{"id":53620,"date":"2015-05-28T05:30:34","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T10:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=53620"},"modified":"2015-05-28T05:15:20","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T10:15:20","slug":"force-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=53620","title":{"rendered":"Force Protection"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems the St. Paul Police Department and\/or the Ramsey County Sheriff office (the article is a little unclear on which) has gotten itself involved in a First Amendment case<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, to me, the case itself, involving a police dustup with of those “First Amendment activists” who seems to have all the time in the world to prowl the streets with a video camera trolling for the faintest whiff of police misconduct \u2013 is less interesting than this quote from an officer of the St. Paul police union (Emphasis added):<\/p>\n

“I don’t know of a time in our profession where we as cops have needed to be any more vigilant about our personal safety<\/strong> and the security of our facilities, than the present,” said Mark Ross, treasurer of the St. Paul police union.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blame it on cable TV; cops aren’t the only ones who think it’s the most dangerous time in history.<\/p>\n

It’s not:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Even with the uptick in the past year or two, it’s less dangerous than it was five years ago. \u00a0Or ten years ago. \u00a0There are are 1\/4 fewer cop killings than there were 20 years ago. \u00a0And less than half as many as a little over forty years ago; 1973-74 were more dangerous than 9\/11.<\/p>\n

I added emphasis to this part:<\/p>\n

“There are safety considerations too numerous to list<\/strong> as to why a person making videos of police officers and police facilities creates enough reasonable suspicion to stop, detain and identify somebody engaged in that type of activity.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Too numerous to list? \u00a0No, I think it’s worth a little time and discussion.<\/p>\n

Go ahead and list the “safety considerations” of people videotaping cops, officer.<\/p>\n

Every last one of them.<\/p>\n

I get it; the “video activist” involved was one of those pains in the ass who’s constantly sniffing around looking for something to wave around; he’s sort of like an assistant county attorney, if you think about it.<\/p>\n

But let’s hear the “safety considerations” that a guy with a camera offers you that\u00a0every other person out there, no matter what they’re doing<\/em>, doesn’t also present every police officer, everywhere.<\/p>\n

I’m serious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems the St. Paul Police Department and\/or the Ramsey County Sheriff office (the article is a little unclear on which) has gotten itself involved in a First Amendment case. Now, to me, the case itself, involving a police dustup with of those “First Amendment activists” who seems to have all the time in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-your-papers-please"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53620"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53628,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53620\/revisions\/53628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}