The SWAT team was looking for guns and other material related to a carjacking that had occurred that morning.
So it wasn’t for the airpods themselves, but rather airpods being in the stolen car was how they attempted to find the carjackers. While the police definitely screwed up, the article author is going out of their way to create the most rage inducing headline possible.
The air pods did lead them to that street, then the cops just apparently picked a random house to raid.
So it’s accurate, but it would have been best to add “following armed carjacking”.
But the real issue is the overuse of raids and judges being way to fucking lenient with warrants.
Both things Biden claims he reigned in two years ago via executive order. I know because whenever I point out how not enough is done about our policing issues, people keep telling me everything is fine and Biden already fixed this and I should stop worrying about it.
Clearly it’s still happening and people are being traumatized. Luckily this time the police didn’t murder anyone at least.
But none of these cops or the judge who signed a bullshit warrant will ever be held accountable.
It’s not accurate, it uses nearby apple devices. If your iPhone picks up the air pods then it will point to an area where your iPhone is located. It can’t pinpoint the exact location. This wasn’t disclosed to the judge when the warrant was applied for. The police omitted critical information because they knew their warrant would be denied. Hopefully, a federal court will make things right, unfortunately, the police will keep their jobs.
Clickbait? These people had their home broken into and ransacked by a bunch of goons pointing rifles at them for absolutely no reason other than incompetence. They didn’t even fix the damage they cause as noted at the end of the article.
The article implies the swat team was sent due to an armed carjacking that morning. Someone got a warrant for search and seizure based on geolocation results from the airpods and they assumed the carjackers would be hanging out at this address.
It’s a rental home. Nothing is mentioned about the identity of the owner of the home. After looking up the house on zillow though it’s about 113k. It’s a dead end street surrounded by homes that are valued under 100k. I didn’t realize that federal minimum wage would be enough to pay a mortgage in 2024, but apparently it is possible. This isn’t super relevant other than the fact i’m looking at buying a house near Boston and I did a double take that a home exists in this price range and isn’t in a trailer park. 113k here won’t even buy you a parking spot.
After looking up the address it looks like a group of juveniles were involved with the carjacking so names are impossible to find. The most bizzare thing though is that a couple hours after the carjacking the car was picked up 3.5 miles / an 8 minute drive from the house in wylin court with the suspects bailing from the car and the cops arresting them… I wonder when the swatting happened at 630pm who they thought they would find?
I didn’t know that about St Louis, I went there for a conference a few years ago and mostly stayed downtown but I drove around a bit one day and it just seemed like an old Southern city. I never felt unsafe but I also lived in an old Southern city with lots of crime for a while so things outside of downtown didn’t seem much different.
There are still many places in the US where you can get a decent house in the lower 100s but they are mostly all rural.
But even as a staunch Euro leftist, I think it is okay that there are people I strongly disagree with, even strongly dislike because I think the fight for values that are against my personal morality.
Both Romney and Cheney are such people.
I don’t think they should have political power over other people.
But they share at least a certain common ground with me that the fascists don’t.
And for how little I actually like those people, I still value this very difference.
Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, so flip it around, inclusive speech is also protected by the First Amendment. I’m sure teachers can lose their jobs for hate speech but people cannot be criminally charged for hate speech alone. Prosecuting teachers as sex offenders for using pronouns is a clear and deliberate violation of their Constitutional rights.
Hate crimes and hate speech are two different, but related, things, so I understand your confusion. You cannot be prosecuted for hate speech, because that is a government infringement on your liberties. They can prosecute you if the hate speech intentionally incites violence, because that is not protected speech. The hate speech can also inform intent to turn another crime into a hate crime.
Calling someone the N word (hate speech) won’t get you arrested.
Calling someone the N word while you attack them (hate crime) will.
Under this context, yes you would be prosecuted for “hate speech” because the criminal activity here is the speech itself. Under any other circumstances you would be allowed to say whatever you like. There are always consequences to your actions, they’re just not always criminal consequences.
Making someone feel unsafe is not assault. Words can compel people to act but they themselves are responsible for their actions.
That being said, there is a concept of fighting words in the USA. Scroll down to the section titled Post-Chaplinsky, there’s information about the courts’ rulings applying to personal insults.
