Overrated: How are we still seeing AI hallucinated cases? It’s a tragic reflection of the justice system’s tech incompetence!
Underrated: Buddy, we’re still seeing Zoom fails. Keep your pants on.
In this specific case, we mean this literally. Five years on from COVID sending the entire profession into Zoom, giving us everything from “naked appearances” to sex hearings and turned “I’m not a cat” into a celebrity, the courts are still dealing with Zoom fails because professional dignity ends where the camera frame begins.
A Detroit police officer appeared in a virtual court hearing wearing his official uniform shirt and badge, and not so much else. It’s the sort of thing Detroit’s greatest law enforcement hero might have pulled, but Axel Foley would’ve joined reclining on a floaty in a Beverly Hills pool and no one would’ve been the wiser.
The clip is art. The stages of grief beautifully distilled in flickering images stitched together and whizzed across our screens at speed. Look at this! This is some 400 Blows era Truffaut composition right here. Walk with us through this staggering work of breathtaking genius.
Denial
Judge Sean B. Perkins, attempting to come to grips with the image on his screen and instantly regretting the lack of imagination in his “no shirt, no shoes, no justice” sign. Note how Judge Perkins makes the bold creative choice to break the fourth wall here — to make eye contact directly with the audience to offer an unspoken plea: tell me this is not happening. But, like that plastic partition — creating a screen within a screen effect symbolizing the compounding and impenetrable distance between us — the audience descends into heartbreak, both powerless to answer his call and unable to provide comfort if it could.
Anger
It’s probably better to describe this as annoyed confusion, but, when we’re truly honest with ourselves, isn’t that really what anger is? Based on the names at the bottom of the screen, that’s defense attorney TaTaNisha Reed captured moments after surmounting her own denial stage. The mise-en-scène places the light cascading over her with an incandescent quality to convey righteous rage to the audience. The sort of righteous rage a criminal defense attorney might have when they’re thinking “seriously, my client’s fate is in the hands of a cop who can’t even bother to put his pants on?!?”
In this, she speaks for us all.
Bargaining
“You got some pants on, cuz — uh — officer?” No notes.
Depression
“Is that in the… no, sir.” Defeat. And also a meditation upon the institution of law enforcement in 2025. Formal, martial uniformity increasingly exposed from beneath. It’s a trope that we’ve seen time and again, but as a sequel one cannot help but draw parallels to Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans or Pants Off Dance Off Season 2.
Acceptance
“Uh, uh, ok.” Resignation meets resilience as the judge buries the lingering memories of the event and pivots to call upon the woman we assume to be the prosecutor (who is never shown in the clip… another symbolic nod to the intangible and yet ever present nature of the state? Simultaneously within the chat and yet without as she floats above and untouched by this — to draw upon Lacan — encounter with the Real.)
So the clip concludes. The audience is ripped away from the narrative without conclusion, and yet… forever changed.
And, somewhere in the distance, the familiar melody of Axel F begins.
The post This Is The Citizen Kane Of ‘Police Officer Going To Zoom Court Hearing Without Pants’ Clips appeared first on Above the Law.
Overrated: How are we still seeing AI hallucinated cases? It’s a tragic reflection of the justice system’s tech incompetence!
Underrated: Buddy, we’re still seeing Zoom fails. Keep your pants on.
In this specific case, we mean this literally. Five years on from COVID sending the entire profession into Zoom, giving us everything from “naked appearances” to sex hearings and turned “I’m not a cat” into a celebrity, the courts are still dealing with Zoom fails because professional dignity ends where the camera frame begins.
A Detroit police officer appeared in a virtual court hearing wearing his official uniform shirt and badge, and not so much else. It’s the sort of thing Detroit’s greatest law enforcement hero might have pulled, but Axel Foley would’ve joined reclining on a floaty in a Beverly Hills pool and no one would’ve been the wiser.
The clip is art. The stages of grief beautifully distilled in flickering images stitched together and whizzed across our screens at speed. Look at this! This is some 400 Blows era Truffaut composition right here. Walk with us through this staggering work of breathtaking genius.
Denial
Judge Sean B. Perkins, attempting to come to grips with the image on his screen and instantly regretting the lack of imagination in his “no shirt, no shoes, no justice” sign. Note how Judge Perkins makes the bold creative choice to break the fourth wall here — to make eye contact directly with the audience to offer an unspoken plea: tell me this is not happening. But, like that plastic partition — creating a screen within a screen effect symbolizing the compounding and impenetrable distance between us — the audience descends into heartbreak, both powerless to answer his call and unable to provide comfort if it could.
Anger
It’s probably better to describe this as annoyed confusion, but, when we’re truly honest with ourselves, isn’t that really what anger is? Based on the names at the bottom of the screen, that’s defense attorney TaTaNisha Reed captured moments after surmounting her own denial stage. The mise-en-scène places the light cascading over her with an incandescent quality to convey righteous rage to the audience. The sort of righteous rage a criminal defense attorney might have when they’re thinking “seriously, my client’s fate is in the hands of a cop who can’t even bother to put his pants on?!?”
In this, she speaks for us all.
Bargaining
“You got some pants on, cuz — uh — officer?” No notes.
Depression
“Is that in the… no, sir.” Defeat. And also a meditation upon the institution of law enforcement in 2025. Formal, martial uniformity increasingly exposed from beneath. It’s a trope that we’ve seen time and again, but as a sequel one cannot help but draw parallels to Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans or Pants Off Dance Off Season 2.
Acceptance
“Uh, uh, ok.” Resignation meets resilience as the judge buries the lingering memories of the event and pivots to call upon the woman we assume to be the prosecutor (who is never shown in the clip… another symbolic nod to the intangible and yet ever present nature of the state? Simultaneously within the chat and yet without as she floats above and untouched by this — to draw upon Lacan — encounter with the Real.)
So the clip concludes. The audience is ripped away from the narrative without conclusion, and yet… forever changed.
And, somewhere in the distance, the familiar melody of Axel F begins.
The post This Is The Citizen Kane Of ‘Police Officer Going To Zoom Court Hearing Without Pants’ Clips appeared first on Above the Law.
