Adding to this common problem in larger metropolitan police forces in the US is their rapid militarization.
Shaking down kids while cruising around in a black and white is one thing. Being equipped with military gear including armored cars opens up a whole new level of control issues.
> Shaking down kids while cruising around in a black and white is one thing. Being equipped with military gear including armored cars opens up a whole new level of control issues.
I'm not sure which one of those two does more damage to society in the longer term. The second obviously has problems but the first chips away at the foundations and I suspect that long term that one will have far more potential to do damage.
The ongoing debate between moderates and the far right in Israel is an extreme example of this control issue. The 'Rook' mentioned in the link is built on a caterpillar chassis, as is the case with the armored devices Israel uses to destroy Palestinian homes and schools.
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/IDF-destroys-two-...
A caption of one of the linked photos about the Rook at the Philadelphia police equipment convention - 'The last attachment is the grapple claw, which can remove fortified doors and burglar bars and even be used to remove debris from natural disasters'.
Surely natural disasters and helping people comes first not, as an afterthought....
I don't think corruption has much to do with "militarization". It doesn't take a tank to plant evidence and steal money.
Also, much of the equipment that people point to as evidence of "militarization" is either generic equipment that has valid police use (e.g. armored trucks. Brinks security, for example, uses them for their secure transport services), or is not military equipment at all. Riot shields, gas masks, and tear gas aren't commonly used by the military and they are designed to resolve things like riots non-lethally. In the old days, soldiers were broke up riots by clubbing people with sticks and shooting wooden bullets. Today's riot police are much better equipped to safely disperse a crowd with their "militarized" equipment.
It's not about the tanks. Once the cops start thinking of themselves as "warriors" and the rest of us as "civilians," the necessary lines have been drawn in their minds to justify mistreatment of the outside group.
One difference between our militarized (and unionized) police forces and the real military is that if you're in the military and you shoot someone who didn't need shooting, you are in very deep shit.
The police are demanding -- and getting -- all of the perks of the Heroic Warrior job title, accompanied by few of the responsibilities that should go with it and essentially none of the accountability.
> One difference between our militarized (and unionized) police forces and the real military is that if you're in the military and you shoot someone who didn't need shooting, you are in very deep shit.
Only if the wrong people find out. Just like with the cops.
I see this assertion made about police thinking of themselves as "warriors" but I have yet to see this substantiated by evidence. It doesn't correspond to the rate of people killed by police (that rate essentially mirrors the overall rate of street crime).
I am even more dubious of the second claim you make. A US citizen has vastly better ability to attempt to exact justice for their own police force's actions than someone in northern Iraq or Afghanistan's tribal regions. Especially when the military is more likely to use indirect weapons and weapons with drastically longer range (artillery, airstrikes, etc.) the notion that an unnecessary killing is more likely to result in disciplinary action in the military is very unlikely - there's a substantial chance such loss of life isn't even detected.
I am even more dubious of the second claim you make. A US citizen has vastly better ability to attempt to exact justice for their own police force's actions than someone in northern Iraq or Afghanistan's tribal regions.
A deployed soldier may be more likely to succeed in hiding the evidence of crimes they commit. They'd better succeed, because that's the only way they'll escape punishment. The differences come into play when the rogue cop or soldier is actually caught. Military personnel are held to higher standards than civilians in many respects, while police continually demand to be held to lower ones.
Are you aware of Mai Lai massacre? That’s one we have been told about because there was no hiding it once congress got involved. There should be many others where nobody broke the ranks.
I don't think corruption has much to do with "militarization"
Not the corruption of individual cops on the street, but I bet there are some kickbacks given for purchase of heavy equipment. Don't want to get political about it but tear gas is pretty aggressive, and is ironically banned for use on the battlefield but it's considered totally normal for police to use it to control civilian populations.
"Ironically" hollow point bullets are banned for military too, yet I rather have police use those than AP rounds, which would fly through the perp, his car, his house, his block and end up in some bystander next street over. Would you rather police use napalm (not banned for military) than teargas?
And, as the sibling said, police is not purchasing DoD equipment[1], if there is any corruption it could not be in form of kickbacks.
If you are not taking about military gear then why bring up militarization in the same context? Of course there are kickbacks in any government's procurement, even if they are just buying staplers or catering. People spending other people's money do want to be rewarded for the effort.
Because militarization doesn't only include items sourced directly from the military, it refers to the general mindset and mission of policing as well.
Nothing wrong with them having advanced equipment to bring out when necessary. Listening to some people you'd think that the police are cruising around in tanks.
When the police have to go up against criminals wielding AK's and high powered rifles I want them to be as equipped as possible to defend themselves. The problem is not with the police but rather the widespread availability of guns in our society. It's easy to heft blame on the police, but also intellectually disingenuous because they act and react to the conditions of the society they are tasked to protect. Those conditions are where blame must be placed.
As an aside, if a malicious government ever wanted to exert control over the populace then they would have a very easy time doing so with the military regardless of how well equipped the police were. In fact, distributed police forces beholden to local municipalities would likely be a line of defense against a centralized aggressive military.
"Police militarization" is really nothing to be concerned about. Unless you're a criminal.
Sure. You had me nodding until then very end. I don't think you have to feel physically threatened to be concerned about something. And this is a thread about rampant police corruption. But then all of the sudden I felt lumped in with criminals because it _does_ concern me.
The article doesn't mention how Detective Sean Suiter was shot in the head the day before he was to testify for the grand jury against the task force officers.
FWIW, this was not news to the residents of Baltimore. They have been talking about this for over 25 years. Anyone who listened could hear about it. Nobody really gave a shit.
