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The logic is "the government failed therefore the private sector should step in". The reason the government fails in the first place is because of Starve the Beast. No matter that the very concept of the private sector regulating itself, especially in economic and environmental terms, goes against basic understandings of capitalism.
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Jul 30, 2014 16:51
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SedanChair posted:So many investigative practices are junk science, it's no surprise even without the shortcuts. Don't even get me started on "fire science".... 
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Jul 30, 2014 18:32
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Talmonis posted:I like the EPA and the FDA just fine, though they certainly need work. OSHA, DNR, the CDC and HUD are pretty positive agencies. The goal of the EPA is to protect the environment while not needlessly harming economic progress. The goal of the FDA is to protect the public's food supply and ensure safety of medical devices and pharmaceuticals while not needlessly harming advancement in those fields. Each agency does the job of its mandate reasonably well, most of the time. I think the core problem with law enforcement is the perception that their job is to maximize arrests and convictions. All of these problems we're seeing stem ultimately from that I think. It's a lot like that Comcast guy who wouldn't let the customer cancel. Employees respond to the metrics you judge them by. If police get promoted based on how many drug busts they make, then you're going to get lots of drug busts with shittier and shittier behavior to obtain them.
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Jul 30, 2014 19:24
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Also most of those agencies have limited coercive power over individuals. Compared to the police or the FBI, the FDA's or the EPA's ability to end my life is much smaller. Sure, both agencies make decisions that do impact lives, but "kill/maim someone" isn't in their toolbox in the same way it is for law enforcement.
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Jul 30, 2014 19:34
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KernelSlanders posted:The goal of the EPA is to protect the environment while not needlessly harming economic progress. The goal of the FDA is to protect the public's food supply and ensure safety of medical devices and pharmaceuticals while not needlessly harming advancement in those fields. Each agency does the job of its mandate reasonably well, most of the time. I think the core problem with law enforcement is the perception that their job is to maximize arrests and convictions. All of these problems we're seeing stem ultimately from that I think. The Office of Weights and Measures is pretty badass. And yes, as I've been saying the problem with the police and other law enforcement, including prosecutors, is their mandate. They are not given the instructions to lower the crime rate, but to arrest, prosecute, and imprison criminals. Similarly, our prisons aren't judged by how well the rehabilitate prisoners--our prisons basically have no positive metric, their existence is solely to make money for some and political capital for others, and that is how they are really judged.
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Jul 30, 2014 19:35
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GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:Aren't the articles basically decrying the fact that HUD is being gutted? Well, I'd heard that HUD was basically gutting the public housing in New Orleans to put up a mixed income suburban wasteland for kickbacks/because poor people suck. And then there's this poo poo. Watch to 1:13:19 for the full thing I'm trying to convey. E-Tank fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 19:38
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Obdicut posted:The Office of Weights and Measures is pretty badass. Really the problem is that Republicans and Conservatives of any stripe refuse to fund anything that doesn't have a numerical metric behind it. And not even then, unless it's actively making money. Because of that, we'll never see pro-active police presence that isn't tied to arrests and speeding tickets.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:33
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E-Tank posted:Well, I'd heard that HUD was basically gutting the public housing in New Orleans to put up a mixed income suburban wasteland for kickbacks/because poor people suck. And then there's this poo poo. Without HUD, there is no public housing. They're an organization that needs fixing, so they can do their job properly, rather then one that should be eliminated in lieu of Free Market hocus pocus.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:35
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Well, I'm glad this thread about how to reign in abuses by the police has concluded that: 1) Any attempt at controlling the government is part of a Republican conspiracy and must be resisted 2) We can't rely on an agency that has had success at reigning in police abuse because of a bunch of irrelevant poo poo about Palestine or something 3) There's no point to doing anything until Full Communism is achieved so we'll just have to keep letting cops kill black dudes for sport I guess. Good job, leftists. Good effort.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:58
