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“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

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Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#291

Post by rjbwork »

nahname wrote: post #112
stcredzero wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. Many young people coming out of school seem to have no conception of rights. To them, it's excusable for rights to be violated if they feel enough justified anger. They are unclear on the concept that rights apply to people and situations in ways they may not like.

Don't even try to blame this on the youth. They are still to apathetic to even count. We only have ourselves to blame for this. It is our mess to fix.

Thanks for that! We're just now trying to establish lives for ourselves in one of the worst economic climates since the great depression. That's hard enough without having the responsibility of fixing politics and government foisted upon us as well...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#292

Post by rjbwork »

lightcatcher wrote: post #213
mmagin wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a tangent (but hopefully quite relevant): Does anyone else feel that perhaps a lot of what we're seeing is a case of "Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them"? As I look back on all of the history education I received in school (the compulsory part, not college), it occurs to me that it was largely a lot of propaganda. With the exception of black slavery, a brief mention of WWII internme…

I'm studying applied math at an almost exclusively STEM college. I've taken one history class (European history from 1300-1600) and will not be taking any others. However, I wouldn't consider my public history education to be "largely a lot of propaganda". I did take the advanced (AP) history courses at a public high school in Texas, and I might have just been lucky and great teachers, but my teachers discussed: -Bri…

AP is a whole different best for any class, much less history! I took AP US and non-AP World history in high school. The depth and breadth of material covered was just ridiculously, obscenely different between the two. I'm not sure what graduating high school even means these days if you don't have a bunch of AP credits, but it certainly doesn't make you an informed citizen with basic competencies.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#293

Post by jlgreco »

Kylekramer wrote: post #62
akiselev wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah it's all much worse in other places. We're still "better" than all the dictatorships and authoritarian governments in the world, and that makes it all just fine and dandy. The only people losing sight of reality are the ones deluded into thinking that America/ns is/are immune to what appears to be a fundamental feature of power: corruption. By point 3 he meant actions by USG whistle blowers with access to cla…

There is a problem with broad statements like the grandparent comment. College students buy water everyday without trouble, people own guns without being harassed daily, people makes bets daily without any trouble, people make joking threats daily without incident. There is plenty bad going on without the need for exaggerations and outright lies. If you want reality to change, you have to accept reality. Skewing it t…

People also break into cars to finance their crack addiction everyday without trouble. The incompetence of the police does not excuse their overreach.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#294

Post by mindcrime »

rday wrote: post #119
mtgx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the public thinks that those being targeted are all dirty evil criminals, and I also think America as a whole doesn't have an "innocent before guilty" mentality. It's not just the American leaders that have corrupt minds. It's also a lot of Americans, who are supporting this sort of stuff. The media is also not helping at all, and making the problem worse, because they are usually on the government's s…

I had a very charged discussion with friends just the other night about this very idea. I argued that even if a defendant has the resources to get to a jury trial, the jury is prejudiced against the "criminal" from the start. It turned out, however, that each person in the room had either been wrongly accused of a crime or knew someone that had been railroaded by the system. They knew that the prosecution wasn't perf…

FWIW, I was on a jury for the first and (so far) only time, about 2 years ago. It wasn't a big, flashy murder or rape case, just a guy being accused of breaking into a cop car and stealing a flashlight and a handheld radio. But, I found that the other jurors, by and large, took the "innocent until proven guilty" thing VERY seriously. I know that most of us thought he was "probably" guilty, but in the end, we actually acquitted him on all charges because we didn't believe the State had proven he was guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Granted it's just one anecdote about one jury on one case in North Carolina, but this jury was not prejudiced against the "criminal" from the start. And, if anything, by the end, most of us were biased against the State for being (or appearing to be) some combination of: incompetent (the investigator from the Sheriff's department), abusive / a plain dick ( the prosecutor), and/or dishonest (the cop who had his car broken into).

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#295

Post by bradleyjg »

sneak wrote: post #221
Nrsolis wrote: post #184

I knew Sal Culosi. He was a nice enough guy that used to hang out at Fast Eddies Sports Bar in Fairfax, VA. I saw him there often just tending a beer and minding his own business. If you can believe it, he was an optometrist at a Wal-Mart that just measured eyeballs and wrote prescriptions. If he was a bookie (as alleged) then I never saw anything that gave him away. I followed his story in the paper and was surprise…

It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments. If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that! It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops. Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsib…

So-called professional courtesy is the canary in the coal mine. If there's a jurisdiction where police officers can speed with utter impunity, it's a good bet that a lot worse is going on.

In my own city, I was appalled by the spectacle of hundreds of police officers protesting in and around a courthouse where officers and union officials involved in a ticket fixing ring were being arraigned.

Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/officers-unleash-...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#296

Post by valleyer »

Steuard wrote: post #230
stcredzero wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presumption of innocence is not directly enshrined in the constitution, and in the case of some crimes, like rape, has been deliberately and explicitly weakened.

This is a bit off topic for this thread but given that you brought it up: It is hard for me to look at, say, Steubenville[1] (to take just the most publicized of several examples that I've seen in the news lately) and understand how anyone can suggest that accused rapists aren't given a presumption of innocence in our society. The blame heaped on rape victims is often tremendous, even when everyone knows that it happ…

Sample size: 1.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#297

Post by jlgreco »

lostlogin wrote: post #185
strathmeyer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No American police are generally resistant to training of any type, such as firearm training. They don't like other people telling them they don't know how to do their jobs, that would make them lose confidence. It's why they need to shoot at you sixty times in order to hit you once.

A refusal to take advice is asking for trouble and paints a bad picture of any profession. Always take the advice, you don't have to use is, but you do have to take it in. How do people get like that?

They aren't exactly rocket scientists to begin with. Hell, the police in America have won the right to discriminate against candidates with high IQs...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#298

Post by jlgreco »

tsotha wrote: post #195
matwood wrote: post #30

After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. All the more reason to never speak to the police. Ever. What happened to 'protect AND serve'? The police have made their jobs harder by syst…

>All the more reason to never speak to the police. He didn't know the guy was a cop.

Is this actually the case? Of course he didn't know the reason this cop was his "friend" and the cop didn't introduce himself as a cop, but after a few months you would think that his job would have come up once or twice. Did the cop lie when asked about it?

Regardless, it is more than enough reason to never be "friends" with a cop.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#300

Post by pico303 »

I wonder if anyone is considering or doing any kind of studies correlating the lack of investment in government (i.e. low taxes) and these kinds of problems with law enforcement? It seems like if we're investing less in government, which means less in police, fire, and the agencies that train and oversee them, we're not going to get the quality of service from our law enforcement officers that we're accustom to. Shorter training programs, fewer applicants due to lower pay, less oversite, higher workloads, etc.

I don't know if this is the case, but in a country where we barely get that A leads to B, we might want to start taking a hard look at A to B to C to D.

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