>The cop said, “You’re under arrest,” grabbed her arms, and pulled her out of the room. “I can do this all night. I get paid by the hour,” the cop added.
Two sentences showing precisely why no one can trust the police. Not only are they completely unaccountable, but they will trample your first amendment rights and do so with smug amusement in full public view. These are the kinds of people we're supposed to be happy to give massive surveillance power to?
I don't even get what the comment has to do with anything. Is it supposed to be some kind of zinger? It's a great idea. Make him spend all night arresting people.
The article is written to enrage you. Including that "zinger" makes you angry at the establishment. After reading the article, while I sympathize with the woman who was arrested, I am not surprised at the outcome.
The article didn't "include" the zinger, the cop said it. If you think it's an inappropriate thing for a cop to say (I do) then the article is not to blame for you being angry. The cop is.
The article didn't enrage me. The video did. The actions of the local politicians and police did.
If the attendee's description is true and the video is not missing context, then that doesn't appear to be what happened. Interpreting her description and the video, during the public comment period for an unrelated topic, she went through the usual process for giving a public comment, started her completely off-topic written statement, then was arrested during it a few seconds after two attempts by the council to interrupt her, during which she was flipping off the council.
If she was within her allotted time for a comment that was completely off-topic but otherwise complied with the public comment process, and her flipping off the council was, as she claims, only after it was clear that she was going to be interrupted by the police, then that does seem different than actually interrupting the discussion or refusing to leave.
Looking at the the wrong way, what the citizenship in mass should be doing is surrounding the meeting with torches and making said council fear for their lives.
You might want to look at how a small mob orchaestrated by and comprised of Bush's campaign flooded voting offices to stop a recount, as part of a successful effort to steal the election from Gore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
They didn't even need torches to subvert democracy. I think a majority of Americans are under the misconception that they live in a civilized democracy, and that they have been for a while. But if you look under the covers (or if you're a minority), or just learn history, then you'll find that it's not.
>You mean like how they used the "you can't speak on an issue because we've decided we're not talking about that" rule to have this lady hauled off?
It's not open Q&A. There's nothing preventing them from speaking on their preferred issue online, or even outside. Otherwise public meetings quickly devolve into anarchy. If a specific time was allocated to talk about speed limits, do you think it's fair game for TERFs to use that time to complain about gendered bathrooms?
That's not to say the mayor/council is in the right either, but we also can't have "if you think the debate was shut down too early you can do whatever you want".
>It's not open Q&A. There's nothing preventing them from speaking on their preferred issue online, or even outside. Otherwise public meetings quickly devolve into anarchy. If a specific time was allocated to talk about speed limits, do you think it's fair game for TERFs to use that time to complain about gendered bathrooms?
Bring on the TERFs. Better it be a dumpster fire that get's DOS'd from time to time than people not be allowed to speak their minds.
Please engage in good faith and write comments that contribute, rather than taking away, from the conversation. [ the above comment was modified to copy mine; this is not good faith ]
Gather up a dozen friends, dress like Indians and throw the politician in the harbor. Yes I know I'm mixing and matching historical references, that's the point. Have one guy dressed as Elizabeth Warren, another guy like the redskins mascot and a third guy as Abu from the Simpsons like they didn't understand the assignment. The point is to maximize the meme-ability of it so that you get a court of public opinion trial and not the usual kangaroo court trial that people who thumb their nose at government get.
Article: city council purposefully cancels the public comment segment of an extremely divisive issue that people came to protest, arrests two people, cop makes clearly sadistic comment, the direct will of the people is beaten into submission by using the powers of the council to derail any possible opposing words or actions
Comment thread: but what about her decorum? Did you see the middle fingers she was putting up? Why didn't she comply with the procedure and sinned by commenting on an unrelated topic after they canceled the appropriate one? Are we sure she didn't break any other laws here? What if she looked at someone the wrong way? Are we sure we want to permit this behavior in our society? And why is the article quoting the cop? Isn't it a bit divisive to just use the officer's own words to make him look like a monster? Why aren't we talking about the real issue?
When you wonder how average people let dictatorial power grow unchecked in their societies, refer to the above.
As an european guy. Interesting to see things happen from far away. Knowing that crazy country has so much power, makes the near future of the whole world even more scary.
It's not that much different in the most powerful parts of Europe. For instance Germany does this to people who talk about Palestine. So does the UK. Poland does it to people who talk about gay rights. I don't know the equivalent in Spain, France or Italy.
On the other hand, I see a lot of HackerNewsers and European geeks utterly angry at laws that forbid (blanket) recording of public places and GDPR which controls what the videos can be used for.
Every EU topic here is filled with people wishing for its destruction and dismantling of such privacy protecting laws.
> The USA doesn't like when any entity gets too powerful.
The US seems to broadly have permitted both their government and their corporations to exercise an absurd degree of influence over them in recent years, so this doesn't track. This is a problem in most countries, but the rate of change of the US is unparalleled.
You're right that some countries are more paranoid about certain kinds of power than others. That just ends up creating blind spots, where some Europeans can barely imagine their a decision of their government being wrong, while some Americans are knee-deep in ideology that decrees that anything private is automatically good, free and moral because only the government has the capacity to be evil and companies can't influence them. This doesn't really apply to the issue here, because it's a perfect collaboration of the world parts of the private and public sectors, so almost no one likes this.
Those are likely the same people who want to unconsensually force Flock and other mass surveillance on people. Most well socially adjusted people greatly appreciate those protections.
