ActusRhesus posted:

I agree there can be improvements to rehabilitative programs ( though I think diversionary programs are better for this) but rehabilitation isn't the only purpose of incarceration. Some people can't be rehabilitated.

quote:

Brianna Wu, one of the primary targets of Gamergate, told me she has been showered with alarmingly specific threats. "They're saying who, what, where, why, when," she said. "They said I was going to be on the front page of your site when they murdered me."

"I had someone last week that made a video talking about how they're going to murder me," Wu added. "This is not just, 'I'm going to kill Brianna,' this is like a multi-minute rant about why they want to murder me, how. Their face is visible in the video. I have their name and testimony from the people who know them and how unbalanced they are. This person lives 15 minutes from my house."

Wu called the police, which she's had to do numerous times since Gamergate blew up. To her amazement, even this particular threat hasn't resulted in an arrest.



...

Last week, the NYPD made yet another quick arrest, of a 17-year-old boy named Osiris Aristy. They accused him of making terroristic threats against the police by posting gun emojis pointing at cop emojis, along with statements that reportedly included ""N***a run up on me, he gunna get blown down," and "gently caress the 83 104 79 98 73 PctKKKK." Here, the ambiguity of online communication was not a problem.

Even the anonymity of 4chan hasn't prevented local police from being able to arrest a threat-maker: in Harrisonburg, Virginia, police arrested 24-year-old Joshua James Mitri in October after he posted a message on a 4chan board saying he was going to shoot up an elementary school.

GreyPowerVan posted:

I think that programs and open prisons like some of them in Scandinavian countries would be a better idea. They have much lower recidivism risk and a lower prison population vs overall population.

Most people in prison aren't just like gently caress the police gently caress society, they just made a mistake.

Excuse my phone posting.

ActusRhesus posted:

But murder isn't a mistake.

ActusRhesus posted:

For non violent offenders I would agree. But murder isn't a mistake.

ActusRhesus posted:

For non violent offenders I would agree. But murder isn't a mistake.

ActusRhesus posted:

For non violent offenders I would agree. But murder isn't a mistake.

quote:

Eighty elite police officers and staff responsible for guarding the royal family, political leaders and public events in London have been disciplined for misconduct since 2010, the Guardian has learned.

The vast majority – 60 – of those reprimanded were attached to Scotland Yard’s diplomatic protection group, the unit that came under the spotlight over the Plebgate saga.
...
It can now be revealed that SO6 – whose armed officers guard Downing Street and other top politicians in London – has faced dozens of disciplinary investigations since 2010.

Fifty-four SO6 officers and six staff were disciplined for misconduct since 2010, according to Scotland Yard figures obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

The vast majority of the offences, which ranged from general failure in duty, to assault and traffic irregularities, resulted in written warnings, with only a handful of dismissals.

Four diplomatic protection officers were sacked last year for their role in the Plebgate affair at the Downing Street gates on 19 September 2012.
...
Concerns over the Met’s protection squads were raised again in October when a firearms-trained officer responsible for guarding the royal family was arrested after ammunition was discovered in police lockers in Buckingham Palace.

The FoI figures show that 12 officers and staff from the royal protection unit, SO14, have been disciplined for misconduct since 2010. A further eight officers from SO1, the unit that guards David Cameron and other top ministers, were reprimanded in the same period.

The string of misconduct concerns prompted Scotland Yard chiefs to announce the overhaul of protection squads. In October Rowley said having officers stay in the same role for years could lead to a “separate culture developing”.
...
Scotland Yard was forced to review its security arrangements for the prime minister in October when a jogger was able to run past SO1 officers and within inches of the prime minister on a visit to Leeds.

Previously the Met has been embarrassed by allegations that officers at Buckingham Palace stole items confiscated from the visiting public. This is currently under investigation.

The Met said: “It is important to note that the number of allegations is an extremely small proportion of the total number of officers and staff in the MPS which is over 48,000. The vast majority of our officers and staff carry out their service to Londoners in the manner the MPS and the public expects.

“The MPS is committed to delivering a professional service of the highest standard to the public and expects its employees to conduct themselves professionally, ethically and with the utmost integrity at all times. Any instance where the conduct of our staff brings the MPS into disrepute is treated extremely seriously by the MPS.”

quote:

Computer disks lost by the government containing sensitive data include details identifying the police marksman who shot Mark Duggan, the Guardian has learned.
...
The disks were said to have been lost in the post and contained information about the Duggan inquest, as well as the official inquiry into the police shooting of Azelle Rodney, and the inquiry into the killing of Robert Hamill in Northern Ireland. For all the inquiries, officials were seconded from the Ministry of Justice to assist their running.

