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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16063 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Stealing this from @ToaKraka in the FF thread:

A 911 call is made regarding a robbery perpetrated at gunpoint by three juvenile males in black clothing. One mile away from the location of the reported robbery, the responding officers find two juvenile males—one in all black, and another, KC, wearing a black shirt and mask and gray pants. The officers pull over alongside the juveniles and start walking toward them while shining a flashlight at them. KC starts walking away. An officer steps in front of KC, blocking his path, and asks him what's in his waistband. KC discards the object in his waistband (a gun) and runs away, but is quickly apprehended. He is charged with various delinquencies.

The trial judge grants KC's motion to suppress the evidence. The officers fully detained him, rather than casually speaking with him, when they shined a flashlight on him and blocked his path; and they did not have reasonable suspicion to detain him, since the description given in the 911 call was vague and KC didn't even match it. (The caller didn't even provide a direction in which the assailants fled. Did the officers have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery? No.)

Our own BJ Campbell wrote that this is one of the important differences between the US and Western Europe. A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery and physical evidence wouldn't be suppressed even if obtained without following the proper trail of investigation.

Is the USA shooting itself in the foot there? What will it lose if it changes its legal norms to lower the bar on probable cause and evidence suppression?

It seems to me the problem with law is its universality. We need hard paternalism for the bottom 10% and classic liberalism with protections for everyone else

Yes, and the way that this should be implemented is swift and sure punishment with escalation ladders.

For example, let's say you are caught shoplifting. First offense, a warning. Then 1 day in jail. Then 30. Then 1 year.

Instead the law is like "Crime carries a sentence of 5 years but they probably won't prosecute and if they do the judge will probably let you out with a warning, unless they decide not to for some reason and throw the book at you".

You get bizarre cases where a first offender is thrown in jail for a long time and the (more common) scenario where a repeat violent criminal is released dozens of times. Three strikes you're out was the right idea, we just need better refinement.

Especially when punishments that could seriously deter/derail the lives of the top 90% are essentially lettuce floggings to people in the bottom 10%. You can pile infinite fines on somebody who's already subsiding purely on government aid and cash jobs

The "free to leave" analysis for whether it was a detention seems awfully hard to square with Florida v. Bostick and United States v. Drayton. A state is free to have stronger protections under the state constitution than the federal one, but a judicial opinion has to make it explicit that the court is relying on the state constitution rather than the federal one per Michigan v. Long, and I don't see the court specifically relying on the Penn. state constitution in that decision (but I didn't check all the cited decisions, so perhaps those do).

That case would be a solid loser for the defense in my state. I have, in fact, lost motions to suppress on very similar fact patterns, and I'm far from the only one (so it's not simply my incompetence).

Courts have been making the definition of seizure or detention very expansive. I know of a couple cases in my home state of Washington.

In State v Sum they ruled that an officer waking a man sleeping in a vehicle, asking for identification, and saying he was investigating a stolen vehicle, constituted seizure. They vacated Sum's conviction for giving a false name subsequent to the seizure. They also added a racial component to the law's hypothetical reasonable observer, "an objective observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases."

The Washington State Supreme Court ruled in State v Meredith, relying on the racial dimension introduced by Sum, that officers asking for proof of payment from someone on a bus constituted a seizure, and that the officers lacked cause for the seizure. The decision vacated his conviction for giving a false name subsequent to the seizure. The lead opinion stated that fare enforcement has a “known, racially disproportionate impact” and later said its holding served “to mitigate the known, racially disproportionate impact of such fare enforcement practices."

In both of these cases the stakes were low. Meredith had already served the 58 day sentence that was vacated. The details of Sum's sentence aren't available, but it was also already served. Both were misdemeanors.

In both cases advocacy orgs like the ACLU pursued the cases on behalf of the defendants. Funnily enough the region's transit orgs filed amici briefs in favor of Meredith.

In both cases we had men who were already making net negative contributions to society, and who had their stupidity amplified by well funded organizations to make it even more difficult to rein in the behaviors of men like themselves. The defendants don't even have to show up for the apellate court hearings. I had ChatGPT try to find evidence that they did attend, and it was unable to find any.

Sum

As set forth in this court’s precedent, the seizure inquiry is an objective test in which the allegedly seized person has the burden to show that a seizure occurred. To aid courts in the application of this test, we now clarify that a person is seized for purposes of article I section 7 [of the state constitution] if, based on the totality of the circumstances, an objective observer could conclude that the person was not free to leave, to refuse a request, or to otherwise terminate the encounter due to law enforcement’s display of authority or use of physical force. For purposes of this analysis, an objective observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases, in addition to purposeful discrimination, have resulted in disproportionate police contacts, investigative seizures, and uses of force against Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) in Washington. Finally, in accordance with our precedent, if the person shows there was a seizure, then the burden shifts to the State to prove that the seizure was lawfully justified by a warrant or an applicable exception to the warrant requirement.

