busy without making
things up, and I can't imagine that an off-duty officer doing light
security work at a football game really *wants* to complicate his
evening further with a car search, arrest, reports and so on if there's
no sound reason to do so.
So plenty of innocent people get caught up in horrendous personal
situations that alter their lives for years, or forever, because of
sociopaths with a mission.
Yes, that does happen but this story doesn't read like one of those.
The fact is that some guilty people will always 'get away with it'
ansd some will get caught. No reason to catch the innocent people.
The guilty will rarely get caught if the innocent aren't occasionally
asked a question or two.
