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They can also hold you for 21 days without a stated reason! I was saying it was a bad thing.
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Apr 22, 2015 18:52
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Lemming posted: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.
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Apr 22, 2015 18:54
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Dead Reckoning posted:It's not, though. Your assertion was that prosecutors make mistakes (or "mistakes") far more often with police defendants than with other defendants. The link Obdicut provided doesn't support that assertion, it notes that there are a whole set of intersecting factors, including bias in the jury pool, that make prosecutions of police more difficult. (I'd also point out that his "between 1977 and 1995 there were zero convictions for homicide while on duty of any police officer, despite 550 fatal shootings" stat refers only to New York.) Obdicut pointed out, as I did earlier, that it's difficult to separate the prosecutor's influence from other factors in play. So maybe you could turn down the smugness a bit. I would bet that the rate for the general public in that same period in that same area for fatal shootings has at least one conviction for homicide. Probably a lot more. I'm not being smug, I'm flat out saying gently caress the police. You're making an argument that we can't say that prosecutors take it easy on cops because we can't conclusively prove it. I don't think anyone here actually believes they don't, it's just a semantic argument.
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Apr 22, 2015 18:56
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twodot posted:Why? We have a bunch of people yelling "I DON'T LIKE THE BAD THING!", mission accomplished. I don't understand what happened as a result. Is there not enough people yelling? You seem to acknowledge that yelling is not in itself a solution, does it lead to a solution? Do we know what that solution is or even could theoretically be? If you had a solution and an analysis that it made things better, and your main problem was people didn't care about how it made things better, I would have sympathy for you, but absent a solution you just have a bunch of loud people blocking traffic. Ah, there we go. You slipped up and showed your true colors. You don't actually care about the issue at all and are just trying to shut down conversation on a topic you're uncomfortable with! Thank you for your honesty. For anyone reading: keeping the issue prominent and showing continued agitation over the issue is the only way to get the public and political will to change anything. If people let up, then the issue can be safely swept back under the rug and the status quo can remain. People have short attention spans, so unless something is happening right now (in this case, people being pissed off by police abuses), they'll forget about it. For this reason, the most important thing that any given person can do (non-expert layperson who cares about the issue and has no personal ability to propose or implement any solutions) is to keep talking about it.
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Apr 22, 2015 18:59
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Zeitgueist posted:I would bet that the rate for the general public in that same period in that same area for fatal shootings has at least one conviction for homicide. Probably a lot more. I'd note the parsimonious argument is that prosecutors take it easy on the police: there are structural reasons why aggressively prosecuting police officers, especially for shootings while in the line of duty, would have negative repercussions for the prosecutor, simply in doing their jobs, where they need the police in order to function. if you add in that prosecutors are also political positions, and having the police against you politically is a big negative, and you have two simple parsimonious reasons why prosecutors could be expected to not aggressively pursue cases against police. However, even if a prosecutor did aggressively pursue a conviction against a police defendant, the most likely outcome would be an acquittal, because as Dead Reckoning said, there's a number of other structural factors at work. So you can't say in any individual case, absent actual scrutiny of it, that a prosecutor tanked the prosecution. In some cases it seems clear, in other cases the prosecutor may have taken an aggressive stance but not gotten a conviction because of one of the other factors: lack of police compliance and assistance, juries giving more credence to police officer testimony than citizen/victim testimony, etc. Lemming posted:Ah, there we go. You slipped up and showed your true colors. You don't actually care about the issue at all and are just trying to shut down conversation on a topic you're uncomfortable with! Thank you for your honesty. To put it another way, the only real 'solution' is to enact political change: to elect people who will address the many problems that are being cited. Whether or not a particular solution--like funding PDs more, or even funding prosecutors more so that they can go after more difficult cases with more ease--is enacted is something that'd have to be determined after getting over the huge, initial hurdle of actually electing people on a promise to reform the police department and DAs office, rather than on a law-and-order, throw-more-crackheads-in-prison ticket. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Apr 22, 2015 |
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Apr 22, 2015 19:04