Based on the totality of the circumstances presented in this case, we hold that petitioner Palla Sum was seized when a sheriff’s deputy requested Sum’s identification while implying that Sum was under investigation for car theft. As the State properly concedes, at that time, the deputy did not have a warrant, reasonable suspicion, or any other lawful authority to seize Sum. As a result, Sum was unlawfully seized, and the false name and birth date he gave to the deputy must be suppressed. We therefore reverse the Court of Appeals and remand to the trial court for further proceedings.

Meredith

Finally, we consider whether the disturbance of Meredith’s private affairs in this case exceeded what was “reasonably necessary to further substantial governmental interests”. To make this determination, we consider “‘reasonableness…’ along with history, precedent, and common sense”. As a matter of both reasonableness and common sense, unless mass transit is offered for free, transit operators must be able to charge and collect fares from passengers. Therefore, as history and this court have long recognized, passengers using mass transit must pay their fares or they “may be ejected”. We do not question that premise.

However, in this case, Meredith was asked for proof of payment by law enforcement officers, who then identified and arrested him using resources that no civilian conducting fare enforcement could have accessed. Although we are not asked to opine on the constitutionality of these later actions, they could not have occurred without the initial seizure.

Moreover, as detailed above, the risk of such escalation would be acutely felt by reasonable transit passengers, who are more likely to be members of “historically marginalized groups”, including Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. Members of such groups are already known to be “‘disproportionate victims’” of “police encounters without reasonable suspicion”. If allowed to continue, the high level of intrusion that occurred here would only exacerbate these disparities. The State has not shown such an outcome is reasonably necessary to further the governmental interest in fare enforcement on public transit.

To be fair, it appears that this ruling forbids only fare enforcement by police officers, not fare enforcement by transit employees who are backed up by police officers if they find a noncompliant passenger.

Yet, “[o]n this particular day [the officers] didn’t have any [transit employees] to work for [them,] so [the police officers] worked as a team of two deputies riding the bus fully outfitted in [their] patrol uniforms and then one deputy in a chase car in case [they] dealt with anybody.”

The Washington State Supreme Court is very blackpilling. They essentially rule like kings, vetoing citizens initiatives, and rubber stamping acts of the state government which are obviously against any clear reading of the state constitution.

The state is controlled by an interlocking grid of far left institutions. Merely replacing one won't help. The whole rat's nest has to be slowly unwound which would take decades. Change is essentially impossible.

I get the sense that this is how it must be in Europe, even more so with the supranational EU and European courts that exist far removed from any democratic control.

Democracy is essentially dead in a lot of places.

Democracy works.

Washington residents voted for this.

Democracy only works in an area where consent of the governed is equally geographically distributed.

In Washington, it is not.

They also voted for 35 dollar car tabs.

And the Supreme Court that overturned them. And they never punish those Supreme Court justices. The last justice to lose a reelection bid was Richard B Sanders in 2010, and he was replaced by Charlie Wiggins. Sanders was conservative, Wiggins a liberal. Wiggins was on the majority opinion in the court's 9-0 decision that held that the death penalty was unconstitutional becuase of disparate racial impact.

The voters don't punish overturning initiatives, so the Court is free to reason to achieve its desired outcomes.

the court's 9–0 decision that held that the death penalty was unconstitutional becuase of disparate racial impact

Link

The decision does not appear to be based on disparate impact. Rather, the justices relied on a report finding, with p-values of 4.8–11.1 percent, that race was a factor in the application of the death penalty. (In a footnote, they declined to use the common p-value of 5 percent as a "mechanical bright-line rule".)

Have you voted in Washington state? The elections are basically like

Judge A: Leftist with a AAAA rating from the Bar Association. Certificate of honor from good girl club.

Judge B: Leftist with a AAAA rating from the Bar Association. Certificate of honor from good girl club.

They are not running on the issues like legislative candidates because of the fiction that they are merely interpreting the rules and not making them. It's a farce. Sure, change isn't impossible, but it would take a decades long march through the institutions to get there.

While the elections are nominally non-partisan, I just open the candidate's website and usually can quickly discern their party alignment. If the front page doesn't make it clear from language about equity or law and order, it's easy enough to find out who's endorsed them.

