Police Reform

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Police Reform

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

BarkingSquirrel posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-dJgFdfl3I
No I wasn't doing illegal poo poo in my squad car! You have video of it? Um... Here's some free stuff that IS IN NO WAY MEANT TO BRIBE YOU TO NOT TURN ME IN. No way at all.

I like to be critical of cops, but what do you think is the right thing for the cop to do here? If he sends a trucker away with no paperwork at all, they have no way to prove to whoever they're working for why their cargo didn't move anywhere for the 20 minutes they were pulled over. Personally, I think a trucker who freaks out with their horn about someone speeding on a 70mph highway probably deserves a ticket but I'm a chronic speeder with no respect for human life.

As a general question, what is the argument for the kind of de facto police immunity we have right now? Why would it be a bad thing for cops to sit in front of a criminal grand jury regularly, with the only difference between them and any other defendant being they're allowed to act in the self-defense of others in addition to themselves and they're allowed to take people into custody? Once handcuffs are on or a knee is in their back it has to be an assault trial, shooting an unarmed suspect is always a murder trial. Is there any overall argument for it, or did it just come to happen step by step as police unions got more powerful? Do they assert that cops will hesitate to respond to dangerous situations unless they're assured that 9/10 times they're above the law?

Also, I see the quote in the OP asserting that direct community oversight by citizens with "no intimate knowledge of law enforcement procedures and legal limitations" would muddle the review process, but what would the argument be against a panel of elected judges to either do it directly, or to act as a mediator so a volunteer citizen's panel could do the legwork and then have direct access to a judge every couple of weeks to decide if they can or should act on whatever they find.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 18:30

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 14:04

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

BarkingSquirrel posted:

For starters safety inspections are done at weigh stations, not used as roadside "whoops I hosed up"s. No ticket for something supposedly bad enough to pull him over, no warning and a form he shouldn't have got that was fraudulent(he didn't inspect the vehicle). It was a very clear and defined attempt to butter the man up so no one found out what the cop was doing, an attempt that didn't start until he found out he was recorded.

Cops pull truck drivers over randomly all the time to check log books and medical cards, and they usually don't come out of the booth and check lights, safety equipment or log books at weigh stations. At least that was true everywhere I drove within a 5hr radius of Philadelphia.

And I have a little trouble thinking this supremely corrupt cop was legitimately worried that he would be disciplined for speeding.

quote:

The driver was 100% correct. He was speeding on wet roads while on the loving phone. That's reckless driving especially when he admits he was going to HQ and not a call. Its also how most of them die on duty, which leaves me torn. I don't want him breaking the law but also FTP.

So it is your standard operating procedure to lay on your horn and flash your lights when someone speeds past you on the highway? I didn't make any excuses for the cop, he shouldn't be on a phone and speeding without a good reason but it's also pretty absurd to hold that video up next to the links in the OP.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 19:07

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

BarkingSquirrel posted:

Right they don't check anything at weigh stations, that's why there's a huge parking lot for trucks at almost every one. Nope no siree. The normal place is clearly the side of a road with no lighting and a large chance of being hit by traffic. Yup. Nice glossing over the fraudulent form though.

If I remember right you pass 1 weigh station driving from Philadelphia to Baltimore on 95, and I'm pretty sure the one I'm thinking of is south of Baltimore so it might be 0. Do you really think it's possible to regulate all the trucks and drivers that drive on that corridor in a parking lot at that weigh station? They need a place for overweight trucks to park. Not to mention most weigh stations aren't open 24/7 and night-time is generally when both safety equipment and driver fatigue are most important to regulate.

quote:

"Why are you angry about this abusive corrupt cop? He's not as abusive and corrupt as THESE cops!"- wixard, the year of our lord 2014

What irritates me is what happens in that video is closer to what I would like to see from cops but people like you can't see it because you blindly hate them. There are tons of cops who would have gone into dick mode when they found out a trucker was flagging them down to lecture them about their traffic violations. He could have tossed all his personal poo poo in the cab for no reason, he could have made him submit to a breathalyzer because he was acting erratic, he could have made him wait for a dog to go through the trailer, hell he could have pulled his gun and confiscated the phone and we all know he probably would have gotten away scott free. And of course he could have actually written the ticket for blowing your horn and flashing your lights for no reason and put the screws to the guy's profession. Outside of drawing the weapon and taking the phone, none of those things would have even been a problem for him to do on video because driving a commercial vehicle you have fewer rights than driving your own vehicle.

