Author Topic: Radioactivity Detectors  (Read 1274 times)

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Offline BMG

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Radioactivity Detectors
« on: May 11, 2012, 12:54:41 PM »
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Mike Apatow, of Milford, poses at Stratford Fire Station, Company 2, in Stratford, Conn. May 10th, 2012, where he works as firefighter. Apatow, who had a radioactive stress test Wednesday, was pulled over later in the day, in Newtown, by a state police trooper after a radioactivity detector in the trooper's car was set off when Apatow passed. The detectors are used to help identify potential terror threats. Apatow was not on duty at the time.

That's a pretty sensitive detector! I wish they hadn't posted this story though - I didn't know that the police had this capability and I didn't need to know it either.
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Re: Radioactivity Detectors
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2012, 01:03:32 PM »
Oh boy, do I hear that!  Some things, once known, cannot be unknown.

Nothing surprises me anymore, though, when it comes to the police and their toys.
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Offline Glock32

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Re: Radioactivity Detectors
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2012, 08:32:43 PM »
This will just end up as something to harass citizens with.  Any ne'er do well with weaponized radioactive material will probably be sophisticated enough to have it shielded, or would be so brazen in its use that all the detectors in the world would mean nothing.
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Offline IronDioPriest

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Re: Radioactivity Detectors
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2012, 10:06:43 AM »
This will just end up as something to harass citizens with...

As an aside, the last time I traveled by air, I brought my GPS unit and its "throw on the dash" mounting base. We were flying into Vegas to stay for a few days, and then driving to Phoenix to see my folks before flying home.

The base is a solid, heavy piece of black rubber filled with some weighting substance like sand, and it has a smooth plastic disc for mounting the GPS unit's suction cup to the base. I had the GPS and the base in my carry-on backpack, and the density of the base going through the xray triggered a warning, so they pulled me aside to search the bag. Fine, I thought.

Instead of taking the base out of the backpack and inspecting it, they completely emptied the bag and examined every single thing, from flipping the pages of books and magazines, to opening a deck of cards, inspecting the peg compartment for my cribbage board (a little metal slider with a sharp edge, perfect for slitting throats, BTW), and everything else in the bag.

They got to the base. The agent held it up for examination, and says to the other agent, "This is the item. What is this?" The other agent says, "Oh, that's a GPS base."

Then the first agent says he'll have to swab it down. He took a little moist towlette and wiped every inch of the base, thoroughly and meticulously, almost making sure to take extra time, agonizingly explaining to me every step of the process... "Now I'm going to open this towlette treated with a chemical able to detect explosives. You'll need to stand back. Now I'm swabbing the object in question, making sure that if there are any explosives on the object, they'll be detected. Now I'm placing the swab into the reader, and we'll wait for the result."

Guess what? My GPS base triggered an explosive warning. Two additional agents converged onto the location, as they informed me that I was to receive the patdown. I suffered that indignity while my wife, sons, and little daughter stood by and watched.

I couldn't contain myself. When he stood up from feeling my crotch, I said, "How can you people live with yourselves? How do you sleep at night and look at yourselves in the mirror every morning knowing that what you do for a living is so completely useless and despised by everyone you confront at your job? It's not like you're cops, keeping people safe. This is a joke."

"Just doing our jobs sir."

"Well, you're making a choice every day to come to this. If I were you, I'd find respectable employment that didn't make me into a useless piece of sh*t."

With the curse word, he looked at me sternly, "Keep talking sir. Keep talking."

My patdown was completed, so in a moment of boldness, I said, "Whaddaya gonna do, arrest me? Phhht." I walked away, and that was the end of it.

But man, are you spot on Glock. These piece of sh*t "law enforcement" officers - and let me be clear, I'm not speaking of all cops, but of the insidious mission-creep of all badged authority - are looking for new ways to harass. They want us out of our comfort zone. They want us to become used to ceding our liberty to their badges. Or perhaps more correctly, now that most people are used to ceding their liberty to their badges, they feel more and more emboldened to harasss for its own sake under the guise of "keeping us safe".
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Offline Glock32

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Re: Radioactivity Detectors
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2012, 07:41:26 PM »
I will confess to having a generally negative opinion of "law enforcement officers" because they seem just a bit too on board with abuse of power, whether it's the petty just-because-they-can sort of harassment or the more serious stuff like no-knock raids at the wrong house resulting in an innocent citizen's death or injury. I don't know, I've just seen way too many podunk police departments out in BFE with officers who think they're Green Berets or something. And I hasten to add that most of them probably couldn't pass the PT in basic, let alone the special forces. But I digress.

For me the icing on the cake is their reaction to being videoed. The belligerent indignation they express only confirms to me that they possess exactly the opposite sort of psychological traits an officer of the state should have. This is one of those areas where I have a libertarian tendency. In my view, wanting to be a cop is pretty much an automatic disqualification for actually becoming one. Same goes for POTUS for that matter. At every level we have too many people who crave authority over the lives of others.
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Offline EW1(SG)

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Re: Radioactivity Detectors
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2012, 11:24:00 PM »
I will confess to having a generally negative opinion of "law enforcement officers" because they seem just a bit too on board with abuse of power, whether it's the petty just-because-they-can sort of harassment or the more serious stuff like no-knock raids at the wrong house resulting in an innocent citizen's death or injury. I don't know, I've just seen way too many podunk police departments out in BFE with officers who think they're Green Berets or something. And I hasten to add that most of them probably couldn't pass the PT in basic, let alone the special forces. But I digress.

For me the icing on the cake is their reaction to being videoed. The belligerent indignation they express only confirms to me that they possess exactly the opposite sort of psychological traits an officer of the state should have. This is one of those areas where I have a libertarian tendency. In my view, wanting to be a cop is pretty much an automatic disqualification for actually becoming one. Same goes for POTUS for that matter. At every level we have too many people who crave authority over the lives of others.

That.

We have municipalities all over the country adding British style community monitoring via video camera, and somehow the police want to be exempted from having their public behavior taped?

Something seriously wrong with that.
My doctor told me to start killing people.  Not in those exact words, she said I had to reduce the stress in my life.

Same thing.

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Re: Radioactivity Detectors
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2012, 11:38:45 PM »
I will confess to having a generally negative opinion of "law enforcement officers" because they seem just a bit too on board with abuse of power, whether it's the petty just-because-they-can sort of harassment or the more serious stuff like no-knock raids at the wrong house resulting in an innocent citizen's death or injury. I don't know, I've just seen way too many podunk police departments out in BFE with officers who think they're Green Berets or something. And I hasten to add that most of them probably couldn't pass the PT in basic, let alone the special forces. But I digress.

For me the icing on the cake is their reaction to being videoed. The belligerent indignation they express only confirms to me that they possess exactly the opposite sort of psychological traits an officer of the state should have. This is one of those areas where I have a libertarian tendency. In my view, wanting to be a cop is pretty much an automatic disqualification for actually becoming one. Same goes for POTUS for that matter. At every level we have too many people who crave authority over the lives of others.

That.

We have municipalities all over the country adding British style community monitoring via video camera, and somehow the police want to be exempted from having their public behavior taped?

Something seriously wrong with that.


They've been elevated beyond their stations -- in their own minds.  The taping of them is not exactly a national security issue -- although one would think that from the way they carry on -- it's a Constitutional one.  They've been given, and accepted, the idea that they are not civilians because they're SWAT-ted up with military gear and tactics.  Time was, if the cops were outgunned/outmanned, the "militia" picked up their guns and pitched in to help get the job done; everybody was assured of their rightful places in society.   The police are hired by the people, LENT their authority, to do full time what is every citizen's duty.

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