Cop pulls over man for speeding, livestreams the encounter on Tik Tok - revealing ID info

[thewayne]

Unbelievable. He wasn't speeding and was using cruise control when he was pulled over. Cop lets him go with a verbal warning. Turns out the cop was live-streaming on Tik Tok and showed the guy's drivers license. A little later he receives a message on Facebook that tracked him from the Tik Tok feed.

The guy filed a complaint with the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, the investigation resulted in the officer being suspended for two days without pay. Now the guy is suing for emotional distress, invasion of privacy, etc.

A two day suspension? That's a firing offense IMO, to violate someone's privacy like that. Either management didn't think it was worth firing over, or the union blocked it.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/man-claims-cop-pulled-him-over-just-to-stream-a-traffic-stop-on-tiktok/

Comments

[dewline]

Both, maybe?

[thewayne]

Oh, definitely a possibility.  Probably 99%+ of police chiefs rose through the ranks, though probably from a different org.  So they know both sides of the coin.

[disneydream06]

WOW, I hope he wins a big suit against them.
Cops never seem to have their cameras on during horrible things, and this idiot was tik toking traffic stops? How is that possibly legal. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

I don't think it can be legal.  I worked for a police department, granted, back in the '90s.  We had very specific training as to what information could and could not be released to the public.  I get the same training now, working for a university (HIPAA included), and I expect you do working in the health care field.

[disneydream06]

I love how HIPPA goes by the way side when it doesn't fit for the Clinic.

[thewayne]

I wouldn't be in the least surprised.

[silveradept]

That is absolutely a firing offense for the police officer, and the kind that should prevent him from being hired anywhere else. Of course, we've been trying to figure out how to get police officers fired without being hired again by the next jurisdiction over for decades at this point, and it never seems to work.

[thewayne]

Actually, there is an organization tracking blackballs against officers for things like brutality and such.  BUT it requires the hiring agency to go to the trouble of contacting them to find out if an officer has a bad record.  Even so, you'd think that the employment services group could be bothered to do some Google searching.

[silveradept]

Ah, yes, they would have to do some sort of due diligence to find out if the person they were hiring was actually going to be good. Rather than spending the money so they can beg for more and demand other things be cut to feed their "public safety" maw.

[thewayne]

Of course, it assumes that the top of the food chain really cares about the quality people that they hire.  If Numero Uno is a racist misanthrope, then he's likely to tune the department to his wishes.

[silveradept]

Pretty much. If the stories I've heard of of military recruiting are true, and their having trouble filling the ranks with quality people (because quality people aren't choosing the military over politics or all the stories about what the military does on a regular basis,) I can only guess what of the dregs police departments have to work with, given how much they're involved in corruption and violence and a complete lack of public service.

[thewayne]

This is why I like the European way of populating police departments.  Their academies are not 4-6 months of training, it's 2-4 YEARS.  It's like college, and you are very thoroughly trained by the time that you leave.  Among the reasons I'd like to move to Germany or elsewhere is to try and get back in working IT at a police dept: much more professional orgs.