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GlyphGryph posted:Those with vested interests in the status quou will, of course, do everything they can to stoke the idea in their departments that the treatment is an unfair witch hunt no matter what the reality of the situation. So how do we go about getting those cops we could get on board with this sort of thing to jump aboard despite institutional pressures to not do so? I think a lot of it would come from the top down. More selectivity in who we promote. More recruiting efforts for getting quality community minded cops. Again, I'm lucky. Our force is great. And very intelligent, especially our stateies. I know that's not the case everywhere.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:32 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 10:11 |
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ActusRhesus posted:Also re: acceptable rates of conviction...no. Quotas on verdicts will only encourage ends justify the means mentalities. Or you'll get the Japanese 99.97% or whatever conviction rate by a combination of ends justify the means and "well, this isn't a 100% sure thing so I'll drop it because an acquittal means I will have to kill myself"
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:38 |
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hobbesmaster posted:Or you'll get the Japanese 99.97% or whatever conviction rate by a combination of ends justify the means and "well, this isn't a 100% sure thing so I'll drop it because an acquittal means I will have to kill myself" So buh bye sex assault prosecution.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:39 |
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Which of course is exactly what happened in Japan.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:40 |
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FuriousxGeorge posted:In this case...racism, politics, poverty, corruption...many factors. So do you have the numbers? GlyphGryph posted:We aren't legal policy experts - recognizing there is a problem and pushing to fix it are not bad things for members of the general public to do, because there are experts, presumably, who actually make a career of understanding the intricacies of complex systems like the justice system.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:44 |
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hobbesmaster posted:Which of course is exactly what happened in Japan. Word. You want to see a racist legal system, try being a Filipino victim in japan.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:54 |
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twodot posted:How do you go about "pushing to fix" a problem without proposed mechanisms? You can't just demand that things become better without believing there's an effective way to make things better. Someone needs to come up with a name for this very stupid argument. It comes up a lot.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:55 |
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twodot posted:How do you go about "pushing to fix" a problem without proposed mechanisms? You can't just demand that things become better without believing there's an effective way to make things better. Which is why people get mad when folks come in here trying to downplay the problems and pretend they don't exist - it's actively undermining the most likely way to actually make things better, which is loud and persistent public demands for action and regular media coverage.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:58 |
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Lemming posted:Someone needs to come up with a name for this very stupid argument. It comes up a lot.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:58 |
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twodot posted:Ok, I guess it is physically possible to demand things become better without believing there's an effective way to make them better, but why bother to do it? No one disputes that police getting away with committing crimes is in general bad, the only thing in dispute is what should be done about it. If you're here just to say that police committing crimes is bad you aren't helping the conversation. Are you dumb? Has anyone anywhere ever in this thread said they do not believe there's an effective way to make things better? Obviously there are ways to make things better, or there wouldn't be departments that are better than others, which it very much seems like there are?
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 16:59 |
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twodot posted:This is not what that word means. The confounding variable here is that the police are a self selecting group, so it wouldn't be surprising to see that they do X at rates different from not self selecting groups (like black people). Also the police have people who aren't men. I'd expect your average police officer has more resources and a substantially better understanding of the legal system than your average black man, so you'd need a mechanism to tease apart how much of the discrepancy is caused by that. It also seems rude to ask for numbers, if you think those numbers are important, you should be finding them. Yes, I know what the word means. You listed additional variables but did not offer a differing definition. What I want the numbers for is so we can evaluate if those variables actually account for the differences or if maybe police really are getting preferential treatment. There are a lot of, "But other people are aquitted too..." So I thought maybe we should quantify that. I haven't offered an opinion on that either way, but several people have so maybe we should see if it can be backed up. If I had to hypothesize, my guess would be that around 90% of black men charged with a crime are convicted and that significantly less police charged with a crime are convicted than that. There would likely be a similar disparity all the way down the chain, but once you get to the point where there is enough evidence to charge a major disparity needs a lot more explanation I think.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:01 |
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FuriousxGeorge posted:Yes, I know what the word means. You listed additional variables but did not offer a differing definition. What I want the numbers for is so we can evaluate if those variables actually account for the differences or if maybe police really are getting preferential treatment. There are a lot of, "But other people are aquitted too..." So I thought maybe we should quantify that. Race is a hugely important variable in arrest rates, convictions rates, length of sentence, etc. even when controlling for confounding variables. Race is often a more important variable than priors, which is insane.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:21 |
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That 90% number came right out of your rear end. That's part of my issue with this thread. People throw around what they suspect as if it is proven fact. Also, you do realize that the fact two cases were charged does not per se mean that the strength of the evidence was the same, right?
