Wednesday Writs for 6/5
L1: A few months ago we linked to the story of Debra Cruise-Guylas, who, after being given a non-moving violation when she should have gotten a speeding ticket, flipped the officer the bird and was promptly pulled over again and given the ticket she deserved. She sued, and the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that her middle finger salute was protected speech, and that the second stop was retaliation and a violation of her First Amendment rights. But then last week, in a 6-3 vote, 1 SCOTUS ruled against a man who alleged his arrest was in retaliation for his own exercise of free speech. So, under this ruling, would Ms. Cruise-Guylas have prevailed, if this opinion had been issued prior to her own case? Let’s look at the opinion, Nieves v. Bartlett, our case of the week.
Russell Bartlett was an attendee at a “raucous” extreme sports festival in Alaska where Officer Nieves was on-scene, talking to a group about moving their keg away from the reaches of minors. Depending on whether you ask Nieves or Bartlett, Bartlett either started yelling at the group not to talk to the officer, or Nieves got angry because Bartlett refused to talk to him. Another officer, Trooper Weight, says that shortly thereafter, Bartlett interceded as Weight was talking to a suspected underage drinker. Weight says Bartlett stood between him and the teen, and took an aggressive stance. Weight says he then had to shove Bartlett back when Bartlett squared up aggressively. Nieves saw the altercation and came over to assist, arresting Bartlett, who was not cooperative with the arrest, according to the officer. According to Bartlett, as Nieves made the arrest he said “I bet you wish you had talked to me now.” He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and released a few hours later.
Bartlett filed the subsequent lawsuit, alleging retaliatory arrest. He alleged deprivation of rights under color of law, otherwise known as a “1983 claim”, so called because it is raised under 42 USC §1983. Specifically, he alleged that his freedom of speech was violated by the arrest, referring both to his refusal to speak to the officer and his attempt to intervene in the officer’s conversation with the underage drinker. The District Court granted summary judgement in the officer’s favor, finding that the officer had probable cause to make the arrest, overriding any claim of retaliation. The 9th Circuit disagreed, and found that probably cause DID NOT trump a retaliatory arrest claim. The court ruled that “Bartlett needed to show only (1) that the officers’ conduct would “chill a person of ordinary firmness from future First Amendment activity,” and (2) that he had advanced evidence that would ‘enable him ultimately to prove that the officers’ desire to chill his speech was a but for cause’ of the arrest.”
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed with the 9th Circuit. Quoting their prior decision in Hartman v. Moore, the Court reasoned “although it ‘may be dishonorable to act with an unconstitutional motive,’ an official’s ‘action colored by some degree of bad motive does not amount to a constitutional tort if that action would have been taken anyway’.” In other words, subtract the allegation of retaliation from the situation. Imagine the scenario, but without the earlier verbal exchange and without the officer’s alleged comment of “bet you wish you had talked to me now”; without that motivation, is the arrest lawful? If so, then the officer has not violated the subject’s rights. According to SCOTUS, Nieves had probable cause to arrest Bartlett. Whether he did so out of spite is irrelevant; the arrest is objectively reasonable, the officer’s possible subjective motivations not withstanding.
This decision caused some muttering on social media and elsewhere, with worrisome hot takes- “the Court just ruled that police can now arrest you for speech they don’t like!!!!” This is not accurate, as explained; there must still be probable cause that a law has been broken, as is required for all lawful arrests (we can delve into bad faith or drummed up “probable cause” another time). Furthermore, the Court has long been reluctant to consider the subjective motivations of an officer’s actions, preferring a “reasonable officer standard”. To illustrate: I once had a case in which my client was shot by a state trooper through the passenger side window of his truck. The officer, who was ostensibly there to serve a misdemeanor warrant on my client, claimed he feared for his safety and the safety of others as his justification for the shoot (he claimed he thought my client was about to run over him- remember, he shot through the passenger side window.) I had strong evidence that the trooper had been involved with my client’s wife; I could not use the evidence as proof to rebut the officer’s claim of fear for his safety. The issue would only be analyzed through the lens of what a reasonable officer in the same situation would have done, without regard for any past personal history.
The Court, to its great credit, recognized the potential for abuse of the probable cause test by unscrupulous officers:
Although probable cause should generally defeat a retaliatory arrest claim, a narrow qualification is warranted for circumstances where officers have probable cause to make arrests, but typically exercise their discretion not to do so. In such cases, an unyielding requirement to show the absence of probable cause could pose “a risk that some police officers may exploit the arrest power as a means of suppressing speech.”
The Court then gave an example of a mouthy citizen who has complained about police conduct being arrested for jaywalking at an intersection in which people typically jaywalk with impunity:
For those reasons, we conclude that the no-probable-cause requirement should not apply when a plaintiff presents objective evidence that he was arrested when otherwise similarly situated individuals not engaged in the same sort of protected speech had not been.
So, back to Ms. Cruise-Guylas. That speeding ticket was pretty clearly retaliation for her unfriendly finger gesture. Would she have prevailed, post-Nieves? In my opinion, yes. The reason is that when she flipped off the cop, the traffic stop was complete. There was no probable cause to make her stop the second time. Under the Nieves test, Cruise-Guylas likely would still have a claim.
L2: Speaking of probable cause, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned its own precedent by ruling that spotting a concealed weapon does not give a police officer probable cause to stop and search someone.
L3: Colorado became the latest state to adopt a law to combat strategic lawsuits against public participation-or anti-SLAPP. Anti-SLAPP laws curtail suits which tend to censor and intimidate critics through legal fees by applying sanctions for the filing of such suits.
L4: In other Colorado news, the state’s governor, Democrat Jared Polis, has vetoed several new licensing requirements, angering members of his own party.
L5: The arrest of disgraced Parkland Florida school resource officer, Deputy Scot Peterson, hit the news this week. Does the state actually have a case?
L6: News that record setting Jeopardy contestant James Holzhauer’s long run came to an end leaked on the web before the episode aired. Will the show pursue legal recourse?
L7: A New Jersey lawyer bragged that he had the judge “in his pocket.” Lawyers often brag to about things like that, though most are smart enough not to do it into the court room microphone.
L8: Our dumb criminals of the week thought it would be fun to see if they could get from Nova Scotia to Mexico with no license plate, no identification, and a carload of full gasoline cans. Epic move, bros.