Honestly I need to take time to read this wikipedia article a little more thoroughly but I’m on my way out the door. I am not a lawyer I just find law interesting.
Legally, you cannot be criminally charged. They will not protect you from the consequences of your speech coming from private parties, whatever those are. You can increase the number or severity of charges for crimes if they are even partially motivated by prejudice towards specific groups, hate speech may be evidence of that motivation.
I really can’t comprehend the level of hate that these motherfuckers must possess to write or support such a bill. I mean, let’s say you’re an incredible asshole who doesn’t think that trans people exist, like you think that you know who they are much better than they actually know themselves. Even with that as a baseline, isn’t it still just the polite thing to treat them with basic respect?
If I found out that someone I just met preferred to use their middle name instead of their first name, I would 100% use that person’s middle name when addressing them. It’s just common courtesy. The same thing goes with a person who’s transitioning - I will use their preferred name, because I’m not a completely deplorable piece of shit.
But this guy is way worse than someone who intentionally antagonizes people by using their disliked name when addressing them. This guy wants to actively punish anybody who has the rock bottom bare minimum of civility by destroying their lives and livelihoods.
I just can’t grasp that level of hatred. How is it that this piece of shit shares enough genes with everybody else that he’s recognized as human?
Ah yes, further diluting the term sex offender down to the point the label is meaningless.
Makes perfect sense to combine teachers who accept pronouns, with people caught publicly urinating on the same list with violent rapists and convicted pedophiles… after all, it’s all the same.
Yeah but they are afraid of everything, so they have to make sure they are rapinga child of the sex that won’t get them labeled as gay. Ye ole Republican mantra, rape is okay so long as it’s not gay.
You wish they were this coherent. Just like the homophobic rightwinger scum in Hungary, which was caught in a huge gay orgy, they will gladly posture one thing in public then do another in private.
The original premise made sense. It was a specialized response to extreme circumstances, where rando beat cops would’ve been outgunned, and letting them try would endanger more people. The obvious problem has been letting every asshole with a badge cosplay that scenario.
Except when they actually encounter that scenario, like in Uvalde.
We existed for a long ass time without them, we would be fine if we returned to that. Anytime we give cops more power they use it on the people they most frequently victimize.
Give the money that goes to cops to solve the underlying factors that create of crimes of poverty.
And no new problems ever happen. Right? No threats in the twentieth century were any different from the blunderbuss-and-bayonet era. Barney Fife was perfectly equipped to handle the Munich Olympics massacre.
Every town having a SWAT team is a phenomenon that is younger than I am, and I’m not all that old.
I’d posit that whatever SWATs supposed utility is vastly overwhelmed by their negative downsides. SWATing alone outweighs the benefits. That and cops propensity to want to use their shiny weapons whenever they can alone with the cop brain idea that all non cops are potential enemies seems like a shit system that we should be dismantling.
Yes, hence, “the obvious problem has been letting every asshole with a badge cosplay that scenario.”
The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer. Anything can be abused. We still have problems, and the sane solutions will tend to involve things that can be abused, because anything can be abused.
This is both true and awful - we, the tax payers, just paid an inept SWAT Team to cosplay doing what is essentially a military operation, to the cost of either one completely innocent family getting their house and lives fucked over or all of us paying a bunch of money to fix what they broke.
What a fucking system. St. Louis is dangerous, but not so much that they need to fucking rush in a SWAT Team without good intel. I hope these bastards at least get their toys and privileges taken away… but bringing charges against anyone responsible - I have no hopes that will happen.
ok but just so you know the average chess game consists of approximately 40 moves, but one game ended in a draw after 269 moves and lasted 20 hours and 15 minutes.
They could just have... You know... Sent someone to have a look around the place. They'd probably just found the AirPods. Or... They could have... You know.... Acted like humans instead of paranoid power tripping psychos and -and I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out - rung the doorbell and asked questions like "have you seen anything?"
If they believed guns were possibly involved then it makes more sense to not just knock on the door.
Probably makes more sense to be sure who you are about to SWAT though. Maybe watch the house awhile from a distance? Scout it out? Otherwise demonstrate that you have a tactic other than not giving a shit about the people you claim to protect?
One of two options, a complete failure of understanding on how find your device works and the inaccuracies involved on both the police department and judges side or maliciously misrepresentating the accuracy of the technology by the police department.
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