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:24 |
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twodot posted:Ok, I guess it is physically possible to demand things become better without believing there's an effective way to make them better, but why bother to do it? No one disputes that police getting away with committing crimes is in general bad, the only thing in dispute is what should be done about it. If you're here just to say that police committing crimes is bad you aren't helping the conversation. Are you kidding me? This is not true at all. There are people who think that the cop who shot Walter Scott did nothing wrong. People who are chiming in that they think the situation is hosed up is absolutely an important part of the conversation. Plenty of people are just fine with the status quo. And the entire point of noticing the problem is to create the push for the desire to solve it, but just because you aren't an expert in lawyering or copping or legislating doesn't mean you shouldn't get to contribute to the conversation. Saying "shut the gently caress up if you don't have a solution" is 100% a way to shut down conversation. If the person doesn't have the perfect solution, then they're either told to shut the gently caress up because they don't have an idea, or to shut the gently caress up because their idea is stupid. Not everyone is going to be an expert and able to meaningfully contribute to a useful solution, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say they think something is bad and should be changed.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:27 |
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Ok. But from the flip side you have people who are experts (we have cops, prosecutors and PDs in this thread) and many, not necessarily you, often tell them to stfu or worse when they try to correct demonstrably false statements. You see where that also detracts from the convo, right?
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:35 |
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ActusRhesus posted:Ok. But from the flip side you have people who are experts (we have cops, prosecutors and PDs in this thread) and many, not necessarily you, often tell them to stfu or worse when they try to correct demonstrably false statements. You see where that also detracts from the convo, right? I don't deny that the word of experts should carry more weight when we're talking about the specifics of the situation, especially in regards to how things currently work or the potential effect of ideas. However, it's also a problem when those same people try to use that expertise as a bludgeon and mix their professional and personal opinions as a way to twist arguments and cause people to think that their opinions are fact.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:40 |
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Lemming posted:people try to use that expertise as a bludgeon and mix their professional and personal opinions as a way to twist arguments and cause people to think that their opinions are fact.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:42 |
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ActusRhesus posted:Again...source? Since Obdicut did the work I didn't(thanks!) we do have some numbers and a source. Could you cover the comparative general population numbers to the cop ones?
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:42 |
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The police suddenly forget their training and make oopsies when collecting evidence against other cops. Like prosecutor oopsies, this is in no way an institutional problem, it's just that sometimes people make mistakes
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:43 |
ActusRhesus posted:Ok. But from the flip side you have people who are experts (we have cops, prosecutors and PDs in this thread) and many, not necessarily you, often tell them to stfu or worse when they try to correct demonstrably false statements. You see where that also detracts from the convo, right? There's another layer to that, though. On the internet, everyone can claim any kind of expertise, and there's no way to evaluate those claims; for example, even presuming all your statements are accurate for your experience, unless you divulge a frankly stupid amount of personal info, we have to no way to examine your situation and see if it is typical or atypical. I.mean, I thought you were JAG? The military has enough problems with the discrepancy between treatment of top brass and enlisted when they commit similar crimes (see: Petraeus) for me to easily believe they have no smaller scale problems. But don't answer that, because then you'd be confirming or denying that you were JAG, and really posting that kind of personal info in these debates is just dumb. End of the day you're just tossing out ammo for personal attacks. I don't car about poster expertise or anecdotes, I care about citeable sources.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:47 |
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Zeitgueist posted:Since Obdicut did the work I didn't(thanks!) we do have some numbers and a source. No. Because as has been pointed out there are too many variables to make a direct comparison possible. Strength of evidence? Rate of local office? Some are better than others. Willingness of defendant to deal? Prior criminal history. You're taking an extremely simplistic approach to a pretty complex issue.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:48 |
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I am not a JAG. However, I will agree that military justice is beyond hosed.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:50 |
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ActusRhesus posted:That 90% number came right out of your rear end. I encounter a lot of lawyers online, I have a lot in my family. I don't know anything about the law, so I do my best to defer to them. Some of the times, what they say makes me think, "Wow, if I'm ever in trouble in this area of speciality I'm gonna ask this person who I should hire," or just that I should hire them because nobody else would be better. But then sometimes I encounter lawyers who see me saying something like, "I guess that..." and then post as if it was some thunderbolt out of heaven that, "YOU GUESSED THAT!" and I realize there are some lawyers who would get me a death penalty for a traffic ticket. Jesus loving christ. So anyway it's clearly ridiculous to guess 90% of charged black men are successfully prosecuted, so...my friend, what is the correct number? FuriousxGeorge fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Apr 22, 2015 |
# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:53 |
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ActusRhesus posted:That 90% number came right out of your rear end. Instead of just mocking his lack of numbers, if you want to improve the thread, why not put actual numbers down? You complain a lot about this thread, but do almost nothing in any way to attempt to improve it. The report to the United Nations by the Sentencing Project is probably the best single resource on racial disparity. http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_ICCPR%20Race%20and%20Justice%20Shadow%20Report.pdf Contained within it are a lot of statistics--well-resourced--on issues that we've discussed, including the low funding of DAs and its effect on minorities, the effect of race on indictment, on sentencing, on conviction, etc--all of which are significant. In terms of prosecutor culpability in sentencing disparity: quote:A 2001 analysis of more than 77,000 cases in the federal system from 1991 to 1994 revealed that black and Hispanic male defendants were significantly less likely to receive substantial assistance departures than white male defendants. This disparity remained even when the data was controlled for the severity of the offense, prior criminal history, and the specific district court’s sentencing tendencies.When prosecutors did request substantial assistance departures for nonwhite male defendants, the average downward adjustment such defendants received was roughly six months less than that for white male defendants.Accordingly, departures from standard sentencing guidelines accounted for 56% of the total racial disparity in sentence lengths in the federal system from 1991-1994. I'm not putting this here mainly as a way to slam prosecutors, but to note that sociologists really do understand the whole 'compounding variables' thing and do their best to control for it. It is the easiest way to get a manuscript rejected or criticised in peer review, is lack of control for other variables. Sometimes, the point of the report is to show the position with all variables included, but where it is not, variables are controlled for. On public defenders: There was a specific decision, Strickland, which makes it very difficult for an indigent defendant to claim that his PD failed to give adequate defense. quote:In Strickland and Cronic, the Court established “a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.”101 In order to overcome such a “highly deferential” standard, defendants must prove that their attorneys’ performance was “outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance.” Defendants must then prove that their attorneys’ incompetence prejudiced the outcome of their trials—in other words, that there is a “reasonable probability that the result would have been different” if the defendants had received effective counsel. Application of the Strickland standard by the U.S. federal judiciary has exacerbated the “state of crisis” in indigent defense. Very few defendants have been able to meet the Strickland standard to have their convictions invalidated due to ineffective indigent defense counsel; consequently, federal, state, and local governments have been permitted to underfund and understaff their public defense agencies. Courts have found that defendants failed to meet the Strickland standard when their defense counsel slept during portions of the trial, when counsel abused cocaine and heroin throughout the And the current situation with public defenders: quote:U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder declared that “America’s indigent defense counsel systems exist in a state of crisis.”34 Most indigent defense agencies are grossly understaffed and underfunded. In 2012, more than 70% of public defender offices reported that obtaining adequate funding and providing adequate compensation for their attorneys were extremely or very challenging to the ability of their office to provide indigent defense services. An analysis of funding at both the state and federal levels indicates that effective indigent defense is not a priority in many jurisdictions in the United States. At the state and local level, 15,026 public defenders in 957 indigent defense offices handled 5,572,450 cases in 2007.36 On average, each office handled 5,823 new cases and each public defender handled 371 cases—more than one new case for each day of the year. The states spent a total of $2.3 billion on indigent defense in 2007, or $414.55 per case. The budget for state prosecutors in the same timeline was $5.8 billion, compared to the 2.3 billion for indigent defense. Obviously, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, because the prosecutors also prosecute defendants that can afford to pay for defense, but between 60-80% of defendants are either indigent or become indigent; in addition, just because a lawyer gets paid by the client does not mean they're actually superior representation. In addition, prosecutors enjoy the structural advantage that the police gather evidence to create a case and conviction against the defendant. Caseload probably shows the disparity best: Prosecutors average 94 felony cases per year per attorney. Compare that to the 371 caseload of public defenders. Note that this is, again, an imperfect comparison because the PD number is not felony-only, but you only get a PD if you're facing possible jail time, so it is mostly apt comparison. Also of note is that only 3% of felony trials are concluded by a jury. This is not either a good or a bad thing, but does represent the structural elements at work. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/psc07st.pdf Edit: And as for the 90%: In Florida, the conviction rate was 81% if there was an all-white jury trying a black defendant. If there was a jury with at least one black person on it, the conviction rate was 71% for black defendants and 73% for white defendants. This is a relatively small sample from a particular place (Florida, lol) and shouldn't be extrapolated elsewhere, I'm mainly including it as an interesting note on the effect of all-white juries on sentencing, which is replicated elsewhere, and to give some number, any number, backed up by a source. http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/04/15/qje.qjs014.full Obdicut fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Apr 22, 2015 |