A friend of mine grew up in East Baltimore. They would sit outside on their stoop, because the parents didn't want them inside, and there was no place to play outside other than in the street - no playgrounds, no trees, no parks, no back yards. Sometimes cops would roll up on their corner, get out, and question them about what they were doing. "We're sitting." They were told to empty their pockets. If they had any money on them, the police would confiscate it and drive off.
Re: "one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation" - they aren't mentioning how Baltimore City Detention Center was literally controlled entirely by the Black Guerrilla Mafia for 20 years. 44 employees and inmates were arrested in a sting operation a few years ago.
Or how the city's police used aerial and other surveillance methods (thanks, FBI) to tap and track mobile phones without a warrant or court order.
Other recent controversies involve the wrongful death of Freddie Gray, planting drugs on a suspect on camera, and a US Justice Department report condemning the BCPD for "violating the constitutional rights of citizens, using excessive force, and discriminating against African Americans".
>A friend of mine grew up in East Baltimore. They would sit outside on their stoop, because the parents didn't want them inside, and there was no place to play outside other than in the street - no playgrounds, no trees, no parks, no back yards. Sometimes cops would roll up on their corner, get out, and question them about what they were doing. "We're sitting." They were told to empty their pockets. If they had any money on them, the police would confiscate it and drive off.
Same experience I've had. I currently still live here. My zip code has a lower life expectancy than Yemen,and North Korea.
>>Hard to believe actions like that were taking place in the U.S.
Is it? I'm a Canadian and everything I hear about the US police terrifies me - SWATing leading to innocent people being killed, unarmed black men being shot, no-knock warrants, civil forfeiture, the impossibility of convicting police for just about anything. If the worst thing they were doing was selling drugs that'd be an improvement as far as I can tell.
Oh, I'm not under any illusions that this kind of thing never happens in Canada, but I think if you look at the response to that incident (compared to cases in the US) there are hopeful signs.
The Braidwood Inquiry concluded the use of Tasers in the case wasn't justified. The officers were charged with perjury (not murder, but at least something). The RCMP issued an apology to Dziekański's mother.
Compare this to the response to fatal shootings in the US, and it's very clear to me I prefer this line of the sand.
> In February 2009, it was reported that Canada had unilaterally suspended its mutual legal assistance treaty with Poland, thus blocking Poland's own investigation of the Dziekański Taser incident.
Whoa, those cops surely have a serious level of political backing.
This baffles me always to no end - the flame with which the officials would defend cops who went seriously out of borders. Every time in every locale.
In most "oh things are terrible in America" matters, I believe other countries are about as bad, but have a tamer media. But police misconduct really does seem to be worse in America. For reasons I don't fully understand.
One part of it is probably guns: even in states with strong gun control, there are plenty of them in the hands of hoodlums, so voters appreciate the Dirty Harry approach to dealing with them.
Of course we can guess various reasons, voters like police, cops stick together etc, prosecutors and police work together etc. But those things are true in other countries too.
A lot of it is how the police largely pick on the most vulnerable populations--poor people, minorities, ex-cons, people with drug problems, whatever. They're not dumb, they know that if they tried to shake down drug-addled sons of senators, they'd be fired. So, like all abusers, they pick targets that can't fight back. And those targets are the ones with the least political/economics agency, the fewest connections, the least ability to respond to police brutality, whatever.
And the middle and upper classes--the only voices ever represented in media (excluding the current endless spate of articles interviewing poor Trump voters)--of course they not only have no problem with the police, they don't know anyone who's been shaken down. As a general rule, at least.
So, you look at the predominant voices in the media, and they have no problem with the corruption of cops, and they don't know anyone who does.
Gosh, even my nominally progressive sister goes into any discussion about police brutality with an assumption that whoever got shot deserved it. And she's generally aware of social issues!
The biases are baked in so deep, and so uncomfortable to unpack, it's easier to just to turn away from it all.
The UK's media is vicious, yet there are few areas where the UK (or other countries subject to UK media scrutiny) are on-par with, or worse than, the US. North Korea maybe?
A group of people standing around watching a person who is clearly confused and in distress but do nothing. Uniformed armed officers arrive to take charge of the situation, use little judgment and follow what they think is procedure, when it is not, and/or clearly should not be. A tragic outcome. A government apology. Do Loop.
You're mostly right, although the killing is typically overblown and taken out of context in many circumstances. But when it does happen, you're right that it's damn near impossible to get a conviction of a police officer. And civil forfeiture is probably even worse than what media coverage would lead you to believe. Ironically Loretta Lynch, the second Attorney General under Obama, did this extensively in her career in NY. It's sad when the people who are allegedly representing the interests of the underprivileged have done so much to exploit them. (And don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to be partisan or suggest that the GOP is better or anything like that. It's just disappointing how much of this crap runs through all layers of our government.)
To play devil’s advocate for a moment: children are often coached by parents in cases like this. Remember “balloon boy,” who hid in the garage per his dad’s instruction so the family could get their 15 minutes of fame?
That said, kids like to make things up too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened here.
If you want to charge children for lying, everyone would have a thick binder full of criminal records by the age of 12. Maybe, of we want to blame anyone, it should be the media for but doing their due diligence before publishing a price of news.
I imagine it was a small lie that got out of hand. She did not mastermind a media storm. She told a lie to her school or her parents, they went to police, police talked to media, media interviewed the family, etc. At some point, if she were an adult, she would have understood that the lie had gotten out of hand and would have put an end to it. She was probably so afraid of "getting in trouble" that she didn't dare admit she lied in the first place.