Variant_Eris posted:

It's definitely possible to murder someone accidentally. That's what self-defense murder charges are for.

Edit: That's what 3rd degree murder charges are for.

ActusRhesus posted:

Not all jurisdictions have 3rd degree murder.

captainblastum posted:

Murder (by it's very definition) is not a mistake, but as an indication of how rare it is, the proportion of inmates in prison for murder is probably lower than the proportion of death row inmates who are innocent.

http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-study-4-percent-defendants-innocent

We shouldn't base our prisons around the idea that every inmate is a murderer.

GreyPowerVan posted:

That doesn't mean it's not a thing.

ActusRhesus posted:

Not all jurisdictions have 3rd degree murder.

ActusRhesus posted:

Right. And we also shouldn't base them around the idea that every inmate just got caught with a bag of weed. It's almost like there should be different consequences based on the severity of the offense!

quote:

firearms-trained officer responsible for guarding the royal family was arrested after ammunition was discovered in police lockers in Buckingham Palace

ActusRhesus posted:

Right. And we also shouldn't base them around the idea that every inmate just got caught with a bag of weed. It's almost like there should be different consequences based on the severity of the offense!

Dahn posted:

LEvery Law enforcement agency is always trying to justify a bigger budget.

Grem posted:

Hey how do I get my lawyer to respond to me as much as Actus responds to this thread? It's amazing.

bassguitarhero posted:

At a public meeting over whether to create a civilian oversight board for the police, an officer shoves someone and turns the meeting into a brawl.

Where could this possibly be? Only St Louis, of course, where cops testifying against civilian oversight were wearing "I am darren Wilson" arm bands

http://newsfeed.gawker.com/supremacist-motherfucker-chaos-at-st-louis-cop-ove-1682510440

kmov posted:

The video was taken from the back of a transport vehicle. It shows the handcuffed teenager stepping out to face two officers. Bruce is the one to the left. Officer Bruce can be heard saying: “Stand out here with us...you lying piece of s***.”

Words are exchanged and then; “It’s one forearm blow as he’s trained to do,” said Jeff Roorda with the St. Louis Police Officer’s Association. Roorda says he can see Bruce crouched down and the suspect moving forward. He says Bruce was only defending himself.

Missouri Torch posted:

Bruce walked. And Roorda said the judge, who didn’t allow the video to be entered as evidence, did the right thing. He even said this wasn’t about Bruce’s actions, but the prosecutor’s vanity:

“You’ve got a guy who has twice skated on serious charges all in the interest of prosecuting a police officer on a misdemeanor where the only evidence is video that exonerates him,” Roorda said in a prepared statement. “This is more than a case of prosecutorial indiscretion; it’s a case of prosecutorial vanity.”

StL Today posted:

Jeff Roorda, executive director of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, said the organization has had concerns about dashboard cameras in use on many city patrol cars and would have the same worries about on-body devices.

Roorda, who also is a Democratic state representative, said both types of cameras provide video of “one angle of an encounter” that sometimes doesn’t reflect exactly what happened. “In general, cameras have been bad for law enforcement and the communities they protect,” he said. “It causes constant second-guessing by the courts and the media.”

Riverfront Times posted:

Roorda warned St. Louis aldermen during a hearing that the city cannot purchase body cameras on a whim. By law, any decision related to police equipment must go through the collective bargaining process with the police union, which Roorda represents.

During the hearing yesterday morning, public safety director Richard Gray revealed the estimated price tag for outfitting the city's police officers with body cameras -- $1.2 million, but that number doesn't include the $500,000 to cover labor and maintenance costs.

"My basic point was that we've got a union here," Roorda told Daily RFT while awaiting Nixon's arrival at the campaign rally. "We have not said once that we don't want body cameras. We just said we want a place at the table to discuss how and when they'll be used. We expect the city to abide the law and negotiate with us."[...]

"All we know about Ferguson is that officer Wilson was tried in the court of public opinion," said Roorda, who disagrees with those who argue the cameras would help protect citizens from excessive force by police.[...]