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meat sweats posted:Well, I'm glad this thread about how to reign in abuses by the police has concluded that: 1) Any attempt at controlling the government is part of a Republican conspiracy and must be resisted 2) We can't rely on an agency that has had success at reigning in police abuse because of a bunch of irrelevant poo poo about Palestine or something 3) There's no point to doing anything until Full Communism is achieved so we'll just have to keep letting cops kill black dudes for sport I guess. Nobody said anything remotely approaching this. You're really weird. Like, really, really, really weird. You might want to stop arguing in favor of anything you actually care about, because your arguments are so bad, and your personality so strange, that you do an active disservice to anything you talk about. For example, you keep saying that people are saying there's no point in doing anything. Nobody has said that. Some people, including myself, have said that if you want to change things permanently, you need to address the larger problems. And as an example, my solution to that, making prosecutors a non-political position and giving them a crime-reduction mandate instead of prosecute the criminals mandate, has gently caress-all to do with communism. Just for shits and giggles, what is your actual proposal to fix police abuses? I would add that it's really not just the GOP that's the problem. In California, for example, the prison guard union is one of the most powerful political forces in the state and everyone, most especially Mr. Jerry Brown, needs their support to get anywhere. Democrats, in general, are fine with being tough on crime, they give a small amount of lipservice to rehabilitation but they're mostly still scared of being called 'leftists'. Obama's recent moves on drug sentencing have actually been some of the biggest stuff we've seen from the Democrats in a long time on reform of these issues.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:16
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meat sweats posted:Well, I'm glad this thread about how to reign in abuses by the police has concluded that: 1) Any attempt at controlling the government is part of a Republican conspiracy and must be resisted 2) We can't rely on an agency that has had success at reigning in police abuse because of a bunch of irrelevant poo poo about Palestine or something 3) There's no point to doing anything until Full Communism is achieved so we'll just have to keep letting cops kill black dudes for sport I guess. I'm a little surprised to see you flacking for the FBI seeing as how their entire remit for half a century was to tear all of leftism to pieces by any means necessary.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:33
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It's like arguing that we need to shut down public schools as racist since they were the chief agents of segregation in 1955. In 2014, will giving the FBI more resources to investigate police corruption lead to a net positive or a net negative? I think it's a net positive based on their contemporary track record and I don't think the FBI's overreach on terrorism, which I have made stridently clear I oppose, is relevant, because putting more money and manpower into the police oversight functions isn't going to have anything at all to do with the national security divisions. The irrelevancies that have dominated this discussion are obvious -- we can't have the FBI do anything because of something the FBI did 50 years ago that leftists don't like. We can't address police unions because unions are always good. We can't suggest reining in abuses because of the "starve the beast" conspiracy theory that's convinced any cut to government funding or power anywhere is part of a plot to privatize the fire department. We can't fix one problem because what about school lunches / fossil fuels / transphobia / whatever other totally unrelated concern that reforming the police won't solve. This is why nothing gets done -- the people concerned with the problem talk themselves into focusing their energy on everything but creating & marketing effective solutions to the populace.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:01
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meat sweats posted:
Nobody said that. quote:We can't address police unions because unions are always good. Nobody said that. quote:We can't suggest reining in abuses because of the "starve the beast" conspiracy theory that's convinced any cut to government funding or power anywhere is part of a plot to privatize the fire department. Nobody said that. quote:We can't fix one problem because what about school lunches / fossil fuels / transphobia / whatever other totally unrelated concern that reforming the police won't solve. Nobody said that. quote:This is why nothing gets done -- the people concerned with the problem talk themselves into focusing their energy on everything but creating & marketing effective solutions to the populace. Again, what is your solution? Is it really just "Give money to the FBI to investigate police corruption", or is there more to it than that?
