401–410 of 439 posts
I don't understand flock cameras in high crime areas. Every time somebody commits a heinous crime it's always like "they were arrested 72 times and were well known by the police" What's the point in helping the police catch criminals when they don't do anything after the fact!
Too few prosecutors. Police only arrests, but the real job is done by prosecutors. However, there's a global shortage of them, and cities don't hire more. I don't know whether that's a popular job nowadays. So without proper charges judge cannot do anything but release. Police cannot do anything but arrest. Prosecutors are the main line of defense (defending public from criminals).
DAs used to go after particularly egregious offenders and throw the book at them. This creates incentive effects for all the other would be criminals. It doesn’t take all that much enforcement before criminals get the idea and stop or are put in jail for decades.
Instead we have prosecutors going after all the wrong kinds of crime. Murderers are getting no cash bail while guys who cut down a tree in their yard are getting visits from the police and court summons for non-crimes.
This is intentional policy from DA offices. Pay attention next time your DA is up for reelection, they impact your quality of life far more than your representatives.
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I don't know what you think these links are accomplishing for you. I'm not talking about Flock in the abstract; I have firsthand experience with it. I'm part of a group of people who ultimately got the cameras taken down in my municipality, and before that, I spent years helping craft local rules and ordinances limiting them. There are tens of thousands of Flock cameras all over the country. It would be weird if ther…
You seem a bit distracted by the links instead of the content that can be accessed by clicking on them, they show that in tens of instances, your personal anecdote about how flock removal went don't hold. Flock drags their feet, makes legal threats to cities that cancel, forgets to turn cameras off, turns cameras back on, claims cameras are shut off when they are on, installs new cameras after cancellation, leaves ca…
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So revealed preferences of voters is that they just dont care that much about weeding out bad apples? From what it sounds like, it’s likely not on any sizable group’s top 10 priority list in LA.
It's not possible. Whether it's a city government, judges, cops, schoolteachers, or clergy... some number of people are unethical. Trying to pretend otherwise is a source of a lot of problems. The best way to avoid it is to make it impossible, i.e. in this case don't collect the camera data in the first place. Once it is collected, it will eventually be abused no matter who has control of it.
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Is there any realistic road to having them outlawed nationwide? Eg, ignoring probabilities here, could a wildly successful grassroots program where it became an issue as politically salient as immigration or abortion eventually lead to legislation banning them?
> Is there any realistic... SCOTUS could hand down another surprise decision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatrie_v._United_States
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This is just FOIA. You don't need any special website or process; just Google [(your state) FOIA] or [(your municipality) FOIA officer]. In Illinois, you can simply email free-form requests for documents and start a 10-day clock on the public body's side.
The problem is following up. It's hard to understand the process, and what to do when the public body doesn't respond. If nothing else, the Sunshine Request site is a good place to get form emails for these requests from.
Depending on where you're from, it's pretty easy to find a pro bono attorney. In Illinois, the plaintiff's attorneys recoup their costs on a successful win.
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The problem is following up. It's hard to understand the process, and what to do when the public body doesn't respond. If nothing else, the Sunshine Request site is a good place to get form emails for these requests from.
What you do is: you sue. On my 13th FOIA lawsuit and I have a couple more in the works ;) Depending on where you're from, it's pretty easy to find a pro bono attorney. In Illinois, the plaintiff's attorneys recoup their costs on a successful win.
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These high crime areas are predominantly in blue counties/states, and liberal judges are typically soft on crime.
The US has the highest per-capita rate of imprisonment I think we’re plenty “hard on crime”. What we lack is a principled stance that Americans deserve basic dignity and access to things that make people live less violent lives. It’s no secret that poverty is the key contributor to one’s likelihood of being in prison. People who are “soft on crime”, practically speaking, are the people and politicians so committed to…
This is exactly the false dichotomy that people engaging in this like to play up. It's not an either/or situation... we can and should _both_ address root causes to avoid crime where we can _and_ punish crime when we must.
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See the two paragraphs before? That lays out my position. The courts have repeatedly upheld far more invasive searches and encroachments of vehicles, but now confusingly consider simply observing the outside of your vehicle to constitute an excessive search. The Baltimore decision is stupid because it contradicts 50 years of case law over what constitutes a search and what degree of privacy you expect to have on a pr…
No need for snark; I'm genuinely interested in your position. From my re-read and re-read, you've provided a conclusory statement without actually explaining the details. Is your definition of "stupid" anything that contradicts 50 years of case law? That seems.... tautologically limp.
Do you mind providing your position? Do you think being observed on a public roadway constitutes a search or seizure in the context of the 4th amendment?