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FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

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Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#171
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the DC area, but in plenty of other cities sure. It's not that they're particularly rich, as far as rich people go, it's that the neighbor is like, the chief of staff for the Senator who's in charge of the committee that sets the FBI's budget. Imagine you're a low to mid level employee of a company, and you go do something that makes all of the CEO's friends, business partners, and investors pissed off at him.…

A bit unsetteling how institutionalized corruption is talked about so casually.

[deleted]

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#172
post #3

FYI the neighborhood is Kalorama in DC, where a lot of diplomats and high-level government officials live. Maybe the agents didn't want one of the neighbors to call the director of the FBI to have them chewed out for "making the neighborhood look bad", which is not an impossible thing to happen there considering who the neighbors are. I imagine if you're an FBI field agent, the last thing you want for your career is…

Your knowledge seems to extend beyond the article. Any idea why Kalorama is shaped the way it is? Looking it up on google maps, it looks like two triangles connected by a street, which seems odd for a neighborhood.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#173

People with money and power have it better. Yes, clear, thanks for yet another confirmation. This is why I could never enjoy NYC. As a normal middle class dude you always feel everywhere that you are a nothing: no fame/no power/no money = people are rude, aggressive, hostile to you. I never felt that in London, which is a quite comparable city to NYC. I felt welcome in most places despite not being rich or famous.

NYC as assertive, that's just the way it is. And most rich and famous people are not identifiable as such. This is a non-story. If you don't have gang relations, no criminal record, no violence, no gun ownership ... there's no reason for the cops to bang down the door. That said, I think cops are too aggressive in general about this. That also said - the cops do have a policy of 'bang down the door' because I think i…

There is a reason, they get the wrong door. This has happened repeatedly.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#174
post #139

Fought Experiment: Lets say law enforcement was given the task to examine the affairs of 100, randomly selected, poor/medium income households and 100, randomly selected, very wealthy households. Statistically, where would they find the most amount of criminal activity? Has any similar research been done, and would you care to share the data?

Assuming for a second that the question was asked with legitimate intent: That's the line of reasoning that gets a lot of innocent people treated very very badly based on their socioeconomic status, color of their skin, religion, you name it. Think of it this way: In 1,000,000 people of race blue, the crime rate is 0.01%. So of those million people: 10 are criminals. In 1,000,000 people of race purple, the crime rate…

Of course the question was asked with legitimate intent. And because of the issues you raised, that is the reason why the FBI should have in this case knocked that door.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#175
post #3

FYI the neighborhood is Kalorama in DC, where a lot of diplomats and high-level government officials live. Maybe the agents didn't want one of the neighbors to call the director of the FBI to have them chewed out for "making the neighborhood look bad", which is not an impossible thing to happen there considering who the neighbors are. I imagine if you're an FBI field agent, the last thing you want for your career is…

Worse - imagine you're an FBI field agent, and your "kick in the front door" operation turned into a "SS agents and FBI agents shooting each other" train wreck - because there was a Secret Service protection detail on the other side of that door, and an agent or few got a very fast judgement call wrong, in the heat of the moment.

Or similar, with some VIP who's got trigger-happy private security - because he knows that (say) Mr. Putin would much prefer that he was dead.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the point of capitalism is that people can do that, but shouldn't. And it should work in tandem with whatever social system that's set up, (justice, laws, morals, ethics, etc) Pyramid schemes steal a great amount of wealth, and should be regulated. Regulated capitalism is the good thing. The thing is, pyramid schemes aren't run by the state (or shouldn't be) and you don't have a gun to your head forcing you to p…

I argue there is no need for regulation and we just need pure capitalism. Without a government, companies made of people with guns would emerge punishing scammers and criminals in general, advising companies and reputation systems would emerge protecting people from scams. Due to the nature of entrepreneurship, all these companies could be held in check by competitors. Without regulation slowing down new competitors,…

Everything we have seen of low regulation capitalism shows that quite quickly the market becomes dominated by one or, at best two-three huge players who can simply buy any competition that may seem to emerge. As business books will tell you, competition, in capitalism, is for losers. Winners are the ones that don't have competitors.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#177
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Not necessarily, that's just prejudice. Literally. The sad reality is that poor people and their neighborhoods are more closely scrutinized, small conduct violations are pursued with unjustifiable zeal and harmless behaviors are outright criminalized to facilitate targeting. It's the definition of "systematic racism", and you - it pains me to say - are the target audience of those that institutionalize it. :/

So you are saying poor communities only commit more crimes because of the policing?

The "systematic racism" argument is so broad and unquantifiable and avoids so many other meaningful factors that can actually be addressed. It's a way for these communities to avoid confronting any internal problems they have - whether or not these were caused by historic racism, cycles of poverty, etc.

You should look into some stories of how criminals ended up becoming criminals. Present-day racism is rarely the cause.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#178
Let's compare this experience to that of Amir Locke [1].

To summarize: the Minneapolis PD was executing a no-knock warrant in a homicide investigation. Locke was not the target of the warrant but was sleeping on the couch. He was licensed for the firearm and it was completely legal. When startled awake, he reached for his gun (natural reaction) and the police shot and killed him.

You'd think the NRA would be all over this: a legal gun owner killed in his home by police? Nope [2]. I wonder why.

Let's also compare to Kyle Rittenhouse. Attorneys wanted to use the fact that one of his victims was a sex offender as a defense [3]. There are two possibilities here:

1. Rittenhouse didn't know of this, in which case it's immaterial; and

2. Rittenhouse knew, in which case this was a targeted killing (ie murder).

No one is arguing Rittenhouse knew. The whole point here is post facto justification. This is for the court of public opinion and to give the jury something to hang their hat on with an acquittal. That's it.

I bring this up because I want to highlight the different worlds people live in when it comes to law enforcement. Yet you can't bring the above up without some (predominantly white) people getting offended at the mere suggestion that the system is inherently racist.

Think about that.

[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/amir-lockes-death-prompts-ban-knoc...

[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/where-nra-gun-rights-group-slammed-...

[3]: https://www.kenoshanews.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/kyle...

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#179
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value isn’t what people want. People want drinking water more than just about anything else, but that’s cheap to provide so the cost stays low. Gold on the other hand is rarely something people consider or want, but it’s rare therefore it has high material value.

Value of everything, including money, is subjective and situational. For a "win-win" transaction (which is the case if everyone is free to choose) you need: (Value to buyer) > (value of sale price to buyer) And: (Value of Sale price to seller) > (Cost to the seller) If I buy a computer for $1000, the computer is worth more to me than the $1000. To the seller, the $1000 is worth more to them than the computer. Value h…

That’s extremely oversimplified and irrelevant to my point. Expectations of being able to pay less impacts what people are willing to pay for something.

In a transaction, Value defined for the buyer based on the expectation of personal utility and a seller based on their expectation of the market and their personal utility. The actual cost and actual value to buyer are largely irrelevant.

Basically, buyers lack complete information so they will make purchases where (Value to buyer) < (value of sale price to buyer) etc, and of course sellers have the same issue.

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