Safety Cap's Journal: Lock and Password your phone, people!

Seems that one Patrolman Christopher Green, upon pulling over a drunk driver, discovered some nude photos (of the driver) on her cell phone.

Being the Good Ol' Southern Boy that he is, he copied them to his PDA.

Two weeks after he pulled her over, he called the driver and invited her to a restaurant. Then, on the day of her arraignment, he showed the pictures around the courthouse.

It is unlikely Chris will get any jail time or a fine (the blue line protects their own, and whatchu lookin' at, boy?!), but he'll probably get a little slap on his wrist and a warning to 'not show the stuff in the courthouse...save it for the bar after work' or 'upload it to the internets instead'.

Welcome to Texas.

Update 1:03 CST: I flubbed the link code - thanks to Johndiii for providing the right one. It's fixed now.

I think

[Aggrazel]

Maybe people shouldn't take naked pictures of themselves and keep them on a cell phone if they don't want them to be seen?

Re:I think

[orthogonal]

"Maybe people shouldn't take naked pictures of themselves and keep them on a cell phone if they don't want them to be seen?"

You're right! And maybe people shouldn't go around naked under their clothes, in case they don't want cops to see 'em naked during any illegal body-search the cops perform to get their jollies!

Look, what the cop did wasn't pursuant to any law enforcement duty. Not the seeing them (since when does a traffic stop give a cop to rifle through stored pictures on a PDA -- did he think the

Great

[Safety Cap]

~ did he think there might be a picture of a gun, and the picture might shoot him ~.

Thanks for letting the cat out of the bag. Now it will be illegal to own a picture of a gun without a 15-day waiting period, and you have to have a license, and you have to register your picture...

Can't blame the victim

[Safety Cap]

That's like saying, "She shouldn't have worn those clothes if she didn't want to be raped," or "He shouldn't carry so much cash if he didn't want to get robbed."

If the phone was germane to the case (i.e., an integral part of the crime, or evidence thereof), then sure, have a field day. It is not clear if this is the case.

Passing around "evidence" like candy tarts is not cool, either, no matter what "relevant use" it has. Finally, the whole "hey, you're hot wanna meet me at Crazy Joe's Fish Shack to go o

Re:Can't blame the victim

[Aggrazel]

You misunderstand, I'm not saying that at all. I'm not defending the cop's actions. What I'm saying is that a cell phone can be misplaced or hacked or anything. If you truly don't want naked pictures of yourself out there, don't leave them on your phone.

The link is broken

[johndiii]

I'd be interested to know where this happened (besides just Texas).

It was Houston

[johndiii]

Houston Chronicle story here [chron.com]. I think that this is the kind of thing that you really don't want on the force.

Fire Him

[enforcer999]

He needs to be fired. There is something wrong with an officer that does not respect the privacy of a woman. He has some serious issues that could cloud his judgment in other ways. For instance, what if this officer has to investigate a rape crime scene where the guy insists it was mutual sex or any other scenario involving women and sex?

Fire him ...

[tomhudson]

Two weeks after he pulled her over, he called the driver and invited her to a restaurant.

That would get him fired in a lot of places.

As for the photos, there's a simple solution - get a couple of pix of the cop, along w. some barnyard animals, and some time with photoshop.

I mean, if the guy's going to act like a pig ...

Re:Fire him ...

[ScytheBlade1]

"Fighting fire with fire" comes to mind.