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Obdicut posted:I'd note the parsimonious argument is that prosecutors take it easy on the police: there are structural reasons why aggressively prosecuting police officers, especially for shootings while in the line of duty, would have negative repercussions for the prosecutor, simply in doing their jobs, where they need the police in order to function. if you add in that prosecutors are also political positions, and having the police against you politically is a big negative, and you have two simple parsimonious reasons why prosecutors could be expected to not aggressively pursue cases against police. Oh, I'm aware that prosecutor issues aren't the only reason cops get off, just one of them. I'm more pointing out that despite lack of clear data, I don't actually think anybody believes that it isn't happening, just that they are making the argument that we cant' prove it empirically.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:10
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So, this conversation has actually convinced me to do some thinking, and I have a real, concrete suggestion that doesn't require any change to laws or systems to begin working. We should act to create a Law Enforcement Rating organization. It's goal would be to award a performance rating to police departments based on their corruption levels, their willingness to police their own, their racial biases, etc. Why would this help? It would create a concrete metric to determine which departments are good and bad in the eyes of the public. It would become a source of pride for those who have good departments and a source of shame for those who do not. It's exact accuracy isn't as important as the general sweep of things. It would provide something for politicians to point at and say "See? I accomplished this! We are now leading the country in best police!" or for their opposition to say "The guy in charge is ignoring how terrible our police are, and if you elect me I would act to fix it." Right now, the conversation gets murky. Is it a problem? How bad is it? How widespread? Are there ways to do it better? Those conversations have their place, but right now they are not questions that can realistically be answered even in the vaguest terms because it's just a bunch of disconnected data points. We need someone willing to put them together and pass judgement as a guide to where attention should be focused, both good and bad, as a way to reward success and punish failure. If such an organization already exists it is doing a pretty lovely job. 
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Apr 22, 2015 19:11
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GlyphGryph posted:So, this conversation has actually convinced me to do some thinking, and I have a real, concrete suggestion that doesn't require any change to laws or systems to begin working. How do you operationalize 'corruption', something which by its nature tends to be hidden? In terms of racial bias, we already have very good numbers on this, in general. The problem is that areas with significant racial bias in their police force tend to be areas where that bias is supported by the voting population.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:13
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Obdicut posted:How do you operationalize 'corruption', something which by its nature tends to be hidden? It certainly can't be harder than valuating stock. There's lots of ways. Like I said, it doesn't need to be super accurate, only operate in broad strokes as an indicator of police departments being better or worse. Something the media and politicians can seize onto. Obviously it won't be easy, and honestly the exact details of the judging criteria would probably need to be changed and refined regularly - otherwise you'd get departments that resolve problems by hiding that metric. So long as it roughly approaches reality and provides an opportunity to reward or even appear to reward departments that make positive reforms and maintain them, it would be effective. Worst case is a department that is really good at hiding their corruption gets a high score, but it at least changes the mentality so that they have a reason to fear that corruption actually being revealed instead of being able to ignore it and let it blow over. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Apr 22, 2015 |
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Apr 22, 2015 19:16
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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? You're right, but those biases do come from both sides. Especially with the cops, they tend to ambush in force..and receive / encourage the same in the form of a lot of the more vitriolic responses. It tends to detract for everyone, as it becomes an aggressive / defensive flame war. We shouldn't pretend that enmity doesn't flow both ways. Really both sides would be well-served by at the very least attempting more productive discourse, and not allowing a handful of poo poo-flinging to derail everything.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:20
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Obdicut, your understanding of Strickland is a little off.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:23
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ActusRhesus posted:Obdicut, your understanding of Strickland is a little off. If we're going to complain about things that detract from the conversation, I'm going to say that it's really annoying to see posts like this where you just say "nope" without anything further. In what way is his understanding off? Are you interested in furthering peoples' understanding of it, or are you trying to goad him into saying something else you think is wrong so you can say "gotcha!" again?
