California bans masks meant to hide law enforcement officers' identities

> Yes, what you're missing is that you are intentionally conflating "same standard" when you imply that the criminal standard is voluntary and the LE standard is legal.

This is hard for me to parse, what are you trying to say?

> See your quip about the criminals "than they would treat us" and "able to be as cruel". Voluntary behavior of the criminals. Which is not under discussion.

No, you misunderstood what I was trying to explain. The concept I was trying to explain and reinforce was that the cops should be the good guys. Good compared to what? The behavior of criminals. So it is a part of the expectations for the behavior of police. Or in other words, it's a mistake for Bianco to set the standard of behavior for the good guys, at the level of behavior we see from the bad guys. We should hold cops to a higher standard.

I.e. like you, I agree that it's wrong to compare the actions of police to the actions of criminals. everyone should hold the actions of police on their own, an ask is this what the good guy would do?

Youth services has been hiding the names of their employees for more than a decade now. A few years back the final shoe dropped: now kids aren't even allowed to know the name of the judge that took them away from their home anymore.

They cite, of course, the same argument ICE makes: threats against them.

Is that legal? Well, their theory is that any kind of "family law" proceeding (including convicting minors of crimes, and locking them up without access to family or schooling for years) is considered civil law. Therefore none of the normal legal rights apply. I would think this is trivially a violation of the constitution, especially because it comes to imprisonment, but clearly it is not, since the justice department has no problems doing it. A child can be locked up for a crime (up to when they get 27 years old, yes, not 18, in some states), even if the present proof they didn't do it. The very, very, very basic legal right to not get convicted of a crime that you didn't do is openly violated by youth services. Right to have a trial? Nope. Right to having the state prove their case? Nope. Right to not get locked up without cause? No. Etc.

Needless to say, this was promptly exploited by some states who gave kickbacks to judges who "delivered" juveniles for private detention facilities. When caught doing this, the justice department promptly declared nobody had done anything wrong (except one of the judges who, in addition to having thousands of kids locked up for money, had lied on his taxes. He was never actually imprisoned, and finally pardoned by the president)

Oh and in case you don't know: locking minors away from school? Yes. Youth services does that. Parents aren't allowed to do that. Schools aren't allowed to do that. The police isn't allowed to do that (minor gets arrested, and wants to go to classes or do your homework? Police has to make it happen). Fucking death row isn't allowed to keep a minor out of school. But youth services IS allowed to do it.

So a secret police in the US? This is not new. What's new is that immigration enforcement started doing it on a large scale.

What about when your next door neighbor is walking down your street when an unmarked van pulls up and a bunch of masked men in plain clothes grab her off the street and throw her in the van? (Which literally is what is happening)

Quoting https://thenieveslawfirm.com/do-police-have-to-identify-them...:

You’re minding your own business when a police officer approaches you. They start asking questions, but something feels off. You ask for their name and badge number, but they refuse. What do you do?

As a citizen, you want to trust and cooperate with law enforcement, but you also have rights that must be protected. The question of whether police officers are legally required to identify themselves when asked is a complex one, with no easy answers.

In general, no, a police officer does not have to identify themselves even if you ask them—making it even more important to invoke your right to silence no matter who you think you’re talking to.

California Penal Code Section 830.10 states:

“Any uniformed peace officer shall wear a badge, nameplate, or other device which bears clearly on its face the identification number or name of the officer.”

However, there are a couple of key issues with this law that limit its effectiveness in ensuring police accountability:

    The law only applies to uniformed officers, meaning that plainclothes officers or those working undercover are not required to wear any identifying information.
    Even for uniformed officers, the law doesn’t explicitly require them to make their badge number or name easily visible or accessible to the public. An officer could potentially wear their identifying information in a manner that is obscured or difficult to read.

Hiding their identity completely undermines accountability.

It's also an extremely glaring public safety risk to normalize people who refuse to identify themselves using force and guns to grab and pull people off the street with nothing more than a "trust me, bro".

Typically, you wouldn’t need to - they are supposed to have their names and ID’s on their badges.

And as long as you’re not actively interfering with something they are doing, yes you can and should be able to do exactly that.

Because you’re a member of the public, and you should be able to complain and if they are doing something bad, they should actually be held accountable to it.

Crazy eh?

ICE and the like know what they’re doing, and why.

I think you have it backwards: this applies to SWAT and is very unlikely to be respected by ICE.

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I didn't, but if I would have down voted you it was because I'm not sure I believe you, and you didn't cite law, statue, or court decision confirming your claim. Or explain why you claim to believe that...

Both would be important parts of a useful comment. Perhaps the problem isn't disagreement, but your comment was just low effort that appears to come from anger and frustration?

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> the catastrophic effect on public safety

When was the last time Californians felt safe to go walk alone outside at night in the major cities?

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