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Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

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Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#81

Post by jMyles »

kps wrote: post #76
jMyles wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Downvote me all you want: it won't change the facts. I downvoted you because you are simply incorrect about the facts. Black people make up 12% of the US population, and use illicit drugs at approximately a proportionate rate. Yet, black people make up more than half of the prison population of drug offenders, and nearly two thirds of those under any form of criminal supervision for drug offenses. Why are you sayin…

I upvoted him because it's difficult to read what he wrote (and I routinely upvote grey comments). HN should decide whether a downvote means ‘I disagree’ or ‘this isn't worth reading’ — ‘I disagree therefore this isn't worth reading’ is incompatible with reasoned discussion.

It's one thing to have a different opinion - I often upvote people with whom I have a different opinion.

It's entirely another to make a claim about facts which is not supported - in this case by evidence that is not controversial.

It's simply not so that black people commit crimes in proportion with the representation in the criminal justice system. In fact, if poverty and geography are controlled for, ethnicity and race seem to be non-determiners of criminality.

This is explained, among many other places, here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime-rates-...

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#82

Post by NamTaf »

sukulaku wrote: post #66
NamTaf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Societies (all around the world) tend to be more racially driven than we like to admit. It's really easy to ignore the suffering of a group of people if you are readily able to distance yourself from them. Race plays a significant role in this in many places. 2) Develop systems that are structurally uncorruptable and uninfluencable as best as they can be, by having significant separations of power by design. There…

> Develop systems that are structurally uncorruptable and uninfluencable as best as they can be, by having significant separations of power by design Oh kind of like The Constitution, for example? Obviously that hasn't worked out too well in the long term, what with the US being a burgeoning police state and all. But if "we" write a new and more sternly worded piece of paper that says "rulers can't mistreat their sub…

Try again without the facetiousness. I don't mean like a piece of paper saying 'thou shalt'. I mean by implementing systems where, by design, the decisionmakers over roles that police each other have no way to influence one another. For example, those who are in charge of policing the police shouldn't also be in charge of working with the police on policing other people. I don't mean auditors, I mean those who then receive the information from internal audits and are responsible for making judgements based on it.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#83

Post by epistasis »

kps wrote: post #76
jMyles wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Downvote me all you want: it won't change the facts. I downvoted you because you are simply incorrect about the facts. Black people make up 12% of the US population, and use illicit drugs at approximately a proportionate rate. Yet, black people make up more than half of the prison population of drug offenders, and nearly two thirds of those under any form of criminal supervision for drug offenses. Why are you sayin…

I upvoted him because it's difficult to read what he wrote (and I routinely upvote grey comments). HN should decide whether a downvote means ‘I disagree’ or ‘this isn't worth reading’ — ‘I disagree therefore this isn't worth reading’ is incompatible with reasoned discussion.

"Disagreeing" on facts is not compatible with reasoned discussion too, especially when one couches their opinion in such clearly unreasoned ways such as "go ahead and downvote me." This person knows that they're trolling, and does it anyway.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#84

Post by airkumar »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #53
throw_this_away wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that this isn't an isolated incident, and we're seeing black people on the receiving end of a great deal of police misconduct over the past couple of years (Laquan McDonald and the subsequent cover up is the most recent example), perhaps it's time you consider that the reason arrest rates for black people are so high is because they are targeted unjustly. Not because they're actually committing crimes at higher…

The higher criminality drives the police mistreatment. If you're a police offer and interact with mostly black criminals all day, your priors are set so that you think most blacks are criminals. So when you see an honest black person, you assume he's guilty of _something_, and consider framing him the honest thing, since you believe you're just putting the black man away for crimes he's doubtlessly committed, but for…

"criminality" is not an inherent trait in any race, including black Americans. The increased crime rates are a function of a number of inputs, many of which stem all the way back to slavery-- which has never fully been addressed/redressed in our public policy. To fail to recognize this and treat "black criminality" as some initial condition is to fail to critically think about our collective history and the resulting consequences.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#85

Post by epistasis »

calstad wrote: post #65
cjslep wrote: post #20

Is it bad that this honestly doesn't surprise me? In 2005 my 15 year old self was passing through Northern Georgia to see grandparents, and we hit traffic at the only town stoplight because a Grand Wizard and lots of KKK members were rallying in the streets celebrating running the last minority out of the county. As a white middle class guy, that was quite the contemporarty class on race relations. Racism is alive an…

Yep racism is only a problem in the South

That's not what he said, nor is it even implied by the comment.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#86

Post by jbuzbee »

cryoshon wrote: post #72
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opinion: 1) Police are corrupt. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them that "police are corrupt" is true. This will always be the case. Police don't fight crime, nor prevent it. They create it. If you think this isn't so you haven't had enough exposure to them. Maybe my opinion is coloured by my experience: illegal search of person, car, and house. They ransacked my house, stole money and property from me. It took…

The police also stole more from people via asset forfeiture than actual burglars did last year. They are criminals.