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Apr 22, 2015 19:28
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Phone posting. Sorry. Strickland is a pretty old case and hardly controversial. You have to prove a. Your attorney's conduct was outside professional norms and b. that you actually suffered because of your attorney's error. This isn't a scam to punish indigents. It's a way to make sure convictions aren't overturned arbitrarily because of Monday morning quarterbacking. Every attorney will have a different strategy and every attorney will make at least one mistake during a trial on both sides. That doesn't mean the defendant was necessarily denied a fair trial.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:35
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GlyphGryph posted:It certainly can't be harder than valuating stock. There's lots of ways. Like I said, it doesn't need to be super accurate, only operate in broad strokes as an indicator of police departments being better or worse. Something the media and politicians can seize onto. Obviously it won't be easy, and honestly the exact details of the judging criteria would probably need to be changed and refined regularly - otherwise you'd get departments that resolve problems by hiding that metric. This isn't actually an answer. You're just claiming we could do it. How? This is actually an area I work in, and measurement of corruption is one of the hardest, hardest things to operationalize. A department may appear completely uncorrupt because they have done a great job of concealing corruption. Another may appear more corrupt because they are more transparent. How do you evaluate this? There is one level of corruption that is easy to track--fiscal corruption--but that is not really the main concern. ActusRhesus posted:Phone posting. Sorry. I didn't claim it was controversial, though, so why are you posting this? Did you not understand the context of my post? I also didn't interpret strickland, so saying my understanding of it is off is rather odd. The point is that, while Strickland may, all other things being equal, a good decision, all other things are not equal.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:42
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Obdicut posted:This isn't actually an answer. You're just claiming we could do it. How? This is actually an area I work in, and measurement of corruption is one of the hardest, hardest things to operationalize. A department may appear completely uncorrupt because they have done a great job of concealing corruption. Another may appear more corrupt because they are more transparent. How do you evaluate this? There is one level of corruption that is easy to track--fiscal corruption--but that is not really the main concern.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:46
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Good luck making police departments contribute to metrics designed to out their corruption when they don't even release numbers on how many people they kill on an annual basis.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:50
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ozmunkeh posted:Good luck making police departments contribute to metrics designed to out their corruption when they don't even release numbers on how many people they kill on an annual basis. I think requiring all police departments to keep track of this information in detail and report it annually would be step one in any endeavor to combat these issues. It's farcical that it already isn't mandatory.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:52
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Radish posted:I think requiring all police departments to keep track of this information in detail and report it annually would be step one in any endeavor to combat these issues. It's farcical that it already isn't mandatory. Willingness and ability to do so could very easily be a very dominant metric in lack of other metrics, thereby providing it's own incentive. Obviously, if they aren't willing to come clean, they aren't going to rate highly on the scale.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:53
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Lemming posted:If we're going to complain about things that detract from the conversation, I'm going to say that it's really annoying to see posts like this where you just say "nope" without anything further. If you're not going for a gotcha..and I guess I didn't interpret that response as doing so, but it does really comes off that way. When you and others in some kind of position of authority enter into the discussion and just state the validity of something without backing it up.. how else should people feel? We often end up with that in these sort of threads and it only bolsters the division between those impassioned by injustices, and those in some way involved in the legal side. Not saying you're wrong (I can't), but an explanation would go a long way toward resolving this sort of response before it ever need be asked. I suppose an example would be Robert Bates heading off to the Bahamas. Yeah, it's common for those out on bail to be granted such. However to a layman it seems absurd that someone who just killed a man should be allowed to go waltz off to the Bahamas just because they can handle the 25k bail. Yet it comes up, and feels like nothing other than favorable treatment..and it kind of is..it's an insult to the deceased and those who care about them that this man, simply because he's a man of means, can not only afford bail (which 25k does seem pretty cheap, even if it was an incredibly stupid accident), but to go off to and have an island vacation. I only wonder if the esteemed Sheriff Stanley Glanz was slated to enjoy this reprieve prior to the untimely death of Mr. Harris. People who aren't intimately acquainted with the system and it's normal functions will become incensed by these sort of perceived (and economically..not altogether unreasonable) differences in the functioning of the justice system. It really is to the benefit of everyone posting and especially those only viewing, for that to be taken into consideration in responding. This particular instance, thankfully, seemed ablated because it was addressed. I realize such a request does place a burden upon lawyers/cops who want to weigh in, but it really is to the benefit of everyone..and when you do, you really elevate the discussion from what it often devolves into. e: Also thanks for trying to clarify, I certainly don't always agree with you (ActusRhesus), but I do value your contributions to these discussions. hobotrashcanfires fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Apr 22, 2015 |
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Apr 22, 2015 19:53
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GlyphGryph posted:As someone who works in the area, wouldn't you be better at answering this question than I would? You can actually make suggestions to improve an idea rather than outright opposing it, you know. I don't see any possible way to get anything like an accurate measure of police corruption in terms of police misconduct on duty. I think that rather than some sort of independent scholarly investigation, necessarily toothless, the results would be better by funding the DOJ's departments that investigate police misconduct to a much higher level. Another possibility is the forensics, which are a lot more open to scrutiny because they represent actual data. We've had some success on this--the FBI, the SFPD--but for every forensics unit that's actually investigated and shown to be massively fraudulent, how many are there that are unexamined? GlyphGryph posted:Willingness and ability to do so could very easily be a very dominant metric in lack of other metrics, thereby providing it's own incentive. Obviously, if they aren't willing to come clean, they aren't going to rate highly on the scale. Transparency is definitely something that can be and should be measured.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:54
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So what level of attorney error do you think warrants a new trial?