Instead he stayed calm, listened to the guy, and signed what might have been a false inspection report when the guy had 3 hours left on his clock and it was broad daylight so the lights and flares didn't matter all that much anyway (there's a nice edit in the video when the cop walks away so who knows if he checked lights and kicked tires). That's the kind of resolution I actually hope for when I imagine local cops on the beat instead of the militarized law enforcement robots we pretend they are now.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 20:33

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Sharkie posted:

Your hope for local cops on the beat is that they are corrupt in one way but not corrupt in another (admittedly more vindictive) way? Is there any other profession in America that you hold to these standards? Is your hope for teachers that they forge grades instead of making misleading calls to social services?

In that video the trucker basically asked to be pulled over (what did he expect to happen, the cop would know he wanted him to stop talking on the cellphone?) and the cop didn't gently caress with him for it. If a teacher ignores an absence and it fudges a grade up to pass a kid instead of failing them I have no problem with that either.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 20:48

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Sharkie posted:

The example you gave is a teacher falsifying records in order to help a child; this instance would be like a teacher falsifying records in order to cover up their own malfeasance.

If the driver was doing something for which he should have been ticketed, he should have been ticketed. Otherwise the cop could have just let him go without a ticket and without trying to offer up fraudulent records.

The teacher isn't creating a fraudulent record in my example?

Yes, I agree the trucker should have been ticketed and I said it in my first post here. I don't think they should use their horns to regulate other drivers on the highway and I'm pretty sure it can be interpreted as aggressive driving or something in most places. That's my whole point - it actually does help both the cop and the driver to have a good reason for the stop happening, and the cop's would have been just as good with a ticket. He even mentions the guy has a violation for a light out on his last inspection so this should help with his employer, why do you think he isn't trying to help him?

ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jun 29, 2014

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 21:10

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Sharkie posted:

I guess we just have different perspectives regarding how leniently the officer's actions should be viewed. To continue the teacher metaphor, I've been a teacher, and there's a world of difference between a teacher ignoring an absence, and a teacher fudging grades because they did something illegal or against policy. Quid pro quo behavior like this is corruption, and I guess because the person that witnessed the illegal behavior could have got something out of the cop's cya attempt you see it from a more ameliorative stance than I do. Personally I think "this corruption isn't as harmful as this other corruption so this is how I'd prefer it to be handled" is a nihilistic and corrosive attitude to take towards the misbehavior of public servants.

I can completely see it your way if I try, but if we give the benefit of the doubt to the cop for a split second (I know its hard), he never offers the guy the inspection or threatens a ticket, he just walks up and gives it to him after learning the reason he was freaking out on his horn was because he saw the cop speeding on his phone. If the kid in our school example had some kind of problem with the teacher earlier in the year, do you immediately assume the teacher was trying to cover tracks when you find that fudge in paperwork, or do you assume it indicates that there are no hard feelings?

Safety inspections aren't a huge deal, every trucker passes them and all will fail one eventually because lights do actually go out while you're driving. I just don't think it would cross the cop's mind to bribe someone to keep them from reporting they saw him speeding on the highway, I think he was probably just running the same paperwork he would run if he pulled over a truck that wasn't honking at him. I could certainly be wrong, but that's where I'm coming from when I say it represents the kinds of resolutions I hope for from beat cops.

Pohl posted:

The cop in that video didn't ticket the driver, because the cop realized the driver was only highlighting his illegal behavior. Sure, the trucker was being a dick with his horn, but you could argue, and I think would be able to argue in court, that he was using his horn for safety reasons. The cop had no excuse, and to pull the trucker over and lecture him, that was a classic example of "power".

I don't know, I must be the only one who doesn't think horns exist on cars to point out other people's traffic violations. I've personally never seen anyone on the road honking at cars who pass them too fast.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 22:08

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Pohl posted:

The trucker was doing it intentionally to a COP, not a random person. The difference should be obvious.

Well you fooled me when you mentioned arguing in court. If we were all allowed to be more critical of cops than average people when they break the law, we might not need to have this thread.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 22:50

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

SrgMagnum posted:

I believe the board should include representation from law enforcement because most people only interact with cops a handful of times in their lives through traffic stops. They get the rest of their information from tv and movies which gives them a terrible basis for decisions which affect public safety. Think about it this way... you don't want Feinstein making gun laws because she's demonstrated numerous times that she has absolutely no knowledge about guns or their function.

Unless people are properly informed about police training, policies, laws, and tactics, how can they effectively determine what was reasonable or necessary? That's why I believe a balance is important.

Maybe the solution is to send the board members on ride alongs with agencies outside of their area to give them a perspective of the job from a patrol car. Seeing firsthand how a cop works and how their shift progresses is important if you're going to pass judgement on their behavior. Maybe they should be sent through an academy to give them the same knowledge base a police officer receives?

