I was trying to decide if this was appropriate to post to hn. It shocked the conscience to the extent that people I know who are involved in government/mil/etc were discussing how they would have responded; it is basically rape under color of law.
Even more amazingly, it wasn't one officer alone by the side of the road in an ambiguous circumstance; there was a judge, a DA, multiple officers from several departments, two medical facilities, etc involved.
A civil suit is inadequate; state or federal criminal investigations should be forthcoming. It is possible there is a reasonable explanation, but an investigation is the only way to determine that.
There are so so many things wrong with this situation i don't even know where to begin.
The judge granted a warrant, an almost facially invalid one (and it turns out, completely invalid for other reasons), but will still be immune from anything here.
The DA will be immune from anything here.
The Officers will claim qualified immunity, and may or may not win.
At least there is supreme court precedent that should have put them on notice:
Winston v. Lee - 470 U.S. 753 (1985)
"(a) A compelled surgical intrusion into an individual's body for evidence implicates expectations of privacy and security of such magnitude that the intrusion may be "unreasonable" even if likely to produce evidence"
Here, it wasn't even likely to produce evidence.
The doctor will certainly be sued for, among other things, battery, false imprisonment, etc.
Thanks for linking that. It appears that we've found the real reason the officers decided to put the man through this ordeal:
(Excerpt from complaint -- emphasis mine)
24. Plaintiff asked Defendant Rodriquez if he was free to leave, which Defendant Rodriquez contends that he found rude.
25. Defendant Rodriquez told Plaintiff he suspected Plaintiff of having illegal drugs in his car and proceeded to interrogate Plaintiff on the matter.
The officer felt that he'd not been shown correct respect by the victim and then decided to make him pay. To be honest, I'm not sure how much I blame the doctors in this fiasco, because I don't know what sort of legal protections are available to them if they were to refuse to carry out the invasive operations. Do doctors in the US typically have a legal counsel who can advise them if a warrant is valid, or what operations an officer with a warrant can demand? I know I'd have no idea if a warrant were valid, or what the officer could compel me to do.
I think it's been well established at this point that anyone can be compelled to do anything by law enforcement. The supposed corrective mechanism comes after the fact so you're helpless in the interim. Take Mr. Eckert's case for example. What would have happened if he had started screaming in the hospital for someone to call the police? My money's on nothing. "Just a mental case, nothing to see here" they might say. You truly have no recourse in the moment.
The professional breaches of ethics are shocking and horrible, but the worst part of this is that it's bad test case for the legality of more and more invasive/dangerous bodily searches.
If the warrant was invalid to begin with, my concern is that a court won't be able to strike down the medical procedures as unconstitutional because the search itself was unconstitutional on simpler grounds.
I hope Eckert will win a civil suit, but my guess is that the worst part of this story will be the lack of deep constitutional scrutiny.
One way for the issues to get a decent amount of scrutiny would be in the officers' appeal of their loss of certification, and the medical workers' appeal of their loss of license.
> The best outcome in my mind here is that the doctors lose their medical licenses permanently.
The best outcome, I would think, includes a number of people spending several years in federal prison for deprivation of rights under color of law (18 USC Sec. 242) [1], as well as any licensed professionals involved losing the relevant professional licenses.
Well, yes, "best" and "most likely" are two different things.
Of course, if punishing people for violating people's rights was something people were willing to actually hold politicians accountable for as much or more than punishing drug dealers, then US Attorneys -- always political appointees and usually also politicians -- would be much more concerned about it.
Accept-and-mutter-darkly just preserves the status quo.
"Accept-and-mutter-darkly just preserves the status quo."
I don't accept and mutter darkly, i just think the majority of the populace in the US is happy "as long as it doesn't happen to them", so i'm not sure much will change?
The ironic thing is the whole expedition was to produce evidence for a criminal trial, so unless stuff gets "lost" everything will be well documented. If things do get lost, people pretty much need to hang.
I would like to say that I'd be surprised if any court would find that the right not to be cavity searched without probable cause was not clearly established, but nothing surprises me any more.
The sad thing is, on average most people could be convinced to go along with this, to condone it, participate in, justify it.
One doctor didn't go along and claimed it was immoral. Good. Now what about the other ones? They are authoritarian followers. They love to submit to authority. They take great pleasure in telling others how they "served" and aided an investigation. Someone in uniform coming in and barking orders, and a line of willing "helpers" forms right away.
Authoritarian followers are very dangerous and there is a surprising high number of them in this country, from what I can see. It is surprising given the rhetoric about how freedom, individualism, respect for human rights and liberty. Those are always touted as foundational principles.
Sadly perhaps, I sort of assume cops are corrupt already, I've just seen enough of corruption to kind of fall into that stereotype. It doesn't surprise me that they would want to abuse their power or would want to exercise sadistic tendencies given the opportunity. So that doesn't surprise me.
My present disgust is centered on the doctors and nurses who participated in this.
Kind of strange coincidence not too long ago we heard in the news about the doctors working with the CIA and the military that tortured prisoners.
Doctors are someone most people usually trust. But if you talk to people from other countries, you often hear how they distrust doctors. Ok, that sounds strange at first. They could distrust politicians, police, the military, but it is really sad when one stops trusting doctors. This is why though, because they have seen doctors do immoral things, they have seen them kill their relatives and harvesting their organs, or taking bribes to save lives, or refusing to treat people who have participated in anti-government protests and so on.
I don't know how much of a solution it is, but I think there could be some bureaucratic/authoritarian pushback against this kind of thing if the American Medical Association more stringently enforced its ethics rules relating to the Hippocratic Oath. As a baseline, medical procedures should be for the benefit of a patient and performed with their consent, otherwise they are inappropriate and a breach of professional ethics.
This is already enforced stringently in one very narrow domain: licensed doctors cannot assist states in either conducting, or even planning the preparations for, their processes of death penalty by lethal injection. This has caused them some practical problems, because they basically have to get amateur doctors to give advice. The AMA's rationale is that executing someone is not a legitimate medical treatment, and definitely doesn't have consent. But this principle seems like it should apply more broadly than the fairly extreme case of actually executing someone.
The AMA and other relevant organizations have been turning a blind eye to the torture of POWs by the United States. To date, no doctor who has tortured prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has been sanctioned, where they should rightfully be stripped of their licenses and put into prison.
I don't know of any case where a doctor has actually participated in an execution, but it seems doubtful whether anything would actually happen to them.
I think civil liberties issues are some of the most important things we can be discussing. The hacker idea involves bending rules of all sorts, and to do that involves understanding those rules and how the game is played.
Furthering the appropriateness of having the discussion here is the fact that other venus are more appropriate to other aspects of hacker culture, and the dearth of content available otherwise. (We have github or twitter for technical discussion, and success stories and productivity articles are essentially naval-gazing)
I mean in that we have a news article from a biased (if biased in ways I generally agree with; I like Reason) news source, and a filing from one side in a civil case.
I generally do trust police, and especially federal judges. Everyone involved in the drug war has gotten corrupted, and to some extent the lawlessness south of the border causes lawlessness in enforcing the law north of the border; Nietzsche and all that.