I don't recall ever lacking a conservative option, but until about 2018 I would have voted for the liberals.

There are non-leftists on the ballot for judges for a few seats every election and every time they get absolutely destroyed. Seems like a strong signal from the voters what they want.

They voted for $35 car tabs to get sent to judges, and they voted for those judges to nuke it.

I wonder what the voters really wanted. It's so mysterious.

Yeah, I'm aware that voters are retarded and will vote for a balanced budget, tax cuts, and to give every old and black person a free Cadillac. All at the same time.

Nevertheless, I don't think the voters of Washington should be allowed to vote for kings to rule over them unless they know explicitly that's what they are voting for. These justices run on platforms like "I have a highly qualified rating from the bar association" not "I'm basically Mao in a robe".

It's a farce when the kings will allow the vote to count sometimes, but not other times, depending on whether the kings like it. Feels like Calvinball, largely because it is.

You're familiar with the term "manipulation of procedural outcomes", I presume?

It’s not news that I believe the Cathedral is evil. And since it’s 2008, you’d expect evil to have not only a name, but a blog. And sure enough it does. Evil’s name is Timothy Burke, he is a professor of history (specializing in southern Africa) at Swarthmore, and his blog is Easily Distracted.

The great thing about Professor Burke is that he appears to have a conscience. Almost every post in his blog can be understood as a kind of rhetorical struggle to repress some inner pang of doubt. He is the Good German par excellence. When people of this mindset found themselves in the Third Reich, they were “moderate Nazis.” In Czechoslovakia or Poland they “worked within the system.” Professor Burke is nowhere near being a dissident, but there is a dissident inside him. He doesn’t like it, not at all. He stabs it with his steely knives. He can check out any time. But he can never leave. His position is a high one, and not easy to get.

The entire blog is characterized—indeed it could serve as a type specimen for—the quality that Nabokov called poshlost. Simply an embarrassment of riches. I am saddened by the fact that, as a new parent, I cannot devour the whole thing. But as a case study, I have selected this. The whole post is a treat, but I am especially tickled by the line:

I am drawn to procedural liberalism because I live in worlds that are highly procedural and my skills and training are adapted to manipulating procedural outcomes.

“Manipulating procedural outcomes.” My entire post—maybe even my entire blog—reduced to three words. If you want to know how you are governed, this is it: you are governed by manipulating procedural outcomes. It’s perfect. It belongs on someone’s tomb.

A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery and physical evidence wouldn't be suppressed even if obtained without following the proper trail of investigation.

If you don't suppress such evidence, police will not bother following the proper trail of investigation; they will simply do what is expedient. This is great if you want more incidents closed by arrest (and more criminals caught if the cops are at least honest, though 'expedient' can go beyond that point), but lousy if you want to get around without being hassled by police if you have any resemblance to common criminal types (age, sex, color, clothing, etc)

True, although a real blackpiller will recognize that these rules exist to help the underclass victimize you, not to protect you from illegal police searches. If they want to nail you, they still will.

All Western legal theory falls apart when the subjects of the law start viewing the enforcers of the law as just another competing tribe. Same thing happens when the enforcers of law start viewing the subjects as a competing tribe.

To that end these discussions are very quaint. No one is interfacing with reality.

All Western legal theory falls apart when the subjects of the law start viewing the enforcers of the law as just another competing tribe.

Said enforcers view THEMSELVES that way. The thin blue line, or "the biggest gang in town". Cops view themselves as a breed apart and above ordinary citizens.

I sometimes muse on the viability of an armchair utopia where most police work would function as a kind of national service that ordinary citizens are called to for a couple of years, so that the average beat or traffic cop is not someone who's made "cop" the core of their sense of self.

Israel does this. I follow some math professor who does some part-time cop work.

I tend to feel these type of proposals run into issues on how many hours are in the day. But for 90% of the population 4 years as a cop probably teaches them more than 4 years in college. Perhaps we could do these things in a less credentialed world.

Speaking from personal experience(no, I’m not law enforcement, just to be clear here), it’s very difficult not to fall into this mode of thinking when you have access to sensitive information that the public can only be partially aware of and giving info out could get you and your organization in severe trouble.

I know I’ve slipped into calling some groups ‘civilian’ before mentally slapping myself and looking to find another term.

This sounds like woke judging for black youths. No detention took place. There is an underlying assumption here that black youth are not smart enough to talk to a police officer.