While I agree that the police have a history of horrific abuse of asset forfeiture laws, this oft-quoted event doesn't tell the whole story. The 2104 numbers were skewed greatly based on a proper $1.7 Billion forfeiture from Bernie Madoff. Most of this money went back to his victims:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#87

Post by zaroth »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #22
hackuser wrote: post #8

It seems like there is a smoking gun in this case (though I didn't review the evidence thoroughly). Widespread availability of video recording and distribution has provided many more smoking guns. Certainly, there are many more incidents where no smoking gun evidence is available. For a long time, black Americans have been claiming that such things happen and were widely ignored or disbelieved. It was and is a grave…

Opinion: 1) Police are corrupt. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them that "police are corrupt" is true. This will always be the case. Police don't fight crime, nor prevent it. They create it. If you think this isn't so you haven't had enough exposure to them. Maybe my opinion is coloured by my experience: illegal search of person, car, and house. They ransacked my house, stole money and property from me. It took…

I'm so sorry that happened to you. I think some police officers don't even realize the extent to which they can totally fuck up your life. Then there are the ones that know it well and enjoy it. Or the ones that think they are planting that evidence in order to get the bad guy and the ends justify the means. Since there's historically been no check and balance behind the Blue Wall absolute power has corrupted absolutely.

Police are like the proverbial bull in a china shop. There may be a need one day to call on that bull, but they'll probably leave one hell of a mess, and hope you don't get trampled in the process.

There was a great post a couple weeks on the front page about a guy traveling through Germany I think it was, for a contracting software gig. He got detained on the bus because a cop "smelled pot" and you can imagine how the story went from there. His biggest personal takeaway was exactly as you say, treating people like this must be creating an awful lot of criminals.

There may be cops out there who still believe they are civil servants, and stewards of our constitutional rights. Who understand the terrible power they wield, and insist on always operating within the law. Who arrest civilians as a last resort. Eh, who am I kidding? 'Protect and Serve' changed to 'Shoot to Kill' a long time ago.

BTW, if that's your #1, I'm almost afraid to read your #2 and #3!

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#88

Post by brazzledazzle »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #53
throw_this_away wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that this isn't an isolated incident, and we're seeing black people on the receiving end of a great deal of police misconduct over the past couple of years (Laquan McDonald and the subsequent cover up is the most recent example), perhaps it's time you consider that the reason arrest rates for black people are so high is because they are targeted unjustly. Not because they're actually committing crimes at higher…

The higher criminality drives the police mistreatment. If you're a police offer and interact with mostly black criminals all day, your priors are set so that you think most blacks are criminals. So when you see an honest black person, you assume he's guilty of _something_, and consider framing him the honest thing, since you believe you're just putting the black man away for crimes he's doubtlessly committed, but for…

This is just made up shit that sounds good in your head. Even if we suppose for a moment that what you should have kept to yourself is true, what do you expect black people to do? In a dysfunctional relationship the person in the position of overwhelming power is the one that needs to change. Who "started" it is irrelevant.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#89

Post by Asbostos »

NamTaf wrote: post #41
hackuser wrote: post #8

It seems like there is a smoking gun in this case (though I didn't review the evidence thoroughly). Widespread availability of video recording and distribution has provided many more smoking guns. Certainly, there are many more incidents where no smoking gun evidence is available. For a long time, black Americans have been claiming that such things happen and were widely ignored or disbelieved. It was and is a grave…

1) Societies (all around the world) tend to be more racially driven than we like to admit. It's really easy to ignore the suffering of a group of people if you are readily able to distance yourself from them. Race plays a significant role in this in many places. 2) Develop systems that are structurally uncorruptable and uninfluencable as best as they can be, by having significant separations of power by design. There…

For 1), even modern liberal people still have racist-like prejudices which are not intrinsically different. We're led to believe it's wrong to discriminate based on race so we just transfer our discrimination to some other classification. Blacks are OK, but not if they're from Africa. Indians are OK but not if they're from India. Whites are OK but not if they're from Syria, Irish are OK but not if they're from Ireland. That is, racism has morphed into nationalism, which is widely acceptable so we feel it's OK.

Similarly, homophobia has morphed into "pedophobia". We can't hate gays anymore but we're plenty virulent at hating pedophiles. Just the same emotions transferred to another group.

Inside, most of us are still basically the same bigoted people, but we've restructured our bigotry to fit the popular modern values.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#90

Post by toomuchtodo »

bashinator wrote: post #78
ashwinaj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put, but I suspect large swaths of people will still be in denial since any criticism about the police (or military) is off limits. In any case, if this keeps on going the police force would be the first to be "roboticized". I even have a simple algorithm: 1. Investigate reported crime (race/gender/economic parameters are ignored) OR catch criminal red handed. 2. Create a police report and submit evidence. 3. Te…

Step 1 there probably breaks down to several billion subtasks.

A lot of which we can automate.

These are the hard problems we should be solving, not $social_network_flavor_of_the_week.

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