Thankfully we have no voting power in the said country so they don't care what we think as long as we consume and overall behave. Let's see how long this lasts though. It seems as though EU is approaching the finding out stage.
They really buried the details in this article. The opener leads you to believe she did nothing wrong because she briefly spoke during a public comment period
> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri. After briefly speaking at a podium during a public comment period, she was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs.
The details are toward the end. The council was trying to discuss a public housing issue and she was trying to use that time slot to bring up Flock.
> Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue.
They cut off the mic and told her it was the wrong topic, she wouldn’t leave the podium, flipped off the council (it’s the photo in the article) and the police hauled her off the podium.
There’s a real valid story in here about the city council sending the Flock thing to committee, but the article has been through the clickbait ringer so many times that they’re trying to make it sound like someone got arrested for saying “Flock cameras” during an open comments section, which isn’t true.
Given the topic I’m probably going to get downvoted for bringing up facts from the article itself, but I’m really tired of this type of journalism where you can tell they workshopped this and carefully chose which important details to bury at the bottom of the story so it gives a different impression if you only read the headline or skim the first couple paragraphs.
I dunno, Council announces that they are going to be talking about Flock (YC 17), that there will be public comment about Flock (YC 17), sees that a whole lot of people are very angry about Flock (YC 17) and have come to the meeting, and immediately shift the discussion to a committee so they don't have to hear those people angry about Flock (YC 17), I can see why she did what she did. That sure seems like the Council is trying to avoid all of the community anger over Flock (YC 17).
If you are going to do something that makes so many people so angry that they are willing to come to a local government meeting, you kinda have to let them talk about it, you know? Otherwise it feels like you're trying to run out the clock on them.
Can you explain the need to be annoying about the YC 17 thing? What's the objective here? Is it supposed to convince potential founders to decide against taking YC's money as a way of putting financial pressure on YC not to fund projects that people don't like? Or is the intention that YC people are reading your comment directly and it's changing their minds?
I can't imagine either of these being impactful, and the effect seems to just be to distract from people's concerns about Flock (YC 17). Eg, my eyes are bouncing off of the presumably anti-Flock statement you're making here because you've coated it in repeated parentheticals and tortured the writing so you can say "Flock" as often as possible.
I am amused that much of the HN community goes out of its way to highlight YC connections for companies- I've even seen it for Stripe (YC 09) and Dropbox (YC07) within the past year or so- but has completely dropped that for Flock.
Huh, you seem to be right, the most recent for Dropbox was about 5 years ago. Maybe my sense of time is all screwed up? I thought I remembered it more recently than that. But I trust the data more than I trust my memory.
You're conveniently omitting the fact it was public comments for a different issue
>Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.
Ah I see you are well versed in bureaucratic attack strategies on the first amendment! “We’re not violating your rights, there’s a special first amendment zone you can say all that where we can’t hear!”
Can you instead try to see that people who disagree with you may actually not being attempting to subvert the first amendment, but instead are focusing on the necessary business city councils have to achieve? There are clearly limits on what you can say and do in a city council meeting.
I can see that, but that's also exactly the mechanism by which buraucracies attack the first amendment, so people who just reasonably disagree should explain how their disagreement doesn't serve the very agenda they say they're against.
Do you truly believe the mayor and city council were trying to attack the first amendment as a core principle?
We don't live in an free speech absolutist society. People don't get to talk about just anything, at any time during a city council meeting without restrictions. Don't attribute to malice what is more easily attribute to getting business done.
Malice isn't required to destroy the first amendment, city councils arresting people speaking out, in the name of getting business done is enough. I think the "I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it" view of free speech is very much a minority view. Most people, especially mayors and city councils, ascribe to the "free speech for me and not for thee" view.
> We don't live in an free speech absolutist society
I'm not sure what kind of society we live in. Is there even a social contract anymore? Is the Constitution even in effect? I'm not sure exactly what the rules are anymore, we live in a society where a mob violently attacked the US capitol, and got pardons for their trouble. So, why bother talking about anything, when violence is rewarded but speech gets you a record? What's even the point of the first amendment, it's meaningless when they can just write an executive order deeming their political opponents (or anyone) part of a vast but nebulous terrorist network, who obviously don't have a first amendment right. Because terrorists.
It's objectively hilarious that the useful idiots so virulently angry about Flock look like the type of people that don't drive a car, so it makes you wonder what the fuss about ALPRs is and how it affects them.
If Flock was used to enforce congestion pricing in the cities they ride bikes in, they would all be for it.
Don't act like flock is incapable of tracking bicycles and individual humans. The product may have been sold as ALPR but scope is creeping to total persistent surveillance.
I love how you constructed an entire alternate dimension, a playground where you can argue with endless strawmen and look so good defeating them. Yes, all the people who oppose Flock are non-drivers despite the US being a car-first country, and these non-drivers don't care about the rights of others or encroachments in their general directions, and they all want to turn isolated toll gate cameras into a surveillance movement tracking network, and they even support individual surveillance via Ring. The hypocrisy of these millions of real people that totally exist. Useful idiots indeed.
