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Bill: Public Safety Bill
Details
Submitted by[?]: Progressive Conservative Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: September 2114
Description[?]:
| We believe that this proposed value will allow our citizens to be safer. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The citizens' right to assemble in public.
Old value:: There are no restrictions on the right of citizens to assemble in groups.
Current: The police may only disperse a crowd if a state of emergency has been declared.
Proposed: The police may disperse a group if they believe it poses a potential risk to public safety.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 02:49:42, September 19, 2005 CET | From |  Kanjoran People's Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | No this is entirely to restrictive. The police could disperse groups simply because they disagree with their political ideals. Also, this would restrict the civil rights of Kanjorans before they have even done or planned anything against the law. This would be horribly detrimental to civil rights. |
| Date | 06:47:43, September 21, 2005 CET | From | Kanjoran People's Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | Please tell me no one is willing to accept such a blatant and unecessary assault on the civil rights of our people. |
| Date | 07:01:16, September 21, 2005 CET | From | Kanjoran Imperial Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | We've been trying to pass this for years... |
| Date | 19:41:54, September 21, 2005 CET | From | Populist Liberal Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | We're putting in a no vote but could still be persuaded to vote yes, as there is unfortunately no proposal in between the two, maybe providing more protection then "the police think it could get violent." If it said "The police may disperse groups on probable cause of a risk to public safety. Group members may sue the police involved if they believe there was no probable cause," we'd be comfortable enough to vote yes. There's just a little too much room for police discretion in this one as it's worded. |
| Date | 22:53:32, September 21, 2005 CET | From | Kanjoran People's Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | But then the police could still infringe on their civil rights only they may get paid for it later....that still wrong. |
| Date | 23:18:29, September 21, 2005 CET | From | Populist Liberal Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | The idea is that the payments for the lawsuits would strongly discourage police from abusing their power, as it wouldn't in my view be only the police department that was liable, but the police themselves. Police officers, not being wealthy in most cases, would be in deep trouble if they had to pay $50,000 judgments-- so they'd make damn sure they could show the court they had probable cause (a higher standard than in the proposal), or they wouldn't break up the group. |
| Date | 02:02:30, September 22, 2005 CET | From | Kanjoran People's Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | Even that system would result in people bankrupting good police officers simply because the officers made a bad call about the danger of a group. I hardly think any good police officer deserves that kind of trouble. It wouldn't be a problem at all if they just didnt have the right to break up peaceful and/or legal gatherings. |
| Date | 02:26:31, September 22, 2005 CET | From | Populist Liberal Party | To | Debating the Public Safety Bill |
| Message | Recognizing this is all academic (but still perhaps an interesting discussion) as the PLP has decided it will vote against this particular variable, and it's the most moderate available (it becomes practical only if a variable in between gets added) we would suggest that the best solution might be to require probable cause then before the breakup, as is done with search warrants. Police have been able to get search warrants, despite the need to go to a judge first, reasonably quickly when a search is needed. We could provide for a warrant upon probable cause of a risk to public safety to break up a group. The difference there is that some groups might not be dispersed fast enough (a weakness already in current law), but those that are dispersed are dispersed only with a truly good reason. The term "dispersal warrant" sounds strange, but only because there is no such system in real life. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes | Total Seats: 115 | ||||
| no |
Total Seats: 251 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 74 |
| Random fact: Moderation reserves the discretion to declare RP laws invalid if the players supporting them are doing so in an excessively confrontational way. |
| Random quote: "In politics, madame, you need two things: friends, but above all an enemy." - Brian Mulroney |