Comment by ryandrake
1 day ago
The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
>They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.
i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
Yea, an arrest on your record, even if you're acquitted and/or get a settlement for police wrongdoing, can still mess you up. There are employers and landlords who will ask you / check whether you were ever arrested, regardless of the outcome of the arrest. Mere involvement with Law Enforcement puts a permanent black mark on your record and can interfere with basic things for the rest of your life.
You must not have ever been poor because the idea of several thousand dollars right now completely obliterates any notion of "maybe less money later, possibly"
Particularly if you're young and poor.
Humans don't really work the way you're implying from your armchair.
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How would being arrested for memeing be a black mark? It would be a hilarious talking point that I would be more than happy to chat with a landlord, employer, or literally anyone else about. Anyone who would hold that against you is pretty much a textbook example of a bad person (banal evil or some such).
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I have an arrest on my record. It has never, to this day, impacted my life negatively. (Aside from the actual experience, including paying legal fees - I certainly didn't get a settlement out of it.)
Then make part of the settlement having the arrest expunged.
to clarify, is this a 'record' in the abstract sense of 'something that can be known about your past' (someone googles your name and a news article mentions arrest) or some kind of literal record with arrest records etc accessible (publicly? by employers?) in the US?
This is really far from true, unless you're talking about federal security clearances.
> Yea, an arrest on your record
What an awful data environment
The fact that you were arrested, charged even, if not convicted should not be discoverable by third parties
Uncivilised
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As someone who lives this reality (arrest but no conviction), it's in practice not really so bad. It's never come up with a landlord. The last time it came up was after being accepted to grad school and I had to fill out a form about it. You do just carry with you the knowledge that if you ever get pulled over the cop can pull it up about you and have reason to hassle you more.
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this is gonna have chilling effects on free speech in america. people are gonna be thinking twice about criticising authorities after a pattern of this happening on a national level is established
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Which is why I believe criminal records should only be kept for serious crimes (killing, etc.), anything less, the record gets deleted after few months completely. Otherwise, just as you said, the black mark on the records are worse than serving a whole year in prison, and can be used to exploit others.
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And the ones who get the "payday" are just the ones we've heard of.
How many people didn't get media attention, don't have the ability (time/money) to sue, lost that case, and those where the intimidation and "punishment" was successful?
At some level the people doing this intimidation believe it'll be successful. Is that from experience?
Yes; it works. That’s why they do it.
> some of my students
When I was young, I might have thought this way for sure. I didn't expect to have a future anyway and this would have potentially been a cool level-up that I'd seize.
Responding to someone in another comment that happened after the parent, when I was young and had no real prospects (despite coming from a well-off but not super wealthy family), I had a lot of mental health issues and emotional issues that didn't seem possible to resolve and it wasn't realistic to think I'd finish a college degree or start a career. Imagine being a well-educated white male in the USA who expects to be trapped working retail forever while peers get white-collar jobs and you can see the appeal. Fortunately, decades of hard work and treatment can make a world of difference, but that's not anything you can bet on when you're young and desperate.
Students are young and often have nothing to lose, aside from missing opportunities.
Opportunity cost is a real cost.
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>so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
Those ones are the easiest though, are they not? Someone going into it with convictions (or even chickening out because they are aware of the consequences) have consolation and inner reserves. Some kid angry that he can't get a six figure salary at age 22 fresh out of college might regret it as soon as they're in the clink, but if that doesn't get them... the 6-10 years of lawyer-wrangling and stress certainly will. All for the payday to not even go half as far as they think... it'll pay down some bills, there won't be any sports cars.
not with that attitude there won’t! straight into investments, don’t touch for a few decades and she’ll be right. then again most people desperate for money don’t think like that unfortunately
Mostly this
> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
This is why the saying “you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride” exists.
They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.
The process is the punishment.
Much like peter thiel’s lawsuits against Gawker, which included funding a guy who dubiously claimed to have invented email and sued Gawker for pointing out this was absurd.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_...
YC and its founders worship him like a hero.