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Comment by ajays | Hacker News Reader

Ask yourself: would 3-4 SFPD officers show up at the door of a suspected bike thief if someone claimed he had stolen a bike worth $500?

Dear H-N readers from SF: you _can_ effect change by contacting your supervisors and asking them to raise questions with SFPD. You don't have to silently sit there watching bad things happen; you have an option, and that is to speak up. Sending an email to your supervisor is a very easy thing to do, and if enough of us band together and raise our voices, the powers-that-be will have to listen.

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He granted permission for the Apple employees to enter his residence to search. Nothing in the article indicates any civil liberties were violated.

Ask yourself: would an iPhone 5 would get $500 on the open market? More likely it would be worth $100,000 or more. And if someone stole a $100,000 device of mine with a GPS device that was tracked to a residence, I would hope the SFPD would help me. Anything less would be a miscarriage of justice.

Now onto guilt, this person admitted he was at the bar from which the iPhone was allegedly stolen. Now while this might not be enough to convict someone in a court of law, it's certainly enough to investigate further.

I do not understand why this story is getting any traction except the standard internet hatreds for police and corporations.

The main problem, as I see it, is that he didn't know the two men who searched their home were not police officers. Worse, the cops allowed the man to have the impression that they were. And the fact that the cops themselves didn't go inside shows me that they knew what they were doing was questionable.

"And the fact that the cops themselves didn't go inside shows me that they knew what they were doing was questionable."

EXACTLY! Have you ever, ever known the cops to back off from doing something, and let a civilian handle it? In my few observations of such situations, I've always seen the cops take charge, and shoo the civilians away. For them to just stand at the boundary line and watch the Apple goons go in and search, to me, is clear evidence that the cops knew fully well what they were doing.

He granted SFPD permission, not Apple employees. $100k? That sounds like a stretch. Are you saying the residences of everyone present at the bar that night should be subject to search?

He granted what he assumed were the SFPD to enter his house.

And just because he doesn't know the law, it does NOT mean that it doesn't apply to him. The laws still apply. The cops knew that they had absolutely no evidence or reason to search his house; which is why they wisely stayed outside. But they also knew that they had created a false impression that the Apple goons were also SFPD, which allowed them to enter the guy's house.

As far as the value is concerned: so what? If I put a value of $1000000 on my Bic pen, does that mean I'm allowed to break the laws in finding out who took it?? If it really was that valuable, then what the heck was an Apple employee doing with it getting drunk in a sleazy bar? Will the Apple employee be docked $100,000 from his paycheck if the phone is not found? Get real!

If Sergio Calderón did steal the iPhone5 and if Calderón did give permission for them to search his home and if the Apple employees found it not an San Francisco Police Department officer would that not make the evidence inadmissible since an SFPD officer didn't find it?

Calderón could easily say in court he never had it and the Apple employees planted it there.

"I do not understand why this story is getting any traction except the standard internet hatreds for police and corporations."

I am going to setup a company and then turn up demanding to search your home for my property. See the problem now? That's a scary incursion of your home by a corporation. Tell me you are happy with it especially since the guys you paid with your taxes stand outside waiting for me to complete searching your home.

Now assume that I plant an ounce of some green stuff under the mattress while I am at it. Now what?

I wish I shared you idealism. You're talking about the SFPD - the same SFPD that has gotten away with beatings, illegal arrests, blatant racism and bigotry for decades.

If the mass beating of gays in the Castro and two dozen illegal arrests wasn't able to perturb the SFPD, what makes you think the illegal search of one man's home will?

I get the feeling that in municipal politics the police-city relationship is very similar to the military-government relationship in many banana republics. On paper one answers to the other, but in reality one is so powerful by itself that it is essentially immune to prosecution.

For the last time, it was NOT an illegal search. They asked and were given permission to enter and search. Does that need repeating?

The gave permission for cops to search, not Apple. They knew full well that they were creating the impression that all of them were police officers.

Group of people show up in plainsclothes. One knocks on your door and identifies himself as a police officer and alludes threateningly to your family's immigration status. Two of the others ask if they can enter your house. You agree to it (and they find nothing).

Everything in that series of events is incredibly sketchy and falls under the heading "if it isn't illegal, it should be." And if you go by the spirit of the law, the Apple employees should definitely be charged for impersonating police officers, given this narrative of events.

Note that it would still be incredibly goonish even if (a) they made sure the dude understood they were Apple employees and not police officers or (b) everyone involved actually is a police officer. Pure nastiness on the part of Apple and the SFPD.

"According to Dangerfield, the officers "did not go inside the house," but stood outside while the Apple employees scoured Calderón's home, car, and computer files"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_impersonation

"I wish I shared you idealism. You're talking about the SFPD - the same SFPD that has gotten away with beatings, illegal arrests, blatant racism and bigotry for decades."

I know what you're saying: but that shouldn't stop us from trying!

Look at it this way. If we don't raise questions, then things continue on the trajectory they're on (Newton's Third Law? ;) ). However, if we do raise questions, in sufficient numbers, then we have a chance, however small it may be, to effect change. So why not try to effect change? We have nothing to lose! At the worst, things are no different; in the best case, things get better.

So please! Contact your supe from this page: http://www.sfbos.org/index.aspx?page=1616 It'll only take a minute.

They wouldn't show up for a typical $500 phone, either, as is amply documented by many people's accounts of trying to recover phones that have been precisely located.

But it's extremely disingenuous to say that this is just another phone, it's value is much higher than $500.

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