When I was in kindergarten, I once lied about seeing a snake in the schoolyard. I don't remember why or how, I just told a stupid lie like every stupid kid (which is the same thing as every kid) does all the time. Now, no one believed me and I don't think that anyone else in the world remembers what I said, but imagine if they did. Imagine the grown-ups had taken it seriously and called 911 (well, 125 realistically , it wasn't in North America). The city would have started a large investigation to find the missing killer snake, the media would have printed article after article reporting on how people should be scared of sending their kids to school when there are dangerous animals on the loose and no one does anything about it, recess would have been cancelled, ... Imagine a shark scare, but on a larger scale. Every now and then, some grown-up would have asked me if I was sure I saw a snake, and due to the aforementioned stupidity, plus the fact that I was afraid of getting in trouble, I would have nodded yes. It would have been The News until something else distracted people from it.
None of this happened because no one believed me in the first place. But if it had happened, should I have been held criminally responsible for all the trouble?
That's my point. Kids lie all the time for all sorts of reasons. If you want to start holding them responsible through criminal justice system, you would have to send every one of them to jail.
> Don't judge all the the US by its corrupt big cities.
> I recognize nothing in this story in my town's local police (we're about 65,000 population, and the cops are quite relaxed and civil as a default).
I was stopped without explanation in Andover, KS (population < 12000 as of 2010). Officers harassed me and threatened to arrest me when I would not allow them to search my vehicle. They claimed that they smelled pot in the car. I Was not a pot smoker and was borrowing the vehicle from an anti drug family member while mine was in the shop. The claim was bogus and they were clearly trying to intimidate me.
In a neighboring city (Wichita), police responding to a 911 call that I placed after being robbed at gunpoint played good-cop-bad-cop with me. They suspected that my roommate and I were selling pot (we weren’t) and refused to press charges on the assailant because they assumed we were withholding information. I tried to call them on it, but I was unsuccessful. They didn’t give a shit about us because of the assumptions they made coming into the situation.
FWIW, I have two friends who are cops. I do not think all cops are bad people. Your dismissal of the issue is problematic.
Well we can trade anecdotes, it doesn't really prove anything. A relative was stopped by the cops, with weed and a pipe visible in the car, and was just told "keep that out of sight" and this is a state where it's not legal. Why? Because the local prosecutor does not prosecute simple possession cases and they know it would just be a huge waste of their time to bring people in and book them just to have the cases dismissed.
Police need to deal with every walk of life. I just served on a jury where the police were made to sound like a bunch of idiots by the defense because a person who appeared to be a witness wasn’t interrogated like you were.
Aggressively interrogate victims of crime, and you will find nobody wants to report crime or even cooperate with the police any more. That's far more damaging than missing the opportunity to prosecute a single drugs case, but it isn't measurable.
I didn't say drug case, because it wasn't relevant.
In my situation, a young woman was killed by a car. So a person is dead, and neither the victim's family and friends, the perpetrator's family or others will really know if justice were served.
That's not making excuses for corruption or the despicable conduct in Baltimore. But sometimes our perception of police conduct goes one way because we haven't walked a mile in their shoes, and don't have the big picture of how their world works.
Which of it's big cities aren't corrupt, though? This isn't just a localized problem, these people often end up in federal positions. Plus, there's a huge percentage of the population that lives in large cities. It's too big of a problem to avoid judging the U.S. as a whole by it.
It's funny how normally reasonable people forget that what manages to reach our awareness are very rare and shocking events that are not at all representative of the vast majority of day to day activity, whether police related or otherwise.
You are allowing yourself to be misguided if you focus on what gets put on the front page of CNN.
I don't know about others, I want my police force judged by their worst interactions rather than the majority of their interactions. I want the standards set high enough that all those bad things practically never happen rather than some small regular percentage of ongoing interactions.
No sane person would want to risk their life on a daily basis, wrestle people into their cars against their will on a daily basis, and be subject to the scrutiny you describe in your post, the hatred that is described in other posts, all for a policeman's salary. Literally no sane person would take that deal. Are you about to sign up to be a cop? Hell fucking no.
You could say the same thing about a firefighter- and yet they exist. Sorry, if you mistake courage with insanity.
Some people have a urge to help that lets them run into the wrong direction.
Without that- you would have died in that car-accident you sometimes get flashbacks to.
There is a dentist effect here at work- everybody forgets the negative moments in live, everyone forgets about theire dentist until it hurts again. Police and Emergency services are socially isolated due to that effect.
This has been going on for decades, across the country. See also the Rampart Scandal [0] and the Allen v. City of Oakland [1] case in which cops in LA and Oakland respectively, robbed, beat kidnapped and otherwise victimized citizens. I hate to think what happens in small cities and towns where this stuff is even harder to report.
I hate to think what happens in small cities and towns where this stuff is even harder to report.
I'm not sure. I'm more familiar with the small town side of society, and I'd guess that it's much easier to hide this sort of behavior in a larger city. There's much less anonymity in a small town, and keeping this sort of behavior going would require "buy in" from the entire police force rather than just a nucleus of corrupt officers. So while the small town police force might be more likely to abuse civil forfeiture against out-of-town drivers, I'd be surprised if this level of corruption targeting residents would be possible in a smaller department.
There is the civilian review board, paid for by city taxes, who do nothing but review cases of police abuse and take said officers to court. That's how stories like the parent story become widely known.
So the question is: would you rather live in Baltimore, where these things are reported AND there are powers that can help you with these problems... or would you rather be in Small Town America where the Sheriff is the de-facto ruler and you ain't got nuthing against him?
