Earlier quoted context omitted.
The DA is in the judicial branch?
Is it not? It's the lawyer appointed by the public.
Not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the DA is part of the executive branch.
Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
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Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#22"Deputy Attorney General Jesse Drum argued that the deputies had not acted in bad faith" Is it typical for DAs to have lacking judgement? I know we hear about the bad ones but whenever any kind of insane police stunt appears in the media the DA is always on the police's side. I thought the judicial branch was supposed to be separate and neutral from the executive branch.
DAs are in justice, which is part of executive. Courts are in judicial.
Oh. Okay. That's confusing.
Why aren't DAs part of the Judical branch? It seems like they are a key part of our justice system.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? looking back over the years, from the outside, I think that's been the american attitude all along.
I'd like to hear more about this if you don't mind expounding on it some. I realize that in a certain light that's how it looks (I'm no stranger to a lot of what used to be called conspiracy theories, including the long history of illegal surveillance) but honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion. I realize that's not the same as operating in…
While there is no catching a criminal in this situation. Asset forfeiture is abused. This is where police take items, usually cash, and keep it. There is no trial, just a seizure of property.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/p...
It's a good example of what I mean. There are others, I'm just not going to post them all. The police seem to optimize for stats and profit. And the cities/counties/state are on board. That's why we see red light cameras too. There are also documented cases of tweaking yellow light times in order to increase the number of tickets sent for running red lights.
The police don't seem to be here to protect and serve anymore. Like most things in America it's all about appearances and money.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#24Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high. I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be directly and indire…
Worse is the whole guilty until proven innocent scenario the media (and our society) has created. All it takes is being a suspect once to have your life turned inside out. For years people will suspect you of whatever horrors were committed by someone else.
The founding fathers are rolling over as they say if they heard where this country has gone.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? looking back over the years, from the outside, I think that's been the american attitude all along.
Yes, let’s take an outlier and extrapolate that to a universal. There are bad people everywhere and in America there are a lot of tools to discourage and identify that behavior.
Outlier? Well that depends on a lot of things - social class, colour, gender, religion, position on the environment etc. What looks like an outlier to you may not be an outlier to lots of other people.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#26"They sought warrants to search Heuring’s home and the barn, alleging that there was probable cause that a crime had been committed — that Heuring had committed theft by taking off the GPS tracker. While searching the barn, they found the tracker in a bathroom locker. They also found evidence of drug use: a glass pipe. A subsequent search, granted by a judge based on the paraphernalia, uncovered bags of methamphetami…
I don't know. Investigators who are willing to stoop to "He stole our tracker" are surely not above exaggerating the evidence they've found.
Why do we even bother with warrants if the police can get around them by tricking you into "stealing" something?
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#27By this logic, with a simple warrant, the police could place a big, obvious microphone in the middle of your living room, label it "Police surveillance mic", and you would be forbidden from removing it. I find that much more troubling than any technicalities around 'did he know it belonged to the cops'. Just how much obedience can a simple warrant coerce out of supposedly free citizens?
Just stick an Amazon or Google logo on it and people will buy it and place it themselves..
But that also lets me order more Doritos hands free!
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
DAs are in justice, which is part of executive. Courts are in judicial.
Oh. Okay. That's confusing. Why aren't DAs part of the Judical branch? It seems like they are a key part of our justice system.
Because the US system is adversarial. DAs work with the police to try and convict people. DAs are often very politically motivated in their decisions of who to prosecute and for what charges (throwing the book at people).
Judges are independent from that. They’re supposed to act as a check against the excesses of the DA office.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#29Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high. I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be directly and indire…
>Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution
You just threw that straw man straight down a slippery slope.
>apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high
This falls under "punching Nazis". Do you want some guy going around punching people? No, of course not. But if he's punching Nazis, then hey, let him do his thing, man. Same logic here, except it's "tracking meth dealers".
>I know I sound dramatic
I was thinking "moral grandstanding"
I'm okay with the police catching a meth dealer and putting him away. Good job. Keep up the good work.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? looking back over the years, from the outside, I think that's been the american attitude all along.
I'd like to hear more about this if you don't mind expounding on it some. I realize that in a certain light that's how it looks (I'm no stranger to a lot of what used to be called conspiracy theories, including the long history of illegal surveillance) but honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion. I realize that's not the same as operating in…
This was covered in popular culture most famously by The Wire, written by retired police beat reporter David Simon, it's called "juking the stats", each police district is judged by different crime stats, and promotions are based on those stats, so naturally everything evolves to optimized for better stats. Not only that, on the judicial side in America over the past 50 years, funding has not kept up with the increase in population so there is an extreme pressure on prosecutors to not go to trial, add to this the political nature of the office and American prosecutors are under pressure to keep up their 95% conviction rate, this is done by going hard after those least able to afford an adequate defense and "laddering", adding on every single conceivable charge so that defendants will plead guilty to a smaller number of charges in exchange for some charges being dropped and not inconvenience the state with an expensive trial by jury. This is covered pretty well by season 3 of the Serial podcast.