Live data from Hacker News

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

henrycountyreport.com

221–230 of 268 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 can't imagine how something like this, or Snowden's docs, could have leaked in the pre-internet days. No imagination needed. The Pentagon Papers, Deepthroat, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Hutchinson Letters, Mordechai Vanunu, and The Iran–Contra affair all predated the internet. Thats just off the top of my head.

I totally respect all of those examples on their merits, but IMO if these are the best examples out there, they all (even aggregated together as a single leak) pale in comparison to Snowden leaks.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Opinion: Blacks are corrupt. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them that "blacks are corrupt" is true. This will always be the case. Blacks 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: they {put bad thing here}. If you see a black, cross the street." Do you honestly think that this is a fair st…

yes, downvote instead of answering the question.

While there are dozens of answers to your strawman, here is a simple one:

Black people are not responsible for the safety of the citizenry, black people are not defined by the need to protect and serve us, black people are in fact, just people.

Cops on the other hand are responsible for the safety of the citizenry, are given special powers due to the additional trust and responsibility we (all the other people) grant them.

The comparison is ridiculous.

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

#223

This is an honest question. Realistically, how do we dismantle the police state. It seems like the NSA, FBI, and some not insignificant percentage of the police forces have gone entirely rogue or lost track of their mission entirely. It feels hopeless. So much outrage but so little actual ever changes. Does anyone have any ideas because I'd love to hear them.

The police are as much members of society as anyone else, and they require the active cooperation of you and the rest of society to survive. You can be part of the solution by depriving them this support: Do not cooperate with them in their job. Do not call them. Decline to speak with them if they contact you. Do not associate with them officially or socially. Do not permit them to shop at your place of employment, d…

> Do not permit their children to be friends with yours.

Seriously?

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't imagine how something like this, or Snowden's docs, could have leaked in the pre-internet days. No imagination needed. The Pentagon Papers, Deepthroat, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Hutchinson Letters, Mordechai Vanunu, and The Iran–Contra affair all predated the internet. Thats just off the top of my head.

I totally respect all of those examples on their merits, but IMO if these are the best examples out there, they all (even aggregated together as a single leak) pale in comparison to Snowden leaks.

1) I'm not sure that I agree with your judgement of the significance of those events.

2) Doesn't it stand to reason that papers that are more significant than those that were previously published are almost certain to be published, given that papers of lesser importance were published?

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

#225
post #87

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…

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 absolut…

I usually say police have moved from Serve and Protect to Seek and Destroy. But shoot to kill sounds reasonably like police too.

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

#226
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I guess if you're hell bent on erasing the victims of this horrible conspiracy so as to make an argument for greater latitude in recreational pharmaceutical use... Congratulations. This is like "all lives matter." The idea that black people were victimized because there exists a crime to pin to them seems to me like you're changing the subject away from the humans whose lives are stolen by long term prison time…

They aren't two different things. The "war on drugs" is, and was created precisely to be, a way to legally oppress people of color, especially black, latino, and Chinese people. And it's not just this iteration of the "war on drugs." Prohibition generally, as a policy, has throughout history been first and foremost a tool to legally oppress people who have managed to win a modicum of legal protection otherwise. You a…

I absolutely agree the "war on drugs" and racial bias in enforcement disproportionately hurts people of color. No one disagrees with that in this conversation.

What we disagree with is your decision to blame the law in this specific case rather than a racist conspiracy.

The reason your actions are scary here is that they follow a pattern of dehumanizing the crime and divorcing the responsibility for said disgusting actions from the people who did them (people who deserve life in prison many times over) and instead saying it is the law itself that did this. I mentioned "all lives matter" intentionally. You're following a very similar pattern here, but ignoring the perpetrators instead of the victims.

People did this. Cops and judges. They were not following a racist law.

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

#227
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…

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 Irelan…

None of that is ok, and I don't know anybody who feels any of that is (openly enough for me to know about it) ok.

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

#228
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, and the honest officers were driven out of the police force while the ones involved in planting evidence got promotions. That seems like a pretty good additional reason not to trust police officers most of the time - anyone who's honest probably isn't police anymore.

>anyone who's honest probably isn't police anymore.

The only reason anyone is aware of this story is because it was officers who took it upon themselves to leak the record and are agreeing to testify.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correlations with race are highly suspect as well as self-reinforcing. I believe they should be abandoned because the damage they cause (by perpetuating a problem) may be greater than any possible benefit they provide.

Correlations with race are _facts_. Impartially collected data collated with robust statistical methods results in race falling out of the mix as an important correlate with all sorts of things; we then publish these correlations. Which part should we abandon? Impartial data collection? Robust statistics? Publication of the results? Are you suggesting that certain facts are too dangerous to know?

Correlations are never facts: they are interpretations of statistical measurements.

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

#230
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't two different things. The "war on drugs" is, and was created precisely to be, a way to legally oppress people of color, especially black, latino, and Chinese people. And it's not just this iteration of the "war on drugs." Prohibition generally, as a policy, has throughout history been first and foremost a tool to legally oppress people who have managed to win a modicum of legal protection otherwise. You a…

I absolutely agree the "war on drugs" and racial bias in enforcement disproportionately hurts people of color. No one disagrees with that in this conversation. What we disagree with is your decision to blame the law in this specific case rather than a racist conspiracy. The reason your actions are scary here is that they follow a pattern of dehumanizing the crime and divorcing the responsibility for said disgusting a…

> They were not following a racist law.

Prohibition is a racist law. It is designed to strengthen the institution of racism. It was openly created for this purpose. It seems that you are trying to act like this isn't the case.

> ignoring the perpetrators instead of the victims.

The perpetrators include not only those who participated in these acts in Alabama, but also those who conspired to pretextually pass these laws in the first place.

If you prosecute everyone who participated in this crime, which I hope will happen but almost surely will not, and secure a just verdict in every single case, which I hope will happen but almost surely will not, but you fail to repeal prohibition entirely, you won't have made much progress against racism.

They aren't two different things; prohibition (and its material form, the prison state) is the same thing as racism.

Post reply on HN