Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program • Hacker News Board

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#41

Post by valuearb » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

craftinator wrote: post #17

It seems like the more I read about the police, the more I realize that in their current form, they are unnecessary. For general policing, as in keeping the population safe and dampening crime, they don't need spy planes, they need legs; they don't need pistols, they need communication skills; they don't need body armor, they need to earn the trust of the people that pay them. If 99% of police encounters don't involv…

You aren’t totally wrong, but your view is a recipe for disaster because sooner or later most cops are thrust into that 1% scenario, and they need the ability to defend themselves and you.

The better solution is to eliminate the drivers of friction between honest citizens and cops, especially those traffic create more violent encounters. No knock warrants, the war on drugs, civil forfeiture, vice squads and the criminalization of victimless crimes, the “trafficking myth” war on sex workers, etc.

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#42

Post by einszwei » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #26

Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Remember when they looked at 2 years of body-cam footage for one of their highest earners and came out the other end with 32 counts of assault, false imprisonment and generalized misconduct? [1] They didn't get that idea themselves, though. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/12/an-office...

I feel that mass surveillance for law enforcement will not work until public, judiciary and law accept that Police like all people make errors. It shouldn't be a herculean task to reverse a wrongful arrest or file charges for a use of excessive force by law enforcement officer.

Courts should ultimately decide if the officer did this out of malice/incompetence and penalize accordingly.

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#43

Post by bosswipe » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #16

dfxm12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, yes, but not on the whole. This article goes into some detail about recent votes related to the Patriot act. https://inthesetimes.com/article/bernie-sanders-patriot-act-... Interestingly, there was a three-month extension of the three Patriot Act provisions, included in a House resolution to prevent a government shutdown . It's bad that these things are linked in the same resolution to begin wi…

Why are they tied together? Because someone proposed an amendment to the bill, and enough people voted for it for the amendment to pass . Then politicians don't have to put their name on voting for the extension to the "Patriot" Act. But some of them still voted for this. With some research, they could be named and shamed.

That's an outdated understanding of how the Senate works in the McConell era. No one voted for amendments. Nowadays these things are worked out behind closed doors by Republican leadership and then sprung onto the schedule with as little opportunity for debate as possible.

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#44

Post by v6zfzcbq9cur » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

typenil wrote: post #3

Unsurprising. I wish that mass surveillance didn't have complicit bipartisan support, but people in power only ever seem interested in expanding it.

For this to change, more people who share an aversion to mass surveillance have to get involved in politics. There are lots of people like this, but they are either apolitical, apathetic, hopeless, don't want to get their hands dirty, think politics is beneath them, that their resistance would be ineffectual, or they are too busy with other things. That has to change.

As one more thing to consider: there's some irony in that running for office isn't exactly privacy-friendly. I sometimes wonder if elected office, if not any and all kinds of public service, necessarily selects for people who don't care too much about their own personal privacy, and what the consequences of that are. There's no way to get there without essentially throwing away whatever dregs of anonymity you've managed to hold on to.

So, while I don't think I'm any of those things you list, and I've often thought that I would love to run for office some day, just glancing at the paperwork required to show up to the race is typically enough to turn me off of the idea for a while.

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#45

Post by valuearb » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #11

Lets spend that spy plane money on mental health professionals and stuff that actually helps people and lets us not use the police for everything all the time. AKA "Defund the police."

Instead of “defund the police” how bout “legalize victimless behaviors”?

If cops weren’t tasked to police what you put in your body and what you do with other consenting adults, we’d need far fewer of them and we’d probably appreciate the remaining cops a lot more.

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#46

Post by macspoofing » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #34

macspoofing wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Baltimore is #11 on a list of most violent cities in the world[1]. There are children and good people trying to live in those crime-ridden neighborhoods. The police is not the problem. I feel for the cops there because you can't take one of the most violent cities in the world and expect to police it like Sweden. As such, I wish they mai…

And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? Sorry, working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD.

>And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department?

What about them? False imprisonment is a problem, but not at the scale of the crime in that city. Baltimore had 350 homicides and 2000+ robberies/assaults/rapes, and thousands more thefts and property crimes [1].

Let me pose a question to you: At what point do we start focusing on victims of crime again? All I hear is about police reform, and about criminal rights. Who stands up for the good people living in the violent neighborhoods of St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore etc.? When will the focus be set on the victims in those neighborhoods? Do the people there have a right to not be victimized? Who enforces those rights? A 7 year old girl was killed by a stray bullet in Atlanta recently[2]? What is the ACLU doing for her, her family, and other such families?

>working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD.

