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In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

nytimes.com

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Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#61

Post by rhino369 »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #25
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #12

Why is there not more transparency? It makes zero sense. What is going to stop something like this occuring again? Officers going to jail?

Police unions are the only strong unions left in the country. The conservatives will come for them at some point too...until then you have places like Philly that, at least used to, have complaints against police be heard by the union before they are passed on to internal affairs. Bmore takes the cake, though...just wtf all over and back again.

My only problem with Scott Walkers attack on public unions, is that he exempted police and other first responders.

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#62

Post by YokoZar »

jdavis703 wrote: post #43
nyolfen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really just incredible. how do you reform something so broken? a clean sweep? bring in the feds?

Camden shut down it's police department, and last year had the lowest murder rate in decades: http://www.nj.com/camden/index.ssf/2018/01/camdens_2017_murd... . As engineers when a system is severaly broken, we know the answer can be to turn it off (e.g. in the case of a bad malware infection). The same can apply to other complex systems too.

It wasn't clear from the article, but the context I found was that the Camden County Police Department took over policing from the Camden City force on May 1, 2013.

Cities often have multiple options for who "owns" local policing - county level police, county level sheriff's office, contracting out to a neighboring town, or even state police.

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#63

Post by jacquesm »

grasshopperpurp wrote: post #52
jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that a secret police is used by a dictatorship to keep the dictator in power by systematically attacking the opposition and any grass roots movements. Plainclothes detectives are simply police that are not in uniform ('undercover'), they are still part of the regular police force.

>The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class. Really not that different. http://in…

> They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.

Nonsense, the police were not created with that goal in mind. The Romans had police, plenty of European cities had police forces prior to the 18th century (see Rembrandt's painting 'the Nightwatch' for some proof of that) and so does every other normal society today, even the ones that are not dictatorships. Also, you've just made the leap from 'secret police' to 'plainclothes detectives' to 'any police'.

The linked article is clearly pushing an agenda and in the process does a lot of historical revision.

Police is a normal and useful component of society, the kind of excesses that Americans have to contend with are a direct result of a society that is broken in many ways and for which there are no easy fixes.

If you let the regular police get away with enough bad stuff over time the good guys will leave the force and more bad elements will enter. Keep this going for a couple of decades and you get Baltimore. But it need not be that way. Fixing this will be hard though, they are pretty strongly entrenched now and it will take major force to get rid of them, similar to how hard it is to get rid of the Mafia in Italy.

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#64

Post by frandroid »

patmcc wrote: post #49
southphillyman wrote: post #35

Baltimore police were stealing drugs from Baltimore dealers and selling the stolen drugs to dealers in Philadelphia. Hard to believe actions like that were taking place in the U.S. Sounds like something straight out of a Narcos episode.

>>Hard to believe actions like that were taking place in the U.S. Is it? I'm a Canadian and everything I hear about the US police terrifies me - SWATing leading to innocent people being killed, unarmed black men being shot, no-knock warrants, civil forfeiture, the impossibility of convicting police for just about anything. If the worst thing they were doing was selling drugs that'd be an improvement as far as I can t…

Hey, it happens in Canada too.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/06/29/saga_of_a_toront...

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#65

Post by grasshopperpurp »

jacquesm wrote: post #63
grasshopperpurp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class. Really not that different. http://in…

> They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class. Nonsense, the police were not created with that goal in mind. The Romans had police, plenty of European cities had police forces prior to the 18th century (see Rembrandt's painting 'the Nightwatch' for some proof of that) and so does ev…

>Nonsense, the police were not created with that goal in mind. The Romans had police, and so does every other normal society, even the ones that are not dictatorships.

So, every 'normal' society doesn't have a ruling class that uses police to protect its assets from the working class?

>Also, you've just made the leap from 'secret police' to 'plainclothes detectives' to 'any police'.

Don't see the contention here.

>If you let the regular police get away with enough bad stuff over time the good guys will leave the force and more bad elements will enter. Keep this going for a couple of decades and you get Baltimore.

Replace Baltimore with 99% of the police agencies in the US (can't speak for other countries), and I'd agree.

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#66

Post by gautamnarula »

duck wrote: post #53
mcny wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really really doubt that. All the conservatives I know love the police and think they can do no wrong. I hate to agree. Just an example https://archive.fo/QjtoQ > A Minnesota prosecutor said on Thursday he needs more time to decide whether to charge a police officer who fatally shot an Australian woman who called 911 for help. > Minneapolis officer Mohamed Noor shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond on 15 July, just minute…

The only problem with this reasoning is Minnesota is one of the most liberal states in the Union.

What are you basing that off of? Trump barely lost Minnesota in 2016 (46.9 Clinton to 45.4 Trump), and it's a swing state in virtually every national election.

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#67

Post by 0xddd »

ronilan wrote: post #58
patmcc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Hard to believe actions like that were taking place in the U.S. Is it? I'm a Canadian and everything I hear about the US police terrifies me - SWATing leading to innocent people being killed, unarmed black men being shot, no-knock warrants, civil forfeiture, the impossibility of convicting police for just about anything. If the worst thing they were doing was selling drugs that'd be an improvement as far as I can t…

I’m a Canadian too. The 49th is just a line in the sand. Here’s a reminder: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dziekański_Taser_inci...

Is it really as widespread in Canada? The list linked to from that wiki article seems comparatively bare [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_police_ex...

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#68

Post by maxerickson »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
youdontknowtho wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm...I don't know if 'vast' is what I would use there, but there's a difference.

The difference is that a secret police is used by a dictatorship to keep the dictator in power by systematically attacking the opposition and any grass roots movements. Plainclothes detectives are simply police that are not in uniform ('undercover'), they are still part of the regular police force.

Detectives that just wear civilian clothes aren't quite undercover though. Much of what they do will involve identifying themselves as police (which is not a cover, it's fact).

In the US at least, "undercover" implies that they are not identifying themselves as police.

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#69

Post by nkurz »

jdavis703 wrote: post #38
southphillyman wrote: post #35

Baltimore police were stealing drugs from Baltimore dealers and selling the stolen drugs to dealers in Philadelphia. Hard to believe actions like that were taking place in the U.S. Sounds like something straight out of a Narcos episode.

This has been going on for decades, across the country. See also the Rampart Scandal [0] and the Allen v. City of Oakland [1] case in which cops in LA and Oakland respectively, robbed, beat kidnapped and otherwise victimized citizens. I hate to think what happens in small cities and towns where this stuff is even harder to report. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen…

I hate to think what happens in small cities and towns where this stuff is even harder to report.

I'm not sure. I'm more familiar with the small town side of society, and I'd guess that it's much easier to hide this sort of behavior in a larger city. There's much less anonymity in a small town, and keeping this sort of behavior going would require "buy in" from the entire police force rather than just a nucleus of corrupt officers. So while the small town police force might be more likely to abuse civil forfeiture against out-of-town drivers, I'd be surprised if this level of corruption targeting residents would be possible in a smaller department.

Re: In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat

#70

Post by acct1771 »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #25
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #12

Why is there not more transparency? It makes zero sense. What is going to stop something like this occuring again? Officers going to jail?

Police unions are the only strong unions left in the country. The conservatives will come for them at some point too...until then you have places like Philly that, at least used to, have complaints against police be heard by the union before they are passed on to internal affairs. Bmore takes the cake, though...just wtf all over and back again.

What's most at risk if police collective bargaining is weakened?
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