When the Portland police chief said it was ok to go through suspects’ trash because “they have no right to privacy,” journalists went through the police chief’s garbage and published what they found

curlicuecal:

orestian:

houstonwehaveadog:

thevoluntaryist:

This article is full of gold.

After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our
esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing
tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a “garbage
pull” really is–and to highlight the government’s ongoing erosion of
people’s privacy.

We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most
vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We
chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose
Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief
his marching orders.

Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon
your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they
wouldn’t mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.

Boy, were we wrong.

Perched in his office on the 15th floor of the Justice Center, Chief
Kroeker seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of trash as public
property.

“Things inside your house are to be guarded,” he told WW.
“Those that are in the trash are open for trash men and pickers
and–and police. And so it’s not a matter of privacy anymore.”

Then we spread some highlights from our haul on the table in front of him.

“This is very cheap,” he blurted out, frowning as we pointed out a
receipt with his credit-card number, a summary of his wife’s
investments, an email prepping the mayor about his job application to be
police chief of Los Angeles, a well-chewed cigar stub, and a
handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us
cringe. We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the
conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family, addressed to
“Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker.”

“Are you a member of Focus on the Family?” we asked.

“No,” the chief replied.

“Is your wife?”

“You know,” he said, with a Clint Eastwood gaze, “it’s none of your business.”

As we explained our thinking, the chief, who is usually polite to a
fault, cut us off in mid sentence. “OK,” he said, suddenly standing up,
“we’re done.”

Hours later, the chief issued a press release complaining that WW had gone through “my personal garbage at my home.” KATU promptly took to the airwaves declaring, “Kroeker wants Willamette Week to stay out of his garbage.”

Someone in Portland did something that’s actually cool

shit are journalists doing journalism now? 2018 already wild

“It’s worth emphasizing that our junkaeological dig unearthed no whiff of scandal. […] But if three moral, upstanding, public-spirited citizens were each chewing their nails about the secrets we might have stumbled on, how the hell should the rest of us be feeling?”