# ? Apr 22, 2015 17:58 |
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What you just said makes no sense.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:00 |
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ActusRhesus posted:I am not a JAG. However, I will agree that military justice is beyond hosed. Were you a JAG or were you a civilian specializing in military law? Seems like the latter would not be a good time.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:02 |
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FuriousxGeorge posted:But then sometimes I encounter lawyers who see me saying something like, "I guess that..." and then post as if it was some thunderbolt out of heaven that, "YOU GUESSED THAT!" and I realize there are some lawyers who would get me a death penalty for a traffic ticket. Jesus loving christ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80o1VQbtwPI
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:03 |
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ActusRhesus posted:What you just said makes no sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdba9C2G14
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:04 |
I've been looking for this for five years thanks.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:04 |
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ActusRhesus posted:No. Because as has been pointed out there are too many variables to make a direct comparison possible. Strength of evidence? Rate of local office? Some are better than others. Willingness of defendant to deal? Prior criminal history. You're taking an extremely simplistic approach to a pretty complex issue. I might be simplistic, but I was just making an offhand comment about how hosed up prosecution of cops is, because gently caress the police. Amazingly, it turns out data seems to be backing me up here despite me not giving a poo poo at all. Because gently caress the police.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:08 |
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From this link:quote:Ex-Bunnell cop John Murray’s trial on six felony charges ended this morning in a plea agreement as Murray pleaded no contest to a charge of possessing more than 20 grams of marijuana. Five other charges were dropped. Flagler County Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano sentenced Murray to 18 months’ probation and 50 community service hours and $1,000 in court costs. Murray will not serve jail time, but he can no longer be a police officer. also quote:Shoddy and inexplicable police work, a running theme through a recent investigation of the Bunnell Police Department and its aftershocks, is catching up to the department–to the benefit of two of its former police officers facing felony charges. and quote:John and Lisa Murray were arrested on June 16. John, the second in command at the Bunnell Police Department, had been in that department for eight years. He was charged with four felonies–official misconduct, crack cocaine possession,tampering with evidence and grand theft related to the withholding of $1,380 confiscated from a suspect. Lisa Murray was with the department two years. She was charged with two counts of official misconduct. Their arrests were the latest in a string of scandals–including firings, rehirings and suits–that have wracked the Bunnell Police Department with little let-up for a decade.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:11 |
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GlyphGryph posted:Are you dumb? Has anyone anywhere ever in this thread said they do not believe there's an effective way to make things better? Obviously there are ways to make things better, or there wouldn't be departments that are better than others, which it very much seems like there are? Lemming posted:Are you kidding me? This is not true at all. There are people who think that the cop who shot Walter Scott did nothing wrong. quote:People who are chiming in that they think the situation is hosed up is absolutely an important part of the conversation. Plenty of people are just fine with the status quo. quote:And the entire point of noticing the problem is to create the push for the desire to solve it, but just because you aren't an expert in lawyering or copping or legislating doesn't mean you shouldn't get to contribute to the conversation. Saying "shut the gently caress up if you don't have a solution" is 100% a way to shut down conversation. If the person doesn't have the perfect solution, then they're either told to shut the gently caress up because they don't have an idea, or to shut the gently caress up because their idea is stupid. Not everyone is going to be an expert and able to meaningfully contribute to a useful solution, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say they think something is bad and should be changed. twodot fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 22, 2015 |
# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:15 |
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I'd also note that it may be tempting to use the Cato reports on police misconduct but remember they're a bunch of libertarian whackjobs and I would not trust their data on anything at all.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:17 |
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twodot posted:I said everyone agrees that police committing crimes is bad. Whether or not shooting a particular person was a crime is a distinct issue both from that and from the discussion on how we can improve society. The crux of your argument is that everyone agrees that the police have issues and that if you don't have a solution you should shut the gently caress up. What you fundamentally don't understand is that the first half of the situation, i.e. "the police have issues," is again, emphatically not something that everyone agrees on. Without people acknowledging that the police have issues, there can be no push for reform. It is a very important thing to talk about current problems and how people feel about them. Without that in place, even if you have the perfect solution handed down by Xenu himself it won't matter for poo poo because nobody will care enough to do it. Talking about the current problems is important. Talking about potential solutions is important. It is not a requirement to have a solution for you to be allowed to speak.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:27 |
