Charge him as a terrorist.
Federal, death penatly.
The local police department released video footage that had been captured, appearing to show a man dragging a large tree limb to the based of the rock, in the middle of an obvious trail. The footage continues to show a person believed to be the same man doing the same thing in another instance, with this video offering a relatively clear view of the man’s face.
Durr hurr, “based.”
The punchline is simple – if you spot something suspicious on a trail, report it immediately.
Whoever wrote this line put the punch in the wrong place. Where it goes is on the face of the trail saboteur. This is also something us motorcycle riders occasionally have to deal with. The problem with these NIMBY types is that where they are doing this is inevitably not in fact their back yards – it’s on public lands. Not cool on several levels.
So, the guy’s 44, we can see his face on camera, he’s been charged, but no mention of his name in the article?
Every state has different laws.
The reason “Florida Man” is such a popular trope is because the Sunshine State makes all arrest public information. So you can show the name and face of the suspect, which makes for a juicier story than an unnamed person with no picture.
New York law doesn’t let the name become public [theoretically]
In a lot of ways, Florida’s open-access to government information is refreshing, when entities in other states are more belligerent and less cooperating to journalists and citizens alike. That said, given that being arrested – but not charged – carries a stigma in the USA, both culturally and systemically (eg job applications), there would be good reason to withhold the names of arrested people. This is the norm for minors, precisely because we don’t want to ruin their lives unless and until found culpable. For adults, the equation could be modified so that they’re unnamed until formally charged, at which point they’ll have their day in open court to contest the charge. Whereas arrests are rarely contested for expungement.
But still, Florida’s policy currently serves a very important purpose: figuring out where someone is, once they’ve been arrested. The very power of the government to seize someone means it’s crucial to have oversight of when the government takes custody of someone. But we don’t necessarily need to know that they’ve been charged, just that we need to know which jail/facility they’re in.
To that end, if Florida and other states wanted to protect people from the stigma of (potentially wrongful) arrest, but also prevent the lawless disappearing of people to secret jails, then the solution is two-fold: 1) arrest announcements cannot identify individuals until formally charged, and 2) whenever the state or municipality has custody of someone for any reason, this must be reflected in real-time (eg online) but with no info about the reason for custody, and also updated once no longer in custody.
This allows relatives to find where someone is, the same way as calling local hospitals if someone might have had a medical emergency. We’ve already seen bad-faith handling of detained people at the federal level, where defendants are shuffled from New York to Louisiana via Vermont, to prevent lawyers and family from even filing court papers on their behalf, since those have to be filed with the court where someone physically is.
If only Logan’s Run rules were established, this never would have happened.