So, before hanging people, I'd rather get more evidence. But on its face this isn't so much a miscarriage of justice so much as a string of felonies committed by law enforcement and medical professionals.
In general I would agree. But this stuck out for me:
the warrant was only valid in Luna County, where Deming is located. The Gila Regional Medical Center is in Grant County. That means all of the medical procedures were performed illegally and the doctors who performed the procedures did so with no legal basis and no consent from the patient.
In addition, even if the search warrant was executed in the correct New Mexico county, the warrant expired at 10 p.m. Medical records show the prepping for the colonoscopy started at 1 a.m. the following day, three hours after the warrant expired.
If that's true, then it seems there's no possible way to play devil's advocate. Hopefully the legal system will dish out some justice for him.
It's incredible that they were able to find doctors who went along with it not once, not twice, but five times plus a forced colonoscopy.
"lock the bastards up!" is how you get this kind of situation in the first place; making everyone so afraid to put a foot wrong that they'll do what the person with the badge tells them.
Not to mention that destroying a professional career that takes ten years to start on one misstep is harmful to the medical system itself - why is the slogan always "lock the bastards up" and so rarely "train them better"? The former is a post-facto lose/lose, the latter win/win.
This case involves basically a serial rape, by licensed medical personnel. Short of the death penalty itself for all of them, I see no punishment that is too severe.
Making a very very public example of them is plenty of deterrent value for future "medical professionals" who may be dragged (or otherwise) into any further situations like this.
The firing and blacklisting of every law enforcement officer involved, and yes, up to and including the chief of police, is again a solid push back against this sort of abuse of power everywhere.
Too bad the judge won't see anything but perhaps a slight remembrance of this circumstance when the next election comes. His name should be posted at every polling place, end of story.
If you're tired of these stories, then, perhaps, look to similar cultures that don't have them with the frequency the US does. You'll find that they don't see 'lock them up and throw away the key" as the answer to most transgressions. Rehabilitation and retraining keeps people as productive members of society, rather than lifelong imprisonment in which they become permanent burdens.
And now you're firing the Chief of Police for not having a pat answer when 'cornered' (article's term) by an investigative reporter. You're baying for blood because he didn't spout something off-the-cuff when he possibly didn't have all the details? And people wonder why public figures play their cards close to their chest. Not to mention that it can be a miscarriage of justice if the defendants don't get a fair trial because of something said by a public figure with authority over them. Similarly the judge's original warrant may have been justified given the information presented at the request.
As someone else in this thread mentions, what we have here is one side of the story. It happens again and again and again that the Internet Righteous Machine goes berserk over a one-sided story without bothering to verify.
Making a very very public example of them is plenty of deterrent value for future "medical professionals" who may be dragged (or otherwise) into any further situations like this.
Yes, because the 'deterrent' mentality is working so well for the US so far, what with the incarceration rate five times higher than any other western nation, highest in the world.
I'm not saying these guys shouldn't be punished at all, but the hysteria of your "fuck them all" response is hardly realistic or just. Let them be found guilty in a court of law, of rape and of inappropriate warrants and whatever else. But keep your head about you when discussing legal issues. Being dispassionate doesn't mean being uncaring.
I guess I was more commenting on the general sentiment that rises when stories like this pop up: "destroy the perpetrators, then we can all feel sated" instead of "what's the best way to prevent this happening again"
Prevention is generally ineffective, because it's usually done through regulation. How would you even prevent something like this? I could see creating a law against this specific case, but that would be for a very limited corner-case. I generally don't like the "prevent every bad thing possible" approach to rules and laws, since there's so much to regulate. It's easier to punish bad behavior.
Part of me wants to believe that the police had some kind of evidence beyond "clenching his buttocks".
I don't think any amount of evidence could justify a cavity search, but I'm willing to wait for the judicial side of the story before I finalize my judgement on this matter. It seems so mind-bogglingly impossible that a judge would grant an invasive search warrant on something blatantly circumstantial.
I said explicitly in my post that "I don't think any amount of evidence could justify a cavity search".
However, we know for a fact that a judge signed a search warrant for a cavity search. "Clenching buttocks" seems like such an arbitrary basis for an invasive search warrant that I suspect there may be more to this story.
I actually have a friend who became an NYPD officer (!!!) at some point last decade. Generally I've never had problems with individual police.
I think the drug war is bad for a wide variety of reasons, and the militarization of domestic policing (mainly over drugs, and now terrorism) is bad for everyone (including the police), but it's not because I've personally had problems with police.
I'm a white, upper-middle-class, works-with-USG/DOD, contracted in war zones, lots of friends in government/police, etc. person, so I have it exceptionally easy, sure.
I've met bad individual officers, but it's rare, so yeah, I generally do trust police, based on my personal experience. One of the worst tendencies of policing organizations is the "thin blue line", so they need to take aggressive action in cases of internal abuse to overcome that.
I actually have a friend who became an NYPD officer (!!!) at some point last decade.
Ask him if he's got any crazy stories about stupid shit other cops have done. Then ask him why he hasn't reported them for doing it.
That's the real problem, a very real application of "one rotten apple spoils the barrel." The problem isn't so much the individual police who violate the public trust (there will always be bad apples as long as there are humans involved), it is all of the others who turn a blind eye to those violations.
Those cops who never commit any overt violations but let other cops off with a free pass are the ones responsible for eroding public trust because they teach the public that it is an "us vs them" mentality. As a privileged white guy 99% of the time your interactions with the police will probably be just fine, but even you never know when that 1% bad apple is going to show up, but you do know his buddies won't do anything to hold him to account for what he might do to you.
I think you probably understand this to some extent, referencing "the thin blue line" (the documentary of that name actually turned the phrase on its head), I just wanted to spell it out for anyone else who might not be familiar with the ironic definition of that term.
This isn't an issue that's particular to police. Go into a restaurant and have an average meal? The waiter isn't going to start harping on how crap the chef is. Call up tech support for your five-figure software? They're not going to dump the devs in the shit for your problem. Presenting a unified front to outside forces is usually necessary for employment, and something that we do innately as humans anyway. Given how thoroughly whistleblowers are destroyed, it's hard to fault someone for not calling a colleague out on relatively small matters.
Edit: I don't mean the article when I say small matters
It is particular to police in that they are entrusted with greater responsibility than pretty much any other organization in the country. Their standards of accountability need to be proportional to that responsibility.
Given how thoroughly whistleblowers are destroyed, it's hard to fault someone for not calling a colleague out on relatively small matters.
That's circular reasoning -- Given how corrupt they are, it is no wonder that no one on the inside stands up to the corruption.
I think you're misreading me. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be held to a higher standard of accountability. I'm saying that presenting a united front is something that is a very human trait - and further saying that of course people aren't going to step forward when whistleblowers get the axe.
If you want to fix issues with the police, the first thing you have to understand is that there are humans behind those uniforms, humans who have spent a significant part of their life getting there. Being part of a skilled occupation is not something most people can just toss aside casually, hence why small offences get overlooked. If you can understand the motivations and psychology of the people doing the wrong thing, you have a wider array of tools at your disposal than "I have a really big stick here if you make a wrong step".
