Technology

59675 readers

3174 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

808

Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops (www.theverge.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

224 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (8 children)

How exactly is an individual supposed to determine which cops will be good and which will abuse their power?

Just as we can't make a general statement that all cops are definitely bad, you can't make a general statement that all cops in any particular country or town will be good.

From a basic risk management viewpoint, it doesn't make sense for anyone to accept the risk that any given cop won't abuse their position, even if we were willing to accept that very few would actually do so.

Cops have an extremely privileged status in society and the amount of damage that a bad one can do to an individual - on purpose or even by accident - is incalculable, including setting up an innocent person for capital punishment as we're seeing unfold in Missouri right now.

[+] Dariusmiles2123 -23 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I agree with you, you can’t know for sure that you’re with a good or bad cop.

But you also have to comply with laws if you don’t want to get in trouble.

I can only answer for my country and I can tell you that here you’re gonna waste way less time if you show what’s in your phone and we can see that you’re innocent.

The time not wasted there might also be used to catch the person who’s really guilty.

I’ll just give you an example even if it’s not reated to unlocking phones: A black BMW 335i is filmed hitting a pedestrian and the plate number finishes with a 5. We’re gonna need to have a look at every BMW within these parameters. If you prevent the police from checking your car by hiding it, a guilty guy might have more time to hide his car and a crime is gonna go unpunished, leaving a victim with no one to pay for his injuries.

Of course, that reality might be different elsewhere. It’s just that I have noticed that on Lemmy cops are only seen as bad guys when, in my case, I spend a lot of time helping people.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)