Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting • Hacker News Board

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#71

Post by b6 » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 11:11 AM UTC

cheetos wrote: post #62

unclebucknasty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, the machinations we devise to skirt the core problem, which is an increasing dearth of fundamental moraltity. Look around.. Something's gone completely wrong. Everyone is angry and there is decreasing value placed on kindness and decency. In fact, selfishness is increasingly a virtue. Observe how POTUS behaves. I don't care what side you're on, there is nothing normal or healthy about that level of chaos, narc…

America, since its founding, has been an experiment in extreme individualism over collectivism. We worship capitalism over all else. Even a whisper of government programs that help the poor are vilified as communist. Selfishness and immorality is a natural consequence of that. Things won't change until our culture completely changes.

People in the US are extremely generous, by any measure.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#72

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 11:36 AM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #39

myrandomcomment wrote: post #20

We need to live in a country where the law enforcement agencies are above reproach. There are 3 things we can do for this. 1. Pay for officers should be high without overtime. 2. Stop militarizing everyday law enforcement. 3. Body cams on at all times. Cameras on police cars should be on at all times.

I want two more important steps: 4. The video is archived for at least 90 days, with 360 being preferable. 5. The video is immediately encrypted when it is stored and should only be accessible by the district attorneys office.

I completely disagree with #5, mostly because I think transparency is lost if you restrict video access to district attorney's offices. Videos that are restricted too much aren't any better than no video at all.

First things first, one should always be able to view video of their own police interactions, as should their attorney. They should feel free to show it to family and friends. The district attorney is often viewed as part of the police and working with them closely... and they are political because they are an elected position. If we can't have more public access, it is easy to abuse such power. If the public can show family and friends their interactions, it can lead to change in the way folks are treated. And so on, in the same sorts of thinking.

That said, I don't think they should be made absolutely public without some sort of control and balance. I think it would be wrong for domestic violence calls to be made to the public. I fully support keeping folks' identities private unless they are found guilty in court. I'm going to guess there are prudent exceptions to this, mostly with public figures and safety.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#73

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 11:46 AM UTC

icantdrive55 wrote: post #36

myrandomcomment wrote: post #20

We need to live in a country where the law enforcement agencies are above reproach. There are 3 things we can do for this. 1. Pay for officers should be high without overtime. 2. Stop militarizing everyday law enforcement. 3. Body cams on at all times. Cameras on police cars should be on at all times.

Yea, this is way past due. Along with these implementations, I would like to see just an AA in psychology, and require at least 12 units of law, including a course in constitutional law. Just a high school diploma is not enough.

Most definitely more education. I'd not require the AA in psychology, though I would require at least an associates' if not a 4 year program. It would include things like interpersonal relations, conflict dissolution and resolution, how to interact with the mentally ill, law, physical fitness - including classes that deal with non-lethal ways of de-arming folks.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#74

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 12:02 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #28

myrandomcomment wrote: post #20

We need to live in a country where the law enforcement agencies are above reproach. There are 3 things we can do for this. 1. Pay for officers should be high without overtime. 2. Stop militarizing everyday law enforcement. 3. Body cams on at all times. Cameras on police cars should be on at all times.

Frankly I think that anyone who applies to be a cop should be automatically blacklisted, and that police should be essentially conscripted for, say, $total_training_time + 2 years after education, the way some countries do with their military. To me, the mere act of wanting the authority to arrest and shoot your peers means you are the last person I want to have that power.

This doesn't really explain why folks want to be cops in other countries - Heck, I live in a country where they haven't traditionally carried guns, though they are starting to nationwide from time to time. They do have them available to them. Not only that, but not all of them will be automatically horrible folks. Some actually do want to simply help folks. Not all of them that apply are the asshole. And some of the problem is our own laws and expectations.

At this point, I should mention that I personally dislike cops, and have had really bad interactions with them, including one blaming another's suicide attempt on me. But I also know it isn't universal.

If you do want to arrest and harm folks, no, you shouldn't be on the force. There are other way to sort out these folks or make the behavior different. Pass actual laws protecting folks from such things. Give cops more education. Have laws that make sense. Hire enough police so that they have more time away from folks that are doing harm. Have cops do more work on things that are socially uplifting - where they have contact with good people - and pay the cops for this. Require they are respectful. Require they take the abuse we expect call center and retail employees to take (like being told to fudge off, yelled at, and generally called names). Require police to live in the areas they are policing. Make sure the laws are fair and that we fairly police different sorts of areas. And so on.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#75

Post by jaredklewis » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 12:58 PM UTC

