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In your opinion Randbrick (and everyone else's too for that matter), why is it that becoming a prosecutor is a viable path to becoming a politician, and what effects does this have on our laws and the criminal justice system and by extension the police? The Democratic candidate for governor in my state has had attack ads against him for simply being a defense attorny, so the topic interests me. Does anyone know of any elected officials with a defense attorney background for that matter?
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Jul 19, 2014 01:43
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Randbrick posted:This is great when you're dealing with really bad people. But really bad people are a tiny fraction of the multitudes we wheel through the criminal justice conveyor belt. I get my robbery cases and the occasional rapist, and I get my monsters. But the overwhelming majority of my caseload are sad sack addicts and crazy people who have no proper access to mental health treatment. As an addict who had one run in with the police that could have very easily ended in my arrest (but didn't probably due to me being a clean-cut looking white boy living at home*), it bothers me greatly that other people in a similar situations but the wrong ethnicity or a poorer socioeconomic status suffer so much due to our law enforcement system. Addicts don't need to be punished more. They suffer enough from their addiction. Anyone who has been an addict for longer than several months has already been punished many times over. The thought of someone being hosed by the legal system due to substance abuse just kills me inside. I can't even imagine having to deal with all the stress/pain of addiction on top of being poor and/or in prison. There's a reason so many people are only able to deal with it by "finding religion." It's like sending people to prison for having cancer or any other painful health problem. This is more a problem with the law than law enforcement, though I'm sure plenty of police have their own biases against substance abuse/addicts. *In my particular situation I was using an opioid that had just been made illegal in my state, and the police came to my house asking about my purchase of it online. My parents were there and talked about how I was in treatment, etc. But if I hadn't been in a middle class white home I probably would have been hosed. I'm a programmer who plans to go to graduate school for my phd next year, and my life could have been ruined.
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Jul 19, 2014 01:55
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paragon1 posted:Does anyone know of any elected officials with a defense attorney background for that matter? A ton. Several members of congress with active law practice in their past were defense attorneys or dabbled in it at one point or another. Local politics might change the narrative a bit.
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Jul 19, 2014 05:32
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paragon1 posted:In your opinion Randbrick (and everyone else's too for that matter), why is it that becoming a prosecutor is a viable path to becoming a politician, and what effects does this have on our laws and the criminal justice system and by extension the police? From an idiotic layman's standpoint, defense attorney's free murderers and thieves onto our streets. Easy-PZ attack ads.
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Jul 19, 2014 06:10
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paragon1 posted:In your opinion Randbrick (and everyone else's too for that matter), why is it that becoming a prosecutor is a viable path to becoming a politician, and what effects does this have on our laws and the criminal justice system and by extension the police? In the state of Indiana, the Marion County Prosecutor is arguably the most powerful office in the state. In addition to prosecuting the normal cases a prosecutor faces, the capitol city of Indianapolis also falls within Marion County. So he can also prosecute state government officials on public corruption charges. Steve Goldsmith, most recent oy a deputy Mayor under Blomberg, actually used this position to go after a state wide elected official. Prosecutor also can be a very public, visible office from which you can get a lot of earned media from. Worth pointing out that county Prosecutor or District Attorney (state, not fed), are typically elected offices in most of the country. Another office that is still elected in a lot of places is county judges but those are really bad to launch a career outside of the judiciary because incumbent judges are heavily restricted in what they can talk about in terms of legal analyses and prior cases, particularly those still on appeal. notthegoatseguy fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Jul 20, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 19:18
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KernelSlanders posted:I didn't mean physically gone. I meant you've checked out of the conversation since you promptly ignored the stories you asked for and went on to low effort mockery and name calling. You're like a courtroom scribe. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 20, 2014 20:59
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Cole posted:You're like a courtroom scribe. Hi there, you asked for personal examples of police abuse, these were given. What was your intention in asking for them? Don't be a coward and run off.
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Jul 20, 2014 21:51
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I recall in the jurisdition where I practice.. The District Attorney's race was against a guy who has held the following positions: cop, district attorney, defense attorney, and some rear end in a top hat who's never been anything but a prosecutor. And yes, there were attack ads against that first guy based on defending bad people. It was disturbing. Every time a defense attorney is questioned on those grounds, the local bar association steps up and says that's not cool. And we ignore them, because the local bar association is meaningless.
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Jul 21, 2014 04:01
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Randbrick posted:I recall in the jurisdition where I practice.. Also who is the "we" in "we ignore them"?
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Jul 21, 2014 04:52
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American voters, if I had to guess?