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Jul 30, 2014 22:03
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meat sweats posted:It's like arguing that we need to shut down public schools as racist since they were the chief agents of segregation in 1955. In 2014, will giving the FBI more resources to investigate police corruption lead to a net positive or a net negative? I think it's a net positive based on their contemporary track record and I don't think the FBI's overreach on terrorism, which I have made stridently clear I oppose, is relevant, because putting more money and manpower into the police oversight functions isn't going to have anything at all to do with the national security divisions. I think you're arguing with some trolls that left this thread several pages ago. I don't think anyone still here is throwing their hands up and saying it's hopeless or that communism is the only solution. Strawman harder. The FBI looking into corruption misses the point. Police "corruption" is a red herring. Corruption implies that there are officers behaving in ways their supervisors don't approve for their own unjust enrichment. Rather, the supervisors, DAs, FBI, etc seem to see the types of abuses many of us complain about as good police work. This also relates to Obdicut's point (I think it was you, sorry if I'm confusing people) about police we might know being good people who would never be corrupt. Sure, but that doesn't mean they don't do a job in which they treat their fellow countrymen like an occupied enemy populace with insurgents around every corner. We saw the same thing from the police who posted in this thread (before the trolls chased them away). How dare we suggest that we're not trying to kill them?
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Jul 30, 2014 22:11
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KernelSlanders posted:
Exactly. My friends on the force are good people, but even if they adhere to the highest ethical standards, they still participate in a fundamentally adversarial system. That's what needs to end, and that's why I focus on the prosecutors and the legislators, because that's where the power of the adversarial system comes from. The force of it, however, comes from our culture, and our attitude towards criminals, and so we need to address the problem on the cultural level too.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:17
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Having the FBI be the final police reform authority is like asking the most environmentally friendly oil company to be the EPA. Sure they might do a good job cleaning up the worst actors, but they'll never fix the system. Law enforcement can't police law enforcement, we've been learning that lesson forever now.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:17
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Immediate proposals: 1) Mandatory audio-visual recording whenever police power is used -- the entirety of a shift and any time an off-duty cop uses his badge/gun/authority on his own accord, on the penalty of being treated as a vigilante with no police authority if the recording is disabled 2) Total independence of the internal affairs function in all jurisdictions -- staffed with investigators, prosecutors, and judges who only work on these cases and are not recruited from police culture or beholden to it to win other cases 3) An end to paid vacation and suspended sentences for police abuses, mandatory financial and prison penalties for any abuse of power 4) Expanded use of the FBI's police oversight functions 5) Required regular de-escalation training and incentives in raises and promotions for officers who handle volatile situations without killing people 6) Total end to asset forfeiture and other incentives to act like the mafia 7) Routine stings on cops by internal affairs for things other than bribery -- see if a cop reacts with violence or handcuffs when someone just disagrees with them verbally, see how they handle the arrest of a minority, etc 8) Proper funding of all of the above Long-term proposals: 1) Repeal of stupid laws including drug laws to minimize the amount of police-v-ordinary-people conflict 2) End of preferential recruitment of military veterans to police departments, as a step to eliminating the police-at-war-with-civilians mentality 3) All officers required to do community outreach work, know the area they are patrolling personally, do basic service tasks, spend time there out of uniform 4) Refocus of main police duty on prevention & apprehension of serious criminals and farming out of revenue-raising activities (meter maids, speed traps) to auxiliary forces who do not carry guns -- another step towards eliminating the us-v-them mentality and the contempt of police for civilians 5) Ban all public employee unions, or at least all unions related to police power (police/prison guard unions) meat sweats fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 22:17
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meat sweats posted:5) Ban all public employee unions, or at least all unions related to police power (police/prison guard unions) Why on earth do you think public employees don't deserve labor protections or collective bargaining? If there's something you think unions shouldn't be able to bargain over (e.g. paid leave during investigations) then ban that practice. Why throw out unions? Edit: I'd love to understand the logic behind banning teacher's unions having a positive impact on police reform....
