Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why police lie under oath

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 130 posts

Re: Why police lie under oath

#121

Post by mindcrime »

cema wrote: post #118
csense wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> professional drivers getting out of massive speeding tickets That seems unlikely. > Why have speed limits at all then? To reduce the frequency and severity of crashes. To give people a baseline for safe speed. If most people's usual driving speed is "10 mph over the limit," then the effective speed limit is simply N+10 mph, where N is the number on the signs. > tailgating It's easy to deal with this effectively on…

If most people's usual driving speed is "10 mph over the limit," then the effective speed limit is simply N+10 mph, where N is the number on the signs. A big "if". As I recall, when speed limits were raised on some of the highways in Maryland from 55 mph to 65 mph, the traffic kept going at 72 mph. In a society where everybody drives, speeds are set not so much by some kind of a law but more by the natural course of…

Yep, traffic is largely self-regulating. Most people know how fast it's safe to drive and do it anyway. The others don't care about the "speed limit". Net effect, the actual posted speed limit and associated laws and corrupt bureaucracy are totally useless.

And never mind that "speed limits" are reverse engineered from observations of the natural speed of traffic in a given area in the first place.[1]

[1]: http://www.ite.org/standards/speed_zoning.pdf

Re: Why police lie under oath

#122

Post by IamBren »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #32

My brother is in prison for murder. He did it and confessed to it. Still, during the trial the detectives saw fit to lie under oath, and bring forth evidence of his character (his diary) obtained illegally (they lied and said it was obtained via a neighbor who found it in a trash can in his house 0_o). All of this even though they had an open and shut case. It blew my mind that in a case that they had in the bag and…

I'm not involved with anything remotely illegal but I still watched this all the way through because of the police situation in the US:

"An law school professor and former criminal defense attorney tells you why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

It's quite fascinating really. The police officer he has come up to speak talks about some of the tricks they use to get people to confess and they talk about word tricks they use to get convictions even of innocent people. It's pretty terrifying.

What I find interesting is how many TV shows depict suspects running their mouths to the police like they're all buddies. You're NEVER supposed to do that. Even innocent people can very easily incriminate themselves, as they show in the above video.

Speaking of Texas and executions, have you ever read about Todd Willingham?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...

Willingham was convicted of "multiple infanticide" for burning his house down with his daughters still inside. He maintained his innocence until the end, and finally found a fire investigator to review the case shortly before he was scheduled to be executed. The investigator provided conclusive evidence that he DID NOT start the fire, but the Board of Pardons and Paroles apparently didn't even read it:

“The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”

And so, sadly, he was executed.

There are so many WTFs in this case, which is probably partly why the article is so long. One thing that stood out is how the witness testimony changed from "he was frantically trying to put the fire out" to "he didn't seem to be doing much of all" after he was charged with starting the fire (the witnesses became biased). And how the fire investigators could be high school drop outs with minimal training, and how they used gut feelings and super outdated science while investigating the case. Their investigation is really what caused him to be convicted. Pretty sad story, and it seems to happen a lot like this, especially in Texas.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#123

Post by sjwright »

mindcrime wrote: post #119
brazzy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why have speed limits at all then? Because speed kills, plain and simple. It reduces the time you have to react to any problem, increases your braking distance and increases the damage and lethality of any impact. The latter two are affected with the square of speed. There are very, very good reasons to have a universal hard speed limit.

There are very, very good reasons to have a universal hard speed limit. There are? Well then what are they?

Lower speed deltas create the safest driving conditions.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#124

Post by brazzy »

mindcrime wrote: post #119
brazzy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why have speed limits at all then? Because speed kills, plain and simple. It reduces the time you have to react to any problem, increases your braking distance and increases the damage and lethality of any impact. The latter two are affected with the square of speed. There are very, very good reasons to have a universal hard speed limit.

There are very, very good reasons to have a universal hard speed limit. There are? Well then what are they?

Re-read my comment.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#125

Post by mitchty »

dasil003 wrote: post #100
mitchty wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly sometimes tailgaters don't get off your ass if you slow down. I slowed down to 30 once on a 70mph stretch before one guy finally passed while flipping me the bird. My new rule is to just floor it to get other cars in between me and them.

Wow. To paraphrase Team America: that guy was an asshole and a pussy.

To be fair its really uncommon, but it has stuck out quite a bit in my mind.

