JohnMuir_NeilsBohr t1_it7qh5a wrote on October 21, 2022 at 3:22 PM

Reply to comment by thecoffeecake1 in Philadelphia police raid leads to seizure of weapons, ATVs, fighting dogs in Kensington by dc122186

My car isn’t kept on the same property as illegal narcotics and a dog & cockfighting ring. If it was, and it was involved in constant overrun of city streets and general asshattery, there would be probable cause to impound my car. But alas, Philly is not getting tormented by stolen Volvo station wagons.

Probable cause was given the second they started smashing windows and ripping people out of their cars in the street while riding these ATVs and dirt bikes. Let me know when they all show up with the titles at the impound lot

thecoffeecake1 t1_it7s39i wrote on October 21, 2022 at 3:33 PM

There is zero proof that anyone who owns/possesses any of these dirt bikes was involved in smashing anything. What if you owned a sports car, would it be ok if the police impounded it because people with similar cars as yours illegally street race? Has no one ever committed a crime in a station wagon? Well, since I'm sure someone has at some point, I guess that gives the police probable cause to impound your vehicle, until you can prove it's yours and that you didn't commit a crime with it.

The onus of producing proof is on the police, not on the citizenry. That's exactly what is supposed to separate us from a police state.

JohnMuir_NeilsBohr t1_it80ptj wrote on October 21, 2022 at 4:30 PM

Dude. Stop making the comparison to a police state, they had legal warrants and went through all proper channels to serve them. You sound like an idiot. I get what you’re arguing and why, but it makes no sense in a city where shit like this happens on a weekly basis: https://youtu.be/18aRLFxuekI

Context definitely matters in a case like this.

It’s not simply a case of mistaken identity of one dirt bike for another. It’s another example of the general lawlessness in the city. The same reason why three Wawas, one of them only two blocks from fucking city hall, have to close because they can’t even feel confident enough that the crew in there will be safe overnight.

Like I said, let them all produce the titles. Then I’ll eat my words and feel bad that their property was impounded.

thecoffeecake1 t1_it8rcem wrote on October 21, 2022 at 7:28 PM

That's the thing though, context doesn't really matter. What matters is the law, right? What matters is the rights people have, and those rights need to be universally respected, not respected conditionally based on class, race, or profiles.

I get that the dirt bike/atv thing annoys people. I live a block off Spring Garden, it's one of their favorite stretches to tear up. But that doesn't mean the cops get to go around and find any excuse to seize property that very well could be legally owned. The police need to prove that something is illegal, NOT the other way around.

The problem here is that people are demanding certain rights be violated because something bothers them. We need to "crack down" on the dirt bikes and seize them all because I don't like when they ride around my neighborhood. That's just not acceptable. If this happened in a different neighborhood for a different reason (again, what if the cops came through a block in Rittenhouse and towed all the sports cars away), people would be absolutely irate.

People's rights need to be respected 100% of the time, even if it's inconvenient. Isn't that a part of our whole national ethos all those patriots are carrying on about all the time? It's those same people out now demanding the police circumvent local, state and national law to put a stop to a minor nuisance.

They were serving a narcotics warrant, no? Do you think each of these individual bikes were covered under that warrant also? Obviously not, since the police told neighbors to bring their papers and recover their property. That's an admission that they have no idea what bikes are legally owned with papers, and which ones aren't. They took those bikes as a PR stunt to score some points with the public that have been rightfully critical, and you all ate it out of their hands.