L2: Good!Report
L2 and 4: Good!Report
The problem, I’m sure, with L2 is that if seeing a concealed weapon is probably cause, lying and saying that you saw a concealed weapon is *ALSO* probable cause.Report
L5: What is the perjury charge from?Report
It’s tied to what he said during the investigation after the fact. From the NYT:
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L5: smarter people than I have convinced me that “perjury” is pretty much the only thing that they can get Scot Peterson on. Everything else probably falls under Qualified Immunity. This strikes me as one heck of a civil suit but Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales and Warren v. District of Columbia probably covers this.
I think that the argument could be made that this is different enough from Warren v. District of Columbia to get all the way to the Supreme Court again is a strong one… but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s serious pushback on that.
Hell. Maybe we could argue that it’s time to revisit it. That happens every once in a blue moon.Report
I’m not sure qualified immunity is the issue; it’s not mentioned in the link here. I think that part of having a common-law Constitution is that basic rights are constantly re-evaluated under new conditions over time. Judges make the relevant policy decision, and the courts could decide that officers have certain duties under very specific situations like this one that were not met. But in that case, they may rightly feel that this is a new rule and this particular officer should not be punished/liable for it, but the next officer is on notice (to the extent the rule is legal precedent) and can be expected to be held accountable.
In any event, I wouldn’t expect him to be liable. My cynicism asks whether criminal charges are really intended to shield the law enforcement agency from civil suits for poor training.Report
My cynicism asks whether criminal charges are really intended to shield the law enforcement agency from civil suits for poor training.
My cynicism perks up too, tho in a different direction. How would filing criminal charges insulate the department from civil suits? My first impression would be that doing so would make the civil case easier.Report
The Department (or maybe the proper party is the municipality) are liable in civil rights actions for their own acts or omissions, and inadequate training. If the officer’s conduct is so clearly wrongful, the courts will void a suit. (E.g., Connick v. Thompson, where the officer destroyed evidence that the accused was innocent and that another individusal committed the murder) At some point, training isn’t going to be seen by the courts as a credible training issue. When responding to a call, don’t steal money at gunpoint?
I’m also not suggesting that filing this lawsuit eliminates potential civil liability of the employer out-of-hand, just that it seems to me to be useful evidence for the employer.Report
Here’s a lawsuit that got filed last year. A student who got shot is suing the department to cover the cost of recovery.
Is the department liable?Report
It looks like a letter threatening a lawsuit. The case may have been dismissed in December:
https://www.wtnh.com/news/national/judge-rejects-parkland-lawsuit-saying-failure-to-stop-shooting-didn-t-violate-14th-amendment-rights/1665063074
I’m not familiar with all of the facts, but I’m not surprised that judges, and it’s their role to determine what duties the law imposes, would be very, very, very reluctant to impose liability on the non-murderers in this situation.Report
Ooooh, I didn’t know that. I thought the lawsuit was still making its way through the snake.
Hrm. Reading that, that might be a different lawsuit. The one that I linked to seems to be talking about medical bills and the one you’re linking to is talking about the 14th Amendment.
Hrm. The whole “students are not in custody despite laws mandating attendance” seems to be in tension with the “in loco parentis” thing.
Well, if you were wondering if police have an obligation to protect students who are being shot from being shot, looks like, officially, they don’t.Report
Well, there’s a huge difference between “doing the wrong thing” and “not doing the right thing” and half of what Peterson did falls firmly under “not doing the right thing”.
The fact that he told fellow officers to not go in might not be *TECHNICALLY* criminal but I wouldn’t want to defend it in front of a jury. In front of a judge, would QI cover it? Given how broad it’s gone in the past, I am not sure that a judge wouldn’t find that it did, indeed, cover that here.
As for the Perjury… eh. They got Martha Stewart.
If the thing that Peterson gets sent away for is lying about it after the fact, that’ll leave a bad taste in pretty much everybody’s mouth.
So maybe it’s the way to bet.Report
To the extent it’s a question of law (as opposed to fact) there’s a good chance it would never get in front of a jury. There’s also always the bench trial option.
I still think people need to be really careful what they wish for. We already live in a country where way too many departments are way too willing to send in the SWAT team over minor/non crimes based on the idea that every weed dealer is armed like Rambo and ready to die in a shoot out. Parkland is a nice example illustrating the lie of the thin Blue Line but you’re risking a precedent that will even more strongly encourage more aggressive responses to everything.
School shootings for all the fanfare remain statistical anomalies that almost never happen. His cowardice in the face of a situation almost no officers will ever experience shouldn’t create a new precedent or overturn Warren. Tough cases, bad law, etc.Report
Well, keep in mind that one of the big arguments used by the people who believe that the 2nd Amendment has been too broadly interpreted is that people should not feel like they have to protect themselves, because they can (and should) trust the authorities.
If, legally, it’s found that the authorities do not have any obligation/duty to protect you if the itshay hits the anfay, this argument evaporates.Report
It evaporates only if you accept an absurd premise.
In order for there to be only two possible options: (Trust the police or become your own police force) you have to accept the premise that we live in a lawless Deadwood, where no place is safe and deadly violence is always present.
The opposition to the broad reading of the 2nd Amendment is that we can and should live in a world where deadly violence is a shocking rarity and walking around unarmed and helpless is a freedom everyone is afforded.Report
Chip, I’m not saying that there remain zero arguments to narrow the reading of the 2nd Amendment.
But I am saying that if there is not a civil obligation on the part of the police to protect/serve, the argument that you don’t need a gun because the police will protect you is false on its face.
Feel free to argue that making sure that only poor people have gun laws enforced against them will make us a safer society. That argument, though I disagree with it, is similar enough to how the War on Drugs worked in practice that I can see how someone might believe it.
But the conclusion that leads to both P and ~P is the absurd conclusion.Report
I am arguing we don’t need a gun because…we live in a safe environment where deadly violence is a rare and shocking event.
I just finished walking to work through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, unarmed, unescorted by police, and yet…safe.
And besides, your assumption that a narrowly defined lack of duty to protect means the police are completely unreliable is falsified by the fact that they are for the most part reliable in combatting crime.Report
your assumption that a narrowly defined lack of duty to protect means the police are completely unreliable is falsified by the fact that they are for the most part reliable in combatting crime.
My argument (and my assumption) is not that they are completely unreliable.
My argument is that the conclusion leads to both P and ~P and is therefore absurd.
I mean, absurd to the point where I’d expect people to switch to different arguments about why we don’t need guns.Report
Your argument is that the mere lack of a legal duty to protect automatically- itself, without any other supporting evidence- justifies a need for a gun.