If I want to talk to someone I walk directly at them in their path. That’s a completely normal interaction. The black youth in question could have just responded to the cop “I don’t want to talk you can you get out of my way”

I would like to see the body cam to see how the cop impeded the black youth but everything in the report is just a normal human interaction. And yes a big way we catch criminals is they are not that smart. But that’s a criminals problem not a cops.

IMO if I had a bright orange t-shirt on and the officer did not think I was the criminal he was searching for but wanted to talk to me and asks “hey did you see a couple teens in black around here” the cops behavior would likely be 100% identical. This is just how you approach someone at night you want to talk to. We can’t make it illegal for cops to talk to people.

If I want to talk to someone I walk directly at them in their path.

If you're approaching them from the opposite direction then yes, that's perfectly normal. What happened here is that the officer was following K.C. from behind, got ahead of him, and turned around, blocking his path forward. If a stranger did this to you in public, it would be highly abnormal and probably raise some kind of alarm. If a cop did this to you, it would not suggest that the encounter was casual.

Yes, I 100% agree that it is not casual. The office either suspects me of a crime or thinks I may have information he wants. It’s a clear indicator he wants to talk to me. I could see a colleague doing in this in an office walking up from behind and turning to face me. They have something they urgently want to talk to me about.

But wanting to interact with me and being detained are not the same thing.

Someone above posted prior case law like Florida v Bostick. I feel comfortable saying this ruling is not in line with US constitutional law. And this court is overstepping their authority (since apparently they haven’t stated this is based on state law).

If I were this suspect: Do I think the cop suspects me of a criminal offense: yes Has he detained me: no

If I want to talk to someone, I walk directly at him in his path. That’s a completely normal interaction.

You aren't a police officer with the power to stop someone for questioning. Even for a normal person, intentionally blocking someone else's path is rude. For a police officer, it can rise to the level of implicit detention.

The suspect has reasonable methods to find out if they’re being detained. They can walk around the officer or just say “hello could you please get out of my way”.

You can’t make it illegal for police to talk to people. There is a difference between being rude and being detained. And I disagree it’s even rude to walk directly towards someone you want to talk to.

The suspect has reasonable methods to find out if they’re being detained. They can walk around the officer or just say “hello could you please get out of my way”.

Yes, both of these tests will work. In the sense that if you ARE being detained, you'll know it, because you'll be down on the ground with a split lip.

In reality, the police will just say no, and only beat you if you resist arrest.

You are going too far. This would be a very easy civil lawsuit to win if the police behaved as you just described.

LOL, no. The police will say whatever it takes to win, the judges support them (in court, your word is suspect and theirs is gospel), and even if they get caught doing something wrong, there's qualified immunity. When they lose cases it's because the politicians want them to lose (e.g. sympathetic minority plaintiff)

That’s not what qualified immunity is. It means you can’t sue the cop personally. You can sue the city. And you can get jury trial. And you would have video evidence.

you can sue the city for what?

"cop did something bad" isn't enough to hold a city liability for the bad behavior of one of their cops

a video of a cop protected by qualified immunity doing something bad isn't some golden ticket to find municipal liability

under Monell, it is even more difficult to find municipal liability than individual liability with a steep evidentiary burden which courts are very reluctant to allow much discovery (if any) to find (if they don't just dismiss the claim during the pleading stage for failure to present supporting evidence)

in roughly half the federal circuits, a finding of municipal liability when qualified immunity has been upheld is all but impossible because the circuits have held local governments cannot fail to train to prevent a cop from violating a constitutional right which isn't clearly established

iirc, only the 9th circuit allows an independent claim to functionally survive upheld qualified immunity but in practical terms is very hard and very rare

for all practical purposes in typical cases, an upheld finding of qualified immunity ends the lawsuit

responding to someone pointing out these cases are not "a very easy civil lawsuit" by implying these sorts of claims are difficult because the vast majority of the time qualified immunity is upheld that they don't understand this situation because municipal liability is, to be frank, ridiculous

More comments

Yes, exactly what he said. The law is swift and brutal to you, not to underclass criminals.

The suspect has reasonable methods to find out whether he's being detained.

Forcing someone to risk being accused of acting suspiciously by evading detention sounds unreasonable.

The officers could have just not blocked his path. The opinion gives two different examples where that was permitted: 1 2

I disagree it’s even rude to walk directly towards someone you want to talk to.

I said it's rude to block someone's path, not to walk directly toward someone.

Refusing to talk to police as far as I know is not probable cause for detention.

I keep reading what you say and want to say in a less polite way “I am not a member of a low IQ demographic”.

