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Spoke Lee posted:You are on the clock at your job. At the end of the day your employer wants to know what you did today. You refuse to tell them. They insist, you double down. You plead the 5th. They wonder what you were doing on the job that would be considered incriminating in the first place. Your employment is terminated for being a shady motherfucker. At some point legal action is taken against your friend and co-worker for a crime committed during the shift you wouldn't account your time for. You are called to the stand to testify but plead the 5th. You go home that day because you can't be held in contempt for exercising your right against self incrimination. Yes, you are. Private sector employees do not 'plead the Fifth' with their employer, in the same sense that a private employee has no recourse to the First Amendment if fired for speech. Outside certain protected classes and Equal Employment Opportunity issues, private companies are bound only to the contract they have made with their employees. Police officers are employed by the government, so the Fifth comes into play there. e: as things currently stand. I don't know enough about constitutional law to say if it's possible to legislate a special exempt status for police and the like, but as far as I know it would be unprecedented legally, and at minimum a very heavy lift in even a Democratic congress. I'm leaning toward jarmak's view that under the circumstances, the best way to actually eliminate abuse and corruption is cameras always on and around cops. Unfortunately this also feels like a tacit concession to corruption in the absence of cameras, when as far as I am aware there have been police forces pre-camera that have been impartial and clean--though I doubt any of them were American. It also doesn't address wider problems such as majority black urban areas being patrolled by largely white police from the suburbs, local politics that favor police departments for revenue generation over tax hikes, deliberately low recruiting standards with ceilings, and wreckage from the War on Drugs like the 1033 program, all of which worsen the divide between the police and the poor and minorities. And which are in turn fuelled by a sneering certainty that the poor have only themselves to blame and are basically animals to be kept in line, up to and including the death penalty. That will take time to change, but hopefully cameras can help force the system to face its contradictions and speed things along while reining in the worst excesses. rockopete fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Nov 30, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 17:06
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tezcat posted:Yeah. It honestly looks like those morons are going to see some time. Much better than your normal shitshow of take forever to bring charges and then let them weasel out of any real punishment. They aren't cops, though, so the DA has no institutional incentive to throw the case. I'd like to think that given the evidence, it wouldn't make a difference, but after the Eric Garner case, I have to wonder. I'm a bit surprised that didn't blow up more, given the evidence and facts of the case. Ferguson and Baltimore may have been better primed to explode, but the Garner decision was such an explicit, official devaluation of a life that it hit me harder.
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Dec 1, 2015 08:38
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Jarmak posted:I don't know I'm exactly the opposite, I think it might be because I've choked, and been choked out, way way more violently then it that video during sparring so many times I can't even begin to try to offer a number. As a result my reaction to the video was much more "holy poo poo you can die from that!?" and after finding out there was a policy against it for that reason its always felt like a cop doing something stupid and dangerous that resulted in a freak accident then the "that cop just choked that guy to death on camera" reaction that most people have had. I can understand that in isolation, but for me it was that plus the chain of events that followed. selling loose cigs -> cop's unauthorized escalation causes death -> No one is indicted or charged criminally, and testimony to the grand jury is sealed The DA chose to put only Pantoleo forward and not also the cops putting weight on Garner's back, who are probably more directly responsible for his death. Pantoleo used a chokehold which was explicitly forbidden by the department on a perpetrator who posed no threat to him, and which resulted in the death of this man. For that, he loses his badge and gun, nothing else. One other officer is assigned to desk duty. Some paramedics are temporarily suspended. No one is reprimanded for failing to stop Pantoleo from using the choke hold.
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Dec 1, 2015 15:53
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Jarmak posted:I'll try to respond to people more in depth later when I'm not on my phone, but I wanted to make one quick note. I think we're having a major disconnect on what level of force was applied to Garner. I agree, and again, bringing up Pantaleo alone when several other officers were pressing on Garner's back was a deliberate obfuscation by the DA to help kill the case. The Los Angeles Times posted:Transcripts of witness testimony, Garner's autopsy report, the exact charges Donovan pursued against Pantaleo and other key information was not made public. Without knowing the autopsy report or the list of charges, it's almost impossible for us to discuss this in any productive way. By design. Infinite Karma posted:I'm surprised that there aren't more DAs gunning for bad cops to nail to the wall. People are thirsty as hell to see cops going to prison when they assault and murder people. Every case of an indicted cop is national news. Actually convicting a cop would make any DA an overnight superstar. A DA might theoretically do this, but the voting demographics often push the other way. DAs campaign on 'law and order' because it's literally their job, and voters, especially for local offices, tend to be older, whiter, and wealthier than average. The Garner/Pantaleo case was prosecuted by the DA of Staten Island (Richmond County), who is now the Republican US Representative for that area after winning a special election in 2015 to replace this guy. That's a somewhat extreme example, but the general trend holds true across the country, and the office of District Attorney is often seen as a stepping stone to higher office. Additionally, DAs have to work closely with the police to do their jobs, which incentivizes them to avoid antagonizing cops. rockopete fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 21:41
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Javid posted:I'd personally favor just going ahead and making cops strictly liable for the physical health of anyone in their custody, with pre-existing conditions they couldn't have known about being an affirmative defense. Sounds good to me.
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Dec 2, 2015 04:47
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