What evidence or logic supports that assertion?
Keep in mind that hundreds of millions of people worldwide live under that exact condition, yet don’t feel the need for a gun.Report
Your argument is that the mere lack of a legal duty to protect automatically- itself, without any other supporting evidence- justifies a need for a gun.
No.
It’s that my starting point is that “I have a right to a gun” and I am assuming that the burden of proof is on someone else. It is their job to argue against the proposition.
The argument that I should not have my right to a gun because I can trust the police to protect/serve me is an argument that does not hold up under scrutiny.
And was recently demonstrated when a gunman when into a school and started killing children and the police stayed outside and waited for him to run out of bullets.Report
Where does the presumptive right to walk around with a deadly weapon come from?
Again, you keep fighting an argument that no one is making, i.e., that the sole justification against guns is the police presence.
What moral logic blocks the citizens from asserting that the unregulated access to deadly weapons poses a threat to public safety?Report
Where does the presumptive right to walk around with a deadly weapon come from?
So we’ve moved from “people who argue against the 2nd Amendment have the burden of proof” to “people who argue for the 2nd Amendment have the burden of proof”?
Am I reading that right?
Again, you keep fighting an argument that no one is making, i.e., that the sole justification against guns is the police presence.
Holy cow! We’ve, suddenly, arrived at “nobody is arguing that”?
No, wait. You’re putting emphasis on “sole”.
No, that’s not the sole justification against guns.
Whew. I was seriously “jaw on the floor” there.
No. It’s not my argument that that is the *SOLE* justification.
Are we in agreement that, as justifications go, that justification can be tossed aside into the trash and people arguing against a broad reading of the 2nd Amendment need to use different arguments?
Do we agree on that?
What moral logic blocks the citizens from asserting that the unregulated access to deadly weapons poses a threat to public safety?
Nothing, as far as I can tell.
(Though it would be nice to have it acknowledged that this is an entirely different argument than the one that you don’t need one because you can trust the authorities whose job it is to enforce the laws, including the ones involving public safety.)Report
So we’ve moved from “people who argue against the 2nd Amendment have the burden of proof” to “people who argue for the 2nd Amendment have the burden of proof”?
We (as a society or as individuals) haven’t “moved” on this so much as continuing to recognize that views of the 2A are now, and always have been, split on original intent and split on practical application.
The idea that cop incompetence requires allowing individual to arm up for self-defense isn’t a 2A argument, tho, seems to me, for pretty obvious reasons. That argument would apply with equal force irrespective of whether ‘right to bear arms’ language was ever included in the constitution.Report
The idea that cop incompetence requires allowing individual to arm up for self-defense isn’t a 2A argument, tho, seems to me, for pretty obvious reasons. That argument would apply with equal force irrespective of whether ‘right to bear arms’ language was ever included in the constitution.
From what I understand, the 2nd Amendment is older than the municipal po-po.
As such, the argument would have to be something like “before the police existed, the 2nd Amendment made sense… but now that we have authorities, you don’t need to have a gun. You should trust the authorities.”Report
From what I understand, the 2nd Amendment is older than the municipal po-po.
There were municipal popos in the US prior to the constitutional convention…Report
While it’s true that there were official “night watchmen”, Googling found me a this:
And it goes on for a while from there.Report
Not sure what point you’re making now. Is it that the second amendment predates *post-ratification* police forces? Isn’t that true definitionally?
Either way, I’ll just say this: leveraging an argument in favor of the second amendment on a dubious *historical* fact, rather than an inalienable human right, seems like a step backwards. 🙂Report
I’m not leveraging an argument in favor of the 2nd Amendment.
I’m dismantling an argument opposed to a broad reading of the 2nd Amendment.
Essentially trying to get people to acknowledge that the argument that says that we don’t need a 2nd Amendment because of how awesome the police are is an argument that is absurd.
There can be a million other arguments against the 2nd Amendment! Chip is going to bring many of them up!
I’m not arguing against them.
I’m saying that the government has decreed that The Authorities do not have a Duty to Protect you if stuff goes sideways.
And the fact that the government has decreed that means that the argument against the 2nd Amendment that relies on how we can trust the authorities ought to be abandoned.
Maybe something like “maybe police wouldn’t be afraid all of the time if they knew that regular civilians weren’t likely to be armed”, even.Report
Oh goodie, the 2nd Commandment. Lets turn this into a religious argument. That is pretty much what 2ndA arguments turn into because of course there are no degrees between no guns at all and no gun laws at all.Report
Greg, the main point that I was interested in establishing was that while the Deputy may have been in the wrong morally to not Protect and Serve, he is well covered by Civil Law and has no positive obligation to Protect or Serve (now, he can probably get fired for being a coward, but that doesn’t make him (or the various departments that hired him) *LIABLE*.
And, as such, Law Enforcement, officially, has No Duty To Protect.
And so arguments against the right to own a gun that rely on how we can trust the authorities are bad arguments.
This says nothing at all about any other arguments against gun ownership! There are, indeed, thousands of them.
I’m saying that the one, specific, argument that we can trust the authorities is a bad argument and doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
And that’s the entirety of the point I’m trying to make.Report
Essentially trying to get people to acknowledge that the argument that says that we don’t need a 2nd Amendment because of how awesome the police are is an argument that is absurd.
Except … I think you’re arguing against straw here. Here’s what Chip said up above:
And besides, your assumption that a narrowly defined lack of duty to protect means the police are completely unreliable is falsified by the fact that they are for the most part reliable in combatting crime.
Seems to me that Chip’s argument isn’t that we can dispense with the 2A because cops are good at their jobs, but instead is rejecting a belief of yours which you are (incorrectly) attributing to your … (straw) interlocutor.
I’ll say two things about this. First, gun rights issues are complicated. Second, you should take off your liberal decoder ring and actually hear/read what people are actually saying. That doesn’t mean you’ll agree with them, but at least you’ll be disagreeing on level terms.Report
Stillwater, there *IS* an argument that people give up some degree of a right of self-defense because We Live In A Society and we have outsourced that right of Defense to the authorities.
This is, like, *LOCKE*.
This isn’t a strawman I’m knocking down.Report
OK, dude. Knock down whatever argument exists in your head. Just don’t be surprised when the people you’re actually discussing things with, folks who haven’t made those arguments, are mystified about (and slightly irritated by) what the hell you’re doing.Report
Hey, I’d merely be fine with them saying something like “I agree that the argument for gun control that relies on being able to trust the police is a bad argument (even as I believe that there are hundreds of good arguments for gun control).”