Back in the 90s, when I wore a younger man's clothes, I got a 'disturbing the peace' citation from the Modesto Police Department, the world's finest law enforcement agency (major sarcasm; they're horrible). Two cop cars were parked side-by-side, drivers chatting, blocking the only exit from a parking lot. I gave a little toot of the horn in my '87 Honda Prelude (I loved that car!). The cops didn't move. I gave another little toot. No movement, but they both turned their heads and looked right at me, irritated. I was in a hurry to get home and watch the VHS I had just rented, so I laid on the horn, really loud, just held it down. One cop got out, walked over to my car, told me he could arrest me and hold me in jail all night, just if he felt like it. Then he gave me the 'disturbing the peace' ticket.
I actually went to court to fight it, but the cop didn't show up. Case dismissed.
Based on reading between the lines and watching the video, here's my sense of what happened:
1. Some protestors showed up at a council meeting to complain about flock
2. The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras
3. The protestors started disrupting the meeting, chanting, etc, and were forced to leave/were arrested
4. One protestor went to the podium and started talking about flock cameras, was politely interrupted, then had her mic cut. She flipped off the council and was arrested
If you oppose flock/this kind of surveillance, fine. But this kind of behavior is not tolerated at council meetings, and it's not a surprise that some of the protestors were arrested.
> “Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained. “I just let myself get handcuffed and let them do whatever power trip they wanted to do. Got my ticket and left.”
> 2. The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras
Not sure why they would do that. Our city council gives people three minutes to talk about what they want. Not sure why this city council wouldn't do that.
I'm sure people like you making fun of "pearl clutching" would defend other cranks at public meetings, right? Or is it a matter of "I only invoke 'pearl clutching' if I agree with your cause, otherwise they're being uncivil and deserve to be arrested"?
At this point I no longer think the US can say anything about the Chinese. Yes they have a surveillance dystopia and highly entrenched state crony capitalism, but we now have exactly the same thing.
I think it's a bit reductive to compare China taking inspiration from America in the 20th century to Nazi Germany's explicit admiration for slavery and the genocide of Native Americans.
You don't have remotely the same thing. You don't have high-speed trains, housing that populace who don't already own real estate can afford, a government that keeps the tech-oligarchs at a short leash and who mercilessly removes corrupt officials, functional public transit, functional anything public really.
> Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue. Police arrested her while Schrag looked on. “Sorry ma’m,” the mayor said as police led Heider away in handcuffs.
I mean, what is the appropriate response to someone refusing follow protocol after giving guidance that there's a different topic at hand now? There was a comment session on Flock cameras, people talked about it, then they moved onto housing. You can't run a public meeting where people get to drag every issue back to their favorite issue uninhibited, it just literally doesn't work. The meeting would run 24/7/365 and still nothing would get done.
Sure makes it awfully convenient to end a comment session when you don't want to hear what's being said. We are approving the budget for the death ray, do we have any objections? You have five hundred microseconds to object. Let the record show there were no objections. Guards, arrest that man for speaking after the time for objections has ended.
The comment session was for an entirely unrelated issue.
> Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.
It wasn't that the council disagreed with what Heider said, it's that what she was talking about was unrelated to the meeting.
That doesn't make make it permissible to hijack other meetings. The point remains, she was not removed for simply voicing opposition to Flock cameras. The was arrested and removed for trying to derail an unrelated meeting.
Someone going on the stand to rant about abortion during a meeting on sidewalk codes would similarly get removed.
Many of us on this thread have experience with city councils and are anti-Flock and pro-civil disobedience. We're arguing with you from a point of praticality related to city business meetings. Practicing civil disobedience at a city council meeting is fraught with peril- for example, you're preventing other people from having their topics discussed/voted on. From my perspective, if your goal is to make actual change, getting arrested at a city council meeting speaking on the wrong topic is not a particularly effective method.
An alternative of course is to saw down the Flock cameras. I suspect people like the woman in the article though are trying to find legal ways to be heard—to elicit change.
Is there a legal alternative that you can think of that would be effective?
I disagree with your assessment. These city councils undoubtedly are aware that Flock/ALPRs are a controversial issue, and in many cases, including this one, they don't allow people to speak on the topic.
I recall watching a meeting, I think it was in Austin? Where on every topic, most people coming up to talk did so because they refused to hear comments on the cameras. Instead, they had to deal with the frustration of constantly sending people off the podium.
The lesson being, if you know people will feel strongly, it should behoove you to schedule time for them to speak properly.
Thanks for being polite and thoughtful and laying out your thinking.
The issue is that city council meetings that schedule open discussion on topics often end up running late into the night (after midnight) and the discussion doesn't achieve much.
I don't thikn we can say with certainty that the chair tabled the discussion with the intent of disallowing people their right to discuss it. That's interpreting subjective intent.
Clearly, the best solution to a discussion taking forever, is for the powerful person to terminate the discussion and declare that the outcome was whatever the powerful person wanted.
Translation: Those in power are allowed to execute 'illegal' chess moves, (skipping the Flock discussion), but the public can't do the same to try and discuss things that officials want to avoid discussing.
How it works in Seattle is that people are supposed to sign up and talk about things on the agenda for that council meeting but they are not stopped from talking about anything. This is why you'll see people like Alex Tsimerman (look him up) speak nonsense at nearly every council meeting. The councilpeople just ignore those comments and I believe they aren't included in the meeting record since they're off topic.
There's other ways to also try and limit the length of public comment, if there's more than say 30 people signed up, reduce public comment from 2 minutes per person to 1 minute. Be aggressive about cutting mics rather than giving everyone 10 extra seconds. For topics that council knows will be contentious and attract a lot of public comment they'll either hold multiple public comment blocks that day or literally just do a marathon session, 4-5 hours of just public comment.