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Apr 22, 2015 19:57
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ActusRhesus posted:So what level of attorney error do you think warrants a new trial? I don't have any opinion on that. I really don't think you understood my post. if it helps, completely ignore the Strickland part of the post (which was not in any way central to it) and just concentrate on the rest of it.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:59
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Obdicut posted:I don't see any possible way to get anything like an accurate measure of police corruption in terms of police misconduct on duty. I think that rather than some sort of independent scholarly investigation, necessarily toothless, the results would be better by funding the DOJ's departments that investigate police misconduct to a much higher level. What about measuring funding and aggressiveness (cases investigated and brought to trial and convictions or at least disciplinary actions) for internal affairs departments? If we can't measure corruption directly, might we be able to at least measure attempts to fight it? So, does anyone know if there's any sort of independent organization focused around something like this already in existence?
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Apr 22, 2015 19:59
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GlyphGryph posted:What about measuring funding and aggressiveness (cases investigated and brought to trial and convictions or at least disciplinary actions) for internal affairs departments? If we can't measure corruption directly, might we be able to at least measure attempts to fight it? No, because you might have an IA department that is very good at finding incidents but a prosecutor who was uninterested in pursuing them. You might have an extremely competent and aggressive police union in one area that was able to fight disciplinary charges even when aggressively brought. You might have scapegoats: one problem the SFPD had for a long time is the IA was curiously great at busting some officers, but it turned out to be officers who were attempting to report on corruption. I'm not saying there's nothing that can be found, but all of these are a proxy for 'corruption' and it'd be best to just look at things on their own. We can certainly look at whether IA is a dead-end department, whether they are transparent, etc. But we can't necessarily draw any actual conclusions about the levels of corruption, because the nature of corruption is to hide the data. quote:So, does anyone know if there's any sort of independent organization focused around something like this already in existence? I don't know of any. I know that Cato does its police corruption stuff but as I said, I don't trust them at all. Again, since it's so hard to operationalize, people will in general focus on things that are easier and more efficacious, like showing racial bias, economic bias, lack of policing of certain areas, etc.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:06
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ozmunkeh posted:Good luck making police departments contribute to metrics designed to out their corruption when they don't even release numbers on how many people they kill on an annual basis. They do report the number of people they kill. They don't report the number of people they shoot. There's a difference.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:16
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Dead Reckoning posted:They do report the number of people they kill. They don't report the number of people they shoot. There's a difference. How does "Nickle Ride" Freddie Gray factor in? Or will we ever know?