At that point, I’m good.Report
If that’s what you want then you shouldn’t start out the discussion by saying “it’s clear to me that you haven’t stopped beating your wife yet.”Report
“The idea that cop incompetence requires allowing individual to arm up for self-defense isn’t a 2A argument…”
No more so than the idea that YouTube might demonetize a historian’s Hitler videos is a 1A argument, right?Report
Sure, if we allow idiocy into the debate. Which is what you’re good at so I’ll allow it.Report
Whoa wait, the 2nd Amendment is synonymous with “open carry”?
The burden of proof is on those who argue that there is a presumptive right to carry a gun anywhere. I don’t see that right anywhere in the 2nd Amendment.
So I’m back to, even if the police don’t have a duty to protect, there needs to be some additional justification for carrying a deadly weapon.Report
Whoa wait, the 2nd Amendment is synonymous with “open carry”?
There are readings of it that say that “bear” refers to “carry”, yes.
I can find you an online thesaurus, if you’d like.
The burden of proof is on those who argue that there is a presumptive right to carry a gun anywhere. I don’t see that right anywhere in the 2nd Amendment.
Okay.
So I’m back to, even if the police don’t have a duty to protect, there needs to be some additional justification for carrying a deadly weapon.
So do we agree that arguments against the 2nd Amendment that rely on the police having a duty to protect are arguments that are built on sand?Report
Sure, the “duty to protect” is not an argument I find persuasive.
There are also readings of the 2nd that interpret “well regulated” as meaning “well regulated”.Report
Oh, indeed. I agree with that.
As long as we’re agreed that the argument that we don’t need a broad reading of the 2nd Amendment due to the quality of Law Enforcement Officers, I’m cool with that for now.
Thanks.Report
Btw, Jaybird, I’d only add that the first time I ever heard a person bring up the conceptual/causal relationship between cops and the second amendment in the context we’re discussing now was InMD here at this site. His argument, offered independently of any of the anti-2Aer views, was that *IF* cops can’t protect citizens then citizens will and should be able to do it themselves. So *my* first experience with the idea that the 2A is somehow nullified by competent cop performance was put forward by a 2Aer, rather than an anti-2Aer.Report
Oh. Well, for what it’s worth, I have seen the argument that we shouldn’t be allowed to have guns because we have police out there in the wild.
Do you need me to waste some time this weekend finding you examples of people saying it before you’ll believe me that I’ve seen it?Report
No. And the reason is that by your own admission, since those are views in the wild, *they are not expressed here in the current thread*.
You’re fighting phantoms. Keep it up I guess.Report
I was the one who brought it up.
Here’s what I originally said: “Well, keep in mind that one of the big arguments used by the people who believe that the 2nd Amendment has been too broadly interpreted is that people should not feel like they have to protect themselves, because they can (and should) trust the authorities.”
I suppose telling me “nobody *HERE* is saying what you say some people think!” would be true…
Okay. I guess it’s good that nobody here believes it.
(Heck, I personally think it’s awesome that we’ve reached the point where the position is now even being called a strawman.)Report
I guess I’m on notice that I need to move my goal posts.
Just kidding. 🙂
But it’s really an issue of negative rights theory. What can’t the state stop you from doing or punish you for doing? And if the state is going to do one of those things, who is going to do it? For most people most of the time in our society the answer is your local police department.
With this topic you also get into the interesting issue of what happens if the state choses not to protect you, even if it can. For an interesting example of this google ‘Rooftop Koreans.’Report
And also for the record I am a bad, heretical, and probably very unrepresentative 2nd Aer, gun enthusiast, whatever.Report
No goal post moving necessary. 🙂
I was confused when you first mentioned it, something I think you’ll recall, but we hashed it out in the end.Report
Just so long as we recognize that we’ve moved from “you don’t need a gun because the cops will protect you” to “you don’t need a gun because you don’t need a gun“, and that this movement is worth commenting on.
Like, I’ll accept that arguments can change, but please don’t do this thing where suddenly Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.Report
To recognize that we’ve moved from there, it is insufficient to demonstrate that we’re not there now. Someone would also need to demonstrate that we were once there.Report
Sigh. I’ll research and find examples of people arguing that they don’t need guns because we have The Police this weekend.
Edit: Here you go. (I guess I thought it’d take me longer. I should have known to just google “locke handguns”.)Report
The really, REALLY weird thing to me about this is that Jaybird, specifically, wants to focus on what quote-unquote “liberals in the wild” say about X, even tho there are folks on the conservative wild, with sympathetic voices in Congress and the WH, arguing that (eg) Jews should be gassed, blacks should be shipped back to their home countries, gays should be killed, Islam is an un-American religion.
I’m not making a “both sides” argument here. I’m making a “Jaybird focuses on only the transgressions of one side” argument here. And generalizing from Jaybird, that American political conventional wisdom is *still* so hypersensitized to the liberal-to-communism slide that it’s blind to the conservative-to-fascism slide.Report
even tho there are folks on the conservative wild, with sympathetic voices in Congress and the WH, arguing that
If you would like me to deal with one of those arguments, I will.
I will try to do so instead of bringing up other arguments.Report
I’d love it. Go for it. It’d be wonderful to see you argue against the excesses of your own “side” for a change.Report
Please! Give me the argument you’d most like me to say is wrong and a bad argument!Report
Man, you’re sure asking a lot of me in the last few comments. How do I react to; I need to provide you examples of;…..
Weird… IT’s like your objective is for me to articulate my views with enough clarity that you can make counter arguments regardless of the content, rather than you just, you know, getting clear on things yourself.Report
Recently I saw a headline from a conservative outlet to the effect that “saying climate change is a problem isn’t a policy solution”, as if identifying *that* was a refutation of … anything.
What’s obvious to anyone who believes AGW is real is that a headline like that is (effectively) explicitly anti-AGW, since the most fundamental problem we face regarding climate change mitigation is recognizing it as a real problem. It’s effectively a necessary condition (unless someone comes up with an energy source cheaper than pumping petroleum out of the ground…).
What you’re doing right now is sorta like that.Report
I assure you, if given the burden of proof, I’ll do everything I can to address it and force my interlocutor to either address my counter-arguments or say something like “arguing is hard”.Report
A commitment to forcing your interlocutor to say they’re wrong in the face of the arguments is different than a commitment to conceding that you’ll admit you’re wrong in the face of those arguments.