As for the circular reasoning bit - not at all circular, given that I'm not saying 'free pass'. If you want to break the cycle, change the culture. You do that by making it a point with the people cops answer to; make them give whistleblowers better protection. Changing the culture is difficult, but if you want serious change, that's the way to do it.
I hate to even say it but ... there were a set of trials that occurred in Europe in the middle of the last century. It seems like you would have been pro-defense ...
Nice Godwining, given that I've already clarified an hour ago (in response to Amadou) that I was not defending their actions, but trying to better understand motive to stop this happening again.
Thanks for calling me a Nazi for trying to better understand how people are motivated, by the way. I suggested improving protections for whistleblowers as a way to prevent this kind of situation in future. Clearly I instead should have been demanding permanent imprisonment (or even the death penalty) for specific people I don't like, all without a nod towards a fair trial. Then I wouldn't be like a Nazi at all!
> I'm a white, upper-middle-class, works-with-USG/DOD, contracted in war zones, lots of friends in government/police, etc. person, so I have it exceptionally easy, sure.
It sounds like you get it at some level, but to make the point extra fine: this is privilege. When white middle-class guys (which includes me) say, "eh, they've always been nice to me, so I'm not sure what the big deal is", we're failing to care because it the problems don't affect us. A cop's not to stop and frisk me for no reason or kick down my door looking for pot or harass me for some trivial moving violation or throw me in jail on unreasonable charges to get beaten and raped every day. They're always nice to me. So it's easy to say, "cops are kinda great, and that one time my house got robbed they were ON it", and just never internalize the fact that for so many people, they're an armed oppressor working with official government sanction and little accountability. That it takes something as mind-blowingly outrageous as court-sanctioned rape to get our attention and we're still not quite willing to look the system in the eye and say, "man, this is just fundamentally broken"...well, that shows just how deep that privilege goes. Is it any wonder that bad cops and prosecutors (and, gulp, judges) feel empowered to do this kind of shit?
The problem is that when things do go wrong, especially if you fit certain stereotypes, there seems to be little recourse beyond a costly court battle against an organization with far more resources than an individual (monetary and social).
I think groups like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition are pretty clear on things like the drug war being both wrong and unconstitutional, and essentially racist in origin and perpetration.
Yeah but they carry guns and have power over you if they want to. That doesn't make them at all like the rest of us, and they should be exemplary in the way they deal with taxpayers.
...they should be exemplary in the way they deal with taxpayers.
I really didn't want to comment on this article, but I must object to the use of the word "taxpayers" where "human beings" would be much more appropriate.
My choice of word was intentional, since the police is financed by people's taxes on their work and consumption, therefore people should be treated as "clients" by the Police, and not threatened in the absence of any good reason.
I object to the word because it implies that those who pay more taxes deserve more protection, while those who pay no taxes (children, the elderly, the poor) deserve none.
Well, I guess after you've unlawfully probed a person's anus once, you're kind of committed, and your best hope for avoiding a backlash is to justify it by actually finding something.
Because of drugs. And how much drugs could this guy even have in his anus if he was doing something criminal?
Think of all the resources (money) involved here. Now think of all the resources involved in trying to defend these actions. Now think of all the other things we could do with those resources.
I'm also in awe over the number of people who played along. This reminds me a little of the film Compliance, which I happened to see last night. I think humans are very susceptible to stories. Once a narrative gets rolling, people seem to just act out the part they invent for themselves inside whatever they perceive the story to be. The story has a life of its own.
All that aside, I thought there was little about police behavior that would surprise me. This surprised me a little. Butt-clenching as probable cause? Seriously?
I am curious if there is any research related to this idea: "Once a narrative gets rolling, people seem to just act out the part they invent for themselves inside whatever they perceive the story to be".
"Twenty-four male students out of seventy-five were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed and excerpts of footage are publicly available."
I don't want to go too far, but according to Wikipedia's article on rape "the World Health Organization defined it in 2002 as 'physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration – even if slight – of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object'".
Is it a mistake to use that definition here? Obviously the local law is relevant in legal proceedings and I want to respect survivors of sexual assault, but what else do we call it?
Those doctors are screwed. I'd personally sue each and every one of them. If only to stop them from cooperating with the police ever again. Then I'd request the police and doctors be charged with assault. And then demand the doctors' licenses be revoked and the police officers' badges revoked.
Qualified immunity goes a long, long way; and even beyond that, a court issued a warrant for this, which means it's got more than just the usual "in the course of their duties" cover going on.
KOB News 4 have found another case - maybe it's regular practice round there?
"Our investigation reveals another chapter. Another man, another minor traffic violation, another incident with Leo the K-9 and another example of the violation of a man's body.
Young is taken to the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City, and just like Eckert, he's subjected to medical procedures including x-rays of his stomach and an anal exam.
Again, police found nothing, and again the procedures were done without consent, and in a county not covered by the search warrant.
We've learned more about that drug dog, Leo, that seems to get it wrong pretty often. He might be getting it wrong because he's not even certified in New Mexico.
"
The forced X-rays are grevious bodily harm, too: every X-ray damages your tissue, which is why doctors ordinarily only prescribe them where the medical benefits are judged to outweigh the risks.
Is this seriously what HN has come to recently? Ever since the NSA revelations, that most of us have been assuming for a while anyways, I can't visit this site without seeing a front page articles about abuse by the government or a snarky comment like this. Not saying this particular article is unwarranted but you get my point.
Yes, HN is for more than just tech and I love many of the articles that wind up on this site but I disagree that biased politics should be a cornerstone.
Yes, the government is far over reaching it's bounds, I don't think many people on this site would disagree with that, but when it gets to the point where I have to read a comment related to the NSA in every single thread, regardless of it's relevance, it gets tiresome. Nothing is being added to the discussion, just emotionally charged comments like the one above. The "preaching to the quire" metaphore could not be more applicable to this situation. HN is not a sight to raise awareness on, we all know.
I've only been on this site for about 2.5 years now so I'm far from a veteran, but I have seen two major events that have caused a wave of pointless comments.
1) NSA spying revelations as stated above.
2) Google reader shutting down - Companies discontinue old products in favor of new potentially more popular ones. Get over it, there's plenty of alternatives and I don't care that every time a Google product launches you're hesitant to use it because "what if Google discontinues it?". Just like the NSA, stop bringing up stuff everyone knows.
Can we stick to topics that actually raise discussion please.
>Just like the NSA, stop bringing up stuff everyone knows.
Google reader shutdown, ok, many geeks used it, there is alternatives.. blablabla.
But are you saying that NSA spying on everyone should be just another minor fact, I don't get it. Doesn't it seem wrong to you that someone is listening to ALL your digital communications/actions?
I am in no way saying it isn't a problem or we shouldn't talk about it. It's terrible what the NSA is doing. All I'm saying is my HN experience has noticeably decreased do to the massive amount of shallow comments these topics bring. Call your representatives if you want to make a difference, flooding a tech forum with political comments isn't going to do anything.
What about persons outside US? the thing is that wile this does not directly influence, there are at least discussion about ethics of this and whether this really right action, thus at least (all else held constant) decreasing pool of IT professionals that are willing to support this with their labor.
As side note, this surveillance should not be just noted and forgotten.
