Friday, May 07, 2010



Florida cops no longer shielded from public shaming

We read:
"Forget Consumer Reports — the Internet bypasses professional reviewers.and lets regular people share their experiences with everything from cars to hotels to police officers.

But not everybody likes to have bad reviews of their performance available to the public. In Florida, cops got their pet politicians to pass a law making it legally perilous to get too specific when giving thumbs-down to uniformed arm-twisters.

That law is now a thing of the past, tossed out as a First amendment violation by a federal judge.”

Source

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A good decision from this federal judge? If it's such a good idea, why not have the same system in place to judge judges and politicians?

The public has a right to judge the performance of their civil servants, although i'm not too sure that using the internet is the right way to go about it. We all know the internet has no filters, meaning no one knows whether the comments posted will be true or accurate. A person could lose their job, pension, and reputation over false allegations. It does happen. I'm afraid this idea will cause all the loonies out there to vent, and we know they couldn't care less about honesty and/or accuracy.

Anonymous said...

Other people can just reply and criticise them. Also people will get used to the idea that loonies are out there. Is there any law that forbids anonymously criticisng judges?

Anonymous said...

"Is there any law that forbids anonymously criticisng judges?"

If there isn't I guarantee you the judges will come up with something to put your criticizing ass in the slammer!

Judges are a law unto themselves.

BTW,

Did anyone ever find Judge Crater?

Aspergers.life said...

Whazat? Cops being held accountable to citizens? What an odd concept! Stalin would roll over in his grave -- if he were buried in a Florida swamp.

As one who has had his arm twisted (figuratively speaking), I welcome the opportunity to expose the bad guys in blue. Nothing like the free market place to keep rogue cops in (thin blue) line.

Stan B said...

So…I went to “httpe://www.whitepages.com” and entered “Annette Garrett Tallahassee FL”

Got a hit – and only one. Home Address, Telephone Number. And facebook page.

Go to the facebook page and confirm (from her entries on her wall) that this Annette Garrett is a patrol officer in Tallahasse.

Time to get all information?

Less than 5 minutes.

What was this case about again?

PS – The same works for the Judge.

Wikipedia Article pops up :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Richard_Smoak,_Jr.

Tells me he’s stationed in Panama City, Fl.

Go to Whitepages.com, assuming he lives where he is stationed -

Less than 2 minutes to his home address and phone number.

Anonymous said...

DailyKenn.com said...
"As one who has had his arm twisted (figuratively speaking), I welcome the opportunity to expose the bad guys in blue."

And of course, this allegedly happened to you for no reason at all. Right? This is exactly what Anon 4:04 meant.