---------
Anyway, the main issue with Baltimore cops is that they're grossly underpaid. If they live 30 minutes away in a slightly richer area, they can get a higher-paycheck, AND get higher-respect from the community.
Baltimore cops are in a tough spot right now. Morale is low, paychecks are low, and everyone sees them as villains (especially after "The Wire"). Why be a Baltimore cop when suburbia is safer, pays better, and earns more respect?
As such, the cops who stay in Baltimore are usually the ones who can't leave for whatever reason. "Good Cops" go elsewhere, there's basically a "brain drain" on decent cops in Baltimore, and I'm unsure how the city is supposed to move forward.
So the question is: would you rather live in Baltimore, where these things are reported AND there are powers that can help you with these problems... or would you rather be in Small Town America where the Sheriff is the de-facto ruler and you ain't got nuthing against him?
Personally, I much prefer my chances in small town America. I'm currently living in the Bay Area, but planning to move to somewhere much smaller. I may be naive, but I have much less fear of systematic corruption of the authorities in smaller towns. Alternatively, as a white male, I may be correct in my personal assessment despite the non-universality of the answer.
I'm not sure how one would go about definitively answering the question of whether the unreported cases of abuse in small towns are more prevalent than the reported plus unreported abuses in the larger cities. But I don't think it should involve "correcting" for the on-the-job differences between rural and city officers. Even if the brain drain and low morale help to explain why the remaining officers are more likely to be abusive, as a citizen I'd still probably be wise avoid those places and prefer locations with more content officers.
> Hard to believe actions like that were taking place in the U.S.
Interestingly, there's a globally-recognised phrase - "Only in America".
This honestly seems like exactly the sort of corruption I'd expect to hear about in the US... There's just so much negative press about your government and police that a lot of people wouldn't expect it anywhere other than America.
That's an incredibly feeble-minded and edgy-childish thing to say.
Yet, if corruption happens in African, Middle Eastern, and Asian nationas nobody says "Only in Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia". That's just called normal.
There are European nations that are more corrupt than the USA.
You need to stop listening to mass media so much. When I lived in Canada there were stories of police corruption, unwarranted beatings and racism. If you think this is an "only in America" issue you're being incredibly naive.
I disagree - I don't watch any. However, it's a very widely-used phrase, which is what I'm commenting on.
It means something is so ridiculous, it could only happen in America.
It's like when you see people buying a rifle in Walmart - Only in America. Or when they're getting a one-gallon cup of Coke from McDonalds, or drive away from a fuel bowser with the hose still plugged in etc etc. These things can happen elsewhere, for sure, but it's an extremely well-known and common comment to make.
>it could only happen in America is an extremely well-known and common comment to make.
Why not? Everybody else is making it. Besides, it gives the commenter that oh so delicious smug sense of unearned superiority. Besides, everybody else is doing it. Except..
>It's like when you see people buying a rifle in Walmart - Only in America.
People buy rifles in all kinds of stores all over the world so why would Walmart be any kind of exception?
>Or when they're getting a one-gallon cup of Coke from McDonalds,
This literally does not exist.
>or drive away from a fuel bowser with the hose still plugged in
People do this anywhere they are allowed to pump their own gas. FWIW in my 40 years, I've seen the aftermath of this exactly once.
To respond to your other comment:
>I disagree - I don't watch any [mass media]. This honestly seems like exactly the sort of corruption I'd expect to hear about in the US...
Except according to the corruption perception index, the US is less corrupt than most European countries[0] including the likes of France, Portugal and Ireland, and far less corrupt than the vast majority of countries in the world. You claim to not be watching the media but you're getting your false information from somewhere so maybe turn that off too.
>It means something is so ridiculous, it could only happen in America.
An exaggeration in itself but then you go on to support it with claims that are either entirely false or orthogonal to the point. So I corrected you. Yet somehow I'm supposed to be "offended". Since you are so good at internet psychiatry, here's another word for you. Projection.
It was the quick succession of more than a few rapid edits over the course of several minutes that made me feel that you're over-reacting to the comment.
- Its weird everywhere else in the world to sell firearms in the same store as kids toys, milk and cheese. Weird.
- Gallon cups have indeed existed in promotions at various fast food outlets in the US, maybe not McDonalds I suppose.
- It's extremely rare to have people pull away from a bowser without checking the hose has been put away when you aren't pre-paying for fuel (i.e. many places around the world). However almost every image and video of it posted to car forums etc are from the United States.
- The US government is perceived as corrupt to many people in many nations, and the current office is making that perception greater. That is why people can accept that this level of corruption in Baltimore has happened.
But these were just lighthearted examples, and I digress.
>It was the quick succession of more than a few rapid edits over the course of several minutes that made me feel that you're over-reacting to the comment.
That's a bizarre conclusion but whatever.
>- Its weird everywhere else in the world to sell firearms in the same store as kids toys, milk and cheese. Weird.
It's a giant department store. They sell everything. By saying it is weird, you are projecting your own biases.
>- Gallon cups have indeed existed in promotions at various fast food outlets in the US, maybe not McDonalds I suppose.
Yeah. Not McDonald's. It's almost like I said that. I also have never seen any fast food restaurant with any promotional cup size approaching anything near a gallon.
>- It's extremely rare to have people pull away from a bowser without checking the hose has been put away when you aren't pre-paying for fuel (i.e. many places around the world). However almost every image and video of it posted to car forums etc are from the United States.
Oh you saw it in some pictures in a car forum? Well I guess that settles it then.
>- The US government is perceived as corrupt to many people in many nations, and the current office is making that perception greater. That is why people can accept that this level of corruption in Baltimore has happened.
