I made a connection to this practice in the HN discussion about the court case over chalking tires for parking enforcement, and the extent to which we really regard your car as being sacrosanct against touching.
Separate comment because meta: wow. Just ... wow. It took rayiner forever to get an extremely basic point that was well-explained from the beginning. I still feel frustration from re-reading that. And even once he finally got the point, he just reiterated the same generalities. What a waste.
What is this? The Journal of Tautology? They repeat the exact same thing 6 times in a row.
> Back in the day, cops used to touch the tail lights of cars they pulled over in order to leave fingerprints as evidence. Reader’s Digest spoke with experts who said that the practice marked a car in case the stop went wrong — leaving evidence that the officer had been there:
> According to Nick Fresolone, a retired police-academy instructor with the New Jersey State Police Academy in Sea Girt, New Jersey, the “taillight tap” leaves fingerprint evidence on the glass of the taillight to prove that the officer was present at the scene. Ultimately, says Fresolone, if things escalate or otherwise go awry, the officer’s touch to the car’s taillight will have left a fingerprint in a place where investigators would know to look for it.
> Criminal defense attorney Joe Hoelscher says that this routine maneuver serves as a sort of breadcrumb left to prove that the police officer had approached that particular vehicle. “Leaving a thumbprint on the brake light is an old-school way to tag a car with a fingerprint, so it can be identified conclusively as the vehicle involved in a stop should the officer become incapacitated,” explains Hoelscher.
This is interesting. But I’ve never once even noticed a police officer touching my car’s tail lights when I have been stopped. I am wondering if I was just oblivious or if it does not happen everywhere.
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[ 15.1 ms ] story [ 66.0 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19730452
> Back in the day, cops used to touch the tail lights of cars they pulled over in order to leave fingerprints as evidence. Reader’s Digest spoke with experts who said that the practice marked a car in case the stop went wrong — leaving evidence that the officer had been there:
> According to Nick Fresolone, a retired police-academy instructor with the New Jersey State Police Academy in Sea Girt, New Jersey, the “taillight tap” leaves fingerprint evidence on the glass of the taillight to prove that the officer was present at the scene. Ultimately, says Fresolone, if things escalate or otherwise go awry, the officer’s touch to the car’s taillight will have left a fingerprint in a place where investigators would know to look for it.
> Criminal defense attorney Joe Hoelscher says that this routine maneuver serves as a sort of breadcrumb left to prove that the police officer had approached that particular vehicle. “Leaving a thumbprint on the brake light is an old-school way to tag a car with a fingerprint, so it can be identified conclusively as the vehicle involved in a stop should the officer become incapacitated,” explains Hoelscher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_aequi
A tautology would be “they do it because they do it”.
I am in Massachusetts, if that is relevant.