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Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

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Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#171

Post by purpled_haze »

salgernon wrote: post #122
purpled_haze wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do we do about the legions of victims? Financial compensation and putting those that caused the injustice in prison equaling the total of all of the terms served by all of those affected. That is as close to justice as could be had. As for preventing corruption- there's no way to do this as long as there are people that can be corrupted. You can add oversight. You could replace the entire force with minorities…

Which religion? Which denomination of that religion? What if that religion has reprehensible beliefs?

Do you disagree that religion in any form can be used as a force against corruption?

If you work to exclude religion as a whole because some religions or those practicing them have certain beliefs you may find reprehensible, you also exclude other moral and ethical beliefs, peer pressure, and community support that would combat corruption.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#172

Post by jMyles »

simoncion wrote: post #156
jMyles wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the central point here: You can't have "something else" unless there are "crimes" which don't require victims. That's the only reason that planting evidence is even possible in most cases.

> That's the only reason that planting evidence is even possible in most cases. Are you honestly saying that -given everything we probably know about this case and the extent to which people in power were involved and actively worked to support it, cover it up, and promote those involved to even higher positions of power- fabrication of complaints and testimony would be impossible?

You are moving the goal posts now.

Fabrication of complaints and testimony is, of course, possible, but it's not the same thing, nor is it in the same category of ease for a corrupt state official, as merely planting evidence.

The main benefit of prohibition, from the standpoint of the state, is that planting evidence against anybody is suddenly possible, and in fact in many communities the evidence is already planted.

In this particular case, we happen to have evidence of the former, but it is not evidence that fabrication of complaints and testimony, which require a far more elaborate corruption superstructure, are possible in this community.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#173

Post by purpled_haze »

prawn wrote: post #168
purpled_haze wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do we do about the legions of victims? Financial compensation and putting those that caused the injustice in prison equaling the total of all of the terms served by all of those affected. That is as close to justice as could be had. As for preventing corruption- there's no way to do this as long as there are people that can be corrupted. You can add oversight. You could replace the entire force with minorities…

Agree with the idea of ethics education in school but strongly disagree with it having anything to do with religion!

Do you dismiss that much of the moral and ethics we have today in our society evolved in parallel with religious teachings?

I feel strongly that it is foolish to remove the freedom to practice religion if it promotes moral and ethical behavior. Freedom to believe and have faith in something that helps society shouldn't be dissolved.

That said, I'm all for having additional secular classes in ethics and morality for those that don't want to practice a religion. Freedom goes both ways as long as it doesn't promote values that hurt others.

We need to work together to solve corruption and other problems. Religion is not the enemy of morality, and neither is secular education of morality.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#174

Post by _quasar »

dweinus wrote: post #170
_quasar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory that African Americans are being shot by police because they are black is not supported by data. About 50% of deaths at the hand of police are white and 30% black. Of course that means blacks are overrepresented compared to their percentage in the population. However, adjusting to blacks' higher crime rate shows that in fact whites are 1.7 times more likely to be shot by police. Policemen are well aware of…

1) The analysis here is conducted by a pretty biased source: a former cop 2) his data is fed by news reports which may not evenly cover actual incidents 3) 25% of the data lacks racial info at all 4) The likelihood of biased policing being a factor in higher reported African American crime rates completely undercuts the conclusion he reaches Put another way: there are at least 2 layers of biases that occured before M…

> 1) The analysis here is conducted by a pretty biased source: a former cop

OK

> 2) his data is fed by news reports which may not evenly cover actual incidents

OK, although I doubt white deaths are reported LESS than black deaths (nothing to support it)

> 3) 25% of the data lacks racial info at all

OK, but this won't affect conclusion that much. Even if all those incidents involve black subject, it won't affect the conclusion.

> 4) the likelihood of biased policing being a factor in higher reported African American crime rates completely undercuts the conclusion he reaches

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...

Of the 12,664 murders 4,077 were cases where offender's race was unknown leaving 8,587. Males were responsible for about 90%. 90% of 8,587= 7,728 US murders we know to be committed by males. White males committed 45.2% of 7,728 murders which = 3,143 murders. Black males committed 52.4% of 7,728 murders which = 4,049 murders. Black males make up 7% of this nation's population with about 19m individuals. White males make up about 28% of this nation's population with about 112m individuals.

Odds of a white man being a murderer: 1 in 35,634. Odds of a black man being a murderer: 1 in 4,693.

