How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#561

Post by csense » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:32 AM UTC

x0054 wrote: post #135

Get a lawyer and sue. Make those fuckers pay, and make sure the fucks who arrested you are fired. But she for sure!

> Make those fuckers pay

> make sure the fucks who arrested you are fired

Defense attorney and former prosecutor Ken White, of the law blog Popehat, says of a case of much more serious police abuse which resulted in a $1.6 million settlement:

"you can assume that...taxpayers, not the law enforcement officers who engaged in a conspiracy to commit torture and rape, will foot the bill...The only thing out of it that would surprise me is if any of the individual police officers or sheriff's deputies faced any genuine significant consequences arising from it."

[1] http://www.popehat.com/2014/01/16/update-the-quantum-of-reco...

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#562

Post by kylec » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:33 AM UTC

Lagged2Death wrote: post #51

It's high time to just make the cops wear video cameras. A whole lot of this sort of crap could just vanish.

Internal investigations are also BS. If police officers are officers of the court, judges should have the authority (and use the authority) to strip the officer of the authority to act as an officer. Much like contempt of court, it should not require formal hearings or process to immediately remove bad officers from duty. At that point the police department would effectively have an ordinary citizen on their payroll, unable to wear a uniform or make arrests or risk being charged with impersonating an officer and kidnapping.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#563

Post by kafts » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:38 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #198

josh2600 wrote: post #88

I know Peretz personally and he's one of the most rational people I've ever met. There's some question as to whether he should've left the scene or not and I think there's some discussion to be had there, but what happened afterwards is unquestionably wrong. This is who the police stripped naked and put in jail: http://www.brandeis.edu/magazine/2013/spring/featured-storie... This is not a person we should fear. I und…

The police cannot be trusted, and that is not childish nonsense. It is a rational response to the fact that the police consistently act like thugs, and the problem is only getting worse. One of the most important problems is that the mechanisms for righting these wrongs are almost wholly ineffective or out-of-reach. Peretz talks a little about that in his piece. The most practical thing you can take away from this is…

It seems like a lot of people share this sentiment that police abuse is getting worse all the time. An optimistic part of me wants to think that maybe the problem isn't necessarily getting worse, just getting more exposure than it has in the past. How much harder would it be for this same story to reach this kind of audience 5 or 10 years ago? Hopefully the spreading awareness will lead to improvements down the line.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#564

Post by meddlepal » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:40 AM UTC

benched wrote: post #556

debt wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is, why contest anything in that moment? You just broke the law and could've potentially caused serious bodily harm to someone. I feel like there's a small window an officer gives you to get out of the ticket. They walk up. They ask you what you did wrong. You tell them. Everyone moves on. Sometimes they write a ticket or a warning. Parent dude completely and intentionally overcomplicated the situation. Wast…

What I hear you saying is that you enjoy the somewhat arbitrary primate street rules that apply to interacting with people who have more power than you, and you'd rather live by those rules than laws.

Those primitive and brutish rules are sometimes easier to understand and follow compared to the complex legal spiderweb we have created.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#565

Post by cgag » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:40 AM UTC

williamcotton wrote: post #223

forgottenpass wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is some sort of thinly veiled attack on our public servants and what seems to be public government infrastructure in general. I'm all for calling bullshit on general unfounded anti-government rhetoric in general. But law enforcement are not your friends. They're trained that the citizen is an untrustworthy crook, why should we treat them any better?

Dude, this is about someone getting in to a bike accident. Please, for fuck's sake, if you see someone hit by a car or otherwise bleeding on the street, do the sane thing and call 911. I can't believe we're having this conversation...

Someone should try this and document their experience.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#566

Post by chilldream » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:44 AM UTC

amagumori wrote: post #515

chilldream wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> P.S. Just saw that immediately race was brought up. As a tip to anyone who wants to make a difference, people in power will divide you into as many groups as you let them in order to subjugate you. You can simultaneously recognize that the system is biased against certain races while also avoiding infighting based upon race. It's kind of ironic that you tell people to pay more attention to reality and then essentia…

> You can simultaneously recognize that the system is biased against certain races while also avoiding infighting based upon race. maybe you and i can, but in practice, that doesn't really happen. one of the biggest problems with our social justice movement is the complete lack of unity. many times when i see privilege brought up, it's used to invalidate opinions and justify hate towards those with more privilege ("i…

I don't identify with the "social justice" movement for similar reasons, but that doesn't mean racism doesn't exist, and that certainly doesn't mean it's productive to try to remove discussion about racism from an arena so profoundly racist.

Look up "The Southern Strategy" and its relation to drug criminalization. Look up "Stop and Frisk". Look up the reasons behind criminalizing crack at a higher level than cocaine. Incarceration rates, prosecution rates, execution rates, literally everything even vaguely related to this topic. It's pervasive. If you choose to ignore that, minorities who think you don't have their interests at heart probably have a point.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#567

Post by kylec » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:47 AM UTC

joesmo wrote: post #96

kremlin wrote: post #27

I remember, once, a very cynical person telling me not to call the cops, in any circumstance, unless mine or someone else's survival or long-term well being is completely dependent on it. If you see someone shot dead in the street, for example, don't call the cops; leave. You're the first suspect if you do anything else, and you'll be treated like one. I was very put out by this attitude. I'm starting to wonder if it…

Your cynical friend was correct. If you have to call 911 for someone else, do it anonymously. As long as police (internal affairs) are the only ones to police police, there will never be any justice. Also, remember that suing police hardly ever works. Police have immunity by law and they use that to their advantage to cover up any cruel and sick acts they feel like. They are above the law. Ask any minority and they w…

I agree. I posted this elsewhere in this thread, but I want to say it again: If police officers are officers of the court, judges should have the authority (and use the authority) to strip the officer of the authority to act as an officer. Much like contempt of court, it should not require formal hearings or process to immediately remove bad officers from duty. At that point the police department would effectively have an ordinary citizen on their payroll, unable to wear a uniform or make arrests or risk being charged with impersonating an officer and kidnapping.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#568

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 5:59 AM UTC

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #338

kelnos wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think that's rational. A pleasant experience with a cop should be the absolute norm and should be unremarkable. Having a friend who is murdered by a cop is so far in the negative tally column that I don't think there's any recovering from that.

But treating all police like scumbags because of one bad encounter isn't rational. It's a response born out of fear, and while fear can be useful it isn't always rational.

[deleted]

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#569

Post by cgag » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 6:00 AM UTC

So what do we do? Tons of us live here, we should be doing something. Squad up and protest? There has to be a decent number of us who have flexible ours, how about we team up and manually surveil officer Kaur for a week? Is there someone would should be calling to complain to that will hurt this persons career?

I don't know what to do, but this city is tiny and there are a lot of us, surely we can have some effect. My email and website w/ pgp key are in my profile, email me if you're interested in trying something.

Re: How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

#570

Post by gcv » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 6:01 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #505

pessimizer wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can always lie about you. Control what you have control over. If you force them to lie, maybe you can force them to lie stupidly, and that may save you some point down the line. The point is that there is no way that talking will help you. They are trying to make a case against you.

There are many ways talking can help. It can help you avoid the police officer's discretionary punishments. It can help you avoid increased scrutiny that turns up something incriminating. It's less probable that it will help you avoid being punished due to a baldfaced lie on the part of the officer, since presumably the courts are good at filtering those out, but it's not impossible. Once you require the services of…

> try it next time you get a traffic ticket and tell me how it goes

It worked quite well, thank you. I did not say a word, gave the cop my license and registration as required by law, signed my ticket, and hired a lawyer to get it thrown out later.