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Jul 30, 2014 22:20
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Trabisnikof posted:Why on earth do you think public employees don't deserve labor protections or collective bargaining? In general, because public employees work for the electorate and their "bargain" is whatever the voters choose to give them at the ballot box, with anything else they gain from strike action being anti-democratic. They aren't working against the power of a private employer, and they do not have a right to override the education, policing, or other policies that the democratic process has arrived at. In the specific, because police and prison guard unions have been fundamental to blocking reforms designed to end police and prison abuses and are large evils in this discussion. This was discussed to death early in the thread despite the insistence on this page that "no one" is saying what you are saying.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:23
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meat sweats posted:
(This one is actually a long term proposal, so I'm including it here. 6) Total end to asset forfeiture and other incentives to act like the mafia. Agreed. Needs a legislative fix. quote:1) Repeal of stupid laws including drug laws to minimize the amount of police-v-ordinary-people conflict Agreed. Legislative fix. quote:2) End of preferential recruitment of military veterans to police departments, as a step to eliminating the police-at-war-with-civilians mentality Unproven assertion that this is the cause of the police-at-war-with-citizens mentality. Really weak assertion, too: do you have any reason to believe that police who aren't from military backgrounds have a different mentality? quote:3) All officers required to do community outreach work, know the area they are patrolling personally, do basic service tasks, spend time there out of uniform. Agreed. Actual police-level fix! Whooo! quote:4) Refocus of main police duty on prevention & apprehension of serious criminals and farming out of revenue-raising activities (meter maids, speed traps) to auxiliary forces who do not carry guns -- another step towards eliminating the us-v-them mentality and the contempt of police for civilians. I really don't understand this. How does a meter maid having a gun lead to contempt for civilians? And while in general being a cop is safer than most other professions, the most likely time to get shot at is during a traffic stop. Would also be a legislative fix. quote:5) Ban all public employee unions, or at least all unions related to police power (police/prison guard unions) Would be a legislative fix, but obviously unions, while not perfect, can also be forces that improve conditions. What would you replace the unions with in terms of police being able to avoid politicians screwing them over, how would they be able to negotiate workplace safety and other concerns? Some sort of dedicated labor board? Anyway, I'm glad that you've seen the light and realized that fixing problems with the police mainly involves legislative fixes. I'm curious why you didn't touch on prosecutors and their politics though.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:24
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I saw a great comment on Gawker yesterday (yeah, I know...) that I unfortunately can't find now, about the incident over the weekend where the NYPD used a chokehold against a pregnant woman for the crime of grilling on the sidewalk in front of her house. It pointed out that we need to put some responsibility on the people who support soda bans, laws against selling loose cigarettes, laws against grilling, and other picayune poo poo, because any law inevitably gives the police more pretext to gently caress with people and increases the number of incidents like this. It's almost impossible to go a day without technically breaking some sort of law, so cops can always be assholes whenever they feel like it. This should be taken into account whenever a new behavior is made illegal.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:27
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Obdicut posted:I really don't understand this. How does a meter maid having a gun lead to contempt for civilians? And while in general being a cop is safer than most other professions, the most likely time to get shot at is during a traffic stop. When cops spend 80% of their time looking for ways to pick up citizens and shake them until coins fall out, the oppositional mentality is inevitable. Police need to be focused on real crime, not on fundraising or nonsense like selling loose cigarettes, for a lot of reasons, including that they need to re-learn that "criminals" are a specific, rare type of person and not everyone they meet.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:29
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meat sweats posted:When cops spend 80% of their time looking for ways to pick up citizens and shake them until coins fall out, the oppositional mentality is inevitable. They don't, though. This is just your random yelling. And most police don't act as meter maids at any point. There are plenty of places where the traffic detail is separate from the main police force and yet abuses there aren't less common. I think you're taking a true thing--that the police can fund themselves through arresting people for stuff and getting asset forfeiture--and conflating it with a bunch of other poo poo, and making a mess of your argument. quote:Police need to be focused on real crime, not on fundraising or nonsense like selling loose cigarettes, for a lot of reasons, including that they need to re-learn that "criminals" are a specific, rare type of person and not everyone they meet. Criminals are really not a specific or rare type of person. They are an incredibly common kind of person, with most of the 'crimes' being very low-level. If you mean 'career criminal', then yes, cops know that they are rare-ish, but the guy selling loose cigarettes is one (though a completely penny-ante one who nobody should give a poo poo about). If you mean 'violent criminal', then again, cops know that they're rare. The idea that criminality is rare is one of the cultural problems we need to address; for example, the drug use and distribution in the white population is basically equivalent to the black population, but there's far more arrests of black people than white people for this. There's a high level of criminality in both groups, but only one is treated as such. Oh great, you actually know this: quote:It's almost impossible to go a day without technically breaking some sort of law, so cops can always be assholes whenever they feel like it. This should be taken into account whenever a new behavior is made illegal. So why do you think that 'criminals' are rare? Do you actually just mean career criminals?