"We ought to just worry about getting the truth of the matter," Roorda said, "and not just saying that cameras better protect the citizens. The citizens are not in danger because of the police. The citizens are safe because of police, and they will be less safe if we continue down this path of handcuffing police."[...]

In any case, Roorda sees the push for body cameras as a way of harassing officers who commit minor infractions, like rolling a stop sign or not buckling their seat belt. "Our experience with the dashboard cameras has been that they haven't been used to find out the material facts of the situation. They've been used to pile petty discipline on our officers," he said.

But what really bothers Roorda is that all this money could be put to better use. Instead of body cameras, he suggested using the funds to raise officer salaries and upgrading or replacing existing police equipment.

"Our guys make $9,000 less than the average in the St. Louis region. We just went through collective bargaining where they told us they didn't have the money to bring us up to the average salary, yet they have two-million dollars to spend on body cameras? We've got police cars that have 150,000 miles on them, have the wheels falling off. We have guns that are out of production and you can't buy parts for anymore."

Though Roorda is, by all accounts, a friend to the police, his own history as a cop isn't all that flattering. He spent eleven years as a police officer in Arnold before the department terminated him 2001. According to court filings from a later appeal, Roorda was accused in 1997 of trying to cover for another officer by filing a report containing false statements about a suspect's apprehension and arrest. That incident earned him a reprimand.

Four years later the department fired him after a dispute with his police chief over paternity leave grew heated. Roorda claimed that the chief verbally intimated him, but an audio recording proved that this claim, too, was a "false report."

Roorda went on to become Chief of Police for Kimmswick, a tiny city in Jefferson County with a current population listed at 157. He was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 2004. Now, he's got his eye on the Senate.

A watchdog site and text to his bill posted:

Roorda introduced an amendment that would ” prevent the public from obtaining ‘any records and documents pertaining to police shootings … if they contain the name of any officer who did the shooting’.” Under Roorda’s proposal, a police officer’s name would only be entered into the public record if they were charged with a crime. The proposal applies regardless of whether the officer was on or off duty.

"(3) "Police shooting", any incident in which an individual is shot by a law enforcement officer regardless of whether the law enforcement officer was on duty or off duty at the time of the shooting;"

his thoughts after NFL players put their hands up posted:

I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well I've got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours. I'd remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser's products. It's cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do.

cbs posted:

"Whatever has happened in America to cause these feelings of resentment, it's not a failure of law enforcement," St. Louis Police Officers Association business manager Jeff Roorda told CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers. "It's a political failure, and it's an economic failure and we don't feel that should be pinned on the chest of Darren Wilson or law enforcement, more broadly."

Roorda said it's not on police to fix the problems that led to the resentment.

"If we spend this time in the wake of Michael Brown's killing trying to change law enforcement to fix this problem, it's going to be a betrayal to his legacy because that's not why Michael Brown ended on the street confronting a police officer," Roorda said. "It's decades of racial disparity, and economic disparity. It's not a problem with the police."

quote:

"Brooklyn jury awards prison chaplain $4M after apparent cop breaks his leg in vicious beat down
...
“They pulled [my] hat off my head and pulled dreadlocks out of my head,” Graham said. “They slammed me to the floor and held me down. One of them was stepping on my neck and my face. The other one was trying to break my leg.”

Graham said the cops who came to his Crown Heights apartment during a domestic disturbance beat him badly, until they realized what his job was. 'That changed everything,' said Graham.
Graham said he didn’t tell the abusive officers what he did for a living and they continued to treat him like a lowlife until another cop at the 77th Precinct noticed the ID hanging from Graham’s neck and asked him about it.

“Then everything changed,” he said. “They thought I was some thug, but now I’m a state chaplain. I knew from the minute this happened I would sue because I know who I am. I did not do anything.”

The misdemeanor assault, menacing, criminal possession of a weapon, resisting arrest and harassment charges against Graham were later dropped, his lawyer, Raymond Gazer, said.
...
Gazer said authorities couldn’t get their stories straight.

They claimed Graham’s leg was broken was he was flailing about and resisting arrest. Then they tried to blame Graham’s girlfriend, insisting she kicked the chaplain down the stairs after he was already handcuffed.

Meanwhile Graham, whose left tibia and fibula were fractured, underwent two surgeries and now suffers from post-traumatic arthritis.

Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for Corporation Counsel, said the city is “evaluating all of our options for challenging the verdict” and couldn’t say if the agency notified the NYPD after the verdict.