Most of comments are not much political. (i.e. I see them as discussion of ethics/morales, not as person/party x agenda pushing/discussion)
Governments have different powers than citizens and different roles in society. Do they abuse those powers often? Yes, they have since this country was formed, nothing new here.
What does smokeyj's comment add to the discussion? At best it's emotionally charged and douchy way of saying you don't like the government.
I disagree with this. If an individual does not have the right to do something, neither does a collective. We all individually have the right to defend ourselves, for example. As with most things in society, it's more efficient to "outsource" the task to specialists like police. However, if individuals do not have the permission bits to do something like administer non-consensual anal probes, neither should law enforcement.
As someone with personal experience with this, I can say that "revenge" is the wrong reason for punishment. Punishment handed out by society should be about dissuading other members of that society from behaving against the society's best interests. Anything else is personal.
As soon as "revenge" comes into it, the self-perpetuating downward spiral of justifying bad behavior as punishment for bad behavior begins.
Individuals in society who gain pleasure from the punishment of others, whether that punishment was deserved or not, should realize they're really just being sadistic.
Well that's fine, but we're not comparing personal opinions. This tangent was brought to us by smokeyj's ramblings about the injustice of governments doing bad things with unequal punishment, and edias explaining why he's full of it.
Reality is well established that government plays a different role than individuals and is explicitly given permissions we refuse to citizens by way of the Constitution.
People can't own ICBMs or atomic bombs, either, which is their sovereign right if not for the oppressive government.
Btw, what always escaped me about US weapons laws is that police can have 10+ round mags, full auto weapons, etc, but the individual can not. As opposed to military, police fights basically the same criminals as we, mere mortals, do. The only difference is that this fight is their job.
They're expensive; as noted jmccree, in the US limited in numbers, perhaps 200,000 in civilian hands. But worse, the cost of ammo the chew up!
Me, I wouldn't mind having a belt-fed Genera Purpose Machine Gun, but I'd have to burn up a lot of ammo at some range I don't even know of anywhere nearby to become sufficiently proficient.
Well, a real FN P-90 would be cool, but not clearly useful.
As for your knowledge of US weapons laws, it has never been illegal at the Federal level to own 10+ round magazines, although during Clinton's "Assault Weapons" ban new ones were restricted to the police and military. But with the world awash in surplus magazines, and the manufacturers' having months between signing and enactment to stamp out as many as they could, all it resulted in was increased prices for them, and renewed popularity for .45 ACP in new gun designs. I.e. if you're limited to 10 shots, you'd better make them count, which is my philosophy, biased by the fact that the M1911 fits my hand perfectly.
But during that AW ban I owned a number of > 10 round magazines, and currently own 10s for various guns, including 10 or so AK-47 magazines for a friend who lives in a state where they're now banned.
But it's only a few states that do that, although they include the large population California and New York. To put this in perspective, 42-3 of the states have (or in the case of Illinois soon will have) de jure or de facto "shall issue" concealed carry regimes. That means any citizen or resident alien (e.g. Green Card holder) in good standing can get a license to carry a concealed handgun. A handful don't even require a license, including the large population state of Arizona.
Only two of these states recently imposed magazine size limits, Connecticut (which has always been weird, and the politicians are using Newtown as an excuse to turn the screws on the citizens they'd prefer to be subjects), and Colorado ... where the backlash has been fierce, including the recall of two state senators including their Senate President, and subsequent full elections could easily result in a reversal of that law.
So, actually, most of us mere mortals can be as well armed as the police normally are (full auto carbines being of very limited utility). Heck, we can even own body armor as good as their's.
And note, that on a federal level, the only restriction are machine guns manufactured after 1968. In many states, full auto before 1968, grenade launchers, etc are fully legal for individuals to own. The ban on machine guns manufactured after 1968 is clearly unconstitutional. (See US v Miller, where a short barrel shotgun was ruled not protected under the 2nd amendment as it was NOT a military weapon)
Actually manufactured after 1986, a poison pill in the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA). 1968 is when the Gun Control Act (GCA of '68) passed, pretty much completely changing the retail arrangements, and giving the BATF something for their out of work revenuers after sugar price supports destroyed the moonshine industry. They were so abusive many doubt the US gun culture would have survived without the FOPA reigning them in somewhat.
Whatever the constitutionality of the Miller Amendment, it's clear the Federal Courts are going to offer no relief.
| it's emotionally charged and douchy way of saying you don't like the government.
this is your emotionally charged and douchy way of projecting your dislike for those who dislike government. smokeyj's comment were accurate, and none of it, when read without being emotionally charged, suggests an anti-government sentiment: describing things the way they are doesn't always reveal a personal opinion.
Well, the taxes/theft thing isn't quite appropriate.
Seizure, impounding, eviction, even fines, ...these might ring truer, since they're generally harsher, require less sophistication and such effects are more immediate. These things are often unavoidable, and inflicted without option or recourse.
Meanwhile, taxes, tolls, tariffs... eh, not so much. They're slow, often legislated amidst varying degrees of democracy (in our modern times) and in some cases can be met with degrees of flexibility, where a real slippery individual might be capable of avoiding them.
No, taxes are payment on debt you owe. Ben Franklin explained it quite well:
-----------------------
The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.
All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
One could also argue that I have a job, culture and home despite the government - not thanks to them.
There are very large and practical advantages of organizing judicial system, infrastructure and other basic, hard to replace societal services through a tax system.
But history shows us that the more a government interferes the less efficient the result will be.
My analysis of the current situation would be that since all power corrupts the governments of today have become hard-handed, arbitrary in their exercise of powers and blind to the consequences. The amount self restraint that an ordinary citizen could expect from governments seems to be long gone, they pass another law, they raise the taxes and use the "social contract" as a pretext.
I am a very firm believer in non-violence and non-force and would like to minimize the use of violence and force as much as possible, advocates of statism and authoritarians in general don't seem to agree with that view.
Please see the article at the top of this thread for a good example of what I'm talking about.
Also, unless you are an anarchist who rejects all forms of capitalism, then I would argue you do support the use of violence and force, you just support a different kind of authoritarianism.
Oooh, a social contract reference, my favorite! Please, show me this social contract I've signed. Where can I read the specific terms of this contract, and how do I challenge/nullify the clauses I disagree with?
Fair enough, but according to Wikipedia's rough overview of contract law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
(because we all know Wikipedia is the end-all be-all of authority on matters like this)
it appears the Gov't is in violation of their part of the contract, to wit the clause of AT LEAST the 4th Amendment (unreasonable searches and seizures; see the TSA, see most police conduct, see the crap with the NSA, etc etc ad nauseam). Therefor, I should be able to nullify and void this 'social contract' and (among other things, trying to keep it simple since we're arguing 'on the internet') not pay my taxes. We all know how well that will work out - fines, court summons, all culminating with large men with heavy clubs and guns knocking on my door to 'coerce' me to fulfill "my half" of the bargain.
If the deck is stacked so far against you there's no reasonable way to remedy your grievances, it ain't a 'contract' it's a 'coercion' or 'an offer you can't refuse'. The government is a bully with a very large, very powerful club, and we have no reasonable recourse against it. We try to play by the rules, they'll change the rulebook or completely change the game. Ergo, the grand-grand-grand-parent commenter who said "Taxes are an armed robbery" is essentially correct.