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Jul 30, 2014 22:37
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Obdicut posted:making prosecutors a non-political position and giving them a crime-reduction mandate instead of prosecute the criminals mandate Okay, since you're so fond of saying this in response to suggestions that are more concrete and actionable than the above: How do we actually go about doing that? What does this realistically, practically, mean? How does this mandate take shape? (Note that I don't disagree with what you're saying at all. I totally agree with it. But as a larger action that needs to be taken for its own reasons, not something that we need to hold up more immediate reforms for.) meat sweats posted:Immediate proposals: On board with all of these except the public unions one. I dunno, I can see both sides of that one, and it seems like we have enough else to do here that we can revisit the issue of unions once most of the other confounding factors are removed or reduced, when we'll be better able to evaluate whether it really is the concept of public unions themselves that's a problem. I particularly like the suggested penalty in immediate proposal #1. I've been wondering how you might possibly force cops to always keep their cameras on, when any fair penalty for turning it off would always be less than the penalty of whatever misconduct they might want to cover up. I like the idea of no police authority without a recording. Beyond it being an effective way to get around that problem, it's also a powerful idea. Also long-term proposal #3. Interesting idea. Short-term proposal #7—regular IA stings on cops to see if they respond to sass with violence, etc.—seems like a good idea, but suicide for the IA officers in practice. Yeah they could have backup, but by the time they've got an abuse to bust it's already too late for the guy who's just gotten his head cracked in or whatever. But I do like the idea of there being auditors out among the population—of cops always having to treat each person as if they might be an IA officer.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:43
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meat sweats posted:In general, because public employees work for the electorate and their "bargain" is whatever the voters choose to give them at the ballot box, with anything else they gain from strike action being anti-democratic. They aren't working against the power of a private employer, and they do not have a right to override the education, policing, or other policies that the democratic process has arrived at. So the fact that we have democratically passed public union laws allowing them to strike doesn't count as being democratic? meat sweats posted:
Lobbying is just as large a blocker to prison reform, so why aren't you arguing for banning all lobbying too? You're also ignoring my question. Why not ban public employee unions from negotiating over the issues you dislike rather than banning the institution all together? Do you think janitors deserve fewer workplace protections and rights just because they work for the State or can you explain why banning teacher's unions would help police reform?
