In response to immigration raids by masked federal officers in Los Angeles and across the nation, two California lawmakers on Monday proposed a new state law to ban members of law enforcement from concealing their faces while on the job.
The bill would make it a misdemeanor for local, state and federal law enforcement officers to cover their faces with some exceptions, and also encourage them to wear a form of identification on their uniform.
“We’re really at risk of having, effectively, secret police in this country,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), co-author of the bill.
This needs to happen, but
“We’re really at risk of having, effectively, secret police in this country,”
We’re way past this. Without due process, without judical oversight, without identification… we’re deep into actual secret police disappearing human beings off the street.
We absolutely need to ban them from hiding their identities while “serving” the public, but at this point we need to outright ban them from the state. Senators and comptrollers being arrested, lawmakers being killed, chaos in the streets…
Any state with any hope left of resisting the wave of fascism needs to outlaw ICE from having any jurisdiction within their borders. ICE detaining a human should be litigated and prosecuted as a kidnapping, because that’s exactly what it is. “It’ll start a war,” you might say. No it fucking won’t. It will either prevent a war, or the war has already started.
Banning it/them simultaneously goes too far and not far enough. Instead, explicitly legalize self-defense against anyone that fails or refuses to identify and validate their identity while performing official activities. Turn hiding your face and badge number into literal suicide.
This just starts the war directly between civilians and ICE, and it still doesn’t address the underlying problem, which is that - masked or not - ICE agents are taking people off the streets and shipping them overseas to die, all without any oversight. The due process is still skipped over entirely. They might take the masks off, but the concentration camps will keep growing.
At the very least, they need to ban ICE agents from detaining anyone without a judicial warrant. These “administrative” warrants and blatantly racist stop-and-frisk ambushes need to stop.
I don’t understand how it’s even legal right now.
Why would they need exceptions?
Only really practical exception I can think of is when responding to fires or hazardous chemical releases (not caused by them just chucking teargas all over the place) or when working in hospitals or other indoor locations where there is an extremely high likelihood of encountering someone who is immunocompromised since they probably aren’t up to date on their shots.
In these situations, other forms of identification should be incredibly prominently visible.
Edit for the latter since I know I’m gonna get “whatabouts”: officer should be performing roles that necessitate their presence and are providing safety against clear and present threats, e.g., protection details, wellness checks, or collecting evidence. Not deporting children with leukemia or some such vile fuckery.
It has a carve-out for medical masks, so get ready for ICE to abuse the shit out of that if it passes.
If I see some goon kidnap someone ima involve myself.
Citizens arrest I’ll shout
Stop resisting I’ll shout.
What’s good for the goose
Might wanna bring a militia if you actually want to stop them.
Ok!
I’m required to wear a photo id visible at all times while I’m at work as a cable lineman. Wear all the silly hats you want, long as your badge/Id visible and presented when asked.
Wild these papers please people can’t figure it out for themselves.
Where I live cops wear strips on their vest with their station, and name badges with their officer number and name.
Badges should come with a QR code, linked to a government database, profiling official officers. Warrants should also get a QR code, with a justice’s signature, reasoning, and a short list of what activities are permitted by the warrant. The judicial branch controls their own database for the warrants and justices, while the state or federal governments have their own databases for their respective officers.
Also, should these conceptual reforms happen, people should be able to immediately send a copy of the presented warrant and badges to their lawyers and agencies via a QR snapshot.
Judges should be assigned RSA keys in a hardware module, and their public key available to everyone.
Then we build a FOSS app downloading all the Public Keys of every judge, then they would sign warrants with their RSA key.
A simple scan should also check the digital signature, and confirm its validity.
Also there should be 3 hardware modules on the same keychain, each marked with a random number that the judge remembers. If they get kidnapped, they can use either of the 2 duress keys that would signal the warrants are illegitimate and automatically revoke the real key.
In theory, anyone could forge a badge, claim to be ice, and literally kidnap people into sex trafficking or slavery and we wouldnt find out for quite a long time. That’s in addition to the already dangerous prospect of having unidentifiable police who are unaccountable.
There should be passed ASAP. Should become a national law too but not gonna happen with this government. We need to pass this on a local and state level as much as possible.
Also many people may not necessarily know how a real ICE badge looks like. And fake badges are available for collectors and cosplayers alike. Also most people will not fully check or examine a badge or insignia, meaning by the time they realize it is fake it will be too late.
Isn’t this already happening?
mmmm People whom are know to hang out on an island full of under age sex trafficed girls, are now in power of the government. Oh of course it is happening, But its no longer limited to the island, and its government approved.
It is.
You should not be under any obligation to assume or respect any proposed authority by a person unwilling to show you their face.
This sentence should not need to be spoken.