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Jul 21, 2014 04:57
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlY9C6pzxKc
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Jul 21, 2014 22:23
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notthegoatseguy posted:Worth pointing out that county Prosecutor or District Attorney (state, not fed), are typically elected offices in most of the country. Another office that is still elected in a lot of places is county judges but those are really bad to launch a career outside of the judiciary because incumbent judges are heavily restricted in what they can talk about in terms of legal analyses and prior cases, particularly those still on appeal. You could probably affect a decent amount of change with an organization making use of this actually. "We're going to try to get someone who's going to go as easy as possible on Marijuana offenses as a judge" for instance could probably get a lot of people out voting that otherwise might not have been, and it's a lot more directly effecting than a lot of other things used to mobilize people.
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Jul 22, 2014 02:42
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reignonyourparade posted:You could probably affect a decent amount of change with an organization making use of this actually. "We're going to try to get someone who's going to go as easy as possible on Marijuana offenses as a judge" for instance could probably get a lot of people out voting that otherwise might not have been, and it's a lot more directly effecting than a lot of other things used to mobilize people. I'm not saying it isn't possible. But for the most part, judicial ethics would require you to recuse yourself from any case that you might be biased in.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:33
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notthegoatseguy posted:I'm not saying it isn't possible. But for the most part, judicial ethics would require you to recuse yourself from any case that you might be biased in. One might ask what the point is of elected judges if they can't campaign on the basis of what they would do in office.
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Jul 22, 2014 04:58
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KernelSlanders posted:One might ask what the point is of elected judges if they can't campaign on the basis of what they would do in office. Masturbatory democracy.
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Jul 22, 2014 06:25
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/cops-react-to-the-death-of-eric-garner.html
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Jul 22, 2014 11:35
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meat sweats posted:http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/cops-react-to-the-death-of-eric-garner.html Look at all those comments, disgusting.
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Jul 22, 2014 12:14
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meat sweats posted:http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/cops-react-to-the-death-of-eric-garner.html Well he got what he wanted. The cops harassing him stopped that day. Unfortunately so did the oxygen to his brain as they choked him to death. Now if he wasn't a black man standing outside on the street and instead a wealth white man inside his residence or business and was suspected of some petty crime and the police wanted him arrested do you think they would have walked up in group of six and choked him like that? I'm guessing probably not. They would have used kid gloves, gone through all the proper per-emptive work and lawyers would have been involved from the get go. This was in effect a summary execution by not being wealthy enough to buffer his person with enough protective in-betweens both physical and legal.
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Jul 22, 2014 12:59
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Talmonis posted:Jesus Tias, what sort of madness inspired them to do that? Being in the general vicinity of a protest or riot. Once you're in the bus or station, no one can see what the gently caress they do to you. And this is one of the best regarded police forces in the world (Denmark). E: My own experiences are largely from being told to disperse a lawful demontration and refusing to. Out comes the CS gas grenades and batons! 
Tias fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 16:19
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No responses from our local Good Apples to these revelations about how cops think when they think civilian scum aren't listening, eh? Guess there really does come a point when it's indefensible.
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Jul 23, 2014 22:42
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meat sweats posted:No responses from our local Good Apples to these revelations about how cops think when they think civilian scum aren't listening, eh? Guess there really does come a point when it's indefensible. There are no good apples, only the rotten and the rotting.
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Jul 23, 2014 23:53
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Cuntpunch posted:Statistically speaking, most inmates are Black. Real crime rates would go way way down if we had decent jobs available to blacks. Also to hispanics, American Indians, and White people, but just to blacks would help. That's not racist, it's acknowledging that there's an economic component to criminality. Which appears to, mainly, be what you're saying. On the larger topic: The police and their behavior are a symptom. They do the jobs they're assigned under political conditions created mostly by others. In a few cities, the police department has serious political pull on their own, but that often vanishes when key people do. The main problems are: Most judges come from a prosecutorial background Prosecution is a pathway to politics and judgeship Possession of drugs is criminalized Lots of people are in economically desperate circumstances. The culture of the cops will change when we change our political culture and make structural changes to the way that prosecutors and judges get and keep their jobs.