I agree with you, educating the civilian oversight would be key to it working out for everyone, and I like the idea that they could get to interact with cops more than just when something goes wrong, whether it's ride-alongs or whatever.

But on the oversight board itself, what do you think police bring to the table that a lawyer and/or judge wouldn't? Wouldn't they be able to distill the law enforcement process and rights for the civilians without police directly involved?

e: For example in the OP the argument against civilian oversight is basically "uneducated civilians muddle the process," but if there are a few judges involved before it ever gets to the cops, doesn't that streamline the oversight from the police point of view?

ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jun 30, 2014

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 16:30

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

SrgMagnum posted:

A lawyer or judge won't have the same perspective as a line-level police officer. The comfort of a courtroom makes it very difficult to understand the very real implications of the decisions they make. I think having the experience of a cop on the board is important to ensure that side of the incident is taken into account to ensure balance. Having representation for each position gives the group a good range of information and access to each side of the story which is important in cases which are anything but black and white.

I guess I don't get why the police perspective needs to be involved in deciding what the community is concerned about. The police involved in any of the board's recommendations/decisions/questions would get a chance to tell their side when the concerns of the oversight board were brought to the police, after they filtered through a judge.

Maybe I should point out, I'm not viewing the oversight board as a body that gets to directly make policy or discipline officers, I think it's the best way for the community to have a chance at figuring out what exactly is going on as they are being policed, and from there their problems go through the proper channels if they have a leg to stand on. I'm picturing a situation where the civilians basically do the legwork of oversight, and then filter any concerns they have through a judge. It seems like filtering it through both police and a judge wouldn't help the civilians, and the police on the board introduce very real possibilities to undermine the process, whether by being misleading about specific incidents to the board, or just reporting the minutes of meetings up the chain so coverups or spin can start early.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 17:10

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Cole posted:

So cops have no spokesperson til after the fact. Gotcha.

After what fact? Whatever police behavior concerns the citizens speaks for itself. When they decide what concerns them, the cops get to respond.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 17:19

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Zachack posted:

The purpose of field staff in an oversight group is to help the group not waste time/effort/focus by answering (typically procedural) questions brought by other members. Most groups I've interacted with have a real problem stopping a rolling ball, regardless of the ball aiming for a valid target. A cop could be relegated to an advisory role (same with a judge) but expecting a group of random people to correctly identify and respond to something as poorly defined as the community is asking for problems, and the end point is that you'll probably wind up with a group that achieves less than nothing when it becomes an impotent figurehead, and that's assuming the group doesn't get infiltrated by someone with self-serving interests on either side.

I'm specifically asking what we lose with just judges, and no police, on the board.

I don't think the relationship between the two has to be completely adversarial, I just don't see how cops help the community decide what they like and don't like about how they are policed (given a judge or 2 are already involved).

SrgMagnum posted:

This is essentially my thoughts. The police officer is there to answer questions and clarify anything from his/her perspective and training. It'll help as one more level of immediate input on procedure, policy, culture, etc which will assist the group in making decisions/recommendations with full information. I guess I see the cop there in the same position as the judge, one more member of the board with a different background/perspective who is there as a resource for the group.

You don't think the optics of cops advising the civilians what to be concerned about are bad? Does the police adviser recuse himself when it's his or his partner's behavior they're looking into (maybe assume we have body cameras to review for the sake of argument)? It just seems to open a can of worms that doesn't need to be there.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 17:57

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

SrgMagnum posted:

By not having a judge or police officer's perspective you're relying on people to make decisions about a system which they likely don't know anything about outside of TV and the vernal media, which is a terrible place to get educated on anything.

Without that angle on the situation you're only giving the board one side of the story and they won't have a frame of reference for why police officers are trained the way they are, what stressors contribute to the decisions we make, or the reality of using force in the line of duty. I'm certainly not suggesting the police control the board or even coordinate it, I'm just saying that perspective needs to be represented in order to provide all the board all of the information they need to make a decision.

I don't think the cops would be advising anybody on what to be concerned about but they would be available to explain why an officer may have chosen a particular course of action. I guess I don't see one member of the board being a cop as any sort of problem. I view it as another member of equal standing with a different perspective which is incredibly valuable when there is so much misinformation out there about police officers and the job they do.

Maybe we're looking at the board as being different things. What do you see the board as being? What is it's goal and what are it's duties?

I agree 100%, the civilians can't organize it effectively by themselves. I'm suggesting they should be advised only by judges in their board meetings.

