4mo ago

An LAPD helicopter claimed to have ID'ed protesters from above and threatened to "come to your house"

www.motherjones.com

Cool...

This one goes out to all the small government, privacy loving, Republicans out there, supposedly hating invasive big brother tactics and representing the values of the American heartland.

Would be much appreciated if you could have a word with your people about this.

BoycottUnitedStates @europe.pub

tfm @europe.pub

4mo ago

An LAPD helicopter claimed to have ID'ed protesters from above and threatened to "come to your house"

www.motherjones.com /politics/2025/06/los-angeles-ice-protests-helicopter/

News @lemmy.world

gAlienLifeform @lemmy.world

4mo ago

An LAPD helicopter claimed to have ID'ed protesters from above and threatened to "come to your house"

www.motherjones.com /politics/2025/06/los-angeles-ice-protests-helicopter/

Progressive Politics @lemmy.world

TokenBoomer @lemmy.world

4mo ago

A LAPD Helicopter Claimed Cops Identified Protesters From Above and Would “Come to Your House”

www.motherjones.com /politics/2025/06/los-angeles-ice-protests-helicopter/

109 comments

This first thing you should do when going protesting, is to leave your phone at home.
- and cover your face if you are in a shithole country like USA, Turkey, Russia etc
  
  USA ... the world's richest third world country.
- Having a small faraday bag around is useful too, that's what I do.
- If you think you need a phone, it should be a burner.
- Radios or mesh devices only
- I bring my phone. I likely won't be breaking any laws, and I can afford a lawyer. So yeah arrest me and waste the system's time. Just another data point they have to sort.
  And if it gets to the point where none of that matters we were cooked anyway
  
  Lawyers operate in courts. We don’t have due process anymore.
  
  Police issues a dispersal order, but blocks all routes to safely leave the area.
  Congratulations, you will now be charged as having committed a crime and good luck proving in a court that there was no realistic option for you to leave.
  Also police seizes your phone. Congratulations now they access your data and either go after people you have had contact with or they claim you to be part of a criminal organization as they pin other charges on people they found a connection with.
Shouting from a helicopter "Please disperse because we'll come to your house and murder your families if you don't" sounds like an actionable threat. And helicopters are difficult to fly on a good day. Would be a shame if someone up there had an accident.
- I don’t know about you but if I’m on the ground (protesting or not) the last thing I want is a helicopter coming down anywhere near me.
- Someone I know is a military pilot. The green lasers were especially rough, because the light would get spread through the entire cockpit getting split up by the windshield, and even worse when he was flying with nightvision.
  ..... do with this information what you will.
- Think a drone could get up above it and drop something into the propeller?
- Federal offense and highly illegal. They take this extremely serious. Whatever target you were before, expect and multiple time increase in tracking doing this. They will make an example of you.
  Source. Local police chases and FAA raids/reporting. Do not do this. You'd be better off finding another method.
Talking a whole lot of shit for someone riding around in a machine that will find literally any excuse to break down. Helicopters are sketchy as fuck, and even if you manage to autorotate perfectly to try and recover from a stall, you're still liable to suffer severe or fatal injuries. It's super easy to crash due to human error or some kind of mechanical failure.
- A well kept helicopter is a reliable machine as any other, but it's true that it's probably a civil heli with extra cop stuff, ergo easy to down with some fuckery.
  
  Even a well maintained helicopter is a safety nightmare.
  I started my career in aerospace at a company that makes helicopter engines and later I became a search and rescue mountaineer/EMT in a county with more helicopters used for SAR than anywhere else in the US. We beat it into our new members "never pass up the opportunity to turn down a helicopter ride".
  The mountain rescue association tracks member fatalities and injuries. Helicopter accidents are, by a large margin, the leading cause of line of duty death in mountain rescue, and we spend only a couple percent of our time in them.
Follow Hong Kong tactics and use umbrellas to shield from above.
LOL
From the country meant to represent freedom. No more!
- Never was
  
  Wait wdym? Not even in the 18th-19th century?
A helicopter said all this?
- omg I remember that show lmfao
Green lasers. Everybody should have one.
- Check comment above. This is a terrible idea. You'll go from 2 stars to 5.
  
  They have sonic weapons. They run over people with horses and armored vehicles.
America land of the free /s
Then fucking come over assholes
What's wrong is that officers of the law are allowed to lie like that, yet still want to be respected.
- Yeah, it's frustrating. We need to end Qualified Immunity pronto.
- In lying's defense, they shouldn't be respected when they say that regardless of its truthiness
Would be much appreciated if you could have a word with your people about this.
I'm an American, but my only experience with LA was traveling through for 2 days about 10 years ago. AKA no experience with LA.
This action appears to be originated from LAPD and therefore the local LA government. I have always considered LA to be deeply blue, and would therefore think that their local LA government would be Democrat, not Republican.
So should this not be the local blue voting populace having a word with their blue elected politicians?
- The police are violent thugs everywhere, not just Republican cities and states.
  It's because they have almost complete immunity from being prosecuted for wrongdoing and also, well, they are incredibly well armed and often use their monopoly on violence to threaten blue politicians.
  I grew up in a city where cops didn't like their own chief of police because he wanted to drug test the force regularly after several got caught doing drugs on the job. The chiefs own force stalked him, harassed him, made violent threats against him and his family, until he was ran out of town. The police union sued him and said drug testing them violated their rights. The police union won in court. Those drug tests never happened.
  
  That's kinda what I'm getting at. This isn't R vs D, and further perpetuating that is lending into the division of the country that the powers that be want.
  This is class war, always has been. Police are the arm wielding power of the rich, used to push down the working class.
  
  Police unions give unions a bad name. Fucking thugs.
  
  Bruh wow
- LAPD is not under the control of any government. They have literal warring gang factions within the LAPD. It is an occupying junta force.
- LAPD is notoriously corrupt and vile even among other police peers and has been for a long time. Its only competitor is the NYPD
- LAPD is better than it used to be but it’s still full of assholes.
  LASD has been worse and probably still is.
Checking out women sunbathing in backyards or other places.
That's in LA. It doesn't count. They're not people. /sarcasm
- Conservatives are unironically like this. They cheer when we have earthquakes and fires.
  
  As someone who lives in Hurricane Alley, have you tried just not living where earthquakes happen?
  That seems to be the standard response of those in California when a hurricane hits my area...
Laser pointer
- Is it plausible this might cause the helicopter to crash somehow? I wouldn't want to risk that.
  Edit: can't believe people be downvoting this. Y'all have no idea how catastrophic a helicopter crash could be. But if you're downvoting because you think the answer is obvious and I'm stupid, I respect that.
  
  No no, couldn't have that, would be a shame
- They'd come kill you for that.
  
  they're already on the verge of it, may as well hang for a sheep
One wonders just how viable the Ukranian strategy would be to take out LAPD choppers (when landed, of course).
- Sure, they can work with the Hong Kong protesters, Lamas, and Cuban patriots. Maybe some Free Syra Army guys can help too.
What about walkie talkies? Short wave radios? Older tech comms devices?
though the actual audio sounds like they're making a joke, they could very well have the plates and do that
- This would likely be done through cell phone tracking devices like a stingray, not plates. I don't know how many people are in their cars at a protest.
Threatened? So they didn't ID them.
Let them prove it and out themselves

109 comments