Finally, if enough people are frustrated enough about an issue to constantly show up to public comment to talk about it, councilmembers should try meeting with those people at a different forum to at least hear them out to try and diffuse their anger. Council meetings should not be the only other place where residents can talk to their councilmembers.
Thank you for mentioning this. I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand city council meetings and just how many disruptive people who want to play out the clock talking.
> I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand city council meetings and just how many disruptive people who want to play out the clock talking
That may be the case but here it would seem a discussion about Flock was skipped on purpose so that people who want to bring it up would have no choice but to do so during an 'unrelated' discussion.
As a community leader, it would be to publicly acknowledge that there are concerns, then schedule a town hall meeting for their constituents to discuss those concerns with subject matter experts at a more appropriate time.
> “Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained.
I agree with the point she was trying to make. As a member of the public she should not have been arrested for being verbally abusive. But I'm OK with her being removed for subjecting the people who work there to that abuse. If she had made the same points with something approaching civility I'd be in her corner, as I still am with respect to surveillance.
If she were a coworker directing that to me, one of us would be a former employee by the end of the day.
> “Hello, my name is Miley Heider. I’m a Springfield, Missouri constituent, and I’m here to oppose the usage of ALPR cameras, most commonly made by Flock Safety. These cameras are not just surveillance,” Heider started.
> “I’m sorry ma’am,” Springfield Mayor Jeff Schrag said. Her mic was cut. A cop approached her at the podium.
> Heider held up both of her middle fingers while continuing to speak: “They are an invasion of our privacy,” she said.
A reasonable take. It’s a hot button issue, and arrest is absurd, but these people are embarrassing and actually the most counterproductive way to approach this.
You want to know how to turn the masses of normies that could otherwise be persuaded to join you? Send in people like this to behave like this.
1. That wasn't her, it was someone else who was arrested
2. These are the "normies":
> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri.
> Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.
This article is terrible. The story is already pretty good (for the anti-flock side), with the the mayor/council was for shutting down debate on flock. The author didn't need to devolve into ragebait territory, obfuscating what happened by jumping forwards and backwards in time between paragraphs.
Here's a concise, non-ragebait, chronological version:
>Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.
>Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.
>she was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs.
>The cop said, “You’re under arrest,” grabbed her arms, and pulled her out of the room. “I can do this all night. I get paid by the hour,” the cop added.
>The police officer who arrested her said Heider was being charged with disrupting the peace. He took her into the hallway outside of the meeting and held her in handcuffs for around five minutes before issuing her a ticket and letting her go.
>The cop said, “You’re under arrest,” grabbed her arms, and pulled her out of the room. “I can do this all night. I get paid by the hour,” the cop added.
Two sentences showing precisely why no one can trust the police. Not only are they completely unaccountable, but they will trample your first amendment rights and do so with smug amusement in full public view. These are the kinds of people we're supposed to be happy to give massive surveillance power to?
I don't even get what the comment has to do with anything. Is it supposed to be some kind of zinger? It's a great idea. Make him spend all night arresting people.
Have you not heard similar from parents/teachers/chaperons?
"I will take as long as I need, to get you to comply. Your resistance doesn't make this go away, it just prolongs the inevitable."
Resistance may be futile, but resistance is also moral duty.
The article is written to enrage you. Including that "zinger" makes you angry at the establishment. After reading the article, while I sympathize with the woman who was arrested, I am not surprised at the outcome.
Sorry, what?
The article didn't "include" the zinger, the cop said it. If you think it's an inappropriate thing for a cop to say (I do) then the article is not to blame for you being angry. The cop is.
The article didn't enrage me. The video did. The actions of the local politicians and police did.
Well this is how it has been in russia, last 10 years. Started like this got worse with each year.
An attendee interrupted the discussion on the law being passed, flipped off the council, and refused to leave.
How is that First Amendment rights?
If the attendee's description is true and the video is not missing context, then that doesn't appear to be what happened. Interpreting her description and the video, during the public comment period for an unrelated topic, she went through the usual process for giving a public comment, started her completely off-topic written statement, then was arrested during it a few seconds after two attempts by the council to interrupt her, during which she was flipping off the council.
If she was within her allotted time for a comment that was completely off-topic but otherwise complied with the public comment process, and her flipping off the council was, as she claims, only after it was clear that she was going to be interrupted by the police, then that does seem different than actually interrupting the discussion or refusing to leave.
Looking at the the wrong way, what the citizenship in mass should be doing is surrounding the meeting with torches and making said council fear for their lives.
Violent threats only sound like a good idea if you can only imagine them being used by people you agree with.
A society that let small mobs carrying torches dictate your laws would not be good for you, me, or anyone other than the most violent vocal minority.
You might want to look at how a small mob orchaestrated by and comprised of Bush's campaign flooded voting offices to stop a recount, as part of a successful effort to steal the election from Gore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
They didn't even need torches to subvert democracy. I think a majority of Americans are under the misconception that they live in a civilized democracy, and that they have been for a while. But if you look under the covers (or if you're a minority), or just learn history, then you'll find that it's not.
You might be shocked to learn how "society" has been forged over history.
>A society that let small mobs carrying torches dictate your laws would not be good for you, me, or anyone other than the most violent vocal minority.
We talking about the oligarchs here or?
>Violent threats only sound like a good idea if you can only imagine them being used by people you agree with.