I mean, your view is so different from the norm that you’re not even conceding that arguments matters in determining your own beliefs.
Given your history at this site your view doesn’t even make sense as parody of your opponents. It’s your expressed view.Report
I suppose they could respond to counter-arguments with counter-counter-arguments. And then we can have counter-counter-counter-arguments and so forth until we hammer down what is and what is not.
Of course arguments matter in determining my beliefs that I know are beliefs… it’s how I got them. (If they couldn’t withstand obvious counter-arguments, that’s a good indicator that they weren’t worth keeping.)Report
I suppose they could respond to counter-arguments
“they”. All those nameless, faceless, anonymized, random people….
Jaybird, what you do? It’s one reason, not a small reason, why politics sucks. You *intentionally* reduce it to a mood.*
*Then criticize individuals on specific policy! Lose-lose!Report
I’m sure that if more people just agreed with each other that politics would be a lot better.
Unfortunately, all those nameless, faceless, anonymized, random people seem to have different ideas about why we should do things.
At which point we should probably hammer out what should be done.
Preferably by discussing it and letting the best arguments rise to the fore.Report
Jaybird,
If you *really* wanted people to agree with stuff you wouldn’t accuse people of being on “the other side” of holding views they don’t hold.
This is, frankly, a stupid conversation to have. I get that you think it’s “really important”, cuz of your decoder ring and all, but all you’re really doing is perpetuating the divisions you’ve deluded yourself into thinking you’re going to resolve.
Add: Michelle’s post about sexual abuse is a good example. Idiots like Mike D and DD took over a conversation which had almost – not entirely – nothing to do with what they wanted to talk about. Yet their self-defense for co-oping the thread was that “liberals just don’t want to hear what they have to say, so fuck em.”
Winning message!Report
If you *really* wanted people to agree with stuff you wouldn’t accuse people of being on “the other side” of holding views they don’t hold.
I didn’t accuse anyone of holding any views.
I was arguing that, in light of recent current events, a particular argument used for gun control was a bad argument.
As it turns out, it seems that not only do people agree that it was a bad argument, people expressed surprise that anybody would believe it.
Which, I suppose, just demonstrates how bad of an argument in support of gun control it was the whole time.
And this has nothing to do with “the other side” unless someone shows up and says “I will pick up the other side’s argument”.Report
I didn’t accuse anyone of holding any views.
Wait wait wait. On this thread you *accused* liberals of thinking that a competent police force undermines the legitimacy of the second amendment. (For my part I’ve only ever heard that argument advanced by 2Aers). Last night you accused me thinking chemical castration was the solution to child predators.
What the f*** are you talking about? You accuse people of stuff they don’t believe all the F***time. Where do you think the Jaybird Liberal Decoder Ring came from??? That you don’t think you do, but you do, or won’t admit that you do, is exactly what we’re talking about.Report
Really? I said that liberals think that they can trust the police? That must have been one hell of a weird comment to read.
Did anyone point out that liberals have long held the police skeptically?
“Last night you accused me thinking chemical castration was the solution to child predators.”
I did? I thought that *I* was arguing for chemical castration for child predators. Indeed, I didn’t want to talk about what we could do before the fact, I wanted to talk about what we did to perps after the fact.Report
You may *think* that’s what you said. But last night I remember you accusing me of advocating chemical castration for sexual predators.Report
But last night I remember you accusing me of advocating chemical castration for sexual predators.
If that’s how you remember it, I completely failed in my intention.
I wanted you to feel accused of not caring about sexual predators because I forced you to admit that you “only” thought that they should be imprisoned, thus allowing me to crow about how I obviously care more about the issue than you do.
I’ll try to update my mental models appropriately.
(Wait, maybe that’s how you want me to update my mental model… better build two inside of a Schrödinger Box…)Report
If that’s how you remember it, I completely failed in my intention.I wanted you to feel accused of not caring about sexual predators
Why is it not surprising to me that conservatives would feel more sympathy for sexual predators than liberals do?Report
End of conversation Jaybird?
You don’t have a pithy reply?Report
You’re on tilt and you didn’t grok what I said.
Go to sleep.Report
I think the thread shows otherwise.
Pretty standard misdirection, though, so not unexpected.Report
OK, fair enough – that’s an argument that some folks make.
It’s not my argument, personally.
Personally, I merely think firearm ownership in a first world country is poor risk management – that whatever combination of reasons, probably including but not limited to an armed and at least moderately competent and generally not entirely malevolent police force reduces the background level of violence to the point where the risk / reward balance of firearm ownership becomes unfavourable.
Second amendment arguments I can only engage with as an outsider, as I am neither a citizen nor a resident of the USA, though the US’s high saturation of guns does have a bit of an effect on me, as guns smuggled from the US do apparently still constitute a lot of the illegal firearms here.Report
Totally cool. Those arguments make sense to me and I can see how someone could look at the available evidence and reach the conclusions that you have.
While I suppose I could argue against them (if I were feeling froggy), the main thing I wanted to do today was deal with the issue of a law enforcement officer failing to go into a school as children were being shot and seeing what that did to the arguments (or one in particular) in support of gun control that rely heavily on law enforcement.Report
So, yes, Jaybird does need to waste a lot of time this weekend digging up examples of people saying “citizen carry is unnecessary because the police, who are professionals, are properly trained and experienced and much better at it than some doof who doesn’t even know where the local gun range is.”
Jaybird, do make sure that you only find True Scotsmen, please.Report
“I remember a guy at a bar one time. Oh, and a tweeter! He tweeted it! There’s GOTTA be a record of that tweet!”
Dude, c’mon. If you *care* so much about The Truth do the damn work yourself.
I’ll be expecting a Front Page post citing evidence and examples justifying your views on this by … what? … is Monday too early for you DD? Wednesday then.Report
One of my problems is that I never know what level of expertise and familiarity with what we’re talking about I should be assuming on the part of the people with whom I am arguing.Report
There are a lot of really poorly reasoned and ridiculous opinions in the guns debate. I include my own nominal side in this.
