Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the abuse-of-power dept

This week, we could easily replace “insight” with “outrage,” plenty of which was generated by the shocking story of gross violations by the police in searching David Eckert. Both of this week’s top voted comments were responses to that post. First up, That One Guy with some suggestions for the police:

This is a perfect example of why a growing number of people see the police force as a whole as no better(if not worse) than the criminals they are supposed to be around to deal with.

You want to repair your rep with the people, even if a bit? Start calling, vocally, loudly, and most importantly publicly for criminal charges, jail time, and immediate firing(none of that ‘paid vacation/suspension’ crap, the facts are abundantly clear here) of those thugs/’officers’ involved.

Hide behind the infamous ‘blue wall of silence, and stay silent on this case, and you do nothing more, and nothing less, than show why more and more of the public are coming to view the police force as no more than thugs with badges.

Trailing just a couple of votes behind, we’ve got Ninja expanding on Tim Cushing’s initial statement that the story rendered him nearly speechless:

I share the feeling. I believe most readers will agree. These officers must be jailed and stripped of any authority. And the doctors should be severely punished too but I’m not sure how.

I’m guessing people would rather be stopped by muggers now than interact with the police in the US, no? I know that feeling quite well unfortunately.

For editor’s choice — though it’s a little unfair to give one to someone who already won — it’s worth highlighting That One Guy’s reply to Ninja’s second place comment, thus rounding out the top three on that post:

A mugger? He can rob you, maybe rough you up a bit, and if you honestly think your life is in danger, you can fight back to protect yourself.

A cop though? He can rough you up, throw you in jail or ticket you on some trumped up charge, and if you think you’re in danger and try and defend yourself you’re likely to get tazed, pepper-sprayed, beaten, possibly shot, and then (assuming you survive)to add insult to injury you’ll be charged with ‘resisting arrest’ and ‘assaulting a police officer’, likely leading to massive fines if not jail time.

Yeah, I’d take a mugger over a cop any day, the mugger is far less of a threat.

(And to those that inevitably will chime in with ‘not all cops are like that’, that’s nice, but how are you supposed to know before your face eats asphalt that the cop you’re dealing with is a sociopath, and what, other than hope you don’t set them off somehow, are you supposed to do if the cop is a nutjob on a powertrip?)

The illustrative irony is that, if faced with a mugger, you would generally be happy if a cop turned up — but if faced with an abusive cop, you have nowhere to turn.

For the second editor’s choice we’ll move to a different post in the same vein and highlight a reply from Trails to the TSA’s latest abuse and weak PR response:

Protip: If you have to tell people you’re the good guys, you’re not the good guys.

Over on the funny side, we start out with the post about a new We The People petition demanding UK-style porn filtering on ISPs. The petition included the bizarre assertion that a Google search for “cat” turns up porn, when in fact it mostly turns up… cats. One anonymous commenter had an explanation:

Yes, but most of those cats are naked!

In second place, we’ve got Ima Fish with a humorous misreading of our headline about Apple’s latest aggressive move:

I misread the title and thought Apple killed off its own sales website. I assumed that Apple was so hip and exclusive that it refuses to sell its own products.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, first we’ve got one more comment from our post about the anti-porn petition. Arsik Vek provided a quotable rejoinder to such nonsense:

Porn is a standard feature of my ISP in the same way that milk is a standard feature of my car. I can use it to go get some.

And finally, in response to the news that trademark law may be used to get the controversial slur out of a football team’s name, an anonymous commenter offered details of the story as he heard it:

I heard the Washington Redskins were contemplating a name change that would remove “Washington” from their name because it was embarrassing.

Zing! That’s all for this week.