Bank Robbery? Search Thousands Of People!
Posted on November 10, 2007
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Just when you thought you’d read everything possible about police incompetence, they shut down an interstate during rush hour and achieve nothing. From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution-
Southbound traffic on I-75 was clogged for more than five miles and exit ramps near Moores Mill Road in Fulton County were blocked as police walked from car to car, searching for a bank robber who traded a demand note for cash at a Wachovia Bank branch near Smyrna on Thursday afternoon.
The robber never showed a gun and officials weren’t saying how much money he grabbed. But there in the bag was a GPS transmitter that allowed lawmen to track him to the interstate. The tedious exercise didn’t turn up the suspect but it rankled motorists —- some of whom questioned the Cobb County Police Department’s decision to halt traffic on a major freeway.
[…]
Detective Andre Bates, Cobb’s lead detective investigating the robbery, said pursuing officers zeroed in on I-75 with the help of the tracking device that a bank employee slipped to the robber with the money. Cobb officers, with the help of the Atlanta police, shut down the interstate. By 6:30 p.m., the gridlock extended beyond I-285.
Bates blamed the failed search on the sheer volume of traffic.
So a guy with no gun (or even the threat of a gun) robs a bank. The teller puts a GPS tracking device in the bag and the police shut down an entire interstate freeway, during rush our traffic, and attempt to search several thousand cars. Hmmm… did it not occur to them to simply follow the signal until the robber got OFF the freeway?
According to a later article-
The last time Atlanta police shut down the highway was during the Bluffton bus crash in March on I-75, said Officer James Polite,
He could not recall Atlanta police shutting down an interstate in search of suspect. But it could happen.
“Every situation is different,” Polite said.
“It’s hard to tell what we would do until it actually happens. If there is a life-threatening situation at hand or a hostage situation or a person is threatened on the highway,” he said. “When a situation like that happens, time is of the essence. We would act for the preservation of life.”
Yes, the Officer’s last name is (reportdely) Polite 
Anyway…
Assuming the police couldn’t track the GPS off the freeway for some reason did it not occur to them that stopping traffic and confronting a bank robber in the middle of a gridlocked freeway might actually create a life-threatening or hostage situation?
In a free society, without a government monopoly on force, there would be private security agencies instead of a traditional police force. It would be the agency hired by the bank that would go after the robber and they likely wouldn’t have the ability to shut down the road in the first place. Even if they did (through agreement with the road owner), they likely wouldn’t ever get the chance to do it again because the result of thousands of people being inconvenienced in this way would cause too many people to lose faith in both the road owner and the security agency. They’d then take their business elsewhere, those businesses would close, and the person(s) responsible for such a ridiculous decision would never be hired to a position of power again.
Instead we live under a gang of thugs who claim all power for themselves and there will be zero repercussions for anyone. Yea government!
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You wrote:
“In a free society, without a government monopoly on force, there would be private security agencies instead of a traditional police force. It would be the agency hired by the bank that would go after the robber and they likely wouldn’t have the ability to shut down the road in the first place. Even if they did (through agreement with the road owner), they likely wouldn’t ever get the chance to do it again because the result of thousands of people being inconvenienced in this way would cause too many people to lose faith in both the road owner and the security agency. They’d then take their business elsewhere, those businesses would close, and the person(s) responsible for such a ridiculous decision would never be hired to a position of power again.
Instead we live under a gang of thugs who claim all power for themselves and there will be zero repercussions for anyone. Yea government!”
Damn that’s dumb. People would all the time be getting harassed by “private security agencies” that didn’t answer to anyone but the person paying them. That would get a lot worse than the police, dumbass.
Barry wrote: “People would all the time be getting harassed by “private security agencies” that didn’t answer to anyone but the person paying them.
This is what happens with the police now, Barry. People get hassled by the police daily because the police answer to no one and have no duty to protect or serve anyone (according to the Supreme Court).
Private security agencies would answer to their clients. The security agency I hire would also protect me from the security agency that you hire. Additionally, if your security agency was harassing me I would be free to sue them in arbitration court. Under the current system it is nearly impossible to sue the police for harrassment because too many people like you always assume they are correct all the time.