Yet the link I posted shows the US, like I said, to be perceived as less corrupt than, e.g., France. And Spain. And Japan. And Portugal. And on and on.
>But these were just lighthearted examples, and I digress.
You aren't being "lighthearted" any more than the people you are parroting who originally made these comments were. You are spreading lies and being hateful. You think you are better than "those people" in America so you spew your hatred on the internet. Except most of what you say is false or based on some other crap you, wait for it, read on the internet.
To the downvoters: I'm just devastated you took some of my internet points away. But thanks for reminding me I'm on r/hackernews. Nice "rebuttal"
How high up did this sort of thing go, though? It seems like in more corrupt places, this sort of thing basically goes all the way to the top and the entire department is engaged in this kind of activity. Whereas here we have small groups of individuals exploiting their position in this way and hiding it from people above them. Although, if it actually is basically the same, I guess it shouldn't be particularly surprising given that the conditions many are living in are pretty "third world".
Cases like these tend to involve narcotics officers. Since they work undercover, don't wear body cams, and don't checkin with their station as often as a beat cop. AND that is where the money is.
There should be a body cam on every officer and their police powers and privileges should deactivate the moment its turned off deliberately or “accidentally”. A time delayed feed should be made public and an independent federal agency should randomly audit the recordings for civil rights abuses.
Police should be treated like other political officials and there should be a democratic mechanism for the public to remove them from their position.
There should be a national ban on psychological profiling during the police hiring process. Police departments should compensate their officers with substantially higher salaried instead of their current compensation: poor pay with perks like the chance to exert power, abuse people, steal things, and almost completely avoid prosecution.
Finally, police officers should be required to live in the areas they police. They should be provided with the same public housing the general public enjoys if they have trouble finding or affording a house.
Of course, these ideas are too sensible to be ever become real.
I wouldn't say sensible, unrealistic or implausible is closer.
"Sorry madam the last person I dealt with broke my camera, I'm not a cop at the moment"
Political policing departments... Hhmm you think the police equivalent of trump are going to be any less corrupt?
I'm also sure housing the police where they work would definitely no in anyway make them, their family and property, any sort of target being as everyone loves the police.
> Sorry madam the last person I dealt with broke my camera, I'm not a cop at the moment"
He could help in any way a normal citizen could help someone in trouble until another officer arrives with a working body cam.
> Political policing
That’s not what I said.
What’s wrong with allowing the public to petition for a police officer to be fired?
> I'm also sure housing the police where they work would definitely no in anyway make them, their family and property, any sort of target being as everyone loves the police.
Everyone hates the police. That’s the point. It’s a lot harder to curb stomp a kid’s head if you know you’ll see his mother at the grocery store. It’s a lot harder to force a woman to blow you at a traffic stop if she’s in a book club with your wife.
If your profession requires you to have a secret lair, you’re probably a villain.
>He could help in any way a normal citizen could help someone in trouble until another officer arrives with a working body cam.
"Sorry madam I know the theif is getting away but I can only help as a normal citizen"
Or
"Sorry madam I cannot do anything just now I need my camera, if I tried to save her and it went wrong someone could claim I did someone wrong and a mob could then demand I lose my job based on only half facts"
>What’s wrong with allowing the public to petition for a police officer to be fired?
Because as you say everyone hates to police, that would mean you're local high level gangster could drum up enough support to fill the ranks of the police with cops who wouldn't touch them.
>Everyone hates the police. That’s the point. It’s a lot harder to curb stomp a kid’s head...
Also a lot harder to arrest those dangerous and violent criminals who will then take revenge on you, your family or property. But then I forget if you're a cop your family is fair game, because fuck cops right?
> A time delayed feed should be made public and an independent federal agency should randomly audit the recordings for civil rights abuses.
You know, there's a converse to that.
We're developing more and more AI that can detect "events". Wouldn't be interesting if you could detect "criminal" events, even if the officer didn't see, remember, or even know they were criminal to begin with?
It means, that every body cam, camera, and recorder turns into a statute-of-limitations criminal detector. A fishing expedition only bound by compute power. And each charge is a goldmine of $$$$, with almost inexcusable evidence (video!).
It's why the idea of "Badgecam" is boneheaded without one more addendum: the data is sealed until court order opens it up, upon probable cause at the time with said officer. Else, this massive data collection turns into a panopticon of driving and walking officers and devices.
...according to a study conducted by the police department in question.
I contested a ticket I received from an aggressive traffic cop in Portland for texting in a stand-still bumper to bumper traffic jam. He was on a motorcycle and saw me as he rode by on the sidewalk!!! This guy had incredible nerve. In court, I insisted we view the footage from his body camera, which could only be done if I first refuse his plea offer, a significant issue IMO. I took the risk. The way he spoke to me was so militant and I thought it would be good to have the room give it a listen and see the traffic jam. The footage turns off as he is walking up to my car!!! Then he told me “either the battery died or the tape ran out”. Tape!!! This was 2015. The ticket was dropped, but I don’t think many people I know would have had this persistence, especially risking the plea denial. Beyond being annoyed, I was also intrigued with the abuse of power in such a trivial case.
>> It's to be expected that these cameras might have little impact on the behavior of police officers in Washington, D.C., he says, because this particular force went through about a decade of federal oversight to help improve the department.
Seems as though the D.C. PD didn't have many issues that needed correcting?
I have no idea if they do get sanctioned with admin leave. But people often confuse "suspension with pay until a determination of guilty" as a punishment. However, it's really just a way to suspend them until guilt can be determined.
