Policing the Police Act of 2014 (Redraft passed)

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Changing vote to NAY

[Adam Griffin]

Changing vote to NAY

...When did you vote AYE?

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Changing vote to NAY

...When did you vote AYE?

Apologies... thought I had voted abstain. I've been ill the past few days, gets a bit tricky to keep track sometimes.

[windjammer]

Hmmmmm,
After some thought, I might have not clearly 4.9. Could someone explain me exactly the goal of 4.9? Why it should be prohibited???

[Talleyrand]

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I propose this amendment.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

There is a fundamental issue here, which I think this Bill has picked up, but perhaps not carried. What jurisdictional authority does this Chamber have over local police forces?

The substance of the amendment has some issues.

1. 4.4 is obviously fine and important as a concept - but since this amendment removes PORCs (ugh... PORC... ) then the definition of these groups is up in the air, and we don't want this group to fall victim to subjective definitions. For example, lets say an officer is a member of a very conservative Church, they might publicly reject the more extreme teachings of the Church, but choose to stay for whatever reason. If someone determines that the group is homophobic or whatever, should that officer be refused employment? This is my serious issue with this Bill is that is leaves so many holes for subjectivity when, if we are able to do something on this, then it should be clear and unambiguous. Without being counter-productive.

2. 4.5 - I think this one should be limited to certain actions. I think random breath-testing is shown to have positive impacts when it comes to drink-driving arrests and deaths. If you tell people, police can't set up these sorts of things on federal funded roads (not just Federal highways) then it risks saying "alright people, up to you, but we won't stop you unless you're actively driving dangerously".

We need to strike a balance between transparency and actively crippling the capacity of the police to actually do their jobs. If you're drinking and driving, you deserve to get pulled over and you should always been very aware that there's risk you might be breath-tested randomly or be spotted. It's not just about a person's right to do something unmolested, which is a key freedom, it's ensuring that others are free from the risk of the negligent or knowingly risky behaviour.

But I do support this amendment as a further step.

[Adam Griffin]

Hmmmmm,
After some thought, I might have not clearly 4.9. Could someone explain me exactly the goal of 4.9? Why it should be prohibited???

The goal is to ensure that unmarked car use has a specific and prior outlined purpose. You could almost compare it to a warrant, except the process wouldn't be that formal or require any hoop-jumping to that degree - just a designated purpose. I imagine that a police officer would simply need to fill out a short form prior to taking the vehicle, listing who the target is, where they live and so forth.

There are public safety issues that come into play when police forces regularly use these unmarked cars. For starters, a police officer is no good to the public if a citizen needs help, a cop is nearby but nobody can identify them. In addition, continuous and prolonged use of these vehicles - particularly for "traffic enforcement" - creates a dangerous precedent in which citizens are placed in a situation in which they must either disobey the unmarked car's orders to pull over or risk being attacked, robbed, raped or murdered by someone pretending to be a cop. When and if entire forces regularly use this tactic, citizens will have no choice but to pull over every time a VW Beetle or whatever with a couple of flashy lights pulls up behind them (only to find out it's retromike). Separately from all of that, I'm just generally of the persuasion that cops should have to identify themselves to the public unless there is a situation in which their anonymity is absolutely required.  

[Cranberry]

Yes, I support Talleyrand's amendment as well.

Regarding the amendment we are still voting on, NAY, I guess...

[TNF]

Talleyrand's amendment is friendly.

[Senator Cris]

I support Senator Talleyrand's amendment, because it removes awful parts of the bill.
But despite this, I still don't like Section 4 and I'll do the possible to improve it.

[Lief 🗽]

I object to the amendment. Why are we removing the oversight councils??

[windjammer]

Changing my vote to abstain.
Well, it appears that I misunderstood 4.9 and it makes more sense now. I would like to improve the language of both 4.8 and 4.9 but my opposition isn't enough to vote Nay.

So ABSTAIN

[windjammer]

This has enough votes to pass.
On Griffin's amendment, the result of the vote:
Aye (5): SWE, TNF, Griffin, Talleyrand, Lief
Nay (4): Cris, Hagrid, Polnut, Cranberry
Abstain (1): Windjammer


Griffin's amendmebt has been adopted.

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[windjammer]

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I propose this amendment.

Senators,
A vote is now open on Talleyrand's amendment. Please, vote AYE, NAY or Abstain.

[Lief 🗽]

NAY

I'm okay with the change to 4.1, but removing the oversight councils entirely makes this legislation mostly pointless.

[Senator Cris]

Aye

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

AYE

[Talleyrand]

AYE

Lief, I think we need to put back in an oversight mechanism, but I don't think elected police councils per 25,000 residents is a great idea.

[Lief 🗽]

Alright, that's good. I'm glad that we're not taking some sort of oversight mechanism completely off the table.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

AYE

Lief, I think we need to put back in an oversight mechanism, but I don't think elected police councils per 25,000 residents is a great idea.

Again... no one has given me a clear response on this. Sure, we can limit what they do in the Federal space... but do we actually have the right to set these standards for local policing, especially on governance and recruitment.

[Blair]

Aye

The amendment looks good, the council idea looked good on paper but looked difficult to get working in practice. The amendment keeps in all the major parts of the bill

[Cranberry]

Aye

[TNF]

Aye

[windjammer]

Aye.

This has enough votes to pass. I let 24 hours for the senator who haven't voted yet.

[Cranberry]

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I propose the following.

The change to Clause 1 is to protect the privacy not only of police forces but also of civilians appearing on the respective material.
Clause 3 is in my eyes simply not workable in today's Atlasia, and could especially in rural areas create more problems than it tries to solve (which problem does this clause adress by the way, Senator TNF?), regarding nepotism or corruption related themes.
While clause 4 certainly has a good sentiment behind it, it does violate the right to free association in my eyes, secondly will it be near impossible to determine exactly these aforementioned groups...
The measure adressed in Clause 5 helped tackle the PMA in recent history, hence why I find this not so bad an idea...