Conversely, I should not be required to show my face to anyone if I’m not trying to assert authority over them. Being a public servant means having a public identity, being a private citizen means you have the freedom to make choices about what you share.
I agree, but there’s a difference between oversight and law enforcement there. If I am telling someone they need to justify restrictions in a behavior plan, that’s different than something for which someone else may be arrested. In the former example, I think they should be able to wear an N95 for health reasons.
You should not be under any obligation to assume or respect any proposed authority by a person unwilling to show you their face.
Explaining this to the guy with a badge and a mask shoving a gun in my face.
He’s screaming and cocking the weapon, while a few of his friends approach me with tasers and clubs, but I’m just going to stand here waving a copy of John Locke’s Social Contract while explaining that I am a Free Man On The Land and do not make joinder.
Imagine if the leader can use a fake name, change their voice, and wear a mask?
Wait isn’t that just Darth Vader?
I dunno why he had to go with a Star wars reference. Nazi brownshirts were literally called stormtroopers. Seems a more apt comparison.
Because people dont read history text books… They know star wars, they dont know details about what happened in Germany in the late 1930s, if they did, we would not be in this situation…
Also stormtroopers were ripping their name from WW1 shocktroopers, they ran through the storm of bullet and thunder of artillery. Though it should be noted that some Nazi stormtroopers were actual WW1 stormtroopers, it should be noted that as a venn diagram it wasn’t a single circle.
I always see these news of proposals. Wake me up when these proposals are have actually been legislated.
It’s insane that it wasn’t required from the start.
Why not just… uhhh. Ban ICE.
There’s no political will. Most democrats aren’t leftists and they still want some form of immigration enforcement, just with more checks and balances and the rule of law.
Encourage them to wear identification? ENCOURAGE them?!? How that is not and has not always been mandatory is beyond me.
It’s a state legislature attempting to regulate a federal agency. Even if it manages to make it to the Governor’s desk, you know Newsom will veto it, because he’s a cowardly little toad man who has never found a boat he was above licking. And if, by some miracle it survives the legislature and Newsom discovers his spine, the federal courts will bat this away overnight.
All that is assuming Silicon Valley doesn’t have enough votes in the state house to smoother this proposal in committee.
Why even worry about the language of a DOA bill? You’re not stopping ICE from Sacramento. Not with the current crop of liberal dorks and techbro shills running things.
I mean, the president did threaten him, so maybe he’ll grow a spine for his own safety.
The mask part does not say encourage so I don’t see why the id part would be different.
Id would be trivial to fake. So either way it wouldn’t solve much without a hefty penalty for using a fake one.
Its already a hefty fine/jail time for impersonating a member of the law
I meant like ICE agents bringing fake ID so it had someone elses name on it and stuff. That wouldn’t be impersonating law enforcement since they technically are.
I can think of a few forms of encouragement.
“Oh? You want to “detain” my student/employee/friend/partner? You have to prove you’re a law enforcement official and are legally-allowed to.”
If that sounds unreasonable to anyone… you’re the extremist.
It’s totally reasonable, but it’ll probably also get you deported to El Salvador. Or at the very least beat.
Problem is they aren’t required to prove it to you - some witness - unless it’s your child that’s involved, and they can take their sweet time providing proof to the person being detained as well, waiting until they’ve already thrown you to the ground and cuffed you.
This has to pass. And other states need to follow suit. It’s ridiculous any law enforcement can hide who they are unless they’re undercover.
The thin blue line is how much responsibility they’re willing to accept. And it’s a very very thin line right now.
Doesn’t matter if it passes. The president doesn’t abide by the law, so they don’t need to either.
And suddenly, all ICE agents are deemed undercover agents, plus with medical need to wear masks
Plus, who is going to enforce it, cops? Lol
Has an undercover cop ever really benefited the people?
I’d love to be corrected on this, but when it comes to cops, I’ma doubt that real fucking fast.
Officers in my area wear face coverings when doing drug or gang related warrants to protect against retaliation.
Well, germany was pretty fond of one if their undercover cops for a few years.
It went badly though.
This should also include identification on vehicles.
None of this unmarked pickup truck or white van bullshit.
This includes the “ghost letter” bullshit. They claim it’s so they can blend in and catch violations as they happen. Bro everyone can see a cop driving from a mile away by the way they drive, the reinforced grill, the slightly beefier trim to hide the installed lights, etc.
Oh you mean pre-crime, we absolutely need to violate your rights to prevent pre-crime.
I honestly wouldn’t know. I live in Canada and police vehicles here are incredibly obvious and marked. Some unmarked vehicles do exist, but they are for detectives and people going after more serious crimes and dont care about parking tickets and jaywalkers.
Same here in Aus. Only ever seen rushing to actual shit going down stuff.