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Jul 30, 2014 22:44
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Obdicut posted:So, again, the anti-corruption division there is not mostly a police corruption oversight thing, and to the extent they are, they go after financial corruption in the police department, not abuse of police power. You are suggesting that this department that investigates public and private fiscal corruption is a good solution for the problems we have with police in this country, and while fiscal stuff and bribery is among that I don't think it's anywhere near the most important problem with the police. This is why the US scores better on Transparency's corruption index than many countries in Europe, like France: they're not looking, as far as I can find, at police abuse of power for non-monetary gain. Every single one of those very, very, VERY general points and policies could easily be applied to processes related to law enforcement personnel in this country. You are, once again, being obtuse by obsessing over minutiae. quote:Unproven assertion that this is the cause of the police-at-war-with-citizens mentality. Really weak assertion, too: do you have any reason to believe that police who aren't from military backgrounds have a different mentality? quote:How does a meter maid having a gun lead to contempt for civilians? And while in general being a cop is safer than most other professions, the most likely time to get shot at is during a traffic stop.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:45
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We've been around the bend on the union thing, he just despises public employee unions in general. Don't expect anything but circular reasoning.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:46
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Trabisnikof posted:So the fact that we have democratically passed public union laws allowing them to strike doesn't count as being democratic? meat sweets' mom was raped by a union or something; just ignore his weird-rear end ranting on them or it'll just lead to another five page derail.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:47
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Obdicut posted:
Because despite your tendentious police-apologism, these are not really crimes, they are just normal behaviors that have been made illegal. The law is not always right, cops are not always right.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:47
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Cichlid the Loach posted:Okay, since you're so fond of saying this in response to suggestions that are more concrete and actionable than the above: It'd be a very long-term goal. The first step is in campaigning for and electing progressive officials who at least acknowledge the concept, and the concept of rehabilitation. Another is by organizing with prisoner's rights and ex-con's rights groups, and by confronting the myth of criminality being a rare thing and bringing home to people how much the ordinary person's life can be hosed up because they did something so many people do. It's not in the least bit an easy, or a short-term, thing. quote:(Note that I don't disagree with what you're saying at all. I totally agree with it. But as a larger action that needs to be taken for its own reasons, not something that we need to hold up more immediate reforms for.) At no point, ever, at all, in the least way, shape, or form, have I suggested we hold up immediate reforms. Can you explain why you're saying this when it is absolutely not true? meat sweats posted:Because despite your tendentious police-apologism, these are not really crimes, they are just normal behaviors that have been made illegal. The law is not always right, cops are not always right. They are crimes. They shouldn't be crimes, in many cases, but they are crimes. That is a large part of the problem. You are apparently arguing some platonic ideal of 'true crimes', which I assume that you are the judge of. It doesn't really work that way. We both agree a lot of the things that are currently crimes shouldn't be, but they are, actually, crimes now. Can you explain who you mean by 'criminals' if not people who break the law? Are you talking about career criminals? I also haven't engaged in any police-apologism, but that accusation from you is just like the sound you make when you open your mouth.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:48
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ryonguy posted:Perhaps police behavior and attitude is partially to blame for this increased risk? Like, for instance, being a gun-ho military dipshit towards people who were going ten over in a 35? What type of personality or experience could possibly cause that sort of thinking? With how she was acting of COURSE it was her fault she was raped.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:50
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Actual people who commit actual crimes and have actual contempt for society. We definitely don't need to go back to the 70s where you got a three-year sentence for murder and a warning for rape. That's why we need police and no one is here arguing to totally abolish them. But the police focus on drug possession, outdoor grilling, selling sodas that are too big is turning ordinary, non-antisocial behavior into a so-called "crime," as is taking minor nuisances like speeding and turning them into pretexts for extracting hundreds of dollars, doing searches, etc. The personality that leads someone to commit a murder or a rape or rob a bank is rare. It's not something that anyone could do, though obviously your time spent hanging out with cops has convinced you otherwise. It's 1 person in 10,000, and cops being in a perpetual mindset of war with the other 9,999 is the whole loving issue here.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:52
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ryonguy posted:Every single one of those very, very, VERY general points and policies could easily be applied to processes related to law enforcement personnel in this country. You are, once again, being obtuse by obsessing over minutiae. I honestly have no clue what you mean here. What general points and policies are you talking about? The ones from that Singapore bureau where they talk about how legislative and cultural force are necessary to fight corruption? quote:Yet another willfully obtuse bullshit statement. You are pretending that people with strict military backgrounds, possibly with experience in stressful combat situations, will interact with the general public just like everybody else. What do you mean by 'strict' military backgrounds? I think you have an unrealistic picture of military life. The main reason that vets get recruited to be cops is there's a preferential hiring for them, like, literally a law that says that if there's two equally qualified candidates, you hire the vet, and because they are used to a chain of command and taking orders. The military spends almost no time interacting with civilians professionally and adversarially so I'm just baffled why you think that they do. quote:Why does a meter maid need a gun? I really don't care much if meter maids have guns or not, but presumably to defend themselves against sovereign citizens and the like protesting their tickets 2nd amendment style. quote:And as far as getting shot during traffic stops, the most famous video of a cop being killed during one is shown to recruits as how NOT to act towards the public. Perhaps police behavior and attitude is partially to blame for this increased risk? Like, for instance, being a gun-ho military dipshit towards people who were going ten over in a 35? What type of personality or experience could possibly cause that sort of thinking? I really think you have some bizarre idea of what the military is like and what most military people's attitude towards the military is. And sure, cops can elevate their risk of being shot by being pricks. I really don't think that most cops shot during traffic stops are shot because they were being pricks, because in general people don't shoot other people for mouthing off. I'd venture the crazy guess that most cops shot during traffic stops are shot by people who know they're going to be arrested if the cop proceeds. It's still a very small number, but the point is that traffic cops have more reason to be armed than a beat cop, in general. Can I ask where you get this idea of the military being thugs towards civilians comes from? What military activity do you think involves interacting with the general public?