I see the board being largely a window into the workings of the police, not necessarily a direct regulating body. Their duty is to ensure that their communities are being policed as fairly and effectively as possible. Representatives of the community can look into the process of policing in their community and ask questions, make suggestions, and do some of the legwork of actual oversight. I guess right now that would be going over some random sampling of police reports (or camera footage in the future) and discussing any worrisome policies/behavior or specific incidents in their communities. With the help of a judge, they figure out which of their issues are laws that would need to change to make people happy, which are department policies that could change, and which are isolated incidents of questionable police behavior. Then they take whatever action is appropriate, asking questions about why a policy exists, offering policy suggestions, or asking for more information about a particular incident.

I'm not necessarily proposing that as the best solution, but that's what I'm picturing in my head. I'm not sure what legal mechanism we could use to make sure the police department paid attention to them, and that could change the picture quite a bit. I first imagined it without any cops involved because of the quote in the OP that presents the argument that civilian oversight would be too muddled to be effective. I thought maybe there's a good way to keep all the confusion in the meetings and not have the police deal directly with a bunch of adversarial citizens.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 18:33

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Zachack posted:

I don't think a judge provides a window into the workings of the police. I'm not a cop but I am currently involved in my "field enforcement" role with my organization's "enforcement lawyers" and their perspective is wholly different. At a city level this would change (but then what about county and state), and I think law enforcement has fewer barriers than I do between cops and lawyers, but a judge would likely be only able to say "this is what the law says" and not "this is what our process of enforcement is", and the latter is pretty crucial for an advisory/watchdog group because that's where you can make the most effective changes without having to rewrite law (which can be very hard for very good reasons).

If it's someone employed by the police department, empowered by them to speak conclusively on their policies but who doesn't actually work in the field, I have less of a problem with that. But I see less utility and more problems involving cops who work in the street whose own behavior would necessarily be discussed at some point. Assuming we do the logical thing and make random reviewing part of the process.

Can your average cop in a patrol car even speak conclusively on department policy, or would they end up having to go back and ask up the chain like the board would have to without them? I don't mean that disparagingly, I mean it like a science teacher might not know anything about scheduling of the school janitors. Is a practical civilian "policy" question like "Why are cops patrolling this block more than that one?" or "Why are a bunch of people in this neighborhood being picked up and released without charges all of a sudden?" something that a department representative is going to answer in a meeting, or is it going to need an "official response" anyway? They're probably talking to people who live on the blocks in question, so specifics will be important.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 21:01

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

justsharkbait posted:

Further, the 12 hour shifts are awesome for law enforcement because it is a good way to make use of manpower and it gives you a few more days in rotation. working traditional hours in a non-traditional job SUCKS, and i would hate 8-5 or 2-10 as a cop. At least do 10 hr days where you work 4 and have off 3. Of course, training and court are whenever you are needed.

I would have expected cops to like shorter shifts because in my experience working past 10hrs in a job where you're largely waiting around for something to happen ends up being torturous.

justsharkbait posted:

My issue is not with the public at all. As you said, they can only be retrieved IF something happened to need to retrieve them. However, i don't trust department admins. It is like a big dysfunctional family and we all know how people like drama. So any drama they can find on people gets out and it can make for horrible working environments. Supervisors have to review random videos to evaluate the officer. Just let you be having problems with your significant other. That crap will be all over the department for you to have to deal with. "so and so is having marriage trouble." or "so and so can't pay the bills".

Sounds like a pretty good reason to have citizen oversight boards with exclusive access to the body camera footage instead. Would you agree that footage involving some kind of paperwork, whether a police report or a citizen's report of some harassment, could be fair game to a board like that?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 06:54

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

SrgMagnum posted:

That's not even factoring in the physical violence. I've had people pull guns on me over a fix-it ticket or a small bag of weed which wouldn't even be worth writing a ticket over.

I know firsthand that at a cop's discretion, a small bag of weed can turn into a big deal. In my younger days I got pulled over for leaving my lane to dodge a pothole in the middle of the night. I was dumb and had a tiny bag of weed in my pocket, which the cop found when he asked me to step out of the car and patted me down. Then he spent an hour searching my car in the dark, didn't find anything else, but interrogated me about breaking and entering for a bit because I had a bandana, tire iron, and pair of winter gloves in my trunk. After all that he decided to write me an additional paraphernalia charge for the baggy my gram of pot was in. I hired a lawyer and learned the paraphernalia charge was a lot more serious than the possession charge, therefore I probably wasn't going to be able to plead it down or take a suspended sentence deal for a first time offense. In the end it stuck around on my record long after the possession charge disappeared, and ultimately I changed careers because I got through the interview process at 2 new jobs, only to have corporate red flag me when they ran my background check.

I'm not justifying pulling a gun on a cop, just saying there's a reason stuff that's no big deal to cops isn't necessarily viewed the same way by civilians. I'm pretty sure the cop gave me that charge because he was frustrated he wasted his time searching my car in the middle of the night, not because he wanted to protect society from a dangerous pothead, and it significantly changed the next 5-10 years of my life.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 18:03

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

deratomicdog posted:

That doesn't sound like a problem with police, more like a problem with how the legal system deals with marijuana charges.

