Off-Duty Police Officer Steals iPad From TSA Checkpoint 178
SpaceCadetTrav writes "A recent arrest report shows that an off-duty police officer from Fullerton, CA was arrested on felony grand theft charges for stealing an iPad at a TSA checkpoint in the Miami International Airport. The theft was captured on video surveillance last month and the officer was tracked down just before boarding her plane."
wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like she thought she was employed by the TSA.
News for nerds (Score:0, Insightful)
stuff that matters
*sigh*
Re:A Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
No surprise. Cops are people too, with all the usual failings.
At least this bad cop was arrested instead of "protecting their own", but let's see how he is prosecuted.
The fact that they are actually applying the law equally and not regarding the cop as above the law is the surprise.
If only they'd prosecute police brutality, corruption, and intimidation (particularly of anyone with a camera) with such fervency. Then they might stop looking so much like the thugs they're supposed to protect us from.
If that sounds too categorical, that's for a well-founded reason. The cops who don't abuse power themselves but keep silent when their co-workers do the same are equally guilty. They sometimes call it "the blue wall of silence". I call it the blue wall of cowardice. It is most unbecoming of such otherwise brave people.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd have to be mentally defective to steal at an airport. They're the most tightly secured and monitored civilian areas.
No, you just have to think you're above the law. That the cop was wrong about this is the exception and not the rule.
The norm is that cops who break the law, including those who engage in unprovoked violence against innocent civilians, receive a paid vacation known as admistrative suspension.
Re:News for nerds (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this one of those places... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a cop from California who got caught doing the crime in Florida. That's why.
The cover-their-own stuff happens in other cases because they broke the rules in their own district, thus it's their own department, staffed by their own co-workers, that has the authority to go after them. Yeah, it sounds like a massive ethics violation to me, too. IMO, when a cop is accused of something, it should be the next higher layer up in charge of the investigation (local cop? state investigation. state cop? federal investigation. federal cop? federal investigation from a different part of the country.) There's a reason people ask "who watches the watchers?".
Re:News for nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
Show me a /.er that likes TSA, and I'll show you someone who doesn't belong here.
Distrust of government is associated with competence, technical or otherwise. And most of the folks on /. are people who are competent. Competent and or self-reliant people do not feel the need for government to protect them from themselves or imaginary threats. The competent person is capable of feeding and housing himself. He is capable of defending himself as well, when given the opportunity (not disarmed).
TSA is obviously abusing the 4th Amendment, morality, and good plain sense. TSA (and DoHS) is bad government. TSA needs to be eliminated and its duties returned to the airports. DoHS needs to be eliminated and its duties returned to the Treasury Department.
Yet, recording police is still illegal someplaces. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is really the only argument that ever need to be voiced when arguing against laws that make it illegal to record police in public:
Who are Police? They are people. Some people do wrong things sometimes. Thus, some police break the law. Making it illegal for others to record the police only makes illegal behavior by corrupt police easier.
In this instance the officer was not on duty, but it shows that just because you are employed as a Police officer or Government agent doesn't mean your morals are always intact.
Re:News for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
It speaks about how even low IQ people crave for the single most innovative and powerful device thats bound to rewrite the complete history of computational devices. Obama farts? It's news if he have an iPad in his hand in the moment. Nuclear power plant flooding, is not news because nuclear power plants don't make/use iPads. Get with the program.
It also matters for anybody who travels with electronic devices. The TSA requires you to take your laptop (and tablet) out of your bag and put it on a little tray, out in the open and all by itself, to go through XRAY. Then you have to go through the scanner, so you're separated from your goods for a bit. I'm all for poo-poo'ing an obvious appeal to fanboism for link-bait, but you don't really think that's something important to know?
Okay, here's how it matters for iPad owners:
- You'll lose sight of it.
- Activate the 'find' feature.
- Don't go to airplane mode until you're on the flight.
And for non iPad owners, but owners of other tablets or laptops...
- You'll lose sight of your gadget.
- Encrypt your device.
- You should see if there's a built in GPS that can phone home.
Again, I'm annoyed with Slashdot's use of Apple stories to serve ads, but I just flew recently and I think there's definitely a lot of 'it matters' here to discuss. I'm lucky in that my iPad didn't walk away from me during the security screening. I wasn't too worried about it because it's the cellular version and I have the 'find me' option activated on it. I didn't realize this until this article came about, but I put the iPad on Airplane Mode before we went through security. That was dumb Dumb DUMB of me! The 'find me' option wouldn't work!
This thread could easily be salvaged.
Re:"...She placed her bag of chicken over it" (Score:4, Insightful)
I had nothing to hide so of course I said yes to the search.
This was your first mistake.
Re:News for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's a matter of self-reliance, more of a matter of being intelligent enough to realize that the TSA is completely useless, a waste of tax dollars, and (as you said) rapes your constitutional rights.
However, I think most slashdotters are intelligent enough to realize that government is necessary. Nobody is or can be completely self-reliant. Good luck getting from California to New York without roads and bridges or airplanes, for example.
Most intelligent people realize that regulation is necessary. I see the occasional railing against the EPA, but these people are obviously too young to remember a US without the EPA. You young people can't imagine how dirty the air and public waterways were before the EPA. The air around a Monsanto plant was so toxic you literally could not breathe driving past one with your windows down (and few had AC in their cars back in those primitive times). Rivers and streams literally caught fire!
Government is necessary (but don't trust it). The TSA isn't.
The competent person is capable of feeding and housing himself
Not without help. You need land and tools to grow food, tools, labor, and materials to build a house on that land. You need society, and societies need governments. Anarchy results in monarchy.