Comments on: Gent in a Ghostbuster costume backflips over a cop and gets arrested

By: Ken Williams

Ken Williams — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 03:26:00 +0000

1) You’re certainly allowed to dislike those people and their annoying practices as much as you want. 2) Being stupid is not a crime, nor is lowering one’s level of intelligence on purpose. 3) Only things which are actually criminal offenses are crimes. 4) If folks are committing actual crimes, that’s bad, and being drunk doesn’t excuse it (like people sometimes seem to suggest it does). We made a lot of progress on that with the anti-drunk-driving campaigns.

I suggest getting a bag of cheap shiny objects to hand to these folks, it will distract them long enough to make a clean getaway.

By: donovan acree

donovan acree — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:49:00 +0000

The penalty is that they have to do their job. That’s horrible!

By: Hamish Grant

Hamish Grant — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:45:00 +0000

mischief? public drunkeness? also depends on the drunken bastard’s demeanor when the cops confront him of course – initially they will have your (and any other witnesses’) account to go on. Once they talk to the accused, perhaps they get an even better idea of how likely it is that he did what you’re saying he did. also depends on your demeanor when you make your report to them.

By: donovan acree

donovan acree — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:41:00 +0000

Their job is arresting people for not comiting crimes and threatening witnesses to that action?

By: donovan acree

donovan acree — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Luckily, the law is not based on what most people wouldn’t want.

By: donovan acree

donovan acree — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:32:00 +0000

Suppose some drunken bastard does a back flip off my car. My car is not dented or damaged. I call the police and try to press charges… what charge would that be?

I’m thinking it will be like most encounters where the public asks the police for help, they will laugh it off and say there is nothing they can do.

By: auralee

auralee — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:27:00 +0000

Disrespect is not a crime; if it were, many police should start by arresting themselves for disrespecting us.

Every time the police show up, we should ALL whip our all our phones and cameras and start videoing them. We vastly outnumber them; they literally can’t arrest us all.

Authorities abuse their power only so long as we let them get away with it; and so long as it’s only one or two of us objecting, they can get away with it.

By: GameMaster9002

GameMaster9002 — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 15:35:00 +0000

I’m more concerned about why the cop ran right up to the dude, he could have gotten himself kicked in the face.. was he purposely trying to do that? What else was he going to do, grab the dude’s ankles? He could have gotten hurt and had the backflipper land on him, and probably would have claimed assault or something stupid like that. If he were standing just a few feet back he would have been hit either way. Why didn’t these cops just surround the car and shout from a safer distance than that? Anyways, since the dude was apparently released and had no charges pressed, I guess their silliness didn’t hurt anyone. But still, wtf?

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:40:00 +0000

They were unprofessional and out of line (and they threatened the cameraman because they _knew_ they were being unprofessional and out of line.) If they weren’t aggressive jerks, they could have been _appropriately_ unprofessional (because hey, cops are a gang and the guy _did_ diss them, so they do get some slack about giving him a hard time.)

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:37:00 +0000

Typically, the penalty is that the cops have to hang around the station doing paperwork to book the guy, which they dislike, instead of being out making people Respect Their Authoritay. (If they’d left him in the back of the car for a while and let him go, or taken him down to the station and kicked him out onto the street, they’d have avoided that.

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:31:00 +0000

The law in almost all countries is that if you disrespect the police, they can arrest you, rough you up, and throw you in jail for the night and make it your problem. Whether you actually get officially charged with anything is an entirely separate question of law :-) But most police are a gang, and he was dissing them, so yeah it was a dumb thing to do.

Awesome, though :-)

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:21:00 +0000

The police did abuse their position, by threatening to arrest the videotaper, and if they actually took the Ghostbuster to jail, that was also abusive. (If they just stuck him in the back of their car and yelled at him a bit, that’s also not particularly legal, but within the bounds of “ok, he deserved that”.)

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:16:00 +0000

And if you’re not one of those people who understands anarchism, then “letting cops do what they want instead of making them obey the law” ought to sound at least as anarchic as “letting drunks do mostly harmless stupid things.”

By: BillStewart2012

BillStewart2012 — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:12:00 +0000

The one time I was arrested, for photographing police, it was for “interfering with an officer”. The town eventually dropped the charges in return for me agreeing not to sue them (which was ridiculous, offensive, and unjust, but my lawyer told me it was the best deal I was going to get, and as much as I hated to agree with him, he was obviously correct.)

I did at least have friends (one of whom was a lawyer) around during the incident, so I was able to make bail and avoid jail, though it took months to get the camera back, and mysteriously the camera had gotten damaged and the film gotten exposed during that time.

By: D L

D L — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 21:34:00 +0000

Maybe, just maybe, we can put an end to this ‘police state’
nonsense if we clear up a couple things:

1) the backflipper was arrested at the scene, but released later
with no charges

2) “I knew my rights,” says [the cameraman]. “I knew that I was in a public place and I knew I was allowed to legally film a public servant on duty, so I just cooperated with the cops. I wasn’t going to make a big deal about shining a light and camera in their face, but nothing came about it.”

