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Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

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Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#111

Post by jakelazaroff »

mieseratte wrote: post #100
edent wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice." "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana…

> "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice." This one is the original marihuana legislation, predating Nixon's war on drugs, right? > "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either a…

> Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent.

It shows that the intent continues to be racist. This disparity is ongoing, not historical; if it's truly not racist, why not bring the amount of possession charges in line with usage?

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#112

Post by dsfyu404ed »

maxerickson wrote: post #54
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speeding. Public intoxication. Keeping an attractive nuisance.

Speeding and attractive nuisances are only victimless if you squint, as they both pretty clearly are statistically harmful to others (not when I speed a bunch of people feel the need to say I'm sure). Public intoxication less so, but it is also mostly used as a pretext to remove people from public spaces in cases where it is obvious they shouldn't be there. Speeding is also mostly treated as a minor infraction, not q…

The reason people get mostly minor monetary fines for speeding is because we as a society really don't care if people violate the statute so long as they're not being unreasonable about it and it's mostly used as a revenue/probably cause/fishing tool. Ditto for public drunkedness, don't be an ass and it's not a problem.

Speeding, public intoxication, etc. in the typical cases don't have victims because we as a society have decided that we are not victimized by small increase in risk of a negative outcome.

However, writing statues that we expect to be violated and then leaving it up to the cops' discretion is not exactly a recipe for the fairest outcome.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#113

Post by sandworm101 »

seandoe wrote: post #86
celticmusic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motivation for the war on drugs is not borne out of racism, but a combination of greed and public safety concern.

I agree. "Born out of racism" is too strong. I'm not even sure what it means exactly. Was racism rampant at the time? Yes. But the war on drugs still would've happened if there was no racism. Those rugurgitated figures on black vs white drug use vs convictions misses the boat. Go to any city and recognize the color of people that control the drug market. The majority of them are not white. The police don't focus on u…

The early days of the drug war, the ban on pot, was very much a racial thing. There were "scientific" studies and political speeches focusing on how dangerous it would make the negro population, how black men high on pot would be raping white women. Generations later, the crackdown on crack cocaine, as opposed to the more expensive normal cocaine, also broke down along racial lines. The drug wars in other countries, those without America's racial history, have been very different. What makes the US drug war what it is, as opposed to say Canada's or the UK's, is its grounding in America's 'unique' race relations.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#114

Post by Anechoic »

steveeq1 wrote: post #73
eledumb wrote: post #16

I'm a white male, near 1% income and I live in a small town about 30 miles outside a major U.S. city and I'm terrified of the police. We've stopped holding the police accountable for their actions and it's out of control. Local government, state government, prosecutors and most of all the Unions are to blame. Yeah, the Union, I'm the son of a Union executive and Unions have lost their way. The Union is supposed to pr…

The statistics don't support your concern: https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/screen-shot-20... The "unarmed black man shot and killed by police" is heavily pushed by media companies because, well, its an emotional issue that gets ratings, sells newspapers, and gets clicks. Same thing with "terrorist threats", shark bites, and airline crashes. People view it because it's dramatic and it sticks in your head…

The "unarmed black man shot and killed by police"

The issue isn't just being killed by police - It's also being beaten by police, having things unlawfully seized by police, being unjustly cited or arrested by police, and so on. So yeah, being unjustly arrested and spending a weekend in jail waiting to be arraigned on Monday is better than being killed, but it still sucks.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#115

Post by dsfyu404ed »

jadell wrote: post #89
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speeding. Public intoxication. Keeping an attractive nuisance.

Attractive nuisance is a tort, not a crime. No one gets arrested for it, they get sued if someone gets injured. Speeding is arguably not victimless. Someone pointed out the "shooting into a crowd without hitting anyone" analogy, which is apt. You're engaging in immediately threatening and dangerous behavior. Public intoxication is also not victimless; that's the "disorderly" part of "drunk and disorderly" (whether it…

"Shooting into a crowd" is an intentionally reductionist comparison meant to remove nuance so the reader reaches a specific conclusion. The fact of the matter is that we (we = society) do not condone any level of shooting into a crowd whereas we find certain situation specific levels of drunkenness and speeding perfectly fine. Speeding, public intoxication, etc. in the typical cases don't have victims because we as a society have decided that we are not victimized by small increase in risk of a negative outcome. However, there is some situation dependent hard to pin down threshold where we decide society is victimized and basically everyone agrees the crime is worth prosecuting.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#116

