Every time he gets pulled over for a selfie it's an abuse of power. If he can't ignore it, they shouldn't be doing it. Wait for a random encounter in a parking lot or gas station like the rest of us.
Every time he gets pulled over for a selfie it's an abuse of power. If he can't ignore it, they shouldn't be doing it. Wait for a random encounter in a parking lot or gas station like the rest of us.
Yup. That's a clear Fourth Amendment violation.
Same with the "pulled over to give you an ice cream" feel-good ops they do. https://abc7ny.com/post/video-police-hand-out-ice-cream-inst...
An illegal detention is still an illegal detention if it's being done nicely.
In one of the vaguely-parallel timelines, a defendant is being asked by a judge why they didn't pull over and responds with: "I thought they were going to try to give me an ice cream cone, and I'm lactose intolerant so I didn't stop."
Finally! A nice story about cops pulling over a 23-foot banana motor vehicle for years without any consequence other than spreading joy to the people involved and years of fame!
No? You could also pull the public tax dollars spent card, or other crimes not being pursued while you're at it but it won't help sour the mood!
> A nice story about cops…
This is not a nice story about cops.
> A police officer marched up to the banana and delivered the news.
> "'The reason I pulled you over, that light back there, you peeled out.'"
> For a moment, Braithwaite didn't know if he was being serious or not.
> "He said it so straight-faced," Braithwaite recalled. "And I'm like, 'Oh yeah.'"
> The banana jokes, he said, are "never-ending."
> Fortunately, so are the laughs.
..Are we discussing the same article?
> Braithwaite recently drove the banana into Mexico, where he was pulled over five times in three days.
> Every encounter was friendly, he says.
This is a great international story about cops!
> Now he's thinking much bigger.
> His goal is to drive the Big Banana Car through Central America; somehow get it shipped across oceans and eventually circle the globe.
> "I just want to keep going," he said.
> He's calling the adventure "The World Needs More Whimsy Grand Tour."
> A sign mounted to the back of the vehicle carries the slogan.
> "The world is dangerously low on whimsy," says the man hoping to make a difference.
That last paragraph hits it out of the park.
> For a moment, Braithwaite didn't know if he was being serious or not.
This is not a good story about cops. This is a good story about a guy, that includes cops as part of its plot.
It's like those "kid sells his toys to fund parents' cancer treatment" stories local news does as a feel-good segment. Great kid! Shitty system!
> For a moment, x______________ didn't know if he was being serious or not.
I'm still inclined to think that an /s is coming up in later replies. A bad story about cops and a banana motorist is that the motorist is dead, incarcerated or has a bounty on his head and is traveling around the world to ..evade.. his notoriety.
Cops on the road, who drive alone in their car, are entitled to a bit of fun.. or as Braithwaite put it, "more whimsy"!
Don't they? Help me understand..
> Cops on the road, who drive alone in their car, are entitled to a bit of fun…
No, cops are not entitled to Fourth Amendment violations as fun. Turn on the radio or something.
I am entitled to fun, too. That doesn't mean I get to pick kicking you in the shin as my fun.
There was a security incident in 2002: Trooper Fears the Wurst, Stops Wienermobile in DC -- Hot doggers grilled near Pentagon
In some purer version of the universe where laws are absolute, you might be right.
In the world as it is, with laws interpreted by humans along notions of what society generally finds acceptable: if you drive a funny car or where an especially funny hat, expect to get a lot of attention from all kinds of people, including cops.
Do some reading on all the 1000X-worse abuses of police power which are sadly routine in America.
Banana cars getting pulled over for selfies is a massive improvement.
Meh, you might technically be right but the world is better if everyone can have a bit of fun, even police. I’m not super sympathetic to the “I was minding my own business driving a giant banana when the police pulled me over to ask me about it” argument - this guy seems fine with it too, but it’s not like there’s any reason to drive it other than for the attention.
And the “I pulled you over because you peeled out” - I mean it’s fun. Anyway, if it’s harmless I don’t really see the problem.
> the world is better if everyone can have a bit of fun, even police
Police have plenty of ways to have fun that aren't Fourth Amendment violations.
If you wanna give out free ice cream cones, station a cruiser with a sign saying so. People can come to you just fine, without the "what the fuck, why am I getting pulled over?!" worries. The banana guy at least has an inkling of why there are flashing police lights in his rearview, but that doesn't make it OK.
Sure, I agree about the ice cream cones for random people. But the banana car guy is basically opting-in to getting lots of attention.
(And, yes, I realise that this is exactly the same shape of argument that turns into victim blaming when it's about cat calling or worse. No, I don't have a principled way to distinguish the two cases.)
