Byron's point is certainly well taken when you consider we're likely to be bitching about it on a forum where we reveal lots of info about ourselves, or on Facebook where we reveal tons of personal info constantly.
Still, if your immediate reaction to the headline "roadblock to collect dna samples" isn't a mix of anger/fear/paranoia (at least until the details reveal the full nature) then you're dead inside
--Josh
“Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws.” - Tacitus.
Byron, I always love your posts, b/c you're one of the sharpest tools in the shed and you never seem to put bias ahead of facts. In short, you really made me think that I was totally retarded and made me take a second stab at this...
The NHSA is already costing tax payer's money on this stupid, by their methods and your assessment, and wasteful study, so there is no need to waste more money on off-duty cops adding a) a fear factor and b) additional costs when they could've just set up a location like I mentioned and get equally shitty results for less money.
Lastly, why the hell is this worth tax payer's money in the first place? Don't we have police reports that show all of the data? Can't they just use the tax payer money to just cull through the police reports and get better info and waste less time/money?
Fairness leads to extinction much faster than harsh parameters.
...but Facebook doesn't have state-issued uniforms, arrest powers, and weapons. Facebook doesn't, as a matter of course, have the legitimate ability to stop and detain people.Originally Posted by LOKNLOD
Yeah, it was voluntary...but when was the last time you saw a voluntary road block? When you're driving down the road and you see a checkpoint do you say "Well, this is optional." in your mind? Or do you slow down and get your license and registration ready?
People upset about the cops conducting a road block to ask people for DNA samples are right on the money.
There are things that police officers in uniform (conveying the authority granted to them by the state) simply should not do. We're not talking about a knock-and-talk in the course of investigating a crime, or even urging kids to stay off of drugs in a school assembly. Armed agents of the government stopping people and asking for their DNA is well into the realm of things that just shouldn't happen.
3/15/2016
And back to the real concern and why I posted this piece...what TCinVA just said
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Fairness leads to extinction much faster than harsh parameters.
Thank you: I deeply appreciate the compliment. But my aim wasn't to make anyone feel retarded, certainly.
I don't see how using the officers necessarily incurs more cost to the taxpayer though. Any money paid to those off-duty officers came from the grant money; it's not as if the local department had to pay them. The grant money is going to be spent, period. The cost is no different whether they pay two officers to man the roadblock, two admin guys from whatever highway authority, or whoever.
It is not my assessment that this was stupid and wasteful. My contention is that gathering data for such a study is difficult, and wrought with confounding variables, but that setting up a designated destination would lead to further problems in gathering any kind of remotely representative sample of individuals.
I'm not tracking. Are you suggesting that a better way to evaluate the prevalence of intoxicated driving is to look at police reports of people stopped for such offenses?
The problem with that is that it assumes that a representative number of people are actually caught for driving under the influence. It would be just as inaccurate as saying, "X number of people were arrested for theft. Therefore, we know that theft occurs at a rate of Y."
The vast majority of people who drive under the influence will not be caught by law enforcement.
As for why it is worth it, I think that good social policy should be founded on evidence. Having a more accurate picture as to the behavior of populations should be part of that evidence.
It may seem like I'm nitpicking, but I think some differences matter: stopping at the roadblock was certainly required. Participating in the study was not.
The roadblock had signs indicating that a voluntary study was taking place.
Police officers were not the ones who took samples or asked survey questions: they were simply in charge of handling traffic.
If you chose to participate, they directed you to a separate area, away from the presence of law enforcement officers, where dudes in reflective vests with iPads asked you questions and then asked for samples.
Heck, they offered money.
I get the point that you guys are making: that the mere presence of an officer can, in some cases, be seen as a show of force or an indication that cooperation is required. I just don't see it in this case. Cops don't offer you money to do things, period. They especially don't offer you money to do things that they're forcing you to do. No cop has ever said, "Hey, do you want $50 so that our drug dog can sniff your car?"
If people are so ignorant of their rights, so afraid of authority, that the mere sight of two officers makes them ignore a sign, ignore verbal notifications, ignore other cars driving through, ignore other cars turning around, and ignore the fact that they are being offered compensation for their participation... then frankly I believe the problem is with society and our collective knowledge of our rights, rather than with the officers for being there.
This is actually far less invasive and free of consequences than sobriety checkpoints, which have long been upheld by the Supreme Court.
Per this article: http://blog.al.com/east-alabama/2013...comment_o.html
It's also worth noting that while bodily fluids were collected, which certainly contain DNA, the collection did not involve recording DNA information. Again, some may find this to be nitpicking, but there is a world of difference between analyzing blood for chemicals and recording DNA to a database.The survey used deputies to stop traffic, he said, for traffic safety.
