Legal Eagle

Only for their group to turn and start hunting them as soon it becomes obvious despite their crowdfunding they can't actually afford to pay them?

Don't you pay in advance?

Half up front, half when it's done.

Granted, at this point we've gotten into an unknowingly set civil war. Kickstarter's pay policy might end up background noise.

Here's a video from Cody of Alternate History Hub where he explains why the Purge will never work in Real Life. Funny enough, this video was sponsored by The Purge TV show, which suggest even the producers knows the whole Purge thing is stupid.

When discussing The Purge, you do have to keep in mind it's very much intended as a Dystopian Edict. It doesn't work in-universe.

The courtroom scene from Ghostbusters 2.

Saw this on the YouTube thread: a 50-minute video about COPPA.

From the description: "COPPA is better and worse for creators and YouTube than everyone has realized."

Laws broken in "Home Alone".

This is great. It's not the first time that someone has played the "Kevin is a criminal mastermind/budding psychopath" card, but I like how he tallies up all of Kevin's acts and then concludes that no jury would ever convict him due to his age and self-defense motive.

Personally, I think that his parents ought to share some responsibility for his acts, since their act of neglect predicated everything he did.

Also our astute legal friend didn't point out another obvious element: Kevin clearly has superpowers. That's the only explanation for how he could devise and build so many traps in less than a day, never mind clean up the unbelievable mess left behind afterwards.

The cops are kind of brainless too. Harry and Marv are found unconscious and severely injured in a property they burgled, and clearly did not inflict those injuries on themselves. Police would be all over that neighborhood looking for who did, and would spot the damage and debris from the traps on the McAllisters' property, a home where they had recently received a report of an abandoned child, no less.

At the very least, Kevin (and his parents) would be questioned about the incident. If he were somehow able to remain absolutely straight-faced about it, not revealing anything to his parents or to the cops, then we'd know he's a psychopath.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 12th 2019 at 6:57:38 AM

All one 1920s^note I'm assuming based on the fashions depicted family wanted was a short respite. Time away from their life of labor. And thanks to the careless actions of a man rushing to avoid his landlord, an explosive box and an Unwitting Instigator of Doom, they got it, but not int he way they planned.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 29th 2020 at 11:13:24 AM

You could probably get them for negligence, but they'd have an uphill battle to get them responsible for what Kevin did, because the moment they noticed the mistake they called the cops twice, and that's DAYS before Kevin turns his house into a death trap. The cops then failed to enter or investigate the house properly despite being told there's a child alone in the house. Anyone prosecuting them would have to argue how immediately calling the cops was negligent on their part and how the cops' inability to retrieve Kevin when warned of the situation is the parents' fault.

Heck the first officer outright refuses to even send an officer.

Am I the only one who's disgusted that they charged a woman who can no longer work for court fees? As pointed out in the comments, fireworks or not, the real negligence was the failure to secure the scale.

Different legal standards back in those days, I guess. It's also not unheard of for lawyers to completely miss obvious arguments. I had that experience serving jury duty once.

And, now "Tiger King".

Colorado family lost their house ...to the police who effectively seized it to catch a felon and then wrecked the place beyond habitability. The family then took it to court twice only for judges to decide to side with the cops.

It is an interesting question, isn't it? Are the police liable for any direct damages, such as loss of property or loss of use, caused in the course of legitimate law enforcement activities? The established legal precedent is that they are not.

For my part, I'm of the opinion that The City should have given them more money, and their budget should probably have included this.

I suppose part of the issue with the trial as portrayed is they talk more about the semantic letter of the law and less about what sort of precedent they'd be setting or has been sent.

I could see an argument that if the city was liable for damages, there'd be the issue of them having to stop and think "Wait? Can we afford to pay this off?" which is not something you'd want the police to consider while in the process of stopping a dangerous criminal.

Exactly this. The police need to stop criminals first and worry about damages later, as long as their actions are not reckless.

Edited by Fighteer on May 15th 2020 at 3:18:40 PM

The unfortunate thing is the Lechs probably ended up in deep debt due to whatever legal fees they had to pay.

All Cops Are Bastards.

As I said above, you have to keep in mind the police were trying to stop a legitimately dangerous criminal who was trying to kill them and quite possibly could have killed the Lechs had they not intervened. They managed to do this without one getting seriously hurt in the physical sense.

You can say blowing up the house was a bad idea, but what should they have done? And I can tell you that taking any course of action that would have resulted in someone getting shot would have been much worse than whatever they took.

Now, there's the argument that they, or the city, should have paid for damages, which I consider more reasonable. In fact, it was my initial position until I considered the following argument: That could still set a bad precedent. For example, if the city decided it didn't want to pay for damages, it might sabotage police from doing their job and that could get people killed easily.

And in the process ruined that family's life, so that's a pretty cold comfort.

When their home is literally made unlivable that can only be described as 'Reckless' and easy counts as harming. And easy doing more harm than 'good'.

Edited by Memers on May 15th 2020 at 8:05:57 AM

Frankly it feels like this should be something a Police Department / City should be insured over.

The guy wasn't going anywhere. They had him cornered and contained. Keep siege. They've done so for over 10 hours at this point. It occurs that the same officer was overseeing this siege for about what, 14 hours straight? Have someone else take over. Rotate cops out. While yeah, they didn't kill anyone, the guy wasn't going anywhere. With phone, and likely power and water cut to the house, he's only gonna last so long - even if the family has a stocked fridge.

The main issue here is the cops acted like they had a hard time line. No doubt exacerbated by the officers in charge having at this point been at this forever without a break.

Heck, since it's 2015, go to the same walmart he stole from, buy a cheap drone, use that to fly into the house and find him without risking your officers or needing to tear the house open. They can afford APC and giant robots with arms.

Like, the cops were not out of options there.

I do think it's awful the family lost twice though, and frankly is another chapter in how awful police in the USA can be.

Yeah but that's also the kind of thinking that leads Police to stuff like that time Philadelphia bombed one its own neighborhood from an helicopter. Where everything's allowed coz the people in charge can justify it over "doing their jobs"

Edited by Ghilz on May 15th 2020 at 11:54:12 AM