Opting in to getting attention shouldn't imply anything one way or the other about how often you get pulled over. In the real world it does, because the police are a collection of humans and will misuse powers they are able to, but that has no bearing on what's supposed to be right or wrong - it's just the realistic expectation you'll have to deal with.
Well, especially in a democracy what's supposed to be right or wrong is heavily influenced by what the general public wants and accepts.
No, they can't have fun this way.
If you mop floors and you have fun by twirling your broom and humming a tune, you're not affecting anyone.
If we give you a gun and the right to shoot people in the head and go home to sleep in your own bed, then we can ask you to lock in a little more than that and not pull over people because it's funny.
Such a negative attitude is incredibly counterproductive.
You want police to have a positive presence in the community. Innocent engagement with a banana car helps with that, doesn't hurt.
That sounds nice.
Over here in reality, when a man with a badge and a gun pulls people over for a bit of fun: Refusing to play along with whatever game it is that they have in mind is a criminal offense.
> You want police to have a positive presence in the community.
Can they not pull up alongside and wave? Give a thumbs-up? Roll down the window?
If cops want to be a positive presence in the community then they shouldn't regularly extort and abuse citizens and protect their violent and murderous coworkers.
If being a positive presence in the community isn't enough incentive to be that, you don't deserve to be police.
And if that sounds hackneyed and like a ridiculous standard, you're damn right it is: we let them have outsized influence in our existence as otherwise free people. Their standard has to be a double standard.
There's a lot of anger towards police coming through in your comments. It's just a banana car.
It's a banana car that has been pulled over illegally hundreds of times.
Yeah I'm a Black immigrant with a funny name, I have a lot of anger about what we tolerate of police vs what we should.
Are you under the impression all cops are known for is harassing banana cars?
Except it is literally not innocent. They are violating an innocent person’s rights.
It is crazy to me that the banana car driver seems to like the attention from cops, but here in the comments we are rewriting the narrative because all cops must be evil people.
I appreciate your anger, but it’s misplaced here.
It's crazy to you because other people are applying critical thinking and you're not.
The cop comfortable with pulling over the funny looking car (that looks like a banana) is the same cop with unreasonable understanding of the responsibility they're given.
It wouldn't matter if the banana car man has a sign that says "I love cops free donuts in the back"
What's really crazy to me is that someone is working over time to try to police (literally) other people's negative feelings about cop misconduct.
What inadequacy leads someone to see others upset at an obvious misuse of power and think "I need to stand up for the guys misuing it!"
> What's really crazy to me is that someone is working over time to try to police (literally) other people's negative feelings about cop misconduct.
It’s crazy to me that you view it as “policing” your opinions rather than simply seeing my viewpoint as just that, and opposing viewpoint.
I’m not policing you. Just offering a different perspective.
I apologize for speaking up. So much for free speech :)
But I’ll say it once more: it’s a freaking banana car. Lighten up bro! Very confused why you’re more upset than the driver of the banana is (who seems to want the attention and is getting it, the desired effect)!
It becomes policing when you say:
> "I appreciate your anger, but it’s misplaced here."
Weird mix of narcissism to think anyone cares if you appreciate their anger, and arrogance to think you know where it belongs.
You're definitely confused. We can leave it at that.
I don’t mind the insults. I’ll let the downvotes speak for themselves.
The thing is, you can be reasonably sure when you pull over a big banana car, that the driver won't be a curmudgeonly prick who invokes the fourth amendment.
Well yeah, all the ones who were too easily annoyed got weeded out over 100k miles ago!
I had a car that was pulled over dozens of times so the cops could take pics with it. Most of the time it was cool.
Two times pissed me off: one time a cop had just pulled me over on the highway for a pic, okay cool, I pull back onto the highway and went maybe a mile before I was pulled over a second time by his buddy.
Other time I was just rolling into LA for a comic con, it was 3am and I'd been driving for about 14 hours. I was minutes from my hotel and of course here come the cops. I had to make a big detour to find somewhere safe to stop. The next day someone said "Oh, I think my buddy stopped you last night!" so I had him call his cop friend and was able to safely cuss him out from a distance :)
On the other hand I had one awesome experience with the cops in Oxnard when we put my car on the train tracks and accidentally set off the barriers and caused an enormous tailback in each direction at the railroad crossing. I thought the cops would be mad, but they were hilarious and promised to figure out the traffic snafu for us.
https://imgur.com/a/pBcLKqz (we didn't realize the barriers automatically detect stuff on the tracks)
Then an hour later when I was driving the car down the tracks again another cop walked up on me all mad and told me he was writing me a ticket for driving on the tracks, but when I read the ticket he'd written it out to Marty McFly and had a great laugh about it. Here's a pic of him booking Marty haha
https://imgur.com/a/vm0ud5y