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Jul 24, 2014 02:10
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Although it's good to think in terms of denied opportunities for minorities (which can be seen through studies of job callback rates for AAVE sounding vs. Anglo sounding names), even that is putting the cart before the horse when speaking of arrest rates and crime. The police need to simply stop and harass black men less often, because as far as I am aware there is no evidence that they actually commit a proportionally greater amount of drug or weapon crime. Yet, their rates for stops, arrests, convictions and sentences at the high end of the range are all greater. It's simply institutional racism on the law enforcement and justice side, and that can be addressed in itself without punting to broader issues of inequality. (this isn't disagreeing with any poster above)
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Jul 24, 2014 03:46
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SedanChair posted:Although it's good to think in terms of denied opportunities for minorities (which can be seen through studies of job callback rates for AAVE sounding vs. Anglo sounding names), even that is putting the cart before the horse when speaking of arrest rates and crime. The police need to simply stop and harass black men less often, because as far as I am aware there is no evidence that they actually commit a proportionally greater amount of drug or weapon crime. The statistics actually bear out that white people commit a proportionally similar amount of drugs and weapons crimes. There are small differences--blacks tends to have higher rates of distribution, but only by a little, whites steal more, but only a little. It's not putting the cart before the horse, though. It's not saying "The way to solve crime is to increase black unemployment". It's just a simple, true fact that if we increased good, steady jobs available to black people, the crime rate would go down. It'd actually help with the indiscriminate arrests, too, because economic capital equates to political capital, and right now blacks are way underpowered politically because, as a group, they're more impoverished than whites. Anyway, my main point is even if you really dislike everything about cops, the cops didn't design the system. There's only a small ambit that they have control over, and even that part could be circumscribed by society if they wanted to. The majority of problems in our justice system come from rewarding prosecution far more than defense, in terms of judgeships, appointments, and political careers. I don't have a definite solution for this, but definitely pushing for more defense lawyers, not just procedural ones but ones with firm convictions, to be made judges is part of it. Prosecutor would be less attractive as a job if there were more judges who were appropriately hostile to shoddy prosecutions. Oh, and oddly, the New Haven police department is a remarkably uncorrupt one. They participated with an FBI sting against one of their own officers back in 2008, which resulted in his arrest and imprisonment. From what they tell me, along with other friends who are cops, the 'rotten apple' thing is slightly more complex: If you've got any sort of brain you investigate the police force you want to join, you do ride-alongs, etc. So if you're a corrupt shitbird, you'll join a police unit that's got that feel to it. If your'e a straight-and-narrow guy, you'll generally seek out the police forces that are known to be stand-up. Part of the result of this is entire precincts that are routinely violating people's rights, with no good apples left because they self-selected themselves the gently caress out of there.
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Jul 24, 2014 04:03
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Obdicut posted:Anyway, my main point is even if you really dislike everything about cops, the cops didn't design the system. There's only a small ambit that they have control over, and even that part could be circumscribed by society if they wanted to. What they have full control over is who they decide looks suspicious walking down the street.
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Jul 24, 2014 04:55
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Police are a gang that uses their numbers and power to literally extort protection money from people on the threat of harming their children, and if you think a "good person" can be a cop you have no idea what the word "good" means and are possibly unclear on "person" as well: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken
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Jul 25, 2014 12:52
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I want to note that this is super-important in comparison to nearly every other example of police abuse because it is the exact opposite of an isolated incident, a "bad apple," or a rogue squad. It is an explicit policy practiced by nearly every department across the country, openly, and with the full cooperation of prosecutors and judges. You cannot join a police department if you are a good person because good people do not do this.
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Jul 25, 2014 12:54
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meat sweats posted:Police are a gang that uses their numbers and power to literally extort protection money from people on the threat of harming their children, and if you think a "good person" can be a cop you have no idea what the word "good" means and are possibly unclear on "person" as well: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken The reason why this sort of hysterical argumentation is completely ineffective is that if you know any normal cops, it immediately falls flat on its face. I can confidently state that neither of my friends who are cops in New Haven have ever extorted money from anyone on the threat of harming their children. The policy of asset forfeiture--which I strongly object to in most cases--is practiced all over, but it's not used as an extortion racket all over. In far too many places and in far too many people, but the reason that town was a story was that it's unusual. And again, the cops can't possibly do this without the legal framework, and they cannot create that legal framework.
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Jul 25, 2014 13:40
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Yeah, it becomes a combination of "I'm the good guy doing my good work" and "I'm just following orders/the law".
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Jul 25, 2014 13:54
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LorneReams posted:Yeah, it becomes a combination of "I'm the good guy doing my good work" and "I'm just following orders/the law". Combined with a learned version of ptsd and little accountability for abuse outside of what makes headlines and YouTube
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Jul 25, 2014 15:32
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#NotAllCops
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Jul 25, 2014 16:44
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Obdicut posted:The reason why this sort of hysterical argumentation is completely ineffective is that if you know any normal cops, it immediately falls flat on its face. I can confidently state that neither of my friends who are cops in New Haven have ever extorted money from anyone on the threat of harming their children. You cannot confidently state any such thing. "Surely none of MY friends could be evil!" is exactly what allows this behavior to go unchecked.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:06
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meat sweats posted:You cannot confidently state any such thing. "Surely none of MY friends could be evil!" is exactly what allows this behavior to go unchecked. Lol He should be paranoid of good friends without proof but cops are assholes for being paranoid. Guilty til proven innocent right?