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Jul 30, 2014 22:57
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Because the military trains you to view everyone outside of your force as an enemy who is trying to kill you and you need to kill first, and treating "civilians" as "an enemy army that should be killed before they kill you" is....a big reason why cops treat civilians as an enemy army that wants to kill them. Duh. Sorry if "cops should view the populace as the people they are serving and not as an enemy military they are at war with" is too kneejerk anti-cop for your drinking buddies and your Serious Good Faith Proposals.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:01
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Bel Shazar posted:With how she was acting of COURSE it was her fault she was raped. So, I know this is idiotic trolling from someone with a fetish for authority, but just so you know, there are cases where cops get themselves shot due to their own stupidity/behavior, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye and who knows how many more we don't know about because the cop instigated the situation and then his buddies finished it by killing someone who originally shot in self-defense. The fact that it's basically impossible to establish self-defense against a cop due to the way the courts are stacked against civilians is yet another issue that needs reform.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:06
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meat sweats posted:Actual people who commit actual crimes and have actual contempt for society. We definitely don't need to go back to the 70s where you got a three-year sentence for murder and a warning for rape. That's why we need police and no one is here arguing to totally abolish them. But the police focus on drug possession, outdoor grilling, selling sodas that are too big is turning ordinary, non-antisocial behavior into a so-called "crime," as is taking minor nuisances like speeding and turning them into pretexts for extracting hundreds of dollars, doing searches, etc. It's not the police focus on this, but the fact that these have been made, via laws and poo poo, into crimes. Likewise, asset forfeiture is something that is allowed because of laws, cops didn't just make it up. You were doing pretty well with your police reform suggestions that were nearly all legislative fixes, don't go backsliding now into this alternate reality where cops decided to come up with all this poo poo on their own and thanks to one weird trick they can use some old law to seize assets and nobody can do anything about it. If you have a problem with the things that are classified as crimes, it is not the police who decide that. That would be the legislature. The cops have a small amount of discretion about what to focus on, but that is mainly decided by elected officials who the cops report to, like mayors and prosecutors. quote:The personality that leads someone to commit a murder or a rape or rob a bank is rare. It's not something that anyone could do, though obviously your time spent hanging out with cops has convinced you otherwise. It's 1 person in 10,000, and cops being in a perpetual mindset of war with the other 9,999 is the whole loving issue here. Your rear end-derived numbers are pretty dumb. What's mostly convinced me of things related to criminology has been studying criminology and advocating for prisoner's rights and ex-con's rights, something I do in my spare time because ex-cons are some of the most absolutely hosed over people in the US. Most murderers don't have some special 'personality', that's the latent trait theory of criminology and it's really not in very good academic repute. There's a lot of sociological drivers of crime, and a lot of crimes of passion which many people are shocked by because they didn't think the person could do it. I think you're somewhere in the vicinity of a reasonable point, which is that there's a huge difference between a guy who signs up for the mafia and is comfortable with the killing and bank robbing, and a wife who murders her husband after he reveals that he hocked the house to pay for gambling debts and is leaving her for a stripper. I think it'd make a lot more sense to think a lot more about the likelihood of re-offense, but that's part and parcel of a move towards greater rehabilitation, which I dearly want. Listen, I know you've constructed this bizarre fantasy where I'm some cop-loving fascist, but it's really, really not reality. I just don't think that cops are the special villains of the system, any more than I think that the drug dealers shooting at each other over turf are. It'll really help the conversation if you drop the fantasy and look at what I'm actually saying. meat sweats posted:Because