People of my tribe are perfectly fine dealing with this situation even if we did the crime and walking away unarrested while also not having our privacy rights impeded. But yes I understand we live in a world where a significant percent of our population is constantly confused. I don’t think we need to design society so that dumbest parts of our society can do crime and get away with it.

People of my tribe are perfectly fine dealing with this situation even if we did the crime and walking away unarrested while also not having our privacy rights impeded.

No, you aren't, assuming you're a white collar white guy. If the cops decide you did it (and they may have already done so before the stop), they will arrest you. All your friends and most of your relatives will invoke just-worldism and assume you're guilty and cut ties with you. And thus the appearances are maintained. Minority cultures where the cops are treated as enemies are simply correct; a black person who gets arrested will have the support of his community, whereas a white collar white man will have to conceal his arrest to maintain his viability within his community afterwards if he is acquitted or the charges dropped. In neither case does actual innocence or guilt matter. The white people maintain the illusion that THEY will have no problem in such a situation by defining anyone who does have a problem as not one of theirs.

Wouldn’t this be reasonable suspicion, as for a traffic stop, and discarding the gun is itself probable cause?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

  • If you're pointing out that the standard in this case was reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause, then I clarified that here.

  • If you're saying that the officers had reasonable suspicion for a stop and the suspect's discarding of the gun upon being stopped then gave them probable cause for an arrest, then the judges found otherwise: there was no reasonable suspicion for a stop.

reasonable suspicion

Whose reasonable suspicion is it? Is it a 'reasonable man' or is it someone expert in detecting suspicious / criminal activity. It seems reasonable to me that this officer perhaps skilled in the art may notice an odd gait or posture due to carrying a wepon in a waistband that I or the judge may not as we are insufficiently skilled in the art of detection.

In this case, the prosecutor characterized KC as "grabbing at his waistband and [blading] his body away from" the officer, but the trial judge "explicitly disagreed with this description of KC's actions after reviewing the body-camera footage".

However, I can't tell whether that disagreement is relevant here. The police officers initially stopped their car solely on the basis of the clothing worn by KC and the other juvenile, not on the basis of any suspicion of a gun. And it is unclear from the panel's summary of the officer's testimony whether the officer developed a separate suspicion that KC was carrying a gun before or after walking up and blocking his path.

Stealing this from @ToaKraka in the FF thread:

Link to the full opinion

probable cause

Reasonable suspicion for a brief investigative stop is a lower standard than probable cause for a prolonged arrest. (The English word "detention" is a bit misleading here, as in colloquial use it implies a prolonged arrest.)

In this instance it was a detention because the officer stepped infront of the youth and shined his flashlight upon him, and a 'reasonable' youth wouldn't have felt free to leave?

It seems like the youth actually leaving would cut against that.

7:30 on an October evening, I'd want a flashlight too.

In this instance it was a detention because the officer stepped in front of the youth and shined his flashlight upon him, and a "reasonable" youth wouldn't have felt free to leave?

Yes. According to the judges: "A reasonable person, with his path impeded by a police officer, the officer asking him investigative questions while another officer stood nearby, and the questioning officer training a flashlight on him, would not have felt free to simply leave the interaction."

It seems like the youth actually leaving would cut against that.

(1) The officers stop their car next to KC, get out, and start walking toward him while shining a flashlight at him. This may or may not count as a detention.

(2) KC starts walking away. You can call this evidence against the idea that item 1, standing alone, counts as a detention.

(3) One of the officers deliberately steps into KC's path, blocking him from walking away. At this point (with both item 1 and item 3), a detention definitely has taken place, considering the totality of the circumstances (say the judges).

(4) The officer asks KC what he has in his waistband. KC discards the object (a gun) and flees. If the stop had been lawful, then this would constitute probable cause for an arrest. However, the stop was not lawful.

7:30 on an October evening, I'd want a flashlight too.

According to the judges: "The body-camera footage shows that the street was well lit by various streetlights".

According to the judges: "The body-camera footage shows that the street was well lit by various streetlights".

Camera footage may look appear brighter than the same scene to the eye and I'd expect a flashlight to illuminate shadows and provide better contrast. Feels very 'vibes' based.

I wouldn't have expected spotlighting to be detention adjacent unless accompanied by, "You there! Stop! Police!" I suspect the counter narrative of being charged with fleeing / obstruction after being 'detained' via spotlighting would also be dismissed.

I think I prefer the sates narrative that he ditched the gun and fled prior to detention and the his fleeing was within seconds of the officer steeping in front of him. I'd like to see the video.

Thank you, I am not that well-versed in American legal terminology.

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