Of course the bigger problem I think is less the opinions and more that the whole thing works like a reverse prisoner’s dilemma. There’s an insurmountable and justifiable presumption of bad faith.Report
And whether you’re dealing with Shitposter Stillwater or No I Want You To Take Me Seriously This Time Stillwater.Report
DD.,
Dude, I will never take you seriously. 🙂
Except as entertainment value… You did a great job destroying Michelle’s recent sexual abuse post… Good for you!Report
One of my problems is that I never know what level of expertise and familiarity with what we’re talking about I should be assuming on the part of the people with whom I am arguing.>
I appreciate the sentiment, which is effectively a concession. So thank you. Not every liberal is Evil.
But I don’t think your persistent worry about *Liberals* derives from a lack of understanding of where any particular one fits on the knowledge-of-the-issues scale. It’s very clearly something else…. 🙂Report
I think it’s because, far-too-often, their opinions are orthogonal to their knowledge-of-the-issues.Report
Dude, that’s *exactly* how I feel about the vast majority of second enders!Report
Are your feelings confirmed when you have the arguments with instantiated “second enders” here?
Do you find yourself blind-sided by new-to-you arguments?Report
You first!
I’m not the one presenting as being “above the fray” on this topic.Report
“Do you find yourself blind-sided by new-to-you arguments?”
You can tell when this happens to him, because suddenly his posts start being “UR A DORK WHO SUKS” and he fronts like he’s just here for the lulz.Report
Well… you know my view on that. I think civilian police forces exist to augment self and civil defense, not to replace them. In a free society it’s not only a right but a responsibility shared by all. Obviously we can count the ways in which our society doesn’t work that way.
I get what you’re saying though. I’m finally out of my old condo but the first time the crazy neighbor tried to get in it took 2 hours for the police to arrive. Future incidents were more like 15-20 min but still long enough for real damage to be done even with a duty to protect.
As a side note, relevant to your line of thinking on this issue:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/slate-presents-charged-podcast-emily-bazelon-new-york-gun-court.ampReport
Its also worth pointing out that the first and most important line of maintaining civil order is simply to have citizens become aware of each others activity and police each other.
Just having people walking on the streets reduces crime, even if those walkers are little old ladies; Just having someone next door say “Knock off all that racket!” prevents an argument from becoming an assault.
The need for armed police intervention is the last step in an escalating series of encounters.Report
No disagreement from me. Not to get overly philosophical or make points I’m not entirely ready to defend but I often suspect the alienation of modern consumer society is a driver of mass paranoia which then manifests itself in all kinds of weird ways. We don’t know our neighbors so we fear them, and TV and social media tell us every day that fear is justified. Even with my prior personal circumstances I see the danger in that.
There’s really not much room for community anymore.Report
Maybe that’s what I find so dispiriting about this issue.
That we hear eloquent and stirring invocations of DeToqueville and Burke about the civilizing role of church and family, of the trust-building effects of little platoons of civic organizations where free citizens organize themselves into a peaceful civic order.
Then all that flies out the window when the subject of guns comes up.
In which case, we are treated to a world in which civic order flows from the barrel of a gun, where safety can only be created with a private gun, or a government agent’s gun, but always and everywhere a gun and threat of deadly violence.
In this case, the solution to mass spree shootings is not to reduce them, but to answer them with more shootings, more guns and violence by more people.Report
Then all that flies out the window when the subject of guns comes up.
Or race. Or gender identity. Or religion. Or even, it seems, Party affiliation!Report
I keep coming back to the unfolding fight between the Ahmari and French factions, where we are witnessing them in real time slowly come to the understanding that liberal democracy itself must be destroyed in order to advance the conservative cause.Report
Word!
That’s really where we’re at right now. Trump is the leading
dim bulblight on that issue.Adding: the only reason I make light of it is that we’re so far gone as a society that laughter at this point is better than tears.
Add 2: an under-appreciated story in US politics is the concerted, intention effort by one political party – the GOP – to restrict voting rights in service of “conservatism”. It should be a historic-level scandal, but most folks aren’t paying attention.Report
I hear you. Again, spitballing, but I sometimes think about this in terms of the political right to arm oneself, something I support, versus the concept of the gun as a simple solution to a whole bunch of complicated problems.
I don’t know if its possible to completely disentangle these two things but I don’t think it needs to be like it is either. If there was a single principle I could pick to saturate our culture with it would be greater skepticism of violence, especially righteous violence.Report
I don’t think it is logical to have a principle of rule by force while also attempting to promote a greater skepticism of violence.Report
This is standard GOP methodology, Joe. The only way conservatism can survive the natural (not ideological) progression of values and norms is by violence.
Add: but what about Stalin and Mao? …..Report
Mao knew what was up.Report
Lol. You took the bait.Report
I haven’t found a OT liberal that doesn’t think that rule by force is apart from their methodology.
A term reactionary is often pointed at the GOP, part of that indicates that a action was already taken before the reaction happens.Report
Joe, liberals in the US (and at the OT) believe that democracy is our form of government (for better and worse) and that, yes, no single individual citizen has a veto on our governmental process.
If they do, they can advocate for something better, a coup, if you will. Or even a referendum, as their attention span permits.Report
Good, it sounds like you figured it out for yourselves. Just don’t bother the rest of us with that nonsense.Report
Yes, you guys, you new Americans, can figure out a new governmental system unique to the world, offering better outcomes for al
I’d recommend following the advice of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel in your pursuit. They’re super smart guys!Report
“The entire history of US political thought is blinkered by … history. We’re all about the new. The detached. A new paradigm.
That’s our edge. No one’s ever thought of like *this* before.’
{{Please donate at the location listed below. Every dollar helps achieve our Dream of Better America!}}Report
Geez, you sound as if it’s not going to work out or something.
You do you brother.Report
In 6000 years of recorded history there have been a limited number of types of government, Joe. All those types have been evaluated, both conceptually and empirically. Ad nauseum. But you do you in thinking there’s a *new* type of government we can all get behind, one not based on social constructs and all that bullshit…
You are the New Man, Joe. The One Person who’s Seen the Light!Report
I just think the truth of the matter is that individual preferences exist and they don’t align.
Nothing new, something old.Report
Are you saying rule by force is my principle or someone else’s?Report
I don’t know if it is your principle or not, I hope it is not.
I just think it is irrational to hold that as a principle, society should be ruled by force, while also attempting to produce skepticism of righteous violence.
It falls somewhat under ‘do as I say, not as I do’.Report
It’s weird to me, Joe, that we’re revisiting the age old saying that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest.
You apparently don’t like democratic rule, tho….Report
It’s weird that you think people would look at the modern liberal conception of ‘democracy’ and not go shopping ‘all the rest’ for better values.Report
Good luck Joe!