Post by ZeroGravitas »

merpnderp wrote: post #45
sandworm101 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you want to understand why America's police act like an occupying army... then you have to start with the Drug War. Go back much further than that. Go back to the civil rights movement. Go back to jim crow. The history of the American war on drugs was born of racism and continues its birthright. That is the real sticking point, the source of the high emotions surrounding drugs. The drug war is a proxy for much…

There was definitely racism in the passing and enforcing of these laws. There was also definitely communities overran with drug related crime that were desperate for help. When a single mom can't buy her kid a bicycle because the last 3 have been stolen out from under him by addicts looking to score, she's going to ask the her elected representatives for help.

That latter paragraph sounds a lot like the things people say when they want to deny racism was part of the war on drugs.

What often gets missed is that high up members of the Republican party are on record as intentionally escalating the war on drugs to attack their enemies (black people and anti war hippies amongst others).

So if they thought that the war on drugs wasn't a "problem" but rather an opportunity, then they have no incentive to "solve" the problem, in fact quite the opposite. Any consequences that then follow from drug related crime must ultimately fall at their door, not the person they've led into addiction by policy.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#117

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #111
mieseratte wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice." This one is the original marihuana legislation, predating Nixon's war on drugs, right? > "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either a…

> Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent. It shows that the intent continues to be racist. This disparity is ongoing, not historical; if it's truly not racist, why not bring the amount of possession charges in line with usage?

So sickle cell anemia is racist? You can't tell the intent of something by the impact alone.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#118

Post by DuskStar »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #111
mieseratte wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice." This one is the original marihuana legislation, predating Nixon's war on drugs, right? > "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either a…

> Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent. It shows that the intent continues to be racist. This disparity is ongoing, not historical; if it's truly not racist, why not bring the amount of possession charges in line with usage?

> It shows that the intent continues to be racist.

It shows the impact, not the intent, continues to be racist. It doesn't really say anything about intent, at least without a lot more data. If white and black usage differ in kind somehow - say, pot brownies vs smoking on the street (I have no idea if there is a racial disparity here) - it could lead to a difference in police involvement without any racial discrimination.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#119

Post by dictum »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #117
jakelazaroff wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adverse impact, problematic enough, does not imply something was made with racist intent. It shows that the intent continues to be racist. This disparity is ongoing, not historical; if it's truly not racist, why not bring the amount of possession charges in line with usage?

So sickle cell anemia is racist? You can't tell the intent of something by the impact alone.

Sickle cell anemia wasn't imposed via law.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#120

Post by ceejayoz »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #116
merpnderp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was definitely racism in the passing and enforcing of these laws. There was also definitely communities overran with drug related crime that were desperate for help. When a single mom can't buy her kid a bicycle because the last 3 have been stolen out from under him by addicts looking to score, she's going to ask the her elected representatives for help.

That latter paragraph sounds a lot like the things people say when they want to deny racism was part of the war on drugs. What often gets missed is that high up members of the Republican party are on record as intentionally escalating the war on drugs to attack their enemies (black people and anti war hippies amongst others). So if they thought that the war on drugs wasn't a "problem" but rather an opportunity, then…

As a concrete example, Bush Sr.'s famous speech on crack involved begging a drug dealer to come to Pennsylvania Avenue so they could include that fact in it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/tours/s...

> But obtaining the crack was no easy feat. To match the words crafted by the speech-writers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents lured a suspected District drug dealer to Lafayette Park four days before the speech so they could make what appears to have been the agency's first undercover crack buy in a park better known for its location across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House than for illegal drug activity, according to officials familiar with the case.

> In fact, when first contacted by an undercover DEA agent posing as a drug buyer, the teenage suspect seemed baffled by the agent's request.

> "Where the {expletive} is the White House?" he replied in a conversation that was secretly tape-recorded by the DEA.

> "We had to manipulate him to get him down there," said William McMullan, assistant special agent in charge of DEA's Washington field office. "It wasn't easy."

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