“We review, in a variety of ways, all allegations of officer misconduct,” Deputy Chief Kim Royster said. “A [verdict in] a civil case does not constitute a finding or even evidence that an officer has engaged in any misconduct.”

Aparo, now a sergeant in the 108th Precinct, could not be reached for comment. Neither could his former partner Officer Michael Stumbo, who is now assigned to the Harbor Unit.

But Aparo is no stranger to Internal Affairs — or violence.

In April 2010, five men — including Daniel Golden, the nephew of State Sen. Martin Golden — were accused of roughing-up Aparo, a firefighter, and a Port Authority police officer, during a brawl at The Kettle Black bar in Bay Ridge.

In the course of two trials, during which Golden and the others were acquitted, Aparo allegedly had a technician for the company that maintains the bar’s surveillance cameras erase a critical segment of footage that captured the fight.

Aparo was investigated by IAB, but investigators could not substantiate the allegation and he was not disciplined.

Grem posted:

Hey how do I get my lawyer to respond to me as much as Actus responds to this thread? It's amazing.

Vahakyla posted:

Literally every public department and office ever is trying to justify a bigger budget.

Genocide Tendency posted:

Ah yes.

People who do not have the same "gently caress the police, all cops are bad" mentality that I do are making GBS threads up the thread.

It couldn't possibly be people unwilling to actually think and consider actual, realistic reform. Discuss ways to appropriately achieve reform. Or simply have reasonable meaningful discourse on what constitutes true abuse of authority. Nope. Its certainly not them, and the brilliant ones who are saying disband the police, asking why they are needed, saying poo poo like:

Vahakyla posted:

Literally every public department and office ever is trying to justify a bigger budget.

Woozy posted:

All the "reformers" who've shown up to the CotB thread over the years have been rank apologists who refuse to move forward with any discussion of solutions until they can be certain that every single post on every page is punctuated with "of course these are only a few bad apples mind you so please show proper deference to our boys in blue out there every day protecting the L A W A B I D I N G C I T I Z E N from criminal scum." It's almost like reformist talk is actually a rhetorical tactic meant to stall the thread until everyone is forced to agree to disagree with the end goal of arriving at no conclusions at all!

Rent-A-Cop posted:

England is fuckin' weird.

tentative8e8op posted:

Josef bugman posted:

Jesus tit loving christ that is some heinous poo poo.

I mean just who in the gently caress is being employed by the police force? Is there no pschiatric evaluation?

Woozy posted:

The psych eval is to screen people who won't do heinous poo poo.

Woozy posted:

The psych eval is to screen people who won't do heinous poo poo.

Vahakyla posted:

This kinda bullshit is what drags this thread down.

Josef bugman posted:

I would like to disagree as most of the police officers I have met (and the families with police officers in them) have been nice enough people, but it just seems as if the usual problems associated with too much power and the average persons lackadaisical attitude towards people complaining at work just gets magnified here. I mean if anyone has worked in retail they know that you start thinking of customers as too stupid to be able to tie their shoe laces, but you have to realise that you are helping out, I get the feeling a lot of police officers do not do that at all.

Josef bugman posted:

I would like to disagree as most of the police officers I have met (and the families with police officers in them) have been nice enough people, but it just seems as if the usual problems associated with too much power and the average persons lackadaisical attitude towards people complaining at work just gets magnified here. I mean if anyone has worked in retail they know that you start thinking of customers as too stupid to be able to tie their shoe laces, but you have to realise that you are helping out, I get the feeling a lot of police officers do not do that at all.

Woozy posted:

All the "reformers" who've shown up to the CotB thread over the years have been rank apologists who refuse to move forward with any discussion of solutions until they can be certain that every single post on every page is punctuated with "of course these are only a few bad apples mind you so please show proper deference to our boys in blue out there every day protecting the L A W A B I D I N G C I T I Z E N from criminal scum." It's almost like reformist talk is actually a rhetorical tactic meant to stall the thread until everyone is forced to agree to disagree with the end goal of arriving at no conclusions at all!

Zeitgueist posted:

I think police departments both attract bullies and sadists, but also have created a culture where they encourage alarming perceptions and treatment of the public.

So while not all(or most) police are sociopaths, the culture of the force is toxic and 'ruins' otherwise good people. I've personally seen people I know to not be awful enter police work and have their opinions shift to crappy.

However, there are certainly people who started out as poo poo, and used the badge to further it.