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Jul 25, 2014 17:40
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Cole posted:Lol False equivalence. Cops should be held to a higher standard of behavior and ethics than the average person. At the point where you are entrusted with the power to revoke someone else's freedom, every one of your decisions made and actions taken while invoking that authority should be suspected of abuse by default. It's up to the government and its officers to prove they have not acted out of turn, in every single case, and ironically this is exactly where the concept 'innocent until proven guilty' comes from. It's not a defense for cops, it's a defense from cops. meat sweats posted:You cannot confidently state any such thing. "Surely none of MY friends could be evil!" is exactly what allows this behavior to go unchecked. He has every right to confidently state such a thing. What he might not be able to confidently state is that his friends have never covered up for another officer who made a bad call. There's a line there and I see what you're playing at, but you two are using different definitions of what makes a cop a good person. Cuntpunch fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 17:56
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In a better world, cops wouldn't have to monitor and suspect each other like this, because there'd be a strong regulatory body on top of them watching them all the time. That clearly isn't the case though.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:57
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meat sweats posted:You cannot confidently state any such thing. "Surely none of MY friends could be evil!" is exactly what allows this behavior to go unchecked. No, I really can confidently state that. Why do you think that I can't? Is this like me not being able to confidently say they're not reptiles, either, or what? Cuntpunch posted:
Well, again, they joined that department because of it's clean-cut reputation, and they joined a part of that department that had an even more clean-cut reputation. Of course it's possible they've covered something up--they're entirely human--but they specifically sought out a police environment that was as uncorrupt as they could find. Part of the point of this is that cops joining corrupt departments mainly know what they're getting into.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:46
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Obdicut posted:No, I really can confidently state that. Why do you think that I can't? Is this like me not being able to confidently say they're not reptiles, either, or what? Do you think less than 100% of cops have Do you think more than 0% of cops are bad cops? This isn't rocket science. Everyone has friends. Anonymous Internet person vouching for cops means less than nothing. quote:Well, again, they joined that department because of it's clean-cut reputation, and they joined a part of that department that had an even more clean-cut reputation. Of course it's possible they've covered something up--they're entirely human--but they specifically sought out a police environment that was as uncorrupt as they could find. http://www.nhregister.com/general-n...eater-new-haven http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/another_brutality_complaint_is/ http://copwatchnewhaven.tumblr.com/ Your friends sound like great people.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:07
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meat sweats posted:Do you think less than 100% of cops have I can't really understand that sentence, but yeah, I think a lot less than 100% of cops have friends who will swear they are great guys, because i know for a fact less than 100% of cops have friends. quote:Do you think more than 0% of cops are bad cops? Yes. quote:This isn't rocket science. Everyone has friends. Anonymous Internet person vouching for cops means less than nothing. How about you engage with the actual point of my post; Corruption is not universally present and is not present at the same levels everywhere. Rotten apples attract rotten apples, clean apples attract clean apples. If we want to reform the police, we should look to the police departments that, even under a prosecutorial and legal system which encourages abuses of power, manages to (hah) self-police, so that we can learn how they're able to do that. Your article says that New Haven faced 34 lawsuits for police brutality over the past five years. That's not really a lot. If we actually wanted to assess whether New Haven is a less corrupt, less brutal police area than other places, we'd have to do a hell of a lot of real research. The point, however, is that my friends preferentially chose to become police there because of it's reputation for uncorruptness and non-brutality. Do you understand this?
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Jul 25, 2014 23:31
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Obdicut posted:Your article says that New Haven faced 34 lawsuits for police brutality over the past five years. That's not really a lot. If we actually wanted to assess whether New Haven is a less corrupt, less brutal police area than other places I'm glad I got you to go from "New Haven police are shining beacons of virtue" to the police equivalent of "at least Franco is better than Hitler!!!!" in one post. Now keep going.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:37
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meat sweats posted:I'm glad I got you to go from "New Haven police are shining beacons of virtue" to the police equivalent of "at least Franco is better than Hitler!!!!" in one post. Now keep going. It's not "Franco is better than Hitler". It's pretty much "Abraham Lincoln was better than Andrew Jackson". You have a very odd conversational style. Really, let me make one more attempt to engage with you: I think that the entire structure of our legal system is screwed up, mainly through the politicization of prosecution but also through various bullshit laws. Civil forfeiture is one of those laws. Fixing that is not doable by reforming police departments. If we threw out every policeman overnight and replaced them all with lots of oversight et al., we'd still have prosecutors leaning on them to produce, we'd still have the societal expectation of cops as people who's purpose is to arrest criminals, etc. The problems are systemic, they do not lie with the police, and police are necessary in any society. Until we manage to get the justice structure in the US changed, we can only make some amelioration to the police. To do what we can, it would be good to look at the police departments that have low amounts of corruption and violence, to see if we can spread what they're doing and how they do it to other police departments.
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Jul 26, 2014 00:26
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