Unlike a regular job, government employees have a due process right to their job. You cannot suspend them without pay without due process.
I don't think they should have a due process right to a job, but the courts disagree. Trump sort of suggested removing that right during the state of the union, but it won't happen.
And those who do get fired get rehired later, after the news media heat cools off, either by the same department, or by another law enforcement agency in the same area.
Problem is partly that crime is pretty bad in Baltimore and tax base doesn’t help combat it. Officers are constantly having to bend the rules to make any impact. Slippery slope into bad behavior. Also, few well trained and talented police officers want to work in such an environment due to personal risk and stress. The few that do want to be rewarded for the hell they go through.
There is another side to this story, though I agree the behavior is mostly inexcusable.
The history of the early 20th "progressive" movement was a legacy of legal devices which make the police basically outside the control of local political institutions. Police are civil servants like health inspectors or zoning experts.
These changes were made to prevent the previous situation, where a "political machine" could control a town, appoint their people to the important posts and create a town-wide corruption system, often by tossing boons to the poorer people in the central city (Tammany Hall was the most infamous of these operations[1]).
Of course, one might this replacement system degenerated to the point that you have similar corruption, perhaps even less accountability and fewer boons to the disenfranchised.
But the present order is very strongly entrenched in American politics and given the American system is presently close to a mockery of democracy, the chance of change today looks slim no matter how many egregious appear.
Police unions are the only strong unions left in the country.
The conservatives will come for them at some point too...until then you have places like Philly that, at least used to, have complaints against police be heard by the union before they are passed on to internal affairs.
Bmore takes the cake, though...just wtf all over and back again.
> A Minnesota prosecutor said on Thursday he needs more time to decide whether to charge a police officer who fatally shot an Australian woman who called 911 for help.
> Minneapolis officer Mohamed Noor shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond on 15 July, just minutes after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her home.
> The 40-year-old life coach was engaged to be married, and her death drew international attention. It also cost Minneapolis’ then-police chief her job and forced major revisions to the police department’s policy on body cameras.
Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman had promised a decision by the end of the year. But on Thursday he said his office was “getting more information and evidence, and additional investigation must be completed”.
You'd think that all the "conservatives" would demand that the shooter be hanged, quartered, and drawn. At least, there is a silver lining in this case that the new police chief knows that the public will not tolerate something like this.
What are you basing that off of? Trump barely lost Minnesota in 2016 (46.9 Clinton to 45.4 Trump), and it's a swing state in virtually every national election.
"Minnesotans have voted for Democratic presidential candidates ever since 1976, more times consecutively than any other state outside of the south, and longer than any state."
> Half my family is from there so partly anodically, but these seem to back it up.
Your family must live in the Twin Cities metro because Minnesota gets real conservative real quick outside of Minneapolis, St Paul and the inner Suburbs.
Nope, farm country. And as with all things political, it is way more complex and not so binary, but that said, the whole point of this thread is around the Twin Cities and who they've elected... so I agree.
I hear that said a lot about X state, and that's because it's true for pretty much every single state. Once you're outside the major cities, it's hardline conservative.
> The conservatives will come for them at some point too...
Police unions are the most reliably conservative unions, and are powerful advocates for conservative policies. If hardcore libertarians were in power, they might be threatened, but mainstream conservatives aren't likely to come for them.
I kind of doubt the conservatives will come for them. They're often allies, even if they don't like to admit being friends with unions. The only evil the current Republican party seems interested in banishing from the world is Democrats.
The fallout from the gun task force scandal has been substantial. Baltimore state’s attorney has dropped at least 125 criminal cases related to the task force and continues to investigate others. The public defender’s office estimates that the number of tainted cases is likely closer to 3,000.
Camden shut down it's police department, and last year had the lowest murder rate in decades: http://www.nj.com/camden/index.ssf/2018/01/camdens_2017_murd.... As engineers when a system is severaly broken, we know the answer can be to turn it off (e.g. in the case of a bad malware infection). The same can apply to other complex systems too.
It wasn't clear from the article, but the context I found was that the Camden County Police Department took over policing from the Camden City force on May 1, 2013.
Cities often have multiple options for who "owns" local policing - county level police, county level sheriff's office, contracting out to a neighboring town, or even state police.
I've tried rolling that over, some smaller corrupt police departments the town will close the department and lay everyone off and contract with the county sheriffs or a neighboring city.
The problem is a systemic issue, it goes way farther than the police.
The population distribution of Baltimore is based on a practice of redlining, where banks, real estate owners, and others conspired to literally confine black people to certain areas and restrict access to services. Though the original practice is now abolished, neighborhood boundaries and lack of access have not changed, and there are new forms of redlining (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#Current_issues). This is one of the many reasons that there continues to be a quasi-segregation, endemic racism, and poverty in the city.
To me, the answer is quite clear: the government needs to break up the city. They need to force banks to give loans to people to provide businesses and services to African Americans. They need to break up neighborhoods so that there is a more even distribution of rich, middle class and poor, and less ethnic separation (Sandtown-Winchester, the neighborhood Freddie Gray was from, is 99% black). They need to provide better access to transportation throughout the city so people can get to jobs, schools, and social services without additional incumbents. They need to redirect the giant tax breaks going to local giants like Under Armor and use it to fund school lunches, increased teaching facilities/teachers, job education programs, and after school activities. There's a lot of shit that needs to be done to reduce the level of poverty, drugs, and violent crime.
Once that is done, and with increased wages, hopefully the police won't feel the need to take advantage of a broken society and vulnerable population.