I'm not even going to get into the 'contracts made under duress aren't enforceable contracts' side of things.
And, apropos of nothing, while I personally don't mind paying most taxes, I'd like to see a way for individuals to pay 'their share' and indicate what programs their money would get allocated to "Humble Indie Bundle" style. A 'reasonable default' for the majority who don't care, but sliders and drop-downs with various degrees of detail for those who do. I'd like to be able to shunt all of my tax money into silos for 'road repair', 'public education', "fireman's fund", etc, and keep it away from things like "Department of Defense" "local police forces", and "NSA slush fund". tl; dr - A highly granular way to "vote with my dollar". I doubt that will get implemented in my lifetime (if ever), but a man can dream...
If my landlord breaks the terms of my lease I am more than free to move, but I don't get to stay there for free just because he broke the contract.
You can nullify the contract by leaving any time you like. Or you can attempt to hold the government to the contract using a little known facet of our democratic process called "The Legislative Branch."
Once again ... It's not a fair argument to say that you can leave any time you want.
Your home, family, friends, culture, job and probably a big part of your identity will be left behind. Even in states with well known scumbag governments people tend to stay until they have a very real threat to their life and person.
And to think that democracy is a kill-everything-silver-bullet is very naive, we have had laws written under democratic rule that allowed one person to own other persons, less then 10 years ago sexual intercourse between men were still illegal some states in USA.
And yet I agree that a central government is preferable to no central government, I would also agree that democracy is very much preferred over the alternatives.
All I ask is that the social contract is not to be used as a pretext for things that are not absolutely necessary since we are born into that contract and can not nullify it in any realistic way at a later stage in life. Please respect my personal freedom, privacy and individual rights - keep the use of force and violence against others to an absolute minimum.
Is that to much to ask?
PS Search youtube for video called "George Ought to Help", it may contain some things worth thinking about
Democracy is not the only option, according to the terms of the contract violent revolution is also on the table, but a cursory study of U.S. history will tell you how bad of an idea that is.
Also as I already pointed out, your home, family, friends, culture, and job are there largely because of the services the government provides. So while it may suck, if you disagree with paying taxes you can not pay them and leave, or you can stay pay your taxes and continue to enjoy the services of the government.
Here's a thought experiment. Imagine if the government hadn't invested it's tax revenue back into national defense and infrastructure for the past three centuries. Do you still think your home, family, friends, culture, or job would exist? Why should you get to enjoy the payout of investing three centuries worth of tax revenue if you are not going to contribute?
People give up their homes, family, friends, and culture every single day in the U.S. just to survive. Now I do think it's definitely unfair to those who simply can't afford to move. If that's the case for you or the parent I was responding to, I will personally buy you a plane ticket to Somalia (or any other place with limited government) and give you two months rent.
First, about taxes ... I live in Sweden and we pay the worlds second highest percentage of GDP as tax and the service I get in return is really not anywhere near best-of-class.
If we were talking about national defence and infrastructure, that would be something that even an "anarchist" as myself would be willing accept and file under "things that a government can administer", but the amount of government sponsored waste, abuse and misuse of collected tax is reaching biblical proportions right in front of my eyes.
We don't have a constitutional court in Sweden and the political landscape is very much a hegemony and in practice a two party system like the US - it doesn't lean towards changing the system in any meaningful way, When I'm told that I should be prepared to accept my current situation due to a "social contract" which I have been born into - and if I don't like it I can always pack my bags and move to Somalia - it doesn't seem at all reasonable to me - even if you pay my ticket.
Second, role and praise of governments ... The major advancements in living standards and job creation have largely been due to technological improvements, free market capitalism, enterprises and entrepreneurs. The largest redistributions of wealth have been due to voluntary membership in trade unions and individuals exercising their right to choose employer. Governments and nation states have historically opposed any change to things like guild systems and even ordered military forces to break up strike actions. I don't think that crediting governments for job creation and living standards is entierly correct.
We don't live in a perfect world, so I don't expect volontary co-operation to work for all issues that a society faces, I am prepared to accept a central government in a nation state. In that way I am just a different kind of authoritarian than you. There may even be a high practical value for a central government to administer things like infrastructure, defence and judical system.
But once we get past that point we are walking a slippery sloap and we must be very careful with every step we take - otherwise we might end up in a situation where it is me or your who gets a thoroughly examaniation of our back part like the gentleman mentioned in the article above.
And I really don't see how that is covered in any form of social contract.
Sweden is second in the world behind Norway for income equality (one of the most import factors in encouraging entrepreneurship), has one of the highest rates of entrepreneurship of OECD countries (much higher than the U.S.), is number one in the world in terms of gender equality, has the 4th highest life expectancy in the world (The U.S. is 33rd), has the fifth lowest infant mortality rate in the world (less than half that of the U.S.), and is within 10% of the U.S. in terms of GDP per capita.
According to the most recent data I can find (2012) Sweden is fifth in the world in terms of tax percentage of GDP. Considering Sweden is top 5 in almost every indicator I can think of, that seems pretty reasonable to me, and I would not hesitate to call that best of class service.
How can you simultaneously claim that "The largest redistribution of wealth have been due to voluntary membership in trade unions and individuals exercising their right to choose employer."
While also making the claim that you can't simply up and move because "Your home, family, friends, culture, job and probably a big part of your identity will be left behind".
If there is only one or very few employers in your area what real right do you have to choose your employer? Your indictment of the Social contract is equally an indictment of the Free Market.
Also you're going to need some evidence to back up claims like "The major advancements in living standards and job creation have largely been due to technological improvements, free market capitalism, enterprises and entrepreneurs." If you'll take at look at the industrial revolution you'll notice almost all infant industries were subsidized, several key technological developments that helped lead to the industrial revolution were spurred by government intervention (e.g.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer), and patents were really enforced for the first time to encourage entrepreneurship and strangle competition from competing countries.
As for the government using force to break up strikes. I can only speak to U.S. history, but I can't think of an instance where the government stepped in (with violence) before the strike turned violent. I can think of several far more egregious applications of violence by private industries:
And in fact, it was the government which codified the right of unions to strike, preventing private enterprise's unjustified use of violence (or at least attempting to). Unions pretty much wouldn't exist today if it weren't for government protection.
Also, I'm sorry but anarchists reject the use of force in all forms, they would not support any hierarchical forms of power (in a lot of cases that includes any capitalist system, and no anarcho-capitalists are not anarchists). Let's call it what it is, Libertarianism.
> Why should you get to enjoy the payout of investing three centuries worth of tax revenue if you are not going to contribute?
You're portraying industry and taxation as a chicken and egg scenario, and by proving that taxation is why your job is here, taxation must therefore be the enabler of civilization (and as a result, just and moral -- to the extent you support caging people who do not agree). Your basic premise is theoretically and historically inaccurate.
As for your disdain for limited government, that's what set the US apart. It's why we grew to have the largest industry in the world. By your reasoning, Cuba and North Korea should have regulated themselves into endless prosperity by now. Let me buy you a ticket.