I agree, I'm just saying in my case that paraphernalia charge was entirely at the discretion of the cop (I don't know anyone else who's gotten a paraphernalia charge for a baggy without also getting busted with scales and distribution quantities), and it hosed me over pretty hard.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 18:18

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Untagged posted:

Yet, you hold the cop responsible when in reality it all could have been avoided in the first place:

I should have gotten a marijuana possession charge, yes. Instead I got more severely punished for the bag my weed was in than the weed itself, which is completely the cop's fault. He had to know paraphernalia was a more serious charge than the amount of pot I had when he wrote the ticket.

If I didn't have my weed in a ziploc, just loose in my pocket, do you think he should have taken my pants as paraphernalia?

Mercury_Storm posted:

A plastic bag can be considered dangerous drug paraphernalia? What was it, some sort of super air tight anti-drug dog storage bag that only drug dealers use? Christ.

The worst part was when I sat down with my lawyer, he told me if I had been coming home from the grocery store with a 200 pack of unopened ziplocs locked in my trunk, the cop could have written me a paraphernalia count for every one. This was NC law in 2002, I'm not sure if it's still true but it probably is.

It's considered paraphernalia so they can nail dealers to the wall.

ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jul 1, 2014

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 19:00

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

deratomicdog posted:

I've been told to never charge possession of marijuana without also charging possession of paraphernalia.

Out of curiosity, does that make you more likely to write possession of paraphernalia tickets, or less likely to write possession of marijuana tickets?

I would assume they say that because the DA wants to see a more serious crime than weed possession in their court. The SrgMagnum quote I replied to implied that a bag of weed wasn't a big deal, but in a lot of states (like NC) paraphernalia can land you in prison so that kind of makes it a big deal.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 20:25

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

litany of gulps posted:

I don't really trust the personal judgment of most police to think that their interpretation of the law is what they should enforce. Leave that to the courts, because at least judges have some credibility.

On the other hand, if there were actually civilian oversight panels the best way they could change how their communities are policed (without years of legal battles) is if they can influence cops, DAs, and/or judges to use their discretion the way the community would like.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 20:55

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

litany of gulps posted:

So the foundation and the starting point is not in fact the legislators? The judges (in the eyes of a cop) have poor judgment? The police make the laws and decide how to interpret and enforce them?

He provided an example of a judge where he works effectively forcing police to stop writing paraphernalia tickets, I think it goes both ways.

litany of gulps posted:

So the legislators make the laws, but the police decide who the laws apply to.

Yes? I agree there are tons of abuses of power possible (and currently happening) in our system now, but how do we even enforce the idea that cops have to write up charges for every potential crime they see? What if the cop is starting to write someone up for jaywalking and sees another person hail a livery driver off the street instead of a licensed cab, how do they decide what to do?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 21:39

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

justsharkbait posted:

Also, that was only for weed because the courts don't really care anymore. So if i smelled weed, i would tell them "i smell weed. i have cause to search your car now, and i will. So where is it".

That's still a lovely game to play. You're choosing to be harder on people who attempt to exercise their rights to privacy, which is something I think most citizens don't do enough to protect. I understand you have the right to search the car at that point, but they also have a right not to incriminate themselves. If you hold it against people when they make you actually search, it's pretty easy to see that as fighting against their right to privacy and self-incrimination.

Like you said, the courts don't really care so why even search?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 22:12

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

justsharkbait posted:

It is a catch 22. If i smell weed and don't search and they get pulled over in the next jurisdiction, or they have an accident etc. It comes back on me for not taking any enforcement action that would have prevented the problem down the road. So not doing anything is worse then doing something, even if it is for the wrong reasons.

Also, there is little right to privacy in car, and i have a legal right search if i smell something i know to be illegal.

I know you have the right to search, I'm mostly talking about your discretion in writing tickets.

Whether you search or not, if you agree with the courts that it's not a big deal and you'll send people on their way if they give it up when you ask them, why don't you send them on their way when you search and find it?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 22:32

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

justsharkbait posted:

I don't know, because i get evaluated on what i do so if i don't ever write any weed tickets i get a bad eval, no raises, etc etc.

Maybe it would be more fair to send every 3rd person you bust, whether they give themselves up or not?

This eval process you mention seems like a good candidate for reform, because if the courts aren't that interested in enforcing something, why would a cop feel pressure from his administration to enforce it?

litany of gulps posted:

The 18 year old in your example would ideally be judged by a judge, not some beat cop who thinks he is the law.

