In the original article, the owner explains what he originally thought he was agreeing to - and why:
"About three years ago, Saleh said police asked him to participate in what they called a “zero-tolerance” program to reduce crime. He gladly signed up, not realizing at the time how much it would impact his business and customers. Under the program, Miami Gardens police are given broad powers to stop and arrest people who appear to be loitering or trespassing at the participating business.
The idea behind the program is based on the “broken window theory,’’ a concept that has been employed by police around the country. The theory holds that a community that rids itself of petty crime, such as shoplifting, vandalism and trespassing, can eradicate more serious crime because criminals won’t have anywhere to hide."
This is also the justification for NYC's "stop and frisk" program which has been in the news so much lately. For the record, I'm not a fan.
How do these police keep their jobs? I understand that there is corruption and the thin blue line nonsense, but 62 arrests of the same employee for alledgedly trespassing in his place of work is just insane. Even if you were a total bastard you would get rid of anyone you were responsible for who was pulling that kind of crap, as long as you had even the slightest instinct for self-preservation.
Internal affairs is probably the reason - each department seems to have a way to investigate their own complaints.
Here's more from the Miami Herald article:
> Saleh added that after he filed the internal affairs complaint in August 2012, one of the officers he complained about, Michael Malone, confronted a customer who was part of the complaint.
> Saleh said that after the officers started harassing him, his employees and customers, he began to doubt that police were conducting an impartial investigation, and he did stop cooperating. He said that should not have stopped them from collecting their own evidence, given the seriousness of the complaint.
> “What about their own video, the videos that officers are supposed to take from their cars?” Saleh asked, contending that each time an officer turns on his lights, the vehicle’s dashboard cam is supposed to activate. Saleh said he requested copies of the police videos corresponding to the arrests he recorded and was told the videos didn’t exist.
This I can confirm this. Internal affairs never finds fault unless you call a lawyer or the news. I live in Baltimore city and I've experienced the same treatment as well. A couple of years ago I moved from the rural county of Baltimore back to my moms in the city. Since I've been back I've been stopped and frisked more than 20 times, my mom was assaulted by police officers on our street (they forced a nightstick into her mouth because they were convinced she swallowed drugs.) My house raided once with a fabricated warrant.
I've also experienced a similar situation where I've called for a shift commander and the officers that stopped my mom showed up. Or Another when I called internal affairs because they destroyed/ vandalized my computer equipment in my room, including opening brand new beers and pouring them on my laundry. I called a shift commander and the officers of the raid showed up at my house while I was on the phone with internal affairs.
It Baltimore they don't call it Stop & Frisk. They don't check that box off. They check the box called Citizen/Police Contact. The last time I had "Citizen/police contact" I was with my friend who's an eagle scout on our way from the Loyola/Hopkins Lacrosse game when we were stopped by 4 police cars with guns drawn, demanding to see our hands forcing us out of the car, and putting us in hand cuffs while they searched us and the car. The officers reasoning was "You were a black guy (I'm mixed and very light) and a white guy in a beat up car driving through the hood".
I still carry the Citizen Copy of that paper ticket/notice/citation whatever it is because that's the day I was almost shot. It's a reminder that we're not safe anywhere. The only thing we can do is try to stay out of their way.
The smartphone is removed and wiped. Or you're arrested for wire-tapping. Or they say the phone is a weapon and they tase you. Or they shoot you and say they thought you had a gun. Or they just beat the fuck out of you.
Or you get the video, the police-officer's boss agrees with you that the behaviour was outrageous, and sacks the officer. They offer you $1.2 million out of court settlement because all the evidence is so clear. But the officer goes through appeal, and gets his job back, with back pay. Again.
> Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis fired Williams after concluding that the officer choked a suspect during a 2009 arrest and lied about it to Internal Affairs investigators. Williams appealed the finding to an independent arbitrator who ruled in his favor last week. Absent court intervention, Williams can expect reinstatement and a city check for more than $150,000.
EDIT: If you want to downvote, please prove me wrong. I'm happy to provide citations where law enforcement is responsible for criminal conduct, up to and including theft and shooting people's dogs for no reason, and where they're defended by their unions.
