The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system • Hacker News Board

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#61

Post by rayiner » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 12:59 AM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #39

refurb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious that the people on the grand juries are not qualified to asses anything and it's an archaic system not employed by any other country This is an odd statement. It's well known that prosecutors have much greater latitude in what they can present as evidence AND the hurdle for proceeding with criminal charges is much lower. The other option is to leave decisions to charge somebody up to the prosecutors them…

Grand juries don't seem to correct the most egregious errors in either direction. Consider the famous assertion that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. On the other hand, consider the recent non-indictment of Darren Wilson. How often do grand juries defy the prosecutor's wishes? I certainly agree that a check on prosecutorial discretion is badly needed. But the grand jury system doesn't seem…

Aggregated statistics on grand juries are hard to come by, but let's use a random county for example: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/special-reports/article396.... Grand juries in Tarrant County, Texas declined to indict 11% of felony cases. Floating around the internet, you can find numbers ranging from 3-4% in New York counties to 5% in Texas as a whole.

The high rate of indictments, of course, doesn't prove that the grand jury system doesn't act as a check on prosecutorial discretion. An AMA study found that the largest health insurers reject 2.7-6.8% of all claims: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/.... Does the low rate of denials indicate that insurers' claim processes are an inadequate check on fraudulent claims? By your reasoning, it does.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#62

Post by refurb » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:00 AM UTC

hellbanner wrote: post #24

moskie wrote: post #3

Small complaint (about an otherwise very good article): > Eric Garner ... guilty only of selling single cigarettes The cops involved suspected this, but I don't believe it's known that he is guilty of this. Especially in a legal sense: he did not live to see a trial.

Why exactly is selling single cigarettes illegal?

Taxes.

You can do a lot of things to the government and get away with it, but the second you take their money all hell breaks loose.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#63

Post by thrownaway2424 » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:00 AM UTC

If you need proof that police in America are out-of-control thugs you only need to look at this shocking photo from Oakland last night: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Undercover-cops-outed-...

In which an out-of-uniform CHP officer is brandishing a gun in the face of a photographer while another plain-dressed CHP officers wearing a bandana over his face tackles a protester. These cops had no reason to be in this situation, no reason to draw their weapons, certainly no reason to threaten members of the press with lethal force. No reason to hold their weapon sideways like an ignorant thug. These are the kinds of people who would certainly be removed from duty, probably prosecuted in more civilized countries.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#64

Post by thrownaway2424 » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:03 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #35

hellbanner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly is selling single cigarettes illegal?

I dont know for sure but i think they typically come from contraband cigarettes (where taxes have not been paid and, as others point out, without required license). It'd be like selling whiskey shots on a street corner.

Strangely not illegal: making and marketing a toxic product that has killed literally tens of millions of people.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#65

Post by refurb » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:05 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #50

refurb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious that the people on the grand juries are not qualified to asses anything and it's an archaic system not employed by any other country This is an odd statement. It's well known that prosecutors have much greater latitude in what they can present as evidence AND the hurdle for proceeding with criminal charges is much lower. The other option is to leave decisions to charge somebody up to the prosecutors them…

> The other option is to leave decisions to charge somebody up to the prosecutors themselves. The decision to charge essentially is up to the prosecutor; the grand jury process for felonies essentially plays an analogous role to the preliminary hearing for misdemeanors, in that it establishes probable cause and allows the case to continue. The difference is that, while felonies are notionally more serious crimes with…

the alternative to grand juries doesn't give prosecutors more power...[grand juries] establishes probable cause and allows the case to continue

I don't think I understand the two. Grand juries can tell prosecutors "no", but if you remove them it gives prosecutors less power?

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#66

Post by fidotron » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:06 AM UTC

poulsbohemian wrote: post #38

I've been reading the Economist for 20+ years now and it never ceases to amaze me that while there is some excellent journalism, they really don't get the United States. Statements like "If America did not have 300m guns in circulation, much of this would change." show their bias, rather than having anything to do with the way the US turns everything - drugs, immigration, poverty - into a policing issue infused with…

True. Gun control generally is something a lot of Brits just default to thinking is a necessary thing, while not actually having considered it in much depth. (This is largely a reflex to the Dunblane incident, and they can't understand why anyone would disagree with the resulting course of action).

The thing is both sides are kind of wrong. London has far more gun crime than much of the US does (personally I ran into three firearms incidents without trying) which really should provoke much more soul searching in the UK than it does (they delude themselves into thinking the whole US is uniformly dangerous), however, British cops, while by no means perfect, are enormously less likely to be in aggressive by default mode. Obviously it does happen quite a bit, but nothing like the same antagonism that you have in North America.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#67

Post by thrownaway2424 » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:07 AM UTC

joesmo wrote: post #4

How about also ending grand juries altogether (or at least in cases of potential homicide)? It's obvious that the people on the grand juries are not qualified to asses anything and it's an archaic system not employed by any other country ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury ). In addition, the prosecutors' powers need to be curtailed. Such crimes should always be charged, regardless of what the prosecutor wants.…

There are lots of states without grand jury systems.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#68

Post by pyrocat » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:08 AM UTC

If only. All of the actions recommended in this article are moderate, common sense changes that benefit the populous as a whole and will never happen. The police have no interest in changing practices that benefit them, and any politician that tries to oppose their will is going to get called "soft on crime", a nonsense attack that somehow still persists in our political dialog.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#69

Post by thrownaway2424 » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:09 AM UTC

hiou wrote: post #54

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That figure does not even place law enforcement in the top ten most dangerous professions.

Automobile accidents, are by far the most lethal part of US life outside of disease. This is no different for police officers.

I'm always saying that the best thing the police can do is get out of their cars. If it makes them safer, even better.

Re: The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system

#70

Post by rayiner » Fri, Dec 12, 2014, 1:10 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #58

rayiner wrote: post #12

The article makes some excellent points, but the comparison to Europe rang a little hollow to me. The U.S. is an order of magnitude more violent than the U.K., and always has been: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona... . In 1960 there was no drug war, there was no prohibition, the country was prosperous, but more than eight times as many people were murdered per capita than in the U.K. > Sen…

In 1993-94, years where the per-capita murder rate in the U.S. was 9x higher than in the U.K., It's important to keep in mind that murder rates are pretty low in general (save for a handful of countries). It's only when you compare countries to each other that the differences seem large. In 1993-1994 Canada's murder rate was double that of the UKs. I wouldn't, by an stretch of the imagination say that Canada had a mu…

They're low in the sense that any given person is unlikely to be personally murdered. They're not low in the sense that the impact of the crime on the community can't be felt.

I used to live in Wilmington, DE, where 0.038% of people in the city get murdered each year. Vanishingly small odds, to be sure, but high enough where in the year I lived there several scary incidents "hit close to home." There was someone gunned down a block away from my wife's office (in the business district of downtown). There was another person killed on a street corner a few blocks from our house, which we used to pass regularly on the way to our favorite Indian restaurant. That sort of thing weighs on a community's psyche. I have to admit, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up when I was walking around Wilmington at night.

Also, it's reasonable to believe that murder rates are a proxy for violent crime in general. The former is a more reliable statistic, because different jurisdictions' definitions of violent crime differ dramatically.