They haven't been able to reform the Baltimore Police for decades. They need an external org under federal control with the task of weeding out, prosecuting and controlling the police.
> New York City has agreed to pay up to $75 million to settle a federal class-action lawsuit that accused its Police Department of issuing hundreds of thousands of criminal summonses that were later found to be without legal justification, according to a signed copy of the proposed deal filed on Monday.
Does a citizen have any legal recourse or entitled to compensation if a citizen's house was raided multiple times on false pretenses or a fabricated warrant by these fine upstanding officers (The ones being indicted)? I'm asking for a friend.. :-/
Ianal and couldn't answer any particular in your case. I do have a lawyer friend who makes a regular income suiting the Oakland police department.
The broader issue is naturally the police have a lot of leverage on your average court system, police are often not liable for even the most egregious mistake, only actual malice is required and occasionally then legal contortions can justify various behaviors and so-forth.
But even more, if someone wins a suit against the police of town X, town X pays the fine and that money comes out of money for parks and libraries of town X, not say, from the pay of cops of town X, who can thus merrily ignore even a successful suit.
I'm hoping to discover a pattern of this behavior. I've seen more than 4 warrants all listing the same untrue facts that led to a judge signing off on the warrant. No proof just hearsay. I will consult with a lawyer. But this came up and I've known this place to harbor people smarter than I, so I figured I'd ask..
There needs to be an independent police force to police the police. Internal affairs is a joke, and the interests of DAs are too closesly aligned with police to be a reliable check.
Police follow a code that is not unlike that followed by groups that they have legal authority over. When one officer refuses to be an accomplice to a crime committed by another officer, the officer is culturally pressured not to act in a way that would attack the offending officer. One reason for this is you ought not throw stones when you live in a glass house. Officers commit crimes for all sorts of reasons: mistakes, shortcuts, aggression, revenge. Further, if officers blew the whistle on each other for every matter, the culture would turn to disrespect and distrust among those whose lives depend on each other.
So, Baltimore ends up with much greater problems as smaller ones snow ball.
Body cameras are helping to distance officers from hurting their team but they're not being managed in a way that will ensure integrity. The fox can't guard the hen house. Police control when the cameras are on, they control the recordings, and they control who reviews the recordings.
I might as well add that Trump is in the process of creating this culture among the branches of government. Smaller problems won't be reported. Much greater problems will eventually emerge. Everyone will ask how this could ever happen. A political savior will swoop in and reform.
I have a strong suspicion this isn't limited to Baltimore. Not sure what they expected when they show officers they can get away with just about anything with little more than a slap on the wrist.
The first two federal officers involved in a Bitcoin-related investigation (Silk Road) stole the money and tried to cover it up. Which shows just how bad US law enforcement culture is. People like this can, and should be, filtered out.
At some point I hope to see a #MeBlue social campaign by good cops to out bad cops.
Article three of the US constitution: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
I'm not arguing that treason / corruption aren't worthy of increased focus, but your proposal doesn't seem to be it.
There's also these pesky anti anti-corruption / pro "free speech" SCOTUS cases :(
I totally understand that currently it is not possible. My personal opinion is that the scope should be widened carefully in a limited way for aggregious public corruption. It's not an easy answer by any means but should be addressed with harsh penalties for some situations
I don't understand why it makes sense to tie corruption to treason. It's a specifically defined thing in the constitution and it's already bandied about way to easily in a political manner.
Fixing corruption law (including SCOTUS precedent) is very hard, no need to add very debatable issues additionally.
That's not a similar situation in the least. Comparing calling out and calling for the removal of bad cops to holding the thin blue line ignores any bit of context there is.
I'd rather deal with a decent cop in a tank than one on a bike who plants evidence. Hopefully the evidence farmer doesn't get promoted to tank commander.
How does the audit culture work in the US? Are government agencies required to establish compliance with their stated positions (e.g. their position on Transparency) ?
Really Baltimore's not as bad as the Wire, the riots and this story.
As with any city it's best you avoid certain crime ridden areas, but other then that it's great! The low cost of living in the surrounding counties and Govt IT jobs where salary ranges from 120 to 250k are fairly plentiful. Also, traffic isnt too bad, there is a tech scene, a startup scene and good amount to do in and outside of the city.
I almost never say shit like this, but you are clearly speaking from a position of significant privilege. Obviously the cops aren't planting drugs on yuppies and tech workers, nor do you live in one of the many terribad parts of that city.
Huh I was just saying Baltimore is not a bad city especially if these negative stories paint a different picture and in ones mind not a positive one.
Thus, I was pointing out positive aspects of this city that are available to everyone!
As for being privileged I am not rich nor have parents that are wealthy rather about middle class. My startups I started and made no money off we’re all paid for by myself from savings or grants I received from incubators. Thus anyone who wants to can work hard .. save money .. do a startup to either hit the jackpot or use the experience to learn an on demand skill.
I am no way making 120 to 250k in Govt IT but know friends who are after ten or more years. Maybe I will one day and if so that would be great .. though it would come after years of hard work.
The situation sounds much more like The Shield. The Wire was focused on institutional problems. It was more interested in the tragedy that incentives in the police force and city government were such that barely an iota of thought was ever given as to how to actually fix the problems of the city. Instead most work was expended in public relations efforts, cooking the books and ass covering. There was one storyline in season 1 where Herc and Carver thought about pocketing some drug money instead of turning it in as evidence, but they ended up giving it back didn't they?
Yeah, main character(s) of the Wire were "good police" which is what caused many of them to self destruct trying to get actual police work done in a setting where politics was more important than justice.