You mean like how they used the "you can't speak on an issue because we've decided we're not talking about that" rule to have this lady hauled off?
>You mean like how they used the "you can't speak on an issue because we've decided we're not talking about that" rule to have this lady hauled off?
It's not open Q&A. There's nothing preventing them from speaking on their preferred issue online, or even outside. Otherwise public meetings quickly devolve into anarchy. If a specific time was allocated to talk about speed limits, do you think it's fair game for TERFs to use that time to complain about gendered bathrooms?
That's not to say the mayor/council is in the right either, but we also can't have "if you think the debate was shut down too early you can do whatever you want".
>It's not open Q&A. There's nothing preventing them from speaking on their preferred issue online, or even outside. Otherwise public meetings quickly devolve into anarchy. If a specific time was allocated to talk about speed limits, do you think it's fair game for TERFs to use that time to complain about gendered bathrooms?
Bring on the TERFs. Better it be a dumpster fire that get's DOS'd from time to time than people not be allowed to speak their minds.
Threaten elected officials with violence to achieve political aims? That seems counterproductive.
Voting seems counterproductive too. Time for a change.
And please make Bastille Day from Rush to be the soundtrack for this.
Imminent threats of violence are not covered by the First Amendment.
Peaceful gatherings are covered.
Middle fingers are and imminent threat of violence now?
If you read the thread, you might be able to parse out what the user you responded to is commenting on...
> what the citizenship in mass should be doing is surrounding the meeting with torches and making said council fear for their lives
Please engage in good faith and write comments that contribute, rather than taking away, from the conversation.
Please engage in good faith and write comments that contribute, rather than taking away, from the conversation. [ the above comment was modified to copy mine; this is not good faith ]
Gather up a dozen friends, dress like Indians and throw the politician in the harbor. Yes I know I'm mixing and matching historical references, that's the point. Have one guy dressed as Elizabeth Warren, another guy like the redskins mascot and a third guy as Abu from the Simpsons like they didn't understand the assignment. The point is to maximize the meme-ability of it so that you get a court of public opinion trial and not the usual kangaroo court trial that people who thumb their nose at government get.
Article: city council purposefully cancels the public comment segment of an extremely divisive issue that people came to protest, arrests two people, cop makes clearly sadistic comment, the direct will of the people is beaten into submission by using the powers of the council to derail any possible opposing words or actions
Comment thread: but what about her decorum? Did you see the middle fingers she was putting up? Why didn't she comply with the procedure and sinned by commenting on an unrelated topic after they canceled the appropriate one? Are we sure she didn't break any other laws here? What if she looked at someone the wrong way? Are we sure we want to permit this behavior in our society? And why is the article quoting the cop? Isn't it a bit divisive to just use the officer's own words to make him look like a monster? Why aren't we talking about the real issue?
When you wonder how average people let dictatorial power grow unchecked in their societies, refer to the above.
As an european guy. Interesting to see things happen from far away. Knowing that crazy country has so much power, makes the near future of the whole world even more scary.
It's not that much different in the most powerful parts of Europe. For instance Germany does this to people who talk about Palestine. So does the UK. Poland does it to people who talk about gay rights. I don't know the equivalent in Spain, France or Italy.
For Spain it would probably be Catalan Independence, for France any mention of air conditioning technologies, and for Italy it's pineapple on pizza.
What do you think the punishment will be for wearing a burqa near a school, in Italy?
Indeed. Though omnipresent surveillance and restricted speech is an issue in some of Europe too.
On the other hand, I see a lot of HackerNewsers and European geeks utterly angry at laws that forbid (blanket) recording of public places and GDPR which controls what the videos can be used for.
Every EU topic here is filled with people wishing for its destruction and dismantling of such privacy protecting laws.
Europeans fear corporations more than government, and in the USA it's generally the opposite. The USA doesn't like when any entity gets too powerful.
> The USA doesn't like when any entity gets too powerful.
The US seems to broadly have permitted both their government and their corporations to exercise an absurd degree of influence over them in recent years, so this doesn't track. This is a problem in most countries, but the rate of change of the US is unparalleled.
You're right that some countries are more paranoid about certain kinds of power than others. That just ends up creating blind spots, where some Europeans can barely imagine their a decision of their government being wrong, while some Americans are knee-deep in ideology that decrees that anything private is automatically good, free and moral because only the government has the capacity to be evil and companies can't influence them. This doesn't really apply to the issue here, because it's a perfect collaboration of the world parts of the private and public sectors, so almost no one likes this.
Those are likely the same people who want to unconsensually force Flock and other mass surveillance on people. Most well socially adjusted people greatly appreciate those protections.
Sadly, it happens here as well: https://cybernews.com/news/denmark-arrest-lars-andersen-doxx... ...
Thankfully we have no voting power in the said country so they don't care what we think as long as we consume and overall behave. Let's see how long this lasts though. It seems as though EU is approaching the finding out stage.
EU is covered in cameras, possibly more than USA
One major difference between being covered with CCTV cameras and what Flock is doing is the CC part of that acronym.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-...
Improved title:
Woman Arrested, Dragged Away After Speaking About Flock (YC 17) at City Council Meeting
Her mistake was not dressing up as a supervillain:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/21/darth-vader-...
https://www.404media.co/doctor-doom-thanked-seattle-for-all-...