"If you're doing roadblocks and asking people to stop, you have to have the deputies there to make sure everything is safe," he said. "It's not about detaining anybody, because the survey is voluntary and anonymous. It's about making sure the traffic is safe in that area."
...hence the problem. A big sign encouraging people to pull over in a parking lot and participate wouldn't trouble me. Nor would having uniformed officers there directing traffic.
Requiring people to stop (using police authority) so you can ask them if they'd like to contribute some DNA to a study? That's crap.
Law enforcement functions on the public trust...and those who run police departments ought to have the good sense to act in ways designed to preserve that trust, and not undermine it. If it was my department, this wouldn't have happened. Not because I thought that the USSC would get ticked off, but because I wouldn't expend a single iota of the precious capital of public trust in this manner.
I loathe checkpoints in general, but at least when they're looking for drunk driving they're serving what is arguably a legitimate law enforcement purpose. Here? They ain't even doing that.
If this was really on the up and up they'd put up signs giving people the option to pull over if they wanted to, and the officers would be there just to keep things going smoothly. They wouldn't be using the badge to force people to stop. They're doing that precisely because they know that when the man with the badge and the gun pulls you over and asks you to volunteer, lots more people will say yes. Nobody involved is naive as to the reasons why. They're using the badge to snag a captive audience for their survey request and are trying to trade on the presence of the badge to engender enough trust from the captive audience to get them to comply.
When the beginning of the "voluntary" interaction is the dude with the badge and the gun giving you orders consistent with other well-established non-voluntary authority that they wield, the classification of "voluntary" starts to lose its meaning.
In the mall, if armed men trapped you so they could give you a pitch for a survey it would be a criminal offense.
Last edited by TCinVA; 06-11-2013 at 05:52 PM.
3/15/2016
The smart-ass in me wants to ask the officers making those stops:
"Can I swab you for DNA?"
Anyone want to bet what the reaction would be from the officers? They'd probably be none too happy about the request. They'd probably think I was a jerk.
...but, and I can't emphasize this enough, I wouldn't be the one forcing people to stop and making the request for DNA wearing a uniform and a gun.
3/15/2016
So with that way of understanding, do you think it'd still be okay if they had used an off-duty SWAT team with K9 teams, or National Guardsmen in MaxxPro's?
Okay, okay, I know that's a bit of an extreme....but I'm just trying to make a point.
The old proverb, "Perception is reality" comes to mind. So their actions weren't illegal, and they were acting Constitutionally.....but damn, if that isn't a piss poor execution for the following reasons:
You don't see it in this case. You also had the facts of the situation and were thinking about it as a disconnected 3rd party after the fact. What about the person driving up who doesn't have the facts and have time to think about it? In that context, I think it's similar to how Todd has said gun-owners can be our own worst enemy in dissecting whether a shoot was justified or not....was the action reasonable to the person on the ground in the moment is what's actually important, and we have to limit the use of our 20/20 hindsight when evaluating such.
Well, yes and no. Police are authority figures. Police exist to force compliance on the public, which is why people are always so skeptical or cautious about them. So, it isn't entirely stupid for the general public nor the educated/informed public to go, "What the actual kitten!?" when they roll up to cops asking for your DNA. This gets back to the perception is reality/presentation is everything point. There's a reason you don't use grant money to put cops in the emergency department as a patient liaison, just as you don't use cops (authority figures with badges, guns and flashing lights) on roadblocks to ask for your DNA. That's just a plain old fashioned bad idea, and if it isn't patently illegal it's still insensitive to a citizen's rights.
Last edited by TGS; 06-11-2013 at 06:11 PM.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
I wouldn't concede that.
It's one thing to run a checkpoint for a legitimate law enforcement purpose like screening for drunk driving. Personally I have some issues with it and I think the courts have been overly-deferential on that front, but it is at least true that locking up drunk drivers...or writing them tickets, which is far more common...is a legitimate law enforcement function which if you strain it fine enough can be argued into a justification for stopping everybody for nothing more than going down a particular road on the wrong night.
Here? Here we don't have a legitimate law enforcement function that can be stretched into justifying stopping a bunch of people going about their business. The police were stopping people to force them to listen to a sales pitch for a survey.
That dog don't hunt.
3/15/2016
I 100% absolutely agree. Next thing you'll know, we'll have police checkpoints asking you for donations to the incumbent.
I was just going along with it for conversation's sake. First, let's convince Byron that it's a bad idea and cause for concern. Then we'll work on why people should be fired and barred from ever holding a commission in the public trust ever again.
With that, I'm now changing my avatar to something appropriate to the topic and general goings-on around the nation lately.....you silly proles.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
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