When an ostensibly drunk dude does a cheeky backflip off the top of your car while you’re standing beside it, it’s disrespectful. In the context of this video, I think it’s fair to say it’s also a little antagonistic. I fully acknowledge that police brutality and abuse of power are very real problems, but adding this video to the list and proclaiming Petitcodiac, N.B. part of the ‘police state’ cheapens the conversation about what is a very serious issue.

There are good cops and there are bad cops, pretty much like every other job. I’m going to give these two the benefit of the doubt and say they’re somewhere on the good side of the scale, but in all likelihood they are just plain ol’ mediocre cops. They don’t to anything demonstrably horrible in this video, but they do appear uncomposed. Plus that one officer might look a little out of shape, but I digress.

SOURCE:
http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/back-flipping-n-b-ghostbuster-goes-viral-1.1017466

By: signsofrain

signsofrain — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:54:00 +0000

“If you piss off a cop you deserve what you get” – I truly hate this sentiment. You’d sing a different tune if you’d ever been teargassed and beaten for being on the wrong street at the wrong time.

By: signsofrain

signsofrain — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:50:00 +0000

He didn’t harm the car, himself, or anyone else. And it was halloween. If you can’t take a little sass without freaking the fuck out you probably shouldn’t be a cop/trusted with deadly weapons. I want cops to be the most calm, hard to piss off levelheaded guys in the room, but they NEVER are. Kids in school regularly do things to teachers that are much MUCH worse than what this guy ‘did to’ this cop, and they just get a talking to. Cops shouldn’t get to just arrest anyone that pisses them off on trumped up charges. Public drunkenness? Oh yeah, that clean backflip was clearly done by a severely impaired person. -_-;; The cop was in the wrong.

By: Will Bueche

Will Bueche — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:38:00 +0000

There needs to be repercussions for police who waste the time of judges or waste the time of the District Attorney’s office. It isn’t enough that judges laugh at these sort of complaints and dismiss them, there needs to be a penalty that the cops feel. Maybe docking their pay by $50 for each wasted-time arrest. It would encourage the cops to learn to focus their resources. I’m sure I have the details wrong about how these false-arrests work, but the concept is good: find a way to stop cops from acting like freeloading power-trippers, and get them to focus on crime.

By: benher

benher — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Agreed!
But maybe we should vote on it :)

By: purple-stater

purple-stater — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:32:00 +0000

Being in a position where I have to frequently work around drunks (I do not work in a bar), I’m pretty fed up with the attitude that I need to “excuse” or “ignore” somebody because they’ve intentionally, and repeatedly, taken a course of action to make themself more stupid than average. No matter how much they insult, bother, or aggravate other people, you’re supposed to not notice them, and simply forgive them, just because they’re drunk.

To hell with that.

By: purple-stater

purple-stater — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:23:00 +0000

Well, the appropriate response for the cop would have been to grab the kid, headbutt him and say “Don’t do that again you stupid ****.”

But people tend to not like behavior from the police either.

By: dtakt

dtakt — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 07:15:00 +0000

Your reply is funny for two reasons:
1. You clearly are not familiar with what the political philosophy of anarchism stands for.
2. Yes, anarchism is actually the proper alternative.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 04:08:00 +0000

Obviously we do, and we probably have different ideas about entitlement and about how many hours it takes to pay for things like cars and other possessions that people care about.

I can’t resist pointing out many of the same legal issues and social taboos apply to the phrase “get off my lawn”.

You can do that, but there’s no comparison. I’d say that you’re more on the side of the guy in the bar who jumps up and dances on the bar and tries to pour himself a drink, because really, it’s not like he’s really harming anybody….lighten up folks! Right?!

By: facebook-658626507

facebook-658626507 — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 03:15:00 +0000

Sorry, have to side with the cops on this one. That was an insanely stupid thing to do. Impressive backflip though.

By: Cynical

Cynical — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 02:04:00 +0000

I heard this cop totally uppercutted some kid just for opening a window. :/

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 01:20:00 +0000

I’m the same way. I do more damage to myself by giving a shit than anybody could ever do by walking on my car.

By: TheMudshark

TheMudshark — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 01:05:00 +0000

http://www.bobbyseale.com/posters/v5n18-10-31-70.JPG

By: LYNDON

LYNDON — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:50:00 +0000

PS elsewhere in thread suggests he was released after a night in the cells. You take the night in the cells, I take the released and we’ll call it a draw,

By: LYNDON

LYNDON — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:47:00 +0000

Obviously we have different ideas about the sacrosanctness of the outside of cars.

I can’t resist pointing out many of the same legal issues and social taboos apply to the phrase “get off my lawn”.

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:18:00 +0000

Asking someone to stop filming is okay, that’s just a request, threatening them with arrest if they don’t is the stupid part.