They really buried the details in this article. The opener leads you to believe she did nothing wrong because she briefly spoke during a public comment period
> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri. After briefly speaking at a podium during a public comment period, she was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs.
The details are toward the end. The council was trying to discuss a public housing issue and she was trying to use that time slot to bring up Flock.
> Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue.
They cut off the mic and told her it was the wrong topic, she wouldn’t leave the podium, flipped off the council (it’s the photo in the article) and the police hauled her off the podium.
There’s a real valid story in here about the city council sending the Flock thing to committee, but the article has been through the clickbait ringer so many times that they’re trying to make it sound like someone got arrested for saying “Flock cameras” during an open comments section, which isn’t true.
Given the topic I’m probably going to get downvoted for bringing up facts from the article itself, but I’m really tired of this type of journalism where you can tell they workshopped this and carefully chose which important details to bury at the bottom of the story so it gives a different impression if you only read the headline or skim the first couple paragraphs.
I dunno, Council announces that they are going to be talking about Flock (YC 17), that there will be public comment about Flock (YC 17), sees that a whole lot of people are very angry about Flock (YC 17) and have come to the meeting, and immediately shift the discussion to a committee so they don't have to hear those people angry about Flock (YC 17), I can see why she did what she did. That sure seems like the Council is trying to avoid all of the community anger over Flock (YC 17).
If you are going to do something that makes so many people so angry that they are willing to come to a local government meeting, you kinda have to let them talk about it, you know? Otherwise it feels like you're trying to run out the clock on them.
Can you explain the need to be annoying about the YC 17 thing? What's the objective here? Is it supposed to convince potential founders to decide against taking YC's money as a way of putting financial pressure on YC not to fund projects that people don't like? Or is the intention that YC people are reading your comment directly and it's changing their minds?
I can't imagine either of these being impactful, and the effect seems to just be to distract from people's concerns about Flock (YC 17). Eg, my eyes are bouncing off of the presumably anti-Flock statement you're making here because you've coated it in repeated parentheticals and tortured the writing so you can say "Flock" as often as possible.
I am amused that much of the HN community goes out of its way to highlight YC connections for companies- I've even seen it for Stripe (YC 09) and Dropbox (YC07) within the past year or so- but has completely dropped that for Flock.
Fair enough, though I can't seem to get examples out of algolia
Stripe: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Dropbox: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Flock: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Huh, you seem to be right, the most recent for Dropbox was about 5 years ago. Maybe my sense of time is all screwed up? I thought I remembered it more recently than that. But I trust the data more than I trust my memory.
I withdraw my statements about the HN community.
Thanks for bringing up the whole picture. No down-votes from me.
Giving someone the finger is not a crime.
Interrupting a city council meeting, speaking out of turn, refusing to leave, and then devolving into obvious defiance is, however.
Well, she spoke about something 'off topic' during public comments - if that's the same thing as what you described, I'm not so sure.
>during public comments
You're conveniently omitting the fact it was public comments for a different issue
>Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.
Because the council canceled comments on the Flock issue that had been scheduled for that day.
He may be omitting that because it seems like a convenient way to not hear comments about an issue by switching to a different issue.
Did I omit that? I don't think so. I pointed out her comments were 'off topic.'
> Well, she spoke about something 'off topic' during public comments
I didn't even address what others pointed out, which was that the topic was suddenly changed because these people showed up.
Ah I see you are well versed in bureaucratic attack strategies on the first amendment! “We’re not violating your rights, there’s a special first amendment zone you can say all that where we can’t hear!”
Can you instead try to see that people who disagree with you may actually not being attempting to subvert the first amendment, but instead are focusing on the necessary business city councils have to achieve? There are clearly limits on what you can say and do in a city council meeting.
I can see that, but that's also exactly the mechanism by which buraucracies attack the first amendment, so people who just reasonably disagree should explain how their disagreement doesn't serve the very agenda they say they're against.
Do you truly believe the mayor and city council were trying to attack the first amendment as a core principle?
We don't live in an free speech absolutist society. People don't get to talk about just anything, at any time during a city council meeting without restrictions. Don't attribute to malice what is more easily attribute to getting business done.
Malice isn't required to destroy the first amendment, city councils arresting people speaking out, in the name of getting business done is enough. I think the "I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it" view of free speech is very much a minority view. Most people, especially mayors and city councils, ascribe to the "free speech for me and not for thee" view.
> We don't live in an free speech absolutist society
I'm not sure what kind of society we live in. Is there even a social contract anymore? Is the Constitution even in effect? I'm not sure exactly what the rules are anymore, we live in a society where a mob violently attacked the US capitol, and got pardons for their trouble. So, why bother talking about anything, when violence is rewarded but speech gets you a record? What's even the point of the first amendment, it's meaningless when they can just write an executive order deeming their political opponents (or anyone) part of a vast but nebulous terrorist network, who obviously don't have a first amendment right. Because terrorists.
She was not arrested for that.
It's objectively hilarious that the useful idiots so virulently angry about Flock look like the type of people that don't drive a car, so it makes you wonder what the fuss about ALPRs is and how it affects them.
If Flock was used to enforce congestion pricing in the cities they ride bikes in, they would all be for it.
Don't act like flock is incapable of tracking bicycles and individual humans. The product may have been sold as ALPR but scope is creeping to total persistent surveillance.
But Ring cameras all over the place to deter the undesirables from stealing Tenga eggs off doorsteps are ok I assume?