I'm inclined to believe the judge in any minor infraction will largely base their decision on the testimony and report of the cop, so is their judgment really out of the picture?

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 22:53

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

litany of gulps posted:

This is fine. The police voice should be in the process, but it shouldn't be the main voice in the process.

That's still vulnerable to the same biases though. The rich white guy who spits and argues about his rights for 10 minutes could be described as cooperative and the poor black teenager who shook his head once and said, "This is bullshit" could be described as angry and insubordinate. I understand what you're getting at overall, but I'm not convinced the lovely parts of our current system wouldn't just find a way into the new one. We might as well experiment with oversight before we trash the whole idea of cops thinking on their feet, because we're going to need it for the judges when we have robot cops anyway.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 23:30

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

I'm curious on what, if any, the general consensus is on de-criminalising hard drugs like Heroin, Crack cocaine and Methamphetamine is among Goons.

There are some good reasons to believe A) hard drug addicts are less likely to OD when they're getting regulated drugs instead of whatever they can find on the street and B) if you give them a safe place and access to clean needles, they'll use them.

I'm not sure you should be able to go into CVS and get a bag of heroin, but there are civilized ways of dealing with hard drug addicts. Instead of going after the dealers with bigger and bigger guns, offer the addicts a deal on drugs they can't refuse.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 13:07

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

That's the attitude I joined with, but after working for a year in some of the roughest parts of London I have to say Heroin use is so destructive, even when it's carried out without the specter of arrest or prosecution, that it ruins lives and families and it really is something that people need to be protected from. You get people who can live a perfectly productive and positive life if they use most drugs in a recreational way (alcohol is still our biggest threat to public order) but I've yet to meet a Heroin user who could live a functional life whilst still using.

Alcohol is one of the best counterpoints to this idea. Some people can mess around with opiates and keep it under control, the classic example is William S Burroughs who managed to live what people might not call a happy life, but at least a productive one while usually addicted to morphine. A ton of people (Burroughs included) who manage to kick heroin replace it with alcohol, and their lifestyle ultimately doesn't change until they kick that addiction as well.

What criminal laws or punishments do you think can help the situation you see in London? Here in the USA we have mandatory minimum sentencing that puts dealers in jail for a long time regardless of what the judge thinks, it doesn't seem to be discouraging anything. When addicts will jump through any hoops they need to for their drug of choice, what can you do to keep the drug out of your communities aside from education?

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 17:01

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

I'm sure there are people who can dabble in Heroin and those that abuse and then go cold Turkey, I've found people in all manner of professions who use and abuse almost everything under the sun. Bar staff who abuse amphetamines, a nurse who used crack, but I've still never met someone who uses Heroin on a Friday night to let their hair down and then takes the kids to football the next morning.

Are you including all the addicts who get their opiate fix from prescription painkillers? That tends to change the demographics quite a bit. It's the same addiction, but usually a different lifestyle.

ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jul 3, 2014

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 17:56

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

I've interacted with both groups, people who (albeit inject) use Heroin act and function completely differently than to people who are popping tramadol pills to get out of bed.

The biggest difference is the person addicted to painkillers doesn't have to go to that part of town to get them, whereas a lot of the people shooting heroin in alleys grew up in that part of town, or ended up there after failing somewhere else. The way the two work on their brain psychologically, what you called weakness, is the same because they are the same drug. People with addictive personalities can spiral to the same place buying pills, or laudanum, or heroin.

A quick googling indicates you guys have similar problems with prescription drugs that we do in America, even with your healthcare. I figured it would be easier to go to rehab with your national healthcare, but that article describes a woman who had to sell her house to pay for rehab for pain pills her doctor was prescribing.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 19:49

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

When I've come in to contact with heroin users (usually after they have been arrested) there tend to be a few similarities. They are usually white, are either British or Irish and are very rarely frequenting the areas in which they were raised. Their economic background and upbringing tends to be varied. Obviously they are likely to be destitute when you arrest them it's usually for theft, burglary, robbery if it involves a similarly desperate person and regardless of how they grew up they are always disheveled desperate and broken.

Lots of them came from middle class families, some have a degree, who made some poor choices in life and ended up living to feed a habit. Yes, plenty of them had deprived upbringings but unlike crack cocaine (which receives a lot less in the way charity attention and specialist treatment) I honestly don't see any strong correlation between the household they grew up in before they started abusing heroin. When you've got them on a constant watch in a hospital or in a cell you have plenty of time to talk to them and usually they seem very honest and candid.

