In most states, videotaping a police officer during duty may be considered a punishable crime.  That’s right, if you film a police officer during a traffic stop, you may go to prison.  But should these laws be enforced?

During a routine traffic stop, motorcyclist Anthony Garber filmed the trooper that pulled him over for speeding.  Later, Garber uploaded the video to Youtube, which showed the officer in, well, not the best light.  Fast-forward, Garber faces sixteen years of jail time.

How can this be?  Prosecutors have been loosely applying anti-wiretapping laws to these types of cases, claiming that videotaping a police officer is capturing a private conversation without the officer’s consent.  Opponents smartly argue that traffic stops occur in public and that a police officer cannot categorize their interaction with an individual in these circumstances as “private.” 

What do you think?  Do you think that videotaping police officers keeps a check on the police force, or does it serve to create rebellion and distrust?

Do you have a Facebook?  Probably.  Have we all spent multiple hours searching our friends, playing games, and doing whatever else that the wonderful world of Facebook allows us to do?  Definitely.   While at work?  Well, you do not have to answer that one.

The popular social networking site, Facebook has exploded in popularity since its first inception in February of 2004.  From “Farmville” to “Mafia Wars,” the amount of games and applications on Facebook has become borderline maddening.

But how does Facebook relate to the law?

Earlier this year, a man made headlines when his Facebook status update successfully acted as an alibi to a crime committed on the other side of town.  The man’s status update was made from his computer at the time of the crime, too far away from where the crime actually took place for him to feasibly have been involved.

Now, a mother finds her estranged children of over fifteen years by entering their names into the networking site.  According to the Associated Press, a woman’s husband took the children when they were toddlers and fled to Mexico.  Since then, the woman has been searching for her lost children to no avail; until she searched their names in Facebook.  Now her husband is arrested for kidnapping and she has been reunited with her children.  But it unfortunately is not happy ending; custody battles ensue as the children do not want anything to do with their estranged mother.

It is astonishing that such a simple social networking site can have such a drastic affect on people’s lives.  But society’s increasing reliance and acceptance of Facebook and similar sites have people wondering, “How far is too far?”  Is it possible that law-makers will need to add more specific rules for collecting evidence on such sites?  How does one know if evidence and alibis have been planted?

Excuse me, until these questions are answered, I believe I need to go water my Farmville carrots.

This past weekend, the Rohnert Park police shot a woman who was armed with a straight-edged razor to death.  The woman’s mother called the police to report that her daughter had been drinking and “might have some psych issues.”  The police told the woman to drop the blade, but she began to move forward.  The police subsequently opened fire and shot the woman 3 times in the chest.  The woman died on the way to the hospital.

Do you think the force used by the police was justified?  In certain situations, do you think that the police should shoot to injure instead of shoot to kill?