Add: Although it’s not surprising to me. The folks that think Trump’s an incompetent means to a better end appear to lack an appreciation of history.
Maybe the 1000th times the charm!Report
Hell it’s not even my furniture, maybe the 2000th time will work.Report
Then you’re just pissing in the wind.
I don’t think you understand the moral principle of the Hobbes’ work, Joe. It’s not that government sucks, it’s that government is necessary even tho it sucks.Report
I understand Hobbes, I just see little evidence that he was correct. Even less evidence in the people who hold his work as gospel.Report
Now you’re just playing Calvinball rules.Report
Says the man who’s state was governed by Arnold.Report
I just see little evidence that he was correct.
Literally every real world example shows he’s correct.Report
You true believers get to bury the next dead leviathan.Report
You deniers will die at the hands of the next (or next…) leviathan.Report
All leviathans have been found wanting in the end.Report
You haven’t read Mancur Olson , have you?
Read him. It’ll change your life. 🙂Report
Yep read Olson as you suggested. I still think the geography case was stronger.Report
How does the geography case undermine his thesis (which has nothing to do with geography or anything else)?
His thesis is that *whoever* can extract value from a society via taxation will stay (become a stationary bandit).Report
Taxation destroys a quantum of the velocity of money. Geography of comparative advantage with the least reductions in the velocity of money will outpace other geographic areas.Report
Taxation destroys a quantum of the velocity of money.
Except in those cases where taxation makes everyone richer.
C’mon Joe.
The Fox News conception of the Laffer curve has been laughed out of … well … OK, you have a point. Dumb people still think that taxation reduces overall GDP.Report
Those geographic locations where taxation was 100% didn’t do very well.
There is more, I linked it for you a couple years back. I guess you forgot about it.
I’ll see if I can find it tomorrow.Report
100% taxation isn’t a refutation of Olsen’s view.
Have you read Olsen’s work or not? He’s quite explicitly talking about other things than that.
In short, he’s giving a conceptual – not necessarily historical! – account of how government arises, and more importantly (to me anyway) how it evolves.Report
The deep insight he articulates, in my view anyway, is that bitching about rich people controlling policy *makes no fucking sense*. Ie., who the f*** do you *THINK* is going to control policy? His deeper point is that even though (a faction of) rich people control policy, populist pressure can *still* make society more egalitarian, especially as economic quality of life issues rise.
*not can make society more egalitarian, but *will* make it so. At least if I;m remembering my Mancur right.Report
I will read it again, you linked a PDF pretty close to where I linked the geography link.
I haven’t found a good way to sift through years of comments on this version.
Had that PDF in my phone several monthsReport
I checked out Mancur’s book from the Uni library and my dog chewed it. I had to pay not only to replace it but some other weird charge I can’t remember. Reading “The Logic of Collective Action” cost me about 240 bucks. 🙂 It was worth it.Report
Eg., if I had to pay that much for a chewed copy of Moby Dick or The Great Gstsby Ida been pissed.Report
You’re obviously a newbie at how government functions. You borrow the same book from a different branch, tape the first library’s stamp page to the second copy, and return it to the first library. A few weeks later you check it out again and return it to the second library.
Neither will realize that between the two of them, they only have the one copy.Report
Found it:
https://youtu.be/wnqS7G3LmMo
Not sure why Youtube started putting that extra point in the name. Let me know if it plays.
Skip to 25:20 to start in about Geography.Report
what we want to see: cops told to guard buildings don’t hide outside them when shit goes down
what we’ll probably see: “per Broward v. Peterson I was legally required to enter the premises due to the facts supporting my belief that an active crime was in progress with immediate danger to human life. Upon entering the building I encountered a person making a threatening gesture with an implement, thus justifying an armed response. After deploying multiple bullets against this attacker I then encountered another person making a threatening gesture with an implement, thus justifying further armed response. After I judged the situation to be stable I called for backup and medical assistance…”Report
“It became necessary to kill the entire second grade class in order to save it.”Report
Then the attackers are identified as the unarmed janitor and tech ed teacher, taken completely by surprise. But you know that cell phone on the tech ed teachers belt looked like a gun, and is a peace officer really supposed to risk being hit with a mop? Those things can cause a concussion.Report
The Tamir Rice incident does provide an interesting counterpoint to this case.
(I mean, two entirely different police departments, two entirely different situations… but bear with me.)
When the cops have reason to believe that they will not experience any physical danger, they come out guns blazing.
When the cops have reason to believe that they are in physical danger, the policy is to wait for the shooter to run out of bullets before going in.Report
This is how it has worked at least since Columbine. They are extremely cautious about confronting a known danger even when they have overwhelming firepower. They are extremely aggressive about ensuring any potential threat no matter how minor, irrational, or far fetched is dispatched before it has a chance to become a known danger.Report
The cop who killed Tamir Rice was scared of being shot. He thought he had reason to be scared. Cops are taught to be afraid, they are taught to see every situation as leading to their possible death.
I know people point out the death rates of cops which is a good and valid point. Cops do have some actual reason for fear in their jobs. But cop training heavily emphasizes fear over and above the actual risks of their jobs. It’s hard to believe some of them stay in the job the way they are taught to be afraid. One of the reasons they have to be afriad is how heavily armed some citizens are and how common guns are. None of these two paragraphs are suggesting anything about my preferred gun laws. But cop fear is tangible.Report
Let’s change it from a binary to a gradient, then.
Risk of “kid sitting on picnic table when 911 was told that it was probably a pellet gun” vs. “gunshots are being heard while children are being shot”.
Do you agree that there are two different levels of risk here? Do you agree that the former is smaller than the latter?Report
Of course there are different levels of risk. That wasn’t’ my point. Cops are trained to be afraid, very afraid. It’s not really a surprise when they cop like very scared people. That relates to killing children with pellet guns and when charging into a fire fight. Fear gets in the way of rational thought and training.Report
Alright, good. So let me put it like this:
The Tamir Rice incident does provide an interesting counterpoint to this case.
(I mean, two entirely different police departments, two entirely different situations… but bear with me.)
When the cops have reason to believe that, all things considered, the relative risk of physical danger in the encounter is relatively low, they come out guns blazing.