Pica_soO wrote: post #68

unclebucknasty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, the machinations we devise to skirt the core problem, which is an increasing dearth of fundamental moraltity. Look around.. Something's gone completely wrong. Everyone is angry and there is decreasing value placed on kindness and decency. In fact, selfishness is increasingly a virtue. Observe how POTUS behaves. I don't care what side you're on, there is nothing normal or healthy about that level of chaos, narc…

Its normal for human society- once the hardship sets in, the mammoth has been eaten, mean spiritness sets in. The truth is, we never managed to create a stable society in economical unstable conditions, so everytime people start to starve - the world falls apart. Ironically even the counter-measures we come up with (Law & Order in a thousand variants/ various dreams of a big Swage elsewhere/Migration & New Beginnings…

But who is starving? Even poor people in the US are well off by historical and world standards. In fact poor in the US have a very different problem: obesity.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#76

Post by jussij » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 1:00 PM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #61

jussij wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should only be accessible by the district attorneys office. Why the need for such a high level of secrecy? From outside of the US, the picture I get of the police force and the bodies that control them is they have a tendency to try and keep things secret. I would have though a more open system would instil a much higher level of public confidence in that policing system.

Okay.. if you really do want them to have access to the data, then you can amend that to 'Strong cryptographic message signing applied on storage.' There really is a case to be made in keeping the video private; however, police often have to process your private information and the officers have privacy considerations themselves. I really wrote that with this in mind, as I think it's a strong hedge against the "offic…

I'm not suggesting the videos should be available to just anyone for public view. On the contrary they need to be kept very securely, not only to stop unauthorised access but to stop unauthorised tampering or deletion.

However, I don't think access to the video should be controlled by the district attorney or by the state, instead it needs to be more transperant.

For example, lets assume someone in the public has a run in with the law and that results in charges being laid.

At that point, the accused should be able to appoint an attorney who then arranges for immediate access to video from the arresting officer(s) camera.

That process should be quick and fast, not slow and obstructed as it currently appears to be.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#77

Post by benchaney » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 1:34 PM UTC

devinhelton wrote: post #7

Yhippa wrote: post #2

What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?

Peter Moskos, a criminologist who spent a year on the Baltimore police force while doing his PhD, has a good post up about what happened -- http://www.copinthehood.com/2017/07/thats-quite-days-work.ht... It seems like the officer forgot to turn on his body camera while originally finding the drugs, and so rather than get reprimanded for forgetting to turn on the camera, he decided to recreate the crime scene and pret…

He has a post about what he thinks happened. His take on the issue is extremely (and unreasonably) charitable, but it still involves manufacturing evidence.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#78

Post by wholinator » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #64

_fk6q wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On books, everything you say makes sense in the ideal world. But in practicable reality, things are a bit more complicated. Re: item 1, Baltimore is the birthplace of the "Stop Snitchin'" movement, a heavily distributed and well marketed street campaign defining a dynamic that a wiki entry can't possibly describe accurately. The bigger point is that it had a counter-campaign on the police side which retaliated agains…

> You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is, even if they're cops. As much as I want to agree with this statement, I can't help but feel that it's highly problematic in some sense. When it comes to court cases (IANAL, but this is my understanding), law enforcement officials' testimony is treated with a certain measure of elevated credibility (there's SCOTUS precedent for this, but I ca…

Preface: i am not a lawyer either and i welcome criticism as this is just an idea.

I think the solution wouldn't be to charge robbery twice as hard for cops, but to have an additional charge. Something like 'abuse of federal trusted power' or something like that which would carry its own penalties. This, i think, wouldn't cause the strict separation of penalties that could be problematic, but it would address the problem of people entrusted with federal power abusing it.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#79

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:09 PM UTC

Previous discussion 10 days ago: A Baltimore police officer accidentally recorded himself planting drugs (vox.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811601

My comment at the time:

> What sometime happens in cases like that is that the officer's previous arrests are gone through, and many of them thrown out as unsafe

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811986

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#80

Post by ch » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

doug1001 wrote: post #34

na85 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I think that anyone who applies to be a cop should be automatically blacklisted, and that police should be essentially conscripted for, say, $total_training_time + 2 years after education, the way some countries do with their military. To me, the mere act of wanting the authority to arrest and shoot your peers means you are the last person I want to have that power.

during my four-year hitch in the Corps, a quick poll of the first-term enlisted jarheads in a USMC infantry battalion, asking "what are you going to do when you're hitch is up?" the most frequent answer would have been "become a cop" and these were guys who, when off-duty, wore t-shirts with aphorisms like "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" and "join the Marines, travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, an…

It would be interesting if not only EMT training was required, but also some number of years as an active EMT. Having to respond to various scenes involving law enforcement, but not being blessed as law enforcement would provide an interesting perspective on police response.