I love how you constructed an entire alternate dimension, a playground where you can argue with endless strawmen and look so good defeating them. Yes, all the people who oppose Flock are non-drivers despite the US being a car-first country, and these non-drivers don't care about the rights of others or encroachments in their general directions, and they all want to turn isolated toll gate cameras into a surveillance movement tracking network, and they even support individual surveillance via Ring. The hypocrisy of these millions of real people that totally exist. Useful idiots indeed.
At least she wasn't tortured and burnt. Yet
Cm'on! This is not russia. Yet
Looks like the Mayor won't face reelection 'till 2029 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Springfield,_Missouri_may...
Springfield, Missouri about to be sued.
Back in the 90s, when I wore a younger man's clothes, I got a 'disturbing the peace' citation from the Modesto Police Department, the world's finest law enforcement agency (major sarcasm; they're horrible). Two cop cars were parked side-by-side, drivers chatting, blocking the only exit from a parking lot. I gave a little toot of the horn in my '87 Honda Prelude (I loved that car!). The cops didn't move. I gave another little toot. No movement, but they both turned their heads and looked right at me, irritated. I was in a hurry to get home and watch the VHS I had just rented, so I laid on the horn, really loud, just held it down. One cop got out, walked over to my car, told me he could arrest me and hold me in jail all night, just if he felt like it. Then he gave me the 'disturbing the peace' ticket.
I actually went to court to fight it, but the cop didn't show up. Case dismissed.
If you're currently living in Modesto, here's a song for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spsiGPa4aaY
Based on reading between the lines and watching the video, here's my sense of what happened:
1. Some protestors showed up at a council meeting to complain about flock
2. The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras
3. The protestors started disrupting the meeting, chanting, etc, and were forced to leave/were arrested
4. One protestor went to the podium and started talking about flock cameras, was politely interrupted, then had her mic cut. She flipped off the council and was arrested
If you oppose flock/this kind of surveillance, fine. But this kind of behavior is not tolerated at council meetings, and it's not a surprise that some of the protestors were arrested.
> “Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained. “I just let myself get handcuffed and let them do whatever power trip they wanted to do. Got my ticket and left.”
I mean, really?
> 2. The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras
Not sure why they would do that. Our city council gives people three minutes to talk about what they want. Not sure why this city council wouldn't do that.
A lot pearl clutching going on here
I'm sure people like you making fun of "pearl clutching" would defend other cranks at public meetings, right? Or is it a matter of "I only invoke 'pearl clutching' if I agree with your cause, otherwise they're being uncivil and deserve to be arrested"?
Nah, just call it how I see it.
What's to defend about cranks at public meetings - it's a thing that happens... so what?
At this point I no longer think the US can say anything about the Chinese. Yes they have a surveillance dystopia and highly entrenched state crony capitalism, but we now have exactly the same thing.
The US was one of the earliest countries to have these things. China, Russia and even Nazi Germany were inspired by the US.
I think it's a bit reductive to compare China taking inspiration from America in the 20th century to Nazi Germany's explicit admiration for slavery and the genocide of Native Americans.
Germany copied the wrong things then, just like we are now copying the wrong things (surveillance, cronyism, absolute leaders) from China.
You don't have remotely the same thing. You don't have high-speed trains, housing that populace who don't already own real estate can afford, a government that keeps the tech-oligarchs at a short leash and who mercilessly removes corrupt officials, functional public transit, functional anything public really.
Unfortunately, objective... independently verifiable information is not something we could confidently say is standard practice in China.
> highly entrenched state crony capitalism
If your goal is to rescue the reputation of capitalism, people have found more success just calling Donald Trump a communist.
> Later in the evening Mia Heider tried to speak out about Flock during public comments about a housing issue. Police arrested her while Schrag looked on. “Sorry ma’m,” the mayor said as police led Heider away in handcuffs.
I mean, what is the appropriate response to someone refusing follow protocol after giving guidance that there's a different topic at hand now? There was a comment session on Flock cameras, people talked about it, then they moved onto housing. You can't run a public meeting where people get to drag every issue back to their favorite issue uninhibited, it just literally doesn't work. The meeting would run 24/7/365 and still nothing would get done.
Sure makes it awfully convenient to end a comment session when you don't want to hear what's being said. We are approving the budget for the death ray, do we have any objections? You have five hundred microseconds to object. Let the record show there were no objections. Guards, arrest that man for speaking after the time for objections has ended.
The comment session was for an entirely unrelated issue.
> Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.
It wasn't that the council disagreed with what Heider said, it's that what she was talking about was unrelated to the meeting.
It was unrelated because the entire session about flock was skipped.
That doesn't make make it permissible to hijack other meetings. The point remains, she was not removed for simply voicing opposition to Flock cameras. The was arrested and removed for trying to derail an unrelated meeting.
Someone going on the stand to rant about abortion during a meeting on sidewalk codes would similarly get removed.
I'm glad you agree that the government deserves an easy "suppress dissent" button that makes it illegal to dissent.
People can still dissent and protest - just not in the specific scenario of council meetings on sidewalk codes.
And arrested?
I doubt you are pro-Flock, perhaps you don't like civil disobedience?
Many of us on this thread have experience with city councils and are anti-Flock and pro-civil disobedience. We're arguing with you from a point of praticality related to city business meetings. Practicing civil disobedience at a city council meeting is fraught with peril- for example, you're preventing other people from having their topics discussed/voted on. From my perspective, if your goal is to make actual change, getting arrested at a city council meeting speaking on the wrong topic is not a particularly effective method.