When the cops have reason to believe that, all things considered, the relative risk of physical danger in the encounter is relatively high, the policy is to wait for the shooter to run out of bullets before going in.Report
Geez i thought i’ve been clear. Cops are being trained to treat every interaction as potentially deadly. Not a good thing. That leads them to be trigger happy in mild situations like coming up on kids in a park. We may know the killer cop didn’t need to be afraid, but at that time he didn’t. That is the problem, he didn’t know how to dial it down from “I’m gonna die if i don’t blast away” to “just another minor call to clear.” To generalize cops seem to think every situation has a high risk of danger.Report
That creates quite the toxic environment.
If I were arguing for gun control, I’d probably want to not rely on arguments that assume non-toxic cops.Report
Yeah it is toxic. I specifically noted above nothing i was pointing out related to gun control.Report
The cop who killed Tamir Rice was scared of being shot. He thought he had reason to be scared.
He “thought” he had “reason” do be “scared”. I don’t have the encyclopedic memory of OT posts that Jaybird does, but I recall a discussion in the wake of the Trayvon Martin incident where a (white) guy opened fire on a (black) guy walking down the street because he “thought” he had “reason” to be “scared”.
It’s absolutely bizarre to me that folks authorized by the the state to shoot to kill are held to no higher standard than yahoo Florida Men.Report
Agreed. Cops should be held to higher standards and should not be trained to think every interaction with a citizen is a near death experience.Report
Cops are currently held to lower standards.
And it’s not about training, it’s the bare fact that, as a matter of law, COPS ARE HELD TO LOWER STANDARDS.
Sorry for the shouting, of course. It’s just that the whole thing is so absurd it compels me to raise my voice.Report
Well life in the good ol US of A being so absurd that we have to yell is most of the internet. Well except for the porn, not counting the Yell Porn thing. Which i’m sure there is.Report
When the cops have reason to believe that they are in physical danger, the policy is to wait for the shooter to run out of bullets before going in.
We made *very* dark jokes about this after transcripts of the Arvada theater shooting were published.
Folks in the theater: “When are the cops gonna arrive, this guy’s still shooting our ass off?”
Cops outside the theater: “He’s still firing? Everyone! HOLD YOUR POSITION!”Report
L8:
The good ol’ days:
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
Nowadays:
“The two brothers remained silent in court as an agreed-upon set of facts was read out loud, detailing how their escapades had landed them in jail. It all started on the day before their arrest, when they purchased the vintage Skylark. The sedan didn’t come with a certificate of registration or any other legal documents, and didn’t have any plates, but that didn’t stop the Roys from setting out to drive the length of the United States.
For reasons unknown, the brothers decided that they didn’t want to stop at any gas stations until they crossed into Mexico, so they loaded up the back seat and the trunk of the two-door coupe with 21 jugs of gasoline.
…
Over the next six hours, police dogs sniffed the brothers’ car, a drone circled overhead and police tried in vain to talk to them. They still didn’t move. Meanwhile, traffic came to a standstill, and disgruntled drivers complained that being redirected to the nearest border crossing, 100 miles to the south, was going to make their trips take hours longer than they had planned.
The silent standoff finally came to an end at around 4:30 p.m., when the Mounties brought in a military-style armored truck. As the intimidating-looking vehicle closed in, Bailey Roy hit the gas. He sped across the border into Maine and came to a stop as the truck rammed into a parked U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle, creating a blockade. The two brothers spilled out of the passenger-side door, and were immediately taken into custody. Nearly six hours later, the checkpoint finally reopened.”
Sigh.Report
L5 – I’ve seen commentary elsewhere that alludes to this essentially being a trial to settle whether cops have a duty to protect. I find that angle somewhat morbidly fascinating, given the number of departments who claim “To Protect and Serve” as their motto.Report
It’s pretty well established law that there is no actual duty to protect. The Supreme Court has said so. Where I see an opening for this case is an argument of a specific duty. He was not a beat cop assigned generally to the city; he was a school safety resource officer assigned to a particular school. Whether that’s specific enough to be an exception to Castle Rock is iffy, but it’s where I would go with it.Report
I still think it’s the kind of thing that would backfire horribly. They already are too quick to use force because Graham and progeny have made it so unlikely they’ll face accountability. Now we’re talking about adding civil liability if they don’t act into the mix of incentives?
I know everyone is thinking active school shooter, but how are we going to feel when it applies to routine discipline issues?Report
L6 – it may be worth noting that the ‘leaker may face legal trouble’ is just some random lawyer, not (as far as I can tell) someone with more direct knowledge of how the Jeopardy production ecosystem sets up its contracts. (his law firm does handle this kind of thing, it seems but it also handles a lot of types of law (looks to me like just about everything but murder and jaywalking)
One thing I saw on twitter that’s interesting (if it’s correct) is that the studio audience does not sign any sort of non-disclosure agreement. Nontheless, everyone in the room stayed quiet (enough) for at least a month.
(I once attended a taping they did in DC, there was no NDA anyone needed to sign* but the one I attended was the middle round of a teacher’s tournament, so it wasn’t going to be possible to spoil a lot anyway)
*there may have been something printed on the (free) tickets that acceptance and attendance means you’re not going to talk about what you saw. (certainly, electronic use of any kind was prohibited during the taping, and they had enough ushers watching the crowd)Report
L5 – If the guy is convicted of cowardice, then the people who hired him, evaluated him, and worked with him should also be charged. The argument is that you can know how someone will react in a genuine crisis based on a previous simulated crisis. If that is the case, why didn’t anyone else catch his “obvious” failing? I’m sure that the guy deluded himself into thinking he would be brave and heroic. If anyone is going to identify his “flaw” it will be an impartial observer and not a proud man’s own self.Report
Cowardice is on the person. If a soldier in the army fails to run towards danger when ordered to do so, the soldier alone faces the charge of cowardice.
That said, I think it is important to recognize that the government does, in one context, recognize cowardice as a legally actionable thing.
But police are not held to the UCMJ (something I think they should be), so we get to pretend they are super special civilians.Report
Even in a military context it seems a mistake for cowardice to be legally actionable. Leaving your post, failing to perform your duties, not responding to direct orders, etc and so on, that’s OK. Cowardice tho….. Talk about a canoworms.Report
It has a very specific definition. Specific enough that bringing charges for cowardice is very rare, and such actions are more likely to result in dereliction of duty or failure to follow orders.
I mean, personally, I wouldn’t try the cop for cowardice, I’d go for dereliction of duty (he was the school safety officer, one assumes his duty would be to engage any threat to the safety of he school), but I don’t think any such thing exists in criminal or civil law.Report