Maybe the fact that Baltimore cops are forced to deal with the worst of humanity in one of the most violent cities in the world plays a role here? Maybe you need to lower the crime rate before you can expect policing to improve?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore [2] https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/latest-loss-from-atlantas-ris...

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#47

Post by birdyrooster » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #46

alistairSH wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? Sorry, working a tough beat does not excuse the malfeasance endemic to the Baltimore PD.

>And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? What about them? False imprisonment is a problem, but not at the scale of the crime in that city. Baltimore had 350 homicides and 2000+ robberies/assaults/rapes, and thousands more thefts and property crimes [1]. Let me pose a question to you: At what point do we start focusing on victims of crime again? All I hear is about p…

The only thing the police provide victims is a deterrence for criminals and for some, perhaps, a sense of justice and closure. Beyond that, there is nothing more the police can do for victims. Victims need laws passed to help their communities from turning to crime in the first place or laws that decriminalize so called victimless crimes. Part of those changes means funding schools and small businesses and tax abatement for those in most need. So now, while we are talking about funding we look at the city budget. Lo and behold, police departments take a lot (in some cases a plurality) of total tax revenue that could be used to help victims in ways beyond deterrence. That is why we talk about defunding police. That is the context in which we are focusing on victims. The police create many victims on their own and currently have no internal way to fix that problem.

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#48

Post by macspoofing » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

birdyrooster wrote: post #47

macspoofing wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And what about the victims of false imprisonment due to a wholly corrupt police department? What about them? False imprisonment is a problem, but not at the scale of the crime in that city. Baltimore had 350 homicides and 2000+ robberies/assaults/rapes, and thousands more thefts and property crimes [1]. Let me pose a question to you: At what point do we start focusing on victims of crime again? All I hear is about p…

The only thing the police provide victims is a deterrence for criminals and for some, perhaps, a sense of justice and closure. Beyond that, there is nothing more the police can do for victims. Victims need laws passed to help their communities from turning to crime in the first place or laws that decriminalize so called victimless crimes. Part of those changes means funding schools and small businesses and tax abatem…

>When talking about policing, the only thing it provides victims is deterrence for criminals. Beyond that, there is nothing more the police can do for victims.

What about taking criminals out of the community and locking them away in prison? Would that not help? Because that's what this surveillance program would do. It allows the police to view footage after the crime occurred and track down the perp. It wouldn't help that victim, but it would prevent the next one.

>Lo and behold, police departments take a lot of tax money that could be used to help victims in ways beyond deterrence and so that is why we talk about defunding police.

False choice. You don't need to defund the police to fund whatever program you want. And you make it seem like there is some magic social program just waiting to be funded that would solve criminality but the evil police budget is what prevents it from being implemented. As if!

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#49

Post by pmoriarty » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

v6zfzcbq9cur wrote: post #44

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this to change, more people who share an aversion to mass surveillance have to get involved in politics. There are lots of people like this, but they are either apolitical, apathetic, hopeless, don't want to get their hands dirty, think politics is beneath them, that their resistance would be ineffectual, or they are too busy with other things. That has to change.

As one more thing to consider: there's some irony in that running for office isn't exactly privacy-friendly. I sometimes wonder if elected office, if not any and all kinds of public service, necessarily selects for people who don't care too much about their own personal privacy, and what the consequences of that are. There's no way to get there without essentially throwing away whatever dregs of anonymity you've mana…

Not to disagree with what you said at all, but there are plenty of ways to get involved in politics without running for office.

Things like organizing, volunteering your time and expertise to political organizations you support, protesting, documenting and reporting on abuses, or doing something that many HN readers are in a rather privileged position of affording to do: donate significant amounts of money to the organizations whose work they support.

Re: Baltimore police lied about almost every aspect of its spy plane program

#50

Post by javajosh » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

einszwei wrote: post #42

stefan_ wrote: post #26

Baltimore police does need a mass surveillance program - for it's own officers. Remember when they looked at 2 years of body-cam footage for one of their highest earners and came out the other end with 32 counts of assault, false imprisonment and generalized misconduct? [1] They didn't get that idea themselves, though. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/12/an-office...

I feel that mass surveillance for law enforcement will not work until public, judiciary and law accept that Police like all people make errors. It shouldn't be a herculean task to reverse a wrongful arrest or file charges for a use of excessive force by law enforcement officer. Courts should ultimately decide if the officer did this out of malice/incompetence and penalize accordingly.

The American public is already too biased in favor of LEO, to judge by trial outcomes.

Law enforcement should be held to a higher, not lower standard than ordinary people. That will make the job tougher, but if it that makes it too tough for an individual, they don't have to work there.