You could be right.
An alternative of course is to saw down the Flock cameras. I suspect people like the woman in the article though are trying to find legal ways to be heard—to elicit change.
Is there a legal alternative that you can think of that would be effective?
I disagree with your assessment. These city councils undoubtedly are aware that Flock/ALPRs are a controversial issue, and in many cases, including this one, they don't allow people to speak on the topic.
I recall watching a meeting, I think it was in Austin? Where on every topic, most people coming up to talk did so because they refused to hear comments on the cameras. Instead, they had to deal with the frustration of constantly sending people off the podium.
The lesson being, if you know people will feel strongly, it should behoove you to schedule time for them to speak properly.
Thanks for being polite and thoughtful and laying out your thinking.
The issue is that city council meetings that schedule open discussion on topics often end up running late into the night (after midnight) and the discussion doesn't achieve much.
I don't thikn we can say with certainty that the chair tabled the discussion with the intent of disallowing people their right to discuss it. That's interpreting subjective intent.
Clearly, the best solution to a discussion taking forever, is for the powerful person to terminate the discussion and declare that the outcome was whatever the powerful person wanted.
They didn't do that, though. They sent it to committee. That doesn't achieve the city council's goals.
Where should civil disobedience be practiced?
The point of civil disobedience is to be arrested. That's the goal of civil disobedience.
Translation: Those in power are allowed to execute 'illegal' chess moves, (skipping the Flock discussion), but the public can't do the same to try and discuss things that officials want to avoid discussing.
How it works in Seattle is that people are supposed to sign up and talk about things on the agenda for that council meeting but they are not stopped from talking about anything. This is why you'll see people like Alex Tsimerman (look him up) speak nonsense at nearly every council meeting. The councilpeople just ignore those comments and I believe they aren't included in the meeting record since they're off topic.
There's other ways to also try and limit the length of public comment, if there's more than say 30 people signed up, reduce public comment from 2 minutes per person to 1 minute. Be aggressive about cutting mics rather than giving everyone 10 extra seconds. For topics that council knows will be contentious and attract a lot of public comment they'll either hold multiple public comment blocks that day or literally just do a marathon session, 4-5 hours of just public comment.
Finally, if enough people are frustrated enough about an issue to constantly show up to public comment to talk about it, councilmembers should try meeting with those people at a different forum to at least hear them out to try and diffuse their anger. Council meetings should not be the only other place where residents can talk to their councilmembers.
Thank you for mentioning this. I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand city council meetings and just how many disruptive people who want to play out the clock talking.
> I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand city council meetings and just how many disruptive people who want to play out the clock talking
That may be the case but here it would seem a discussion about Flock was skipped on purpose so that people who want to bring it up would have no choice but to do so during an 'unrelated' discussion.
Well, I think that's a subjective reading of the video, right? We don't actually know the intent.
"The meeting would run 24/7/365…"
Maybe: 24/7/52
Or: 24/365.25
(Always bothers pedantic me.)
As a community leader, it would be to publicly acknowledge that there are concerns, then schedule a town hall meeting for their constituents to discuss those concerns with subject matter experts at a more appropriate time.
That's apparently asking too much.
> “Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained.
I agree with the point she was trying to make. As a member of the public she should not have been arrested for being verbally abusive. But I'm OK with her being removed for subjecting the people who work there to that abuse. If she had made the same points with something approaching civility I'd be in her corner, as I still am with respect to surveillance.
If she were a coworker directing that to me, one of us would be a former employee by the end of the day.
That wasn't the woman (Heider).
> “Hello, my name is Miley Heider. I’m a Springfield, Missouri constituent, and I’m here to oppose the usage of ALPR cameras, most commonly made by Flock Safety. These cameras are not just surveillance,” Heider started.
> “I’m sorry ma’am,” Springfield Mayor Jeff Schrag said. Her mic was cut. A cop approached her at the podium.
> Heider held up both of her middle fingers while continuing to speak: “They are an invasion of our privacy,” she said.
Powell was the other person arrested.
> Heider was one of two people arrested
A reasonable take. It’s a hot button issue, and arrest is absurd, but these people are embarrassing and actually the most counterproductive way to approach this.
You want to know how to turn the masses of normies that could otherwise be persuaded to join you? Send in people like this to behave like this.
1. That wasn't her, it was someone else who was arrested
2. These are the "normies":
> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri.
> Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.
I think you have things a bit backwards. The mass of normies are already persuaded - this is what they did.
Those were two different people.
I think the notion that she should be arrested because she called some counselor a cuck is a pretty ridiculous take away
This article is terrible. The story is already pretty good (for the anti-flock side), with the the mayor/council was for shutting down debate on flock. The author didn't need to devolve into ragebait territory, obfuscating what happened by jumping forwards and backwards in time between paragraphs.
Here's a concise, non-ragebait, chronological version:
>Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.
>Heider explained that she waited until the public comment period for a different issue, filled out a form to talk, and then got up to deliver a written statement about Flock cameras.
>she was arrested and dragged away in handcuffs.
>The cop said, “You’re under arrest,” grabbed her arms, and pulled her out of the room. “I can do this all night. I get paid by the hour,” the cop added.
>The police officer who arrested her said Heider was being charged with disrupting the peace. He took her into the hallway outside of the meeting and held her in handcuffs for around five minutes before issuing her a ticket and letting her go.