These guys don't exactly sound like good police: "The unit, whose purpose was to get guns off the street, even stole and sold guns."
They think about stealing but realize that they might get caught due to the wiretap. In a later season when they're taking part in a raid with a dead wiretap and no risk of being caught after the fact, they do take the money.
The entire 5th season has most of the department cooking the books to get their overtime pay.
> They think about stealing but realize that they might get caught due to the wiretap.
If I remember correctly they still and accidentally lose some of that money in the back of their car. Lt. Daniels notices and tells them to bring it it back. They find it, but it looks bad regardless of their honest intentions. ("Do you think he believed us?" - "Would you?")
It is not exactly the same because real Baltimore cops would not even consider the possibility of being caught and know that if they were, nothing would happen to them.
Reminder that Lance Reddick's character in The Wire made his money stealing from drug dealers. This fact was later used to blackmail him into resigning as Police Commissioner when they threatened to use the info to derail his estranged wife's political career.
Yes it basically is based on true stories. I live in Baltimore, I should say just lived, because I just moved out. The city is every bit as corrupt, dangerous, and malicious as it's made out to be. Don't want anything further to do with this city. And the folks here were delirious thinking that Amazon was going to set up HQ2.
I also recently moved away (I wonder if we know one another), in the last 18 months , and was blown away by everyone's collective delusions about Amazon. With the police terrorizing most communities, the lack of heat in the schools, and the delay in bike plan implementation to 2020+, I can't believe anyone thought it was even a remote possibility.
I've always liked Baltimore, but I never lived there. I used to visit every year when I lived up North, but since moving to Richmond, I haven't been up at all. I kind of miss the weird grittiness it has.
Yep. Been living here for around 12-13 years and it's definitely a mixed bag. Plenty not to like about it, but that can be said for many cities with the sort of history as this one. Not planning to move anytime soon (partly because I love living close to work and partly because it's a relatively affordable city compared to some others in the region. Suburbs aren't for me and I guess on some Sisyphean level, I don't like the idea of just moving because it's got problems. When the only people who don't flee to the 'burbs are those who are unable, you get issues like this city's been seeing for years.
Been here for almost 4 and agree about the affordability aspect.
You could buy a rowhome less than 3 miles from O's stadium for like 250k in a not-terrible neighborhood.
At the risk of oversimplifying, I believe increasing crime rate is a good proxy for police corruption. As an example, East Palo Alto in CA was the crime capital of the country back in the 90s. Then a police force that included parties from surrounding cities was formed to address it and now the city is essentially crime-free.
I don't think I've come across any report that states that other crime has increased in EPA. What is your source ?
Incidentally, I think that declining crime rates are, among other things, also a sign of a ``clean'', efficient police force.
The difference is that a secret police is used by a dictatorship to keep the dictator in power by systematically attacking the opposition and any grass roots movements.
Plainclothes detectives are simply police that are not in uniform ('undercover'), they are still part of the regular police force.
Obviously not to the same extent but, in that general area, you seem to have described what’s going on there. The police there are a mafia and people who look to damage them have ended up dead.
I see a difference between the Stasi and the US police currently, but its not like the US police don't exhibit many of the same behaviors. In a related article referencing the same group of police here, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/us/baltimore-police-depar...
That description of jump-out squads, where you never know when some random guy on the street is gonna detain you and arrest/beat/steal from you sounds a lot like the descriptions of secret police in other countries. There was also that black site in chicago where the police disappeared people
I also don't think a dictatorship is a necessary component for calling some group a secret police. An oligarchy and even a representative democracy can do that just as well. Its not like we don't already have secret courts. The apparatus exists for this already
Detectives that just wear civilian clothes aren't quite undercover though. Much of what they do will involve identifying themselves as police (which is not a cover, it's fact).
In the US at least, "undercover" implies that they are not identifying themselves as police.
>The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.
> They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.
Nonsense, the police were not created with that goal in mind. The Romans had police, plenty of European cities had police forces prior to the 18th century (see Rembrandt's painting 'the Nightwatch' for some proof of that) and so does every other normal society today, even the ones that are not dictatorships. Also, you've just made the leap from 'secret police' to 'plainclothes detectives' to 'any police'.
The linked article is clearly pushing an agenda and in the process does a lot of historical revision.
Police is a normal and useful component of society, the kind of excesses that Americans have to contend with are a direct result of a society that is broken in many ways and for which there are no easy fixes.
If you let the regular police get away with enough bad stuff over time the good guys will leave the force and more bad elements will enter. Keep this going for a couple of decades and you get Baltimore. But it need not be that way. Fixing this will be hard though, they are pretty strongly entrenched now and it will take major force to get rid of them, similar to how hard it is to get rid of the Mafia in Italy.
>Nonsense, the police were not created with that goal in mind. The Romans had police, and so does every other normal society, even the ones that are not dictatorships.
So, every 'normal' society doesn't have a ruling class that uses police to protect its assets from the working class?
>Also, you've just made the leap from 'secret police' to 'plainclothes detectives' to 'any police'.
Don't see the contention here.
>If you let the regular police get away with enough bad stuff over time the good guys will leave the force and more bad elements will enter. Keep this going for a couple of decades and you get Baltimore.
Replace Baltimore with 99% of the police agencies in the US (can't speak for other countries), and I'd agree.
Contradiction by mere statement. Explain why you would want to at a minimum intentionally create ambiguity as to whether one is a police officer, one's name, and what organization one works for - keeping them a "secret", if you will.
Shaking down kids while cruising around in a black and white is one thing. Being equipped with military gear including armored cars opens up a whole new level of control issues.
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-the-rook-armored-cater...