The mere existence of a union shouldn't prevent dismissal cases from prevailing, though, unless something else is seriously wrong with the adversarial process. I'm represented by a union [1], and as a result I could ask my union for advice and/or support, if my job was terminated or if I were otherwise disciplined. Their lawyers would look into it and determine: 1) what advice to give me; and 2) whether there is a violation of rights serious enough to threaten the collective interest of the union members, thereby justifying the union themselves lodging an objection.
But the union would not defend me if their lawyers thought the dismissal was according to procedures and with sufficient evidence; it's not considered in the union's interest to defend clearly bad employees, and in practice they object in only a minority of dismissals. Even when they do lodge an objection in a given case, there is hardly any guarantee they will prevail. Why don't police unions work like that? My guess is a mixture of factors, relating to both cultural aspects (the "no snitching" culture) and ineffective oversight or even outright collusion from people who are supposed to be their adversaries in such procedures, such as judges.
And who exactly determines the procedures? Isn't this something public sector unions routinely negotiate? American public sector unions (teachers as well as police) routinely convince the public that they represent the public interest rather than the private interests of their members so there is no one left to lobby against them, giving them a blank check to make it impossible to dismiss a union member for misconduct.
Yes, the procedures are negotiated between the unions and the employers. In the case of public-sector unions, the elected government is responsible for representing the public interest in the negotiations. The legislature can also pass laws directly mandating certain procedures, if they wish, since ultimately the whole union system operates within parameters specified by the labor laws.
Imo public opinion has to align against police misconduct for it to be dealt with. If the public is offended by misconduct not being punished, this provides both an incentive for elective officials to make sure that can be done, and to police unions to be pragmatic about which kinds of interests they wish to defend; it may not be in the members' collective interest to defend a few bad apples, especially if doing so greatly angers the public. Of course, it might be in their interest if the whole lot of them are bad apples...
My impression, though, is that the majority of Americans are hardly concerned about police misconduct, and generally support the police against complaints, which doesn't provide very fertile ground for anyone interested in pushing reforms. You can win an election by being tough on crime, but can you win an election by being tough on police misconduct?
But unions can effectively lobby the government, making it extremely difficult for the government to negotiate with public sector unions. Usually the union owns both sides of the negotiating table and gets a blank check. Just look at what happened to Scott Walker, and not even he crossed the police.
Can't unions' opponents also lobby the government? The Fraternal Order of Police does lobby the government on criminal-justice issues, but so do large organizations like the ACLU, NAACP, National Lawyers' Guild, etc. on the other side. The difference seems to be that more voters and politicians side with the FOP's policy recommendations, than with those that their opponents propose.
In a democratic system, whether a major crackdown on police abuses happens depends to a large extent on whether there is actually public support for such a crackdown. Is the current situation that there is strong public support for a crackdown, but FOP lobbying is keeping it from happening? I don't think that's the case; my read is that the majority of people actually think the police are basically good guys who shouldn't be hassled more. The dissenters are a mixture of left-wing/minority-activist groups who are suspicious of racial profiling and police abuse directed mainly at minorities, plus some libertarian groups wary of increasingly militarized policing. But afaict by far the majority opinion thinks those concerns are overblown and supports the cops.
That makes sense, but teachers unions have similar power and people actually do want good education for their children. I guess that the teachers unions fool people into thinking they want good education as well, but their real interest is the private interests of their members.
> EDIT: If you want to downvote, please prove me wrong.
Your original post was a single word with no explanation and did not contribute in any meaningful way to the discussion. It's not a question of whether I agree or disagree with you, it was a crappy post and not the level of content I expect to find on HN. I gave your post, not you, not your ideas, a thumbs down.
Entirely fair. In hindsight, I regret not including citations and expounding more on how I came to that conclusion. I try to contribute to the discourse of this forum in a meaningful and positive way, and reflexive, emotional posts don't forward that agenda. Your downvote was warranted.
The onus is not on anyone else to prove a 1-word assertion wrong, it's on you to prove it right. More generally, every assertion is wrong by default, the asserter has to prove it true.
I'd need a lot more qualification than that. If defense lawyers have only just been invented then perhaps you can say that someone walked free because of defense lawyers, otherwise it is just the actions of a particular defense lawyer and in that case if those actions are a primary cause, then a different defense lawyer could have had a different outcome, so it is not the existence of defence lawyers per se, that caused that person to walk free.
reply to the edit - the existence of collective legal representation via a union does not by itself explain why these people feel they can act with impunity. I agree that having access to good lawyers does help a lot in employment cases, however I would say that either the police union is almost superhumanly competent in its legal defense of its members, or it is not the primary reason for police being allowed to behave like this.
