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Comment by shermantanktop | Hacker News Reader

I just wonder how this cop got so lucky that he randomly stopped a car with 91kg of meth in it. 91kg!!!

LPR will scan thousands of cars automatically, but he stated in the footage that he chose her specifically. Why?

It's not luck, it's survivor bias on the reporting.

He probably pulls 20-100 [0] people over every day. All of those checks are unconstitutional. Once every 1-100 days one of them has something worth going to court over. Most of those will be plea-bargained and never reach a judge. If it's sufficiently serious, though, it's worth the fight in court. So the judge will only see the really serious cases.

And we're only seeing the reporting because the judge did something unusual and ruled the entire operation unconstitutional.

So it's not "wow! those cops really know their business; they pulled over the one person carrying meth!". It's "wow! out of thousands of illegal, unconsitutional, vehicle stops, one person got taken to court and put in front of a judge, and that case was thrown out"

[0] I have no idea on actual numbers. The point still holds.

Well, had the officer not been lucky, he'd've opened the trunk and found nothing. The stop would presumably end there¹, and so too would any discussion of the legality of the stop unless the person whose rights had been violated had the time and resources to pursue the violation "on the principle of the matter"… not something I think most people are going to have the resources to do.

So I wonder if we could be seeing a bit of survivorship bias.

¹though with cops you never know

California plates. I was pulled over and searched years ago in Kansas for the same reason.

In this case, the Flock data then showed a bunch of recent interstate travel, which cops consider to be probable cause. They know it’s not legally probable cause though, so they pointed to her “nervousness” (aka not consenting to search).

The real question is how many times the same cop pulled over people who he searched and found nothing. Certainly nonzero.

This nervousness excuse is crap too. This is a natural response towards LEO. Do they not understand what they represent is fear to manu parts of our society?

Imagine your innocent wife, mother, daughter, aunt, coworker, while 1. She’s trying to drive across a large vast section of America. Gets stopped by cops late night in stinky west texas. They remove her from her car , into theirs, for interrogation. Would she be nervous?

Same for me with Washington plates in Minnesota. It took the police officer several minutes tailing me to think of an excuse to pull me over. It ended up being the parking tag I had hanging from my rear view mirror that necessitated searching my car.

To be fair, you're going to be a target with Washington, Oregon, or Colorado plates anywhere in the USA. Best if you fly those tags to have a really nice car.

Try driving with Canadian plates in Texas... I thought police cars were rare until that trip.

Cast a big enough trawl net and you'll catch a fish. No surprise there. But, you'll also destroy the ocean floor and kill dolphins. Many cars are being stopped using Flock every day. And many police officers are engaging in petty corruption, like stalking exes or doing unconstitutional searches.

You can tell 100 people in a day that you pulled them over specifically. And you'd be technically correct. With training to always act as if you're being recorded, it gets a lot easier to say with a straight, serious face.

It just doesn't necessarily mean anything, instead of hiding a secret reason -- which is what a statement like that is often intended do: make someone feel anxious, nervous, and vulnerable.

Thousands of cars scanned? Flock alone (there are other vendors doing the same thing) does more than 20 billion scans per month.

Pounds, not kg. ~kg/2

Anyway, a lot.

My guess? Parallel construction.

Sure, but resulting in a weak premise that gets thrown out in court?

Cops are pretty bad at their jobs.

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