You need evidence that economic prosperity should not come at the expense of human rights? Or that America was founded on the principles of restricted government and individual liberty seeking freedom from religious persecutions? Or that shaping moments of this nation was a tax revolt that led to the American Revolution? I don't have time to give history lessons, but I'm not making it up. Check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
Ahahahahah the entire history of the United States is based on expanding economic prosperity at the expense of human rights. For fucks sake slavery was enshrined in our constitution because it was so profitable. Then there was the whole genocide of native populations at the expense of economic growth.
And yes obviously they were revolting over having to pay taxes not you know the whole taxation without representation thing (hmmm... taxation in exchange for representation, that sounds almost like some sort of social contract). Maybe try reading some history through a different lens than "waaaaah taxes!" Why don't you give this a try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_Unite...
Also I was dead serious about accepting your offer to buy me a ticket to Cuba, you can email me at quinnchrzan@gmail.com
You made the case that the US should be a poster child for unrestricted government, citing Somalia as a contrast. I'm simply saying that the beginnings of the US more closely resembled the Wild West than a well-regulated market place. You're only supporting my point in arguing that even the most "civilized" of governments are founded in death and despair, but you probably won't realize that as you're not arguing out of principle.
I will seriously buy your ticket if you promise to stay in Cuba. Email me in a year with proof and I'll send some bitcoins your way. Maybe they'll have computers in Cuba by then.
Yes you are correct when the U.S. was founded it had almost no regulations, no taxes (aside from tariffs), and federalism hadn't quite been worked out yet so the U.S. government was as small as it could have been. I would argue that that's about as close to a truly "Free Market" as America ever got.
...and the result was enslavement, genocide, and subjugation. Yay! I don't know what you mean by saying I'm not arguing out of principle. I'm citing specific events and facts while you sit there and say "but history!" while not responding to any of the evidence I'm providing or providing any of your own.
You offered to buy me a ticket, not promise to reimburse me if I stayed for a year. If you're already trying to back out of your verbal (written?) contract you must be a pretty shitty libertarian. How about this, I'll draw up a contract in which I agree to stay for a year on the condition that you pay for my ticket with the requirement that if I fail to prove residency after one year I will reimburse you for the ticket. A ticket from where I live to Key West (an hour boat ride away) is less than 200$. What do you say? Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?
And hey maybe when (if) I come back in a year the U.S. might have a functional education system and get that healthcare thingy figured out. I mean it's kind embarrassing we're doing worse than a country that doesn't have computers. Except they do have computers despite the efforts of the U.S. embargo.
> Minors can't enter contracts, either, so your parents entered you on your behalf when you were born. You maintain it by staying here.
Or it is null and void when I turn 18.
> You're welcome to leave whenever you like.
And so are you. So there. It is pointless to counter criticism of society with "move to Somalia if you don't like it" and similar absurd platitudes. It doesn't address the question at hand, and it also doesn't address the fact that people who disagree with the (faux) social contract does not have any less of a right to live in the same country as you do.
Imagine that you go to a party, and to your horror you discover that a mass rape is in progress. You try to intervene and say that this is just not right, but are quickly told that if you don't like it you can go down the street to that other party where there are no raping going on.
The fact that we regard it as "civilized" discourse to treat people with respect regardless of how barbaric their remarks are is one of the problems with our present state of civilization.
Rage. That is what I feel. I hope the town is bankrupted and the officers, doctors, and judge who contributed to this are all put behind bars, where, ideally, they'll get to experience what unwanted anal searching is like.
The police are totally out of control in this country. They are out of control because they are untouchable. That was the lasting legacy of the Rodney King acquittals: you can do what you want if you're a cop. You can beat a black man senseless for nothing. You can beat a homeless man to death with your fists. You can pepper spray, tackle, and beat peaceful protesters dancing in a public square. You can smash people's cameras who are trying to document your abuses. You can send SWAT teams to the home of the mayor of a small town, shoot the family dog dead, track the blood all over the house, put the family on their knees for hours with guns to their heads, and then when it turns out it was a mistake, leave, laughing and saying "you're lucky we didn't arrest you."
Almost certainly it will get much worse before it gets better. Armed with ever better surveillance, city police are going to get much more powerful. And power corrupts. I think we'll be hearing about a lot more of these kinds of abuses.
Eventually, 400M Americans are going wake up, realize that they've had enough, and effect real, lasting change.
"That was the lasting legacy of the Rodney King acquittals: you can do what you want if you're a cop."
To a propagandized society, yes, that the revolutionary truth about the initial acquittals. The bourgeois truth is that the LAPD police academy cheaped out on baton training, excluding the normal sections that would have allowed them to restrain King with a minimum of force.
Given that, they had exactly three choices: shoot him like a dog, beat him into submission, or I suppose let him free to commit more crimes while intoxicated.
I guarantee you the message sent by the second prosecution in an area and situation where conviction was much more likely (2 out of 3) has had a lot of very bad effects, including the police resorting to their firearms a lot more.
"Eventually, 400M Americans are going wake up, realize that they've had enough, and effect real, lasting change."
Perhaps all this will help you understand why we're buying guns of military utility at unprecedented rates? With the exception of last August, for around 40 months NICS tracked guns sales have been higher than those of the preceding month a year previously (source is the NSSF). Note that the starting point of this massive surge is well beyond the period of fear that Obama would take effective gun control steps and way before Newtown.
It's ... amazing. The world's stocks of $150 (in today's prices) standard bolt action military surplus rifles have been exhausted, that's from more than a century's production of them.
I'm not sure if we're gearing up for a civil war/general resistance to this sort of shit, the inevitable consequences of the government running out of money, or things less dire in the runup to one or both, but we're getting thoroughly prepared, which should terrify the police-judicial complex. And may well be doing so.
As I and other keep saying, this will not end well.
>As I and other keep saying, this will not end well.
I hope not. My hope is that we can outsmart violent revolution, and do something much better. In the end, we are a functioning democracy, and in 6 years theoretically we could replace every elected official in the land, the President, every governor, every congress person, and every local sheriff and police chief and judge. It would require an almost unimaginable level of cooperation, and it wouldn't address the bureaucracy problem, but literally in 6 years all of the elected decision-makers could be new. We could eliminate parties, hold a new constitutional convention, and adopt policies aimed at capping the complexity of our legal code. And all it takes is 6 years of cooperation.
To me, that's a great outcome. And I suppose if you got the majority of Americans in most places to agree with you, then you'd actually have a chance to get it done.
That's a rather amazing posited jump for a nation in a cold civil war that's getting ever hotter, one that's been in effect ever since the Progressives became a major political force, e.g. no later than Teddy Roosevelt.
What can possibly make you think more than a century of division, which I rate as reaching civil war status in Woodrow Wilson's 2nd term almost a century ago, will magically change. Rodney King expressed the hope pretty well, "Why can't we all just get along?" but that's not happened.
I have my own ideas as to why, going back to the antebellum period, but they're irrelevant to the observation that this is clearly getting worse, and arguably at an accelerating rate. Add to that the inevitable Federal government bankruptcy within, say, a generation---are you proposing you could get a majority of Americans to become Tea Party types, refusing ever more "free" money from the state and after cutting enough of the government's expenses to start paying down the accumulated 17 trillion in debt???---while none of us can predict the time or shape of things to come, there's no way it will end well.