I am very, very anti-union (among other things, came of political age when Joseph Yablonski, his wife and daughter, and close to home, the driver of an explosives cargo truck were murdered by union thugs) and perhaps even more so anti-public union (a worse principle, but they kill fewer people), but they aren't sufficient to explain the Blue Line of Silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Code_of_Silence that tells us that outside of a few, generally very small and rural departments, there are NO "good cops".
> * aren't sufficient to explain the Blue Line of Silence*
That's very true in this case. Cop unions are just one aspect of the problem, and if you look at this particular case, no cop has been disciplined. The union, which comes into play late in the game, really cannot be a factor except very indirectly. There are dozens of problems upstream of the union that need to be attended to first.
A similar issue happens in medicine where to discipline or reprimand a doctor becomes a question of "Why is this doctor exceptionally bad" to warrant action. It can take a lot to get actual board sanctions against a marginally proficient doctor.
Most major Hospitals have peer review processes known as a Morbidity and Mortality conference where doctors behind closed doors can speak freely about poor outcomes and ways to avoid future occurrences.
The lack of major reprimands for marginal doctors is sometimes why people rush to lawsuits because standard review processes are usually avoid a doctor apologizing or admitting any blame.
In aviation, near misses in airline or transport category flights are sometimes investigated as "serious incidents" even if no damage to the aircraft or injuries occurred.
It seems if police adopted a similar review process where problems and potential misconduct are addressed in a non-adversarial way (M&M conference style) then attitudes and community relationship will benefit.
My argument is you believe you can act with impunity if you don't believe there will be any repercussions for your actions. So if it isn't police/LEO unions protecting officers from dismissal due to gross misconduct, who is it?
Other than union lawyers, the other folk involved could be other officers, heads of department, members of internal review boards, judges, magistrates, lab workers, district attorneys, politicians, etc. I agree that lawyers can help, but the lawyers are a mere formality if the process is corrupt in the first place. Unions are not normally some kind of magic shield, they are collective bargaining and pooled legal fees and have not provided the same level of protection that the police enjoy, in the other areas in which they exist.
I don't believe you. I think you'd be sad to do it. Otherwise you would have already. And having lied about one small thing, why should I believe that you haven't lied about other, bigger things?
Does anyone know why Oregon has a higher misconduct rate than California and Washington? It goes against my admittedly stereotype of Portland, which I know may not be representative of the entire state. Plus, I understand big/major cities tend to be more progressive and cosmopolitan.
I live next to the Oregon border in California (along the coast) and our local papers carry stories at least once per month about drastic budget problems north of us.
Our local Sheriff gave a Neighborhood Watch talk and mentioned the drastic down-sizing of law enforcement officers in the Oregon counties adjacent to us as a major concern and a potential source of problems for us.
>"Even if you were a total bastard you would get rid of anyone you were responsible for who was pulling that kind of crap, as long as you had even the slightest instinct for self-preservation."
You're assuming that real accountability exists somewhere short of escalation to the national news. That's not necessarily or even (anecdotally) likely the case and really, what are the chances?
How many years, decades and victims did this county have before now?
In my experience, law enforcement is dominated by a culture of deference to seniority, dreams of retiring with a pension and an "at war" attitude.
Self-preservation is keeping your mouth shut and toeing the line.
It is also making sure that when the folk under you are abusing their power, they are doing it in a way that you can at least slightly, when looked at on a foggy day from a distance, possibly claim might be legitimate business.
You don't think their boss isn't telling them to harass those people? Clearly there is something going on at this location. The article is one sided. It could just as easily be the case that the store is a drug operation as it is that the police are all racists. 62 arrests makes me think drug dealer. Criminals and police tend to tolerate each other because that's part of their jobs. Normal people would have left somewhere before the first 50 arrests.
I am uncertain as to which part of this argument rationalizes arresting an employee for 'trespassing' as he is carrying out his duties. As a glance at HN any day of the week will tell you, American LEOs have more legal tools at their disposal than ever before, to lawfully investigate a suspect. This is not one of them.
