I'm really uncomfortable with this idea. I know a lot of you will like it-- ater all, shouldn't anyone who sees something illegal phone the police? However, I think this gives the state too much power. It reeks of secret police informants and unreasonable searches.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Um. . . isn't this expected of all our responsible citizens anyway? The only thing these guys are getting special is police training.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:"Because they're not a police car, a lot of criminals, bad guys aren't going to be suspicious." Orange County sheriff's Captain Steve Jones said. "Time is of the essence. If you have somebody that is getting ready to do something, the sooner we know they're there the sooner we can be on our way to get to them."
Uh, dood, ya just blew cover! LOL
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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More to the point, all a bad guy has to do now is make their cars look like goofy pest killers and people will just let them do what ever they want. And probably wave and smile at them for the good job they are doing.
"The guy in the funny looking VW took all our jewelry!"
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote: "Because they're not a police car, a lot of criminals, bad guys aren't going to be suspicious." Orange County sheriff's Captain Steve Jones said.
Right, because criminals have never heard of police using unmarked cars before. I guess if they had seen this sort of thing on all those old cop shows they wouldn't need to be out at night stealing a TV.
quote: Um. . . isn't this expected of all our responsible citizens anyway? The only thing these guys are getting special is police training.
Let me preface what I'm about to say with the caveat that I'm totally ignorant about the law. I'm just giving my general opinion of what *should* be and what this *seems* to be.
My problem with this is that it extends and legitimizes the power of the state into what should be private property. That is, property where the state can't legitmately look or have control unless it goes through large legal hoops. It allows the state to check up on people to make sure they are being good citizens and discourages them from deviating from what the state has set down as law.
You say that this reporting illegal activity is what 'responsible citizens' would do, anyway, but I'm not sure that that's so. For instance, as has been discussed on this forum, many conservatives fear the state making saying certain things about gay marriage/people illegal. Are you saying that as a responsible citizen, should that become law, you must report those who say those things?
In short, I don't think morality is legality. I don't like the idea that people should follow the state's lead in morality and feel that in order to be a responsible citizen they should nark out their neighbors for every stupid infraction. I would far rather that people only turn to the state when they *must*, as a last resort and regard private property as private, short of extreme circumstances.
What Nolen is doing is keeping tabs on people for the state. The state is officially using them to check up on people in places where the state can't go in such a way that people don't know that they are being surveilled by the state. If it's o.k. to use Nolen in this way, then why not the phone company, or your ISP, or your bishop?
The whole thing is rotten.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I honestly didn't read the article as saying that the exterminator squads (or whatever other groups they decide to add to this) would be looking for signs of illegal activity taking place within a home while they're onsite for a service call so much as that they'd be out cruising neighborhoods as if they were en route to an assignment and watching for indications of burglars, etc.
My (completely uneducated) guess is that if the exterminators, cable guys, whoever were to start calling the police if they saw hypodermic needles on the table while they were repairing the phone line, they'd find themselves suddenly lacking in work before long. It wouldn't be too hard to figure out that it's the cable guy that ratted on you when he's the only one who's been in your house. And for that reason alone, I'd guess that the service people would do their best to avoid such a potential conflict. Watching for oddly dressed individuals in a backyard is one thing, actively ratting out a customer is another.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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One of the justifications in the article was that
quote: Technicians from Truly Nolen Pest Control of America are being trained by local law enforcement to spot anything unusual as they visit customer's homes.
Yes, the article made it sound like that it's just going to be from the outside, and I appreciate your explanation as being a reasonable possibility, but I don't understand why the police would need to specifically use Nolen to catch people doing bad stuff on the outside of someone's home when the more logical and useful practice would be to encourage neigborhood watch assocations and the like.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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It does sound like they are using service people to get past search warrants.
Service people, trained or not, would most likely report anything that was obviously illegal. "I worked on the heater and there was a child's screaming coming from a locked door" or "they had all of these plant grow lamps in their basement with lots of funny plants I've never seen before except depicted on baseball caps."
I tried to find the guys name, but I couldn't. Anyway, some guy talks about trust economy. Each nation has a level of trust and who it is centered on. Japan trusts the government. China trusts the family. In Japan, you would turn in your brother if he broke the law. In China you would probably hide your brother from the government if they were hunting him at the peril of your life.
I'm not sure where America is, but I would say it is more like China than Japan.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I hadn't thought about the police trying to get around search warrants.
This is a well-intended but poorly conceived idea. The police might receive a lot of opposition for this, for the reason that Storm Saxon mentioned, and because people will think that it is lazy police work.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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