You still seem to think there aren't prescription opiates available even stronger than heroin. If it were more profitable for street dealers to sell $10-$20 bags of hydromorphone instead of dihydromorphine, the people you're talking about wouldn't be addicted to heroin, they'd be addicted to Dilaudid.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 04:02

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Samurai Sanders posted:

edit: actually, more in general, how do the courts deal with laws that have clear ulterior motives? Like, for example, here in Honolulu it's illegal to drink in the park/on the beach, but everyone does it. What the law is REALLY for is for giving the police a tool to get rid of people who are being obnoxious, but not yet doing something that breaks another law.

I would argue that there will always be laws that don't need 24/7 enforcement. Jaywalking has been brought up a few times, and I think most people would agree that in the middle of the night when there's no traffic no one needs to waste time writing people up for it, but if someone steps out in front of a car and causes an pile-up in traffic, it needs to be recognized that the pedestrian is at fault. Encoding certain timeframes into a citywide jaywalking law probably isn't in the majority's interest since traffic may be different for different neighborhoods at different times (when school lets out, when work lets out, when bars let out on weekends, etc). I think a huge step would be making sure the discretion cops (and DAs, and judges) are using with these laws is the kind that their local community would prefer, rather than just a department policy or a particular goal of X citations for this or that crime.

I'm not really optimistic that anyone can write a set of laws that makes most of the people happy with 100% enforcement everywhere, but with discretion in enforcement, prosecution, and punishment a community can dictate how they're regulated by the laws on the books. IF they have real oversight, which obviously they do not right now.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 20:12

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

deratomicdog posted:

What would citizen review boards do that internal affairs already doesn't do?

Something a board might look into is why cops are arresting a bunch of people for stupid violations like "impeding pedestrian traffic" for talking to their neighbor on a street corner. Maybe they find out it's based on some stupid arrest quota and decide their tax dollars and the police's time would be better spent with a different policy.

How does a community involve internal affairs in something like that?

# ¿ Jul 6, 2014 04:41

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

We have unregulated nicotine popping up all over the place in the USA right now with vape shops. Flavored cigarettes got banned because they could be attractive to kids, but there are mall kiosks pushing candy and fruit flavored vapor loaded with way more nicotine than a cigarette. I know a few people who have toned down their nicotine addiction a lot using e-cigarettes, but I also know people who have probably tripled their nicotine intake wearing a vapor pen around their neck all day compared to when they were a pack a day smoker.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 18:18

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Xoidanor posted:

Cigarettes are not dangerous simply because of the nicotine, they're addictive because of it but that's not what destroys lungs and give people cancer.

That's very true, but as far as I know the jury is out on long-term effects of inhaling vapor juice, and there's no regulation on what companies might put in their nicotine vapor juice. I'm someone who generally supports deregulation of drugs, selling flavored vapor with a significantly higher nicotine concentration than cigarettes might mitigate second-hand smoke issues, but it seems like a bigger potential addiction problem than cigarettes themselves. So far none of the major drug pushers like big tobacco or big pharma have made it into the market, but with their lobby and market penetration they could get way more people addicted to their products than they do now.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 19:42

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Well poo poo guys, I guess we're just lucky the de facto procedure was never that cops just shoot harlots on-sight. If so, they could shoot all women dead and they would never need to reevaluate this procedure because we haven't seen any recent examples of loose women luring cops into booby traps so it must be a proper procedure.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2014 07:26

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Network Pesci posted:

But what if everybody really IS going 70 in a posted 55? Surely you've seen that in real life before? I don't know the law (personal experience is that the worst possible thing you can do when dealing with a cop is tell him that you know what the law is) but I'm fairly sure that if I stubbornly refused to go over 55 on a two-lane highway, causing ten or twenty other drivers to pile up behind me honking and flashing their lights and flipping me the bird when they can't pass, a cop could come up with something to ticket me for.

Why would a cop pull over the car going the speed limit and not the aggressive drivers, who would get way more points for honking and flipping the bird while speeding in most places?

Do you really think as long as everyone speeds, cops should be helpless to enforce speed limits?

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 22:15

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Liquid Communism posted:

Best way to get the union and precinct to disown officers is to have them start losing cases and being given massive, punative fines and reparations to pay.

That would be nice, but how do we do that without the unions threatening to strike until we pay cops enough money to have comprehensive "malpractice" insurance? I'm pretty sure specific LEO liability insurance products already exist. How many victims of police abuse will be able to successfully navigate civil trials to get awarded more than 7 figures and actually put a dent in the union's finances?

Of course if the cops had to negotiate their own insurance, the ones with lovely records who had been taken to court already would pay out the rear end for their insurance, just like a doctor who has claims on his malpractice would. But a union would probably pay a fixed rate per member, and that probably wouldn't increase every time someone went to court, it would be some contracted length of time between renegotiations. That's how every insurance product I've ever had from my union works, but I might be talking out of my rear end as I've never shopped for LEO insurance.