As Kipling noted in "The Gods of the Copybook Headings". Or I could say you're pushing hope over experience---and I think we've had enough Hope and Change to last a generation or three....
* Well, there's one possibility, nanotech resulting in a post scarcity society fixing the fiscal problem, but it wouldn't fix the divisions, and its development has been ruthlessly suppressed by the existing science establishment who want that money for themselves.
A number of people have commented that they are not surprised by the police actions in this case, because they are likely corrupt. I'm right there with you in most cases, but I simply can't wrap my head around what kind of outcome here would have made it worth all the trouble for the police involved?
After the SECOND probe (there were six total probes, two x-rays) I'd think most people would be convinced the guy wasn't hiding anything. Even if he was, we're not talking pounds of drugs here.
The police involved, and anyone that went along with SIX probes and two x-rays, and still were not sure this guy was innocent, are far beyond "corrupt", they are simply insane. Corruption generally comes with some kind of substantial payoff. What could that have been in this case? I'm really baffled by this, and scared. Only truly crazy people could allow this to happen, much less support it.
> The police involved, and anyone that went along with SIX probes and two x-rays, and still were not sure this guy was innocent, are far beyond "corrupt", they are simply insane. Corruption generally comes with some kind of substantial payoff. What could that have been in this case? I'm really baffled by this, and scared. Only truly crazy people could allow this to happen, much less support it.
If you think of the police (or groups of police officers) as just another gang (sadly a possibility in some districts), then this could be a targeted humiliation/retribution effort either on the behalf of a police officer (unlikely) or for a local patron/mafioso.
Over the past several years, this has been bothering me more and more, too.
If it's "we did this horrible thing, but made some money" or "we did this horrible thing, and locked up some terrible bad guy", then at least there's some kind of logic to it. But we keep hearing these stories of: someone in power does some whacked-out stupid mean shit to someone who's in no position to resist. And it goes unchecked and unpunished?...
I don't mean to be hand-wringing and preaching to the choir here,... but yeah -- I'm baffled and scared, too. I think there's a streak of American culture that enjoys hurting people just for the sake of hurting people.
I'm remembering back to the L.A. riots, after the Rodney King beating. I'm a white guy, and I was watching the riots on TV in high school. I wasn't sure what to make of it at the time. Maybe things haven't changed much?... (sadly...)
It seems possible that the police realized they were in trouble and were attempting a last-ditch effort to get out of it. The incremental civil rights violation from the 6th unnecessary cavity search might be relatively low compared to the 1% chance they would find something and be saved from the inevitable lawsuit.
Have you ever been on the other end of an office who "knows" you have something on you?
I have.
I was pulled over in Dallas, TX because my tag light as "out." He made me step out of the car. When I did, I looked at my tag light. I was not out. I told him. He then changed his story to it was "too dim." (It was the factory light in the factory casing, etc. All stock.).
He then asked if I was okay with a search. I told him no, so he called the drug dog.
Drug dog hit on my car on the third time around it. They ripped my car apart, threw my laptop on the ground, let the dog crawl all over my interior. This entire time my car was running. They kept me there long enough to run down 3/4ths a tank of gas.
After they found absolutely nothing (I don't do drugs outside of caffeine and alcohol once a month or so.) the dick head started trying to rip off my fucking interior door panels because he knew there was something there. He started with the one on the opposite side of the car that the dog hit on.
The other officer talked him out of it and they let me be on my way, but then I had to spend the next half hour picking my shit up off the side of a 6 lane interstate at 10:30 PM in the fucking dark, praying I didn't leave something behind or get hit.
Cops are are worse people on average than a random group of the general population. "Domestic violence is 2 to 4 times more common in police families than in the general population." [0]
I don't know what else to say really. This kind of reaction defies any form of rational discourse. As an outsider I'm kind of numb to it though. America, in my mind, has gone from a "cool" place that I learned about on television (Home Alone, Mickey Mouse Club, Terminator, NASA etc.) to this giant nanny state that has MASSIVE knee-jerk reactions to anything, e.g. putting warning labels on coffee, searching peoples assholes for drugs cause they clenched their buttcheeks, making air travel a ridiculously painful experience, etc.
In some ways that is the most staggering thing of all. They assaulted the man and did horrible things against his will, and now they're attempting to charge him money for the privilege?
This reminds me of the old horror story they used to tell about China, that when they'd execute a prisoner they'd send a bill to his family for the cost of the bullet.
That's actually sort of common in the U.S.'s insane healthcare system. You are liable even for health procedures you didn't request, if they were performed on your body. This may be due to an emergency (ambulance took you to a hospital you never asked to go to), due to law-enforcement intervention, whatever. Free markets!
Maybe they're hoping for some coverage from the malpractice insurers?
Not that I think that'll get very far, perhaps another lawsuit or 5 to try to force them, but if they don't bill the guy they wouldn't have a claim against them to begin with, I'd suspect.
While some of the procedures may fall under malpractice (multiple enemas, surgical sedation without consent), they're definitely violations of the AMA's professional conduct and ethics oaths.
In re the billing, it's probably an automatic thing from the hospital itself, rather than the physicians.
Attorneys had to be falling over each other trying to get to this client.
Suing is not enough. This sort of egregious behavior won't stop until people go to jail. The cops involved should be fired for cause - which means, they will never be hired by any other force in the USA.
Justified or not, "If This Goes On..." eventually the moral calculus is going to shift to where that's an acceptable response, and one sufficiently supported by the population that solving many such crimes will become very, very difficult.
There are many consequences to excesses by the state like this case, and this is probably one of the more minor ones.
What happened was pretty much rape... and rape used to be a capital crime, for which you could in fact get the death penalty. Strangely, it was struck down in 1977.
The scary part about this is that this wasn't just a single rogue cop. Several physicians, nurses, a judge, a radiologist, and at least one police officer - any of whom could have put a stop to it - participated in a state-sanctioned rape and found nothing wrong with it.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Why should the police department fight the lawsuit tooth and nail, assuming they're sufficiently sure of the facts? Do they think this will make it significantly less likely they'll lose? If not, they ought to think about damage mitigation, both to their public image and in what they'll have to pay out, i.e. a jury will presumably award smaller damages against a department that shows contrition.
This sort of non-response just screams "We're guilty and top to bottom corrupt" ... not the sort of thing that will end well.
This kind of behavior on the part of law enforcement will lead to destruction of public trust in the police. And that is a major step on the way to destruction of the American Empire because when Americans no longer trust their security forces, then nobody else in the world will trust Americans at all.
The medical clinic and the doctors who performed the procedures should all sue the police officers involved personally as well as the police department since they lied and they solicited the doctors to commit crimes. This kind of rogue police behavior needs to be severely punished in a very public way to send the message that "peace officers" are there to keep the peace, not to disturb it.
Why wouldn't you just stop at the X-ray? Is there some method of hiding drugs that wouldn't be very obvious in an X-ray? Ignoring the morality entirely, did they actually gain anything from that? Was there someone who could of hid narcotics past the first 7 steps?
What's so powerful about this story is it doesn't seem to make sense. I want to know why. What on earth motivated anything beyond step 1? Step 1 was bad enough!