You're uncertain because no part of my argument attempts to rationalize it. You're taking the debate approach that asks 'should they or shouldn't they arrest or harass the person?' Who cares. The fact is that they can and will harass people. What's up for debate is whether is there some missing information in this article that is leading to false conclusions about corrupt cops. Is there a doubt about whether this is random police harassment. Yes there is.
An all-too-valid point whose realism I was unprepared to consider. Just because harassment isn't a proper or efficient means to stop drug trafficking, doesn't mean it isn't the case here.
In Moab UT and other cities in UT, after speaking with many bartenders, you'll find out that indoor cameras are to protect employees from harassment by alcohol police. Including falsifying reports, and blackmail.
Eventually enough cars will be equipped with multi-ways dashcams and it will be a matter of time when someone writes an app to recognize cop cars and pin them on the map, 24/7/365. Just for our own safety...
Cars? Let's go deeper: How about clothing with built in cameras (and possibly other sensors) that look up every face one comes across on the internet (facebook/google seem like good data sets to start) to match with an identity and then for actions deemed unseemingly by the individual, they can use their identity and find relatives/friends/children and send a message with the clip and a caption "Here's how your friend/dad/daughter, is conducting themselves admirably today, you should be proud of them."
I've been stopped by the police for turning to look at their car as they passed by me. I'm white, clean cut, and middle-aged and was around the block from where I've lived for over a decade.
My crime? I was walking barefoot down the sidewalk.
I'm a little confused. In order to be arrested for trespassing, doesn't the owner of the property have to confirm that the person is not allowed on the property?
In order to be convicted, yes, but police don't usually need to actually confirm to make the initial arrest. However if it turns out an arrest for trespassing was mistaken, because there was actually permission from the property owner, a properly functioning police system should certainly not arrest the same person for allegedly trespassing on the same property.
No they can't. False arrest, which includes arrest without probable cause or a warrant, is a crime.
Of course you'd need to get the prosecutor to take up the case, which would probably require the help of a lawyer, which a person taking out the trash at a convenience store probably can't afford.
Additionally, I think there is more to this story than is being reported, because it makes no sense on its face.
As far as understand, a person can be arrested for one of two reasons:
1) an arrest warrant exists for said person
2) a police office has reason to believe (gathered evidence, etc) that said person committed a felony
I agree with you that a cop can arrest someone for a very weak reason (he looked like the suspect), but arresting the same person 62 times when it was apparent the guy worked there?
At some point even the officers need to be held accountable for their actions. There has to be better way to get feedback from their departments rather than creating a media firestorm when one of these stories/videos go viral.
I would like to think the point should be whenever they do something provably illegal (that's oversimplified, but you get my drift).
I mean, there'll always be a grey area, but this story seems a little nutty.
I totally agree that catalyst for localized change (if there's even any of that in this case) shouldn't be, "Oh shit, we got caught and now it's on the news."
It will be interesting to see how long social sharing of face recognition data is kept away from the general public. Then this store owner could know in advance of any interaction if the cop outside is a good guy or not.
Within two weeks of arriving in the US I had been arrested and hauled out of a bar by two police officers, thrown over a car, and had my wallet and pockets rifled through. My crime? Talking to a cop's girlfriend.
Of course, we won't get in to equally informative stories of police in China, India, Thailand or the United Kingdom.
Having collected a fair range of experience across the world, I think I've now discovered where my misunderstanding originally arose: I had the wrong idea about what "police" meant. I see now that it's clearly nothing more than an internationally popular short form for "useless and corrupt thug-cum-bureaucrat".
Context is important. Just killing people who have not harmed you isn't an answer. But if you're talking about shooting back, then an interesting conversation is possible.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/21/v-fullstory/3769823/in...
In the original article, the owner explains what he originally thought he was agreeing to - and why:
"About three years ago, Saleh said police asked him to participate in what they called a “zero-tolerance” program to reduce crime. He gladly signed up, not realizing at the time how much it would impact his business and customers. Under the program, Miami Gardens police are given broad powers to stop and arrest people who appear to be loitering or trespassing at the participating business.
The idea behind the program is based on the “broken window theory,’’ a concept that has been employed by police around the country. The theory holds that a community that rids itself of petty crime, such as shoplifting, vandalism and trespassing, can eradicate more serious crime because criminals won’t have anywhere to hide."
This is also the justification for NYC's "stop and frisk" program which has been in the news so much lately. For the record, I'm not a fan.