African American male is 9 times more likely to commit homicide. It's very unlikely that biased policing is the cause of 9x homicide conviction rate.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#175

Post by simoncion »

jMyles wrote: post #172
simoncion wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the only reason that planting evidence is even possible in most cases. Are you honestly saying that -given everything we probably know about this case and the extent to which people in power were involved and actively worked to support it, cover it up, and promote those involved to even higher positions of power- fabrication of complaints and testimony would be impossible?

You are moving the goal posts now. Fabrication of complaints and testimony is, of course, possible, but it's not the same thing, nor is it in the same category of ease for a corrupt state official, as merely planting evidence. The main benefit of prohibition, from the standpoint of the state, is that planting evidence against anybody is suddenly possible, and in fact in many communities the evidence is already plante…

> You are moving the goal posts now.

I absolutely am not.

Officials shut down a police IA investigation into the years-long scheme. The folks who were complicit in this scheme SHUT DOWN an active investigation into the scheme.

Why on earth do you think that fabrication of (or paid production of) testimony wouldn't be possible?

An internal investigation was shut down by those involved in the conspiracy!

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#176

Post by newman314 »

newman314 wrote: post #104
taurath wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate: if I were the most decent nicest cop in the world I could see why I wouldn't want my every word and action on camera. It'd severely limit things I could say in confidence to anyone, and if I were say speaking to a victim of a crime its difficult to comfort people with a camera in their face. I'd be worried to being reduced to essentially the role of a call-center employee with every interact…

Well, given the mandate by some police departments to only hire the less intelligent... I subscribe to the notion that cops absolutely need to be held to a higher standard, esp. given their potential for exponentially causing harm (because guns and LE powers).

Not clear why I'm getting the downvote here. Is it because I didn't cite a source for the line around hiring practices?

[1] http://thefreethoughtproject.com/court-police-departments-re...

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#177

Post by NN88 »

Here are the documents referred to as evidence in case the site goes down:

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144475/dothan-police-depar...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144476/dothan-police-depar...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144477/dothan-police-dept-...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144479/dothan-police-dept-...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144480/dothan-police-dept-...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144481/dothan-police-dept-...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144482/dothan-police-chief...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144490/dothan-police-offic...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144478/dothan-police-dept-...

https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144483/dothan-police-chief...

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#178

Post by SamReidHughes »

dang wrote: post #135
rewqfdsa wrote: post #28

> black Americans have been claiming that such things happen and were widely ignored or disbelieved Black Americans commit a wildly disproportionate amount of crime. Black men make up 1 million out of 2.3 million people in prison. 4.7% of all black men* are in prison. A black man has a 70% chance of being in prison at some point in his life. Are you suggesting the police are framing all of these people? While police…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10660295 and marked it off-topic. You reveal your lack of good faith with the slur, "the criminality of the black community". If you were genuinely interested in factual exploration, that's where you'd be least likely to go.

Agh, sorry, I downvoted you by accident.

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#179

Post by csn »

jessaustin wrote: post #105
ashwinaj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put, but I suspect large swaths of people will still be in denial since any criticism about the police (or military) is off limits. In any case, if this keeps on going the police force would be the first to be "roboticized". I even have a simple algorithm: 1. Investigate reported crime (race/gender/economic parameters are ignored) OR catch criminal red handed. 2. Create a police report and submit evidence. 3. Te…

I suspect physical security will be robotized before policing is. Robots could get very good at recognizing firearms held in human hands (i.e. rather than stored in a holster) and then incapacitating the owner of those hands. Once enough such robots are installed in crowded public areas, the current mass-murder-mania (and one hopes, the hysteria that has arisen in reaction) would be eliminated.

False positives would be scandalous. We would also need an unspoofable way for the AI to distinguish intent of the weapon drawing, because law-enforcement et cetera. The bot can't always already be at the scene when something happens.

Anyway I know at least one company working towards this goal as we speak, but I bet they aren't anywhere near that yet: http://gimltd.fi/ (Generic Intelligent Machines)

Re: Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit

#180

Post by gkop »

marcusgarvey wrote: post #154
hackuser wrote: post #8

It seems like there is a smoking gun in this case (though I didn't review the evidence thoroughly). Widespread availability of video recording and distribution has provided many more smoking guns. Certainly, there are many more incidents where no smoking gun evidence is available. For a long time, black Americans have been claiming that such things happen and were widely ignored or disbelieved. It was and is a grave…

>1) Why did our society make this error? Because America was, and is, racist.

I wish it wasn't necessary to need to point out the simplest explanation to a crowd as smart and analytical as HN.

And even as it is necessary, I wish HN didn't downvote you for it.

But reality.

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