I'm a proud IATSE member, I support unions as a general rule, but over the course of this thread I'm starting to agree that police unions aren't in our society's best interest. I can't decide where I want to draw the line though, because I think it would be absurd to dismantle teacher's unions, or deny union membership to government workers in any trade that exists both privately and publicly.

Actually, that's exactly where I want to draw my line in the sand: if no private version of your trade exists and you rely completely on the government's existence, you can't have a union. You can't collectively bargain against the American public, because ultimately they decide what your job actually is. There's no one else you could work for in the USA and kick in a homeowner's door with guns drawn to enforce local or federal laws on private property, and that training won't help your career anywhere but the military and the police. The same is true of corrections officers, the only civilian job you could have in America where you are trained to don riot gear and extract uncooperative people from prison cells safely. Meanwhile a teacher could teach at any of 1000s of private schools with the same education and training they have for public schools, and their performance should be evaluated on the same metrics in either position.

But deep down my gut is telling me that would be a bad law, because I'm having trouble deciding if I'm making a real distinction or just trying to figure out how to ban LEO and CO unions with a general statement. I can't think of anything else offhand I would definitely want it to apply to (certainly politicians if they wanted to have a union), maybe the IRS?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 20:51

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Trabisnikof posted:

If the threat of union strikes were the real issue then wouldn't we have a reformed police system in all the states where public workers and/or emergency workers are forbidden from striking? Strong unions aren't a universal in the United States, but I'm unaware of a state where police act tremendously better than any other state.

Well OK, so they don't strike they systematically cut the quality of their service.

This was a couple years ago now and I'm going mostly off the cuff so I might be foggy on details, but Camden, NJ managed to end up with a union contract so strong they had to dissolve the city's police department to get out from under it, and start over with a Camden County Police Department with hundreds of brand new officers fresh out of training and civilians taking all the office jobs. It was something absurd like 30% of the force managed to call out and still get paid each shift, they had already laid off a huge chunk of the force because the city was completely broke, senior officers working fixed first shift hours got the incentives that were supposed to be for rotating shifts, etc. I'm pretty sure they weren't coming to the scene of your crime if there wasn't physical injury or some arbitrary amount of property stolen/destroyed, they certainly never showed to smooth over fender benders in rush hour.

http://phillytrib.com/news/item/6607-camden-mayor-stands-by-police-firings.html

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20140429_In_Camden__more_cops__less_crime.html

There were hundreds of people waiting to sign up and be cops, and the city desperately needed cops but had 0 money. The union let hundreds of cops lose their jobs instead of working with the city to rehire the cops who got laid off by adding furlough days into their schedules, which every other person I knew who worked for Camden County already had to deal with (I worked with the parks department on outdoor concerts). The mayor had to dissolve the city police department in order to hire a few hundred unemployed people from the community who were waiting to work for what the city was offering the cops. Most of the cops who got disbanded, including the chief, stuck around afterwards so I guess it wasn't such an unreasonable offer. There's plenty of private security work in all the gated communities and shopping centers in the well-off white suburbs around Camden, I guess it's paying better than that.

There's no CEO or board of directors tweaking a business plan to run away with a bunch of profit from a city at the expense of the cops. I'm not saying there's no corruption, but there's literally nothing a bunch of broke people in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the country can hold over the head of a police force, but the reverse is not true. Twice as many residents were shot when the cops were running around with 175 paid police compared to when they had the 400+ cops they needed.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 00:13

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Trabisnikof posted:

If police unions were a major factor in police abuse then states with weak union laws should have statistically less abusive police right?

Someone mentioned earlier that the police union managed to lobby hard enough for Rick Perry to veto the law TX legislature passed that would prevent cops from taking people into custody for any minor offense. Twice. Texas isn't exactly a strong union state.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 00:32

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 14:04

ChristsDickWorship: Dec 7, 2004; Annihilate your demons

Trabisnikof posted:

Right, and it doesn't take a union to lobby. It would be unconstitutional to prevent police from forming a lobbying group.

Do you want to address how the police union in Camden helped anyone at all, including the police officers themselves, when they let more than half the force become unemployed instead of taking any realistic pay or benefit cut? If that were actually a company they worked for, they would all be unemployed right now. Because they're a public safety necessitated by the government, and they knew they would get the deal on the table even if the police force got disbanded, the union leaders had no incentive to back down on anything, despite the fact that more than half their members had no work. The residents of one of the poorest, most violent cities in America are the ones who lost the most.

What harm would befall police officers if they didn't have unions? Do you think it's politically viable anywhere for local politicians to bleed cops dry while crime rates skyrocket?

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 02:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Police Reform