the military trains you to view everyone outside of your force as an enemy who is trying to kill you and you need to kill first No, they don't. Where are you getting this weird idea of military training from? quote:Sorry if "cops should view the populace as the people they are serving and not as an enemy military they are at war with" is too kneejerk anti-cop for your drinking buddies and your Serious Good Faith Proposals. I completely agree that the cops should view the populace as the people they're serving, and there's an antagonistic relationship between the cops and civilians. I think it's got gently caress-all to do with a lot of cops being ex-military. For one thing, this attitude is perfectly common among cops who aren't ex-military.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:08
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The cops are not passive recipients of what the law is -- police union lobbying has a large role in shaping the laws. More importantly, people who choose to become cops know what the legislature has done and what the cop culture is. Changing the situation so that the police force is not composed of people who think that putting someone in prison for 5 years for pot possession is awesome is an imperative. Right now, cops are shitheads because no non-shithead would ever agree to that. There is no cop draft. You choose to pursue this career. You absolutely bear moral responsibility for enforcing lovely laws because you get to choose whether to do so or not by choosing to become a cop.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:19
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Obdicut posted:Most murderers don't have some special 'personality', that's the latent trait theory of criminology and it's really not in very good academic repute. That you claim to work with criminals and don't see the obvious differences from top to bottom in the personality of someone who is capable of murder and someone who isn't is mindboggling. It's not a magic genetic lottery, it comes from upbringing, trauma, and many factors, but it is absolutely real. There is a tiny superminority of people who commit violent crimes and a huge number of people who would never do so under any circumstances. You have spent too much time hanging out with cops if you doubt this for a second.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:21
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Obdicut posted:Legislative fix. I think you're thinking that people here are thinking something that they don't think. Nobody said that "police-level fixes" wouldn't involve instituting laws to enforce them. By that metric, practically EVERY reform that you don't want to risk being rolled back with a change of the brass is a legislative fix. What people are arguing is whether we should hold off talking about immediate, police-focused legislative fixes until sweeping, system-level legislative fixes are made. You keep saying that reforming the police won't solve the larger problems, and you are right. But this thread is ABOUT the subset of problems that belong to the police. meat sweats posted:The personality that leads someone to commit a murder or a rape or rob a bank is rare. It's not something that anyone could do, though obviously your time spent hanging out with cops has convinced you otherwise. It's 1 person in 10,000, and cops being in a perpetual mindset of war with the other 9,999 is the whole loving issue here. Weeellll at least for rape it's over 1 person in 40 (1 man in 20, don't know the stats on female perpetrators but it's certainly nonzero) but they generally assault their own acquaintances and in ways that create plausible deniability. Murder and bank robbery are probably a lot rarer. But yes, your point stands that the vast majority of people do not want to hurt other people. Although I think it's also dangerous to frame "criminals" as some distinct species from "us law-abiding citizens" (which the police do too with their "wolves/sheep/sheepdogs" thing).
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Jul 30, 2014 23:26
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Cichlid the Loach posted:Although I think it's also dangerous to frame "criminals" as some distinct species from "us law-abiding citizens" (which the police do too with their "wolves/sheep/sheepdogs" thing). I think it's a necessity in the context of this discussion of getting cops to stop treating everyone as criminals. I also think that relying on crime stats to predict the prevalence of criminals is misleading--individual criminals commit hundreds of crimes. That's why putting actual violent criminals in prison has done so much to reduce the crime rate.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:30
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