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Apr 22, 2015 20:21
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Dead Reckoning posted:They do report the number of people they kill. They don't report the number of people they shoot. There's a difference. Uh, link? I think it's on a voluntary basis, so most don't http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/03/eric-garners-death-wont-even-show-up-in
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Apr 22, 2015 20:23
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hobotrashcanfires posted:How does "Nickle Ride" Freddie Gray factor in? http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=74 They have a "deaths in custody" report as well. Technically part of the underlying law is expired and currently up for renewal, but BJS has continured to collect data anyway.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:31
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Dead Reckoning posted:http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=74 That's a depressing read, but thanks.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:35
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Dead Reckoning posted:http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=74 Digging a little bit more into that link, it seems like they report *some* of the people they kill, although their approach seems to be improving over time: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ardpatr.pdf quote:The ARD [Arrest-Related Deaths] program captured approximately 49% of law enforcement homicides, while the SHR [Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHRs) maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)] captured 46%. An estimated 28% of the law enforcement homicides in the United States are not captured by either system. However, the methodology for identifying ARD cases has changed over the observation period. In 2011, the ARD program was estimated to cover between 59% and 69% of all law enforcement homicides in the United States, depending on the estimation method used. While this coverage estimate still does not result in a census, it does suggest improvements over time in the overall approach to identifying law enforcement homicides and reporting them to the ARD program. It seems to me that individual departments are pretty resistant to releasing this information, and after a cursory search I couldn't find anything indicating there are any repercussions for not reporting accurately.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:47
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Their data quality profile is an interesting read if you're curious about the difficulty of collecting this kind of data. For example, suspects who die by crashing their car during a chase without police intervention aren't included, nor are bystanders. They aggregate data from at least three local sources (which can have different scope and definitions depending on local law and policy) and two national sources.Lemming posted:Digging a little bit more into that link, it seems like they report *some* of the people they kill, although their approach seems to be improving over time: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ardpatr.pdf The penalty for failure to report is being ineligible for certain federal law enforcement funding, the same way the federal government dictates policy on a lot of issues. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Apr 22, 2015 |
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Apr 22, 2015 20:47
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Dead Reckoning posted:http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=74 That's a "best estimate" based on voluntary reporting and scouring various different datasets that are missing entire states. The data reporting is so bad one of their sources is actually Wikipedia'.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:59
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Killed by Police uses news reports to create a list of police deaths for 2013, 2014, and 2015. This includes all deaths in custody or during police action, including people who suddenly became unresponsive and died of as-yet unknown medical reasons after being cuffed and tossed in the car. So far we're at 356 deaths today, or about 3.2 deaths per day.
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Apr 22, 2015 21:11
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ozmunkeh posted:That's a "best estimate" based on voluntary reporting and scouring various different datasets that are missing entire states. The data reporting is so bad one of their sources is actually Wikipedia'. Also, it's "voluntary" in the sense that the federal government can't compel the States to report thanks to the 10th Amendment, but instead makes receiving federal money contingent on compliance. Again, this is pretty normal. quote:Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 - Amends the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to provide that in order for a State to be eligible to receive a Truth-in- Sentencing incentive grant, its grant application must include assurances that the State will follow the guidelines established by the Attorney General in reporting, on a quarterly basis, information regarding the death of any person who is in the process of arrest, is en route to be incarcerated, or is incarcerated at any municipal or county jail, State prison, or other local or State correctional facility (including any juvenile facility), including: (1) the name, gender, race, ethnicity, and age of the deceased; (2) the date, time, and location of death; and (3) a brief description of the circumstances surrounding the death.
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Apr 22, 2015 21:43
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You know that expired a decade ago, right? I hope the 2013 version works because the old one you posted did gently caress all.
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Apr 22, 2015 22:11
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And yet, they've still managed to improve their data collection in the intervening years. Since we've moved on from the fallacy of "the cops dont even file a report when they kill a child!!1!" to complaining about the way those reports are aggregated, I'm curious what you think could be done to make the data collection better, without repealing the 10th Amendment.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:01
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Pass mandatory reporting requirements at the state and/or local level.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:17
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Since I've already done ozmunkeh's homework, why don't you tell me which states don't already have mandatory reporting of homicides and deaths in custody at the state level? I'll start you off: California does.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:11
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Dead Reckoning posted:Since I've already done ozmunkeh's homework, why don't you tell me which states don't already have mandatory reporting of homicides and deaths in custody at the state level? I'll start you off: California does. If you know the answer, why not just say it? Why is it someone else's homework? There are huge problems with the collection of this particular data, according to a Burea of Justice Statistics report, and according to criminologists in general: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/18/police-killings-government-data-count In general, there is an incredibly patchy system of voluntary reporting of these numbers: the result has been a systematic undercounting of homicides by police officers.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:29
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Obdicut posted:If you know the answer, why not just say it? Why is it someone else's homework? And don't refer to that as hype, without backing it up.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:42
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