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ozmunkeh posted:The police suddenly forget their training and make oopsies when collecting evidence against other cops. Like prosecutor oopsies, this is in no way an institutional problem, it's just that sometimes people make mistakes You probably start reforming the system in the prosecutor's office, because right now they're essentially immune from legal ramifications (or any ramifications for that matter) of misconduct and rewarded for conviction rate. Radley Balko wrote a great long (looong) form piece about it. Most of the article is examples that illustrate the impossibility of holding prosecutors accountable for anything, but there are some stats on the difficulty of holding prosecutors accountable: quote:In 2003, the Center for Public Integrity looked at more than 11,000 cases involving misconduct since 1970. Among those, the center found a little over 2,012 instances in which an appeals court found the misconduct material to the conviction and overturned it. Less than 50 cases resulted in any professional sanction for the prosecutor.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:30 |
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Ah. I see. You are the one who doesn't believe it's possible for things to get better (because its due to the mixing of the races), and you're projecting. You at least admit there's a serious problem though, right?
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:34 |
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Lemming posted:The crux of your argument is that everyone agrees that the police have issues and that if you don't have a solution you should shut the gently caress up. What you fundamentally don't understand is that the first half of the situation, i.e. "the police have issues," is again, emphatically not something that everyone agrees on. Without people acknowledging that the police have issues, there can be no push for reform. It is a very important thing to talk about current problems and how people feel about them. Without that in place, even if you have the perfect solution handed down by Xenu himself it won't matter for poo poo because nobody will care enough to do it. quote:Talking about the current problems is important. Talking about potential solutions is important. It is not a requirement to have a solution for you to be allowed to speak. edit: GlyphGryph posted:Ah. I see. You are the one who doesn't believe it's possible for things to get better (because its due to the mixing of the races), and you're projecting. You at least admit there's a serious problem though, right? twodot fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Apr 22, 2015 |
# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:35 |
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Zeitgueist posted:Amazingly, it turns out data seems to be backing me up here despite me not giving a poo poo at all. Because gently caress the police. I also liked this quote from the HRS article: "When we try to use criminal law as a substitute for standards that should be applied within a profession or occupation, we almost invariably are disappointed with the results."
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:44 |
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twodot posted:Quote the poster who thinks the police are free from all problems, that police officers never get away with crimes. Everyone agrees that this is happens some of the time. There seems to be a qualitative disagreement about the frequency, which must be the case since there's no numbers available to drive agreement, but that doesn't matter because as long as we agree it happens some of the time, we can talk about solutions. You're either very stupid or being intentionally dense, so I'll try to be simple for you. Some people are killed by bears. It doesn't happen very often though, so I don't particularly care about doing anything differently than we currently are. I'm not sure what bear-related precautions we take in places with bear attacks, but they seem fine. I don't think many people live in mortal terror of bear attacks. Everyone agrees that it's bad that people are killed by bears. Nobody thinks bears are no danger to people. Everyone agrees it happens sometimes. But it's pretty rare, and really if you don't want to get attacked by a bear you shouldn't provoke one, so nobody really gives a poo poo. If it was happening on a wide-spread scale that I didn't really understand before, then I would probably start caring and wanting to do something about it. Here's a hint I'm not really talking about bear attacks A very important step in the process is pointing out problems and showing why people should care about them. In this case, abuses by police are a lot more widespread than people assumed, and it's become an actual thing politically and in the media recently. This is helped in large part by things like people protesting, which is at its very, very core a bunch of people angrily yelling "I DON'T LIKE THE BAD THING!" which, it turns out, is actually very important. Edit: Also, literally nobody who thinks that a bad thing is happening shouldn't be solved, but any given person might not personally know how to fix it, and that's fine.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:44 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 10:11 |
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hobbesmaster posted:Or you'll get the Japanese 99.97% or whatever conviction rate by a combination of ends justify the means and "well, this isn't a 100% sure thing so I'll drop it because an acquittal means I will have to kill myself" Torture and high pressure psychological tools to get confessions, real or false, are used even more in Japan. That's not a good goal.
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# ? Apr 22, 2015 18:46 |