Every step is just more evidence that the people involved were riding high on a power trip, which is why they absolutely need that power removed from them.
Once you have that then the only possible answer is that you simply haven't looked hard enough yet, if you give up then you are letting someone get one over on you and you know they are lying no matter what the damn machine says.
One thought is after they tried the first time and didn't find anything they might have been worried they would get in trouble so at that point they might as well keeping going because now they really have to find something to justify what they did.
Not defending them at all just trying to at least attempt to figure out their reasoning.
I did mull this over when I wrote the post, and it is something I do consider, but I cant say "Oh dont sue me because I my tax dollars will go to repair the screwed up damage the society I support decided to support."
Hopefully this guy getting ten million dollars will make the citizens revolt AT the police agency, and drive the stake deep. I do agree we need a standard of liability, but who is going to start the groundswell to make that happen?
People only care when their pocketbooks are on the line as far as I can tell.
In this circumstance, I hate to defend those that did what they did. The comment above about authoritarian followers is a good explanation as to why the officers/medical staff would comply. But I could see how one would comply, not to serve or aid, but out of fear or simply the with the perception that they _had_ to comply.
Doctors command an astounding level of respect and trust, and both are necessary for their profession to even exist. If I cannot trust a doctor while I am unconscious or otherwise vulnerable, then I would be putting myself at risk by avoiding seeking medical help if it became necessary. That level of trust is so high, I don't think it would be a stretch to think many people would expect a doctor to put a patient's needs and wellbeing above their own.
These doctors may have risked their livelihoods or their freedom by refusing to comply, but they knew full well the actual harm they would do if they did comply. They should be held accountable.
These doctors may have risked their livelihoods or their freedom by refusing to comply
Yeah, no. The first doctor is home right now, sleeping well, knowing s/he did the right thing by refusing to comply. The cops didn't have shit, the second hospital doctors completely abdicated their responsibilities absent any compelling interest and they went along with it because they wanted to, because they found a good enough reason. How do I know? Because the existence of the first doctor(s) proves they could have said "no."
When the cops haul a man in for "standing funny", anything you do to oppose their will is painting a target on your back.
The first doctor got away with it because the other doctors went along with the officers' demands. If everyone had refused they would have been ethically in the right, but you can be assured the authorities would have reacted far less favorably.
They went to a different hospital. That's not just turning to the next guy. The doctor at the first hospital explicitly refused on ethical grounds and did not get any unfavorable repercussions from the authorities, which completely refutes your point.
Do you know any medical personnel? They guard their licenses tightly and know exactly how they could be vulnerable. These people aren't stupid and have a culture versed in telling cops to back off. Note that the first doctor(s) they went to said, "no."
Just because you can see how they would comply says more about you than them.
EVEN IF he did had drugs in there, this would still be not right to me. Aren't there more effective ways than this to combat drugs? Let it go.
IMO, everyone related to this case (besides the victim) should be fired, divorced and ostracized. Sounds like a DOJ case.
We put people in jail for violating drug laws and it does seem to have some effect.
To bad it never occurs to prosecutors that we could encourage police and doctors to obey the law using the same means.
If this man was found with drugs he wouldn't have been offered better training or face a civil lawsuit. If we are willing to be tough on drug users, we should be as tough on people in authority when they break the law.
We should all resist, especially if we have nothing to hide. To the point where it no longer makes sense for someone to say: "they obviously have something to hide", because the norm has been destroyed.
Not quite, our trial by jury system is far from being corrupted. In a real police state like e.g. Japan the police don't worry too much about how they close a case, for they know whoever they charge will get convicted.
The defining characteristic of English law is its distribution of power between prosecutor, judge, and jury. This delicate balance has been utterly corrupted in the United States to the point where today at the federal level there is a conviction rate of over 90 percent — which would impress Mubarak and the House of Saud, if not quite, yet, Kim Jong Un. American prosecutors have an unhealthy and disreputable addiction to what I called, at the conclusion of the trial of my old boss Conrad Black six years ago, “countless counts.” In Conrad’s case, he was charged originally with 17 crimes, three of which were dropped by the opening of the trial and another halfway through, leaving 13 for the jury, nine of which they found the defendant not guilty of, bringing it down to four, one of which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional and the remaining three of which they vacated, only to have two of them reinstated by the lower appeals court. In other words, the prosecution lost 88 percent of the case, but the 12 percent they won was enough to destroy Conrad Black’s life.
Multiple charges tend, through sheer weight of numbers, to favor a result in which the jury convict on some and acquit on others and then tell themselves that they’ve reached a “moderate” “compromise” as befits the reasonable persons they assuredly are. It is, of course, not reasonable. Indeed, the notion of a “compromise” between conviction and acquittal is a dagger at the heart of justice.
Well, I was talking more about state courts; at the Federal level they situation is obviously worse. E.g. see my Rodney King comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682482 where the state court came to the correct conclusion, and the Feds took no chances the 2nd time around ... but, still, they only managed to convict 2 out of 4 defendants.
I believe to say it's "utterly corrupted" goes beyond the observable facts.
Yeah, and the fact that the paper author had to include a big state with only a 59% conviction rate is telling (Florida).
Prosecutors should have high conviction rates, they shouldn't be prosecuting innocents, or at least people they can't easily convince a jury are criminals. That they fail so often in states tells us a lot.
I'm also unconvinced the innocent are as frequently convicted in state courts as in Federal.
Now, separate from this we could discuss the plea bargain and its abuses, but we've got some strong evidence that a lot of people who refuse them and then go to trial are found not guilty.
Just imagine how this would be going if they'd planted some drugs. (That might even be what these police learn from this affair: sneak some narcotics in after taking the vehicle to impound.)
It is not just about these cops, these doctors, or this judge. It is about institutional rot, a rot so wide and deep that to point it out will get you scorn and ridicule in most quarters.
Well, I know that the words "police state.." should be followed by something the police stated when discussing things like this, unless I want the discussion to end up with countless people pointing out that it is nothing like as bad as Russia was under Stalin, etc.
I think the soft line for a police state is using the police to work towards social policy goals. So, for example, when you move from pulling people over for driving dangerously to having checkpoints.
I've often found a ... well, not denial, but a lot of people who just don't want to hear about it. They have no trouble believing it, but doing anything other than keeping their heads down and ignoring it is at this time impossible.
I realize that it's human nature to want to discuss disturbing things like this, and that hackers fall under the category of humans, but this is really off-topic for Hacker News.
There's no intellectual discourse to be had here; it's just the dissemination of fear.
Many hackers have a vested interest in the development and progress of society as a whole. It's extremely evident in open source communities, especially.
Matters such as this highlight major problems with society, and many hackers feel a personal responsibility to address those problems in some way, whether that be by reasoned discussion, protest, or various forms of support for larger causes formed to deal with those problems.
This is not fearmongering, this is shining a very bright light on an issue that has spent far too long in the dark.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.
Even more amazingly, it wasn't one officer alone by the side of the road in an ambiguous circumstance; there was a judge, a DA, multiple officers from several departments, two medical facilities, etc involved.
A civil suit is inadequate; state or federal criminal investigations should be forthcoming. It is possible there is a reasonable explanation, but an investigation is the only way to determine that.