Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by cinquemb » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:20 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #46

datashovel wrote: post #32

Keep the leaks coming world! The joke is that anyone who is truly qualified to run for office doesn't want the job. I hope that the more leaks like this that come out, more qualified people will realize they can't just stand by idly thinking the system will just fix itself. I imagine Snowden leaks alone have gotten far more "qualified" people engaged in civic activities than we'll ever truly comprehend, and have take…

> I imagine Snowden leaks alone have gotten far more "qualified" people engaged in civic activities than we'll ever truly comprehend, and have taken a bit of the "fear of rebellion" out of those who might not have spoken up in the past. You wish. The reactions vary from 'oh, I knew that all along' to 'well, no matter what I do, the spying will continue' and a whole bunch of shades in between. Then there are those tha…

>On the whole the effect of Snowden's revelation is a big disappointment, I thought far more would happen because of them but maybe I'm just too impatient.

I have similar sentiments for similar reasons you list. I also tend to find the battle that people seem to create of "privacy vs security" to be sucking up all the air in the room of plausible ideas that can change the status quo and bring upon more effective societies, with namely corporate sponsors and individuals within governments reaping the benefits (effectively status quo) with most individuals in a given society mostly being taken on a ride with no true internalization of how any of it will enrich their life at best or end up dead from mostly being a function of where they happened to be born at worst.

I guess in saying that, it's not too surprising that I see that using technology to subvert our present collective individual behaviors that takes advantage of how we operate today could break the apparent deadlock in a way we might not expect to unfold (with the ethics in mind of how some ways of going about such could just enable more of the same).

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

#112

Post by jrowley » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:20 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #105

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…

I suspect physical security will be robotized before policing is. Robots could get very good at recognizing firearms held in human hands (i.e. rather than stored in a holster) and then incapacitating the owner of those hands. Once enough such robots are installed in crowded public areas, the current mass-murder-mania (and one hopes, the hysteria that has arisen in reaction) would be eliminated.

Woah, comments like these are why I read hackernews. Sounds potentially dangerous from a hacking perspective but almost certainly this will be the future.

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

#113

Post by Asbostos » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:21 AM UTC

karlshea wrote: post #61

rewqfdsa wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's sad that you actually think this is true.

You're saying it's not true? That policemen don't assume all blacks must be guilty of something? I'm sure a lot of them really do. That's just how human nature works. We all judge people on flimsy evidence and form prejudices. Police are humans like the rest of us and are bound to have those same kinds of prejudice.

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

#114

Post by simoncion » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:22 AM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #56

datashovel wrote: post #32

Keep the leaks coming world! The joke is that anyone who is truly qualified to run for office doesn't want the job. I hope that the more leaks like this that come out, more qualified people will realize they can't just stand by idly thinking the system will just fix itself. I imagine Snowden leaks alone have gotten far more "qualified" people engaged in civic activities than we'll ever truly comprehend, and have take…

> Keep the leaks coming world! Seriously. I can't imagine how something like this, or Snowden's docs, could have leaked in the pre-internet days. It's so easy to replicate & distribute information now, and the process by which stories make the "front page" is so democratic.

I'm not snarking.

You've heard about the Pentagon Papers? The NSA domestic surveillance documents were at least as big as the Pentagon Papers. They would have been national news.

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

#115

Post by sophacles » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:24 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #11

cygnus_a wrote: post #5

Another reason to decriminalize drugs in favor of self-help programs.

> Another reason to decriminalize drugs in favor of self-help programs. Decriminalizing drugs may change which crimes are available to use to frame members of a disfavored group, but it is unlikely to change whether bigots in power seek to frame members of their disfavored groups for crimes.

While I agree with this statement - I would like to point out that drug possession is particularly easy to frame someone for, and it has a high payout (that is, long and severe punishment, easy to re-frame someone, etc) compared to other crimes. Making drugs legal would put a huge dent in a lot of problems.

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

#116

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:25 AM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #102

jacobolus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your three-sentence story was about police battling the “explosion of mafia” using underhanded tactics, and makes no mention of innocent people. The case under discussion is police planting drugs and guns on people who were wrongly arrested and who had no prior criminal record or connection to gangsters, because the police were hateful racists. Since those two scenarios seem completely unrelated, my inference was tha…

Rather than inferring that all thugs are black, you should have inferred that mafia isn't there to help people. Anyhow, sorry if my story isn't interesting.

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by such_a_casual » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:26 AM UTC

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…

The solution is dead simple. Put cameras and mics on every cop in the country. Release the recordings to the public after a certain amount of time (leave this up to the states and local govt). Put a cap on how long these recordings can be withheld from the public regardless of special circumstances (maybe 10 years?). Problem solved.

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

#118

Post by gnaritas » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:26 AM UTC

rewqfdsa wrote: post #28

> black Americans have been claiming that such things happen and were widely ignored or disbelieved Black Americans commit a wildly disproportionate amount of crime. Black men make up 1 million out of 2.3 million people in prison. 4.7% of all black men* are in prison. A black man has a 70% chance of being in prison at some point in his life. Are you suggesting the police are framing all of these people? While police…

Take your racism somewhere else, it doesn't belong here.

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

#119

Post by will_brown » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:27 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #92

Frondo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of police are corrupt, and there is an absolute ton of racism in this country so we believe it when the cop tells a lie that implicates a black guy. Not racist like we're out in klan hoods on the weekend, and it's definitely not like we're consciously choosing to be racist--this is just lifetimes of unexamined biases, media information, etc. We have these little biases that tell us not to trust the black guy's…

Personally, I don't believe a single damn word out of a police officer's mouth. Particularly so if they are under oath. It has nothing to do with race, I don't care who the defendant is. They say the least reliable form of testimony is eyewitness accounts. Actually, I think the police have the eyewitness beat on this account. Too bad I've never had jury duty, and even if I did I'd probably be dismissed, so unfortunat…

Did you read the articles? Police officers were the first ones to report on their fellow officers for their misconduct (i.e. planting evidence) triggering the investigations of Internal Affairs. I suppose the irony here is under your logic you would not believe the whistle blowing officers because they only had eyewitness accounts - and you don't believe a single damn word out of a police officer's mouth - rather you would have sided with the defending officers as you don't care who the defendant is.

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

#120

Post by jlarocco » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 3:29 AM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #59

rewqfdsa wrote: post #28

> black Americans have been claiming that such things happen and were widely ignored or disbelieved Black Americans commit a wildly disproportionate amount of crime. Black men make up 1 million out of 2.3 million people in prison. 4.7% of all black men* are in prison. A black man has a 70% chance of being in prison at some point in his life. Are you suggesting the police are framing all of these people? While police…

> 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…

Without providing a reference backing up your second sentence your claim is no more believable than the OP's.

The reason I mention it is that on average black people tend to be poorer and live in worse neighborhoods, and poor people in bad neighborhoods (of all races) tend to do more drugs. So my expectation would be black people tend to do more drugs than white people, but I still doubt it's enough of a difference to explain the difference in prison population.

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-median-income-in-the-us...

Edit: Just to be clear before I'm downvoted into oblivion, I agree that the police and justice system are heavily biased against black people, I'm just not sure that sentence is true.