Look we all have to sacrifice some liberty for security. For example, we sacrifice our right to kill others so that we cannot be killed ourselves right? It's not pure liberty, or pure security.
When a police officer points a gun at someone that is harassment right? So we have to allow the police some degree of ability to harass people and to do it with a reasonable amount of suspicion right? And there's a line determining what acceptable harassment is. Well I believe that line wasn't crossed because that lady called the police in and they acted.
And I won't advocate it across the board, because there is a point where it crosses the line and while the last example of the cop with the van in the article would probably cross the line, I think the other reasons for its use didn't.
My point is that nothing is all-or-nothing. There is a gray area and you can't make a snap decision that they were wrong simply by reading that article. You'd really have to understand their situation. But given the details in the article most of the reasoning behind its use was okay.
Is free speech a gray area to you also? What about search and seizure?
You happen to consider this one example harmless... what if they started sending out a pink police van in states where "sodomy" is illegal when someone called in a complaint?
It in fact is a gray area. We all sacrifice our right to yell fire in a crowded movie theater don't we? See, nothing is black and white. So if they did start sending out "a pink police van in states where 'sodomy' is illegal when someone called in a complaint" then that is a whole other issue. But that's not the issue of contention here.
There is a gray area and cases like the ones in the article are not the same as the case you describe above.
I don't think so. If you voluntarily choose not to yell out a false fire alarm in a crowded theater, you are not sacrificing your free speech rights any more than when you choose not to yell "boo" in the same theater. You wish to avoid the negative social consequences of the action. You still have a right to do it, though doing either one may get you kicked out of the theater.
No you sacrifice your right to yell fire. Yea you probably have no reason to, but if you did choose to yell fire, you couldn't (legally at least). As a tradeoff you expect no one else to yell fire (unless there was actually a fire). Same thing for our right to kill people. We sacrifice that too. There's also a lot of rights we sacrifice. The right to run a red light, the right to molest little children, etc. That's what laws are. They define the gray area. They define the boundary as to what's acceptable and what's not. Anarchy is absolute freedom. Wiretapping: legal or not? Well we have courts to rule that and determine if it's too much of a violation of our rights and freedoms.
When a police officer points a gun at someone that is harassment right? So we have to allow the police some degree of ability to harass people and to do it with a reasonable amount of suspicion right? And there's a line determining what acceptable harassment is. Well I believe that line wasn't crossed because that lady called the police in and they acted.
And I won't advocate it across the board, because there is a point where it crosses the line and while the last example of the cop with the van in the article would probably cross the line, I think the other reasons for its use didn't.
My point is that nothing is all-or-nothing. There is a gray area and you can't make a snap decision that they were wrong simply by reading that article. You'd really have to understand their situation. But given the details in the article most of the reasoning behind its use was okay.