The amusing part to me was he turned left only about a mile up so there was no real reason to stay tailgating (no off ramps up and coming). Just to note that I wasn't being a dick about things either.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#126

Post by philwelch »

btilly wrote: post #77
philwelch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stalin ended up replacing over-enthusiastic NKVD chiefs twice You know things are bad when Josef Stalin replaces you because you're overenthusiastic.

No, he was just following Machiavelli's advice for how a prince (ie dictator) should enforce law and order when extreme measures are called for. Namely assign the job to a henchman, and then when the deed is done, convince the people that the henchman was acting on his own, and execute the henchman: http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/churchhistory220/Lecture13...

One would surmise that if Stalin's goal was to avoid building a reputation as a brutal mass murderer, he certainly failed.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#127

Post by btilly »

philwelch wrote: post #126
btilly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he was just following Machiavelli's advice for how a prince (ie dictator) should enforce law and order when extreme measures are called for. Namely assign the job to a henchman, and then when the deed is done, convince the people that the henchman was acting on his own, and execute the henchman: http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/churchhistory220/Lecture13...

One would surmise that if Stalin's goal was to avoid building a reputation as a brutal mass murderer, he certainly failed.

No, Stalin's goal was to maintain control without open rebellion.

He succeeded in that.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#128

Post by philwelch »

btilly wrote: post #127
philwelch wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would surmise that if Stalin's goal was to avoid building a reputation as a brutal mass murderer, he certainly failed.

No, Stalin's goal was to maintain control without open rebellion. He succeeded in that.

There's good evidence he was poisoned, and after his death he was pretty quickly denounced, but he ruled for long enough that we can still count it as a win I suppose.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#129

Post by wnight »

mc32 wrote: post #47
rdtsc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but on the other hand they are just people -- as fallible as anyone. Responsibilities, privileges, and risks should be clearly presented to anyone applying for the position. Imagine, for example, we applied the same argument to ATC controllers. "Oh they are just human, so they let the planes collide once in a while. No biggie. Maybe 10 days paid vacation" -- No way, right? There would be talks of manslaughter charg…

>Imagine, for example, we applied the same argument to ATC controllers. One can't honestly compare the rigor and checks for a order of magnitudes larger workforce. It's like saying the same rigor applied to space vehicles should be taken to build cars or appliances. I mean, it's possible, but not economically viable. Also, it's not the same kind of adrenalin inducing scenario (i.e you're not thinking, "is this the pl…

They might be good people but still be horrible cops. But being horrible cops means they must not be cops.

Would you have such an accepting stance on teachers refusing to turn in a rapist teacher? Betraying a trust must mean you lose your position immediately, but it must also cost enough to make it honestly unattractive.

By not having strong and effective punishments for this we create perverse incentives to betray others.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#130

Post by schrodinger »

calibraxis wrote: post #82
noonespecial wrote: post #16

Nearly the entire job of police is to collect evidence of crimes being committed. (Actually stopping crimes in progress is secondary at best). Falsifying evidence is the opposite of this job. Not just not doing the job, but doing its inverse. Provably falsifying evidence even one time should be enough to be banned from ever being entrusted to carry out this role again.

> Nearly the entire job of police is to collect evidence of crimes being committed. I have to disagree. Their job is to maintain social control using violence (and the threat of it). If you take food from a store and give it to a hungry person, you'll face a man with a stick. What happens when you watch a DVD movie? You get threatened that a man with a stick will come after you if you copy it. Similar goes if you sim…

Let me preface this statement by saying that I am a libertarian opposed to the excess powers granted to some police and the corrupt situations in which they may be found.

However, in a city like NYC I (anecdotally) find that in the overwhelming cases I've encountered the police have focused on real problems like violent drunks and child Abusers. For case in point, I was with a group moving frm a party to a bar and we (lapsing judgement) carried a few beers with us for the walk over. Definitely not violent drunks.

An undercover cop car was driving by and had (presumably) no choice but to detain us. In the end, he laughed at us and told us to pound our beers since we already got in trouble for them anyway (seriously, they laughingly told us to finish our beers off to the side while they wrote the ticket). It ended up behind a minor citation ($30) and a wink and get on with your night. Not a big deal.

I don't think it's fair to pigeonhole all or even most officers as someone who will show Up "with a stick". While I lament unreasonable open container laws, these guys handled things very profrofessionally and respectfully.

Maybe I got a skewed sample, but I, being pretty libertarian have been pretty impressed with the pragmatism and respect I've seen with the NYPD.

Post reply on HN