Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by sukulaku » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 8:59 AM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #82

sukulaku wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Develop systems that are structurally uncorruptable and uninfluencable as best as they can be, by having significant separations of power by design Oh kind of like The Constitution, for example? Obviously that hasn't worked out too well in the long term, what with the US being a burgeoning police state and all. But if "we" write a new and more sternly worded piece of paper that says "rulers can't mistreat their sub…

Try again without the facetiousness. I don't mean like a piece of paper saying 'thou shalt'. I mean by implementing systems where, by design, the decisionmakers over roles that police each other have no way to influence one another. For example, those who are in charge of policing the police shouldn't also be in charge of working with the police on policing other people. I don't mean auditors, I mean those who then r…

Sorry but what you're suggesting basically just amounts to rearranging the chairs on the Titanic's deck.

Besides, it's been "tried" already, in this form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers - and by now it's clear how much that helped, right?

In reality, "the separation of powers" was just a bullshit PR-distraction, meant to give us a false sense of security, to alleviate the nagging subconscious awareness that the idea that we live in a system that benefits us just makes no sense whatsoever.

Regardless of how parts of the government are ostensibly "separated" or "firewalled", they're still all part of the same overall organization: the government.

There's no way to arrange an all-encompassing "authority of coercion" in a way that benefits the people being coerced. Another way to look at it is that forcefully taking people's money does not benefit whoever's money is taken. It benefits the takers.

The exploiters need the masses of the exploited to be blind to the exploitation, because otherwise it would come to an end, and that's why we find the idea of "the separation of powers" floating around, along with "the social contract" and "consent of the governed" and so on.

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

#202

Post by rewqfdsa » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 9:25 AM UTC

lectrick wrote: post #182

jMyles wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poor people in bad neighborhoods (of all races) tend to do more drugs This is not true. This matter has been thoroughly studied - have you a source to back up this claim? Even though the drugs that are often consumed in poor neighborhoods are more likely to be criminalized, they are still used at comparable (and sometimes higher) rates in affluent neighborhoods (along with many other drugs in configurations that ar…

Correlations with race are highly suspect as well as self-reinforcing. I believe they should be abandoned because the damage they cause (by perpetuating a problem) may be greater than any possible benefit they provide.

Correlations with race are _facts_. Impartially collected data collated with robust statistical methods results in race falling out of the mix as an important correlate with all sorts of things; we then publish these correlations. Which part should we abandon? Impartial data collection? Robust statistics? Publication of the results? Are you suggesting that certain facts are too dangerous to know?

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

#203

Post by jensen123 » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 9:47 AM UTC

policestate101 wrote: post #124

America is a police state, ruled by a corrupt elite Willing to break laws, rewrite them if possible, create secret ones when needed, they will torture, murder, commit war crimes, this the country Americans reside in, only they do not want to except this increasingly glaring truth. What happens instead is people who speak out are ignored, derided, and silenced.

America is a democracy, where a majority of the population supports the War on Drugs, War on Terrorism etc.

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

#204

Post by wyclif » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:05 AM UTC

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…

I'm Anglo-Saxon, and about as WASPy as it gets. When I was a teenager and got my driver's license, my Dad warned me that there were "bad cops" and that I should be careful to avoid getting stopped by police. If I did get stopped, he warned me to be on my guard and gave me tips on how to handle the situation (most of it was about saying as little as possible and not talking to police).

But the main thing I wanted to share was that he told me that bad cops sometimes plant evidence (usually drugs) in order to incriminate innocent people, and that I should be on my guard during these encounters and aware of everything that happens. And guess what? I didn't believe him! I honestly and naively could not believe that an officer of the law would do something like that. I had bought into the "protect and serve" nonsense.

Later, when I got a little older and more experienced, I figured out on my own that he was right and I told him that I had been wrong all along. Not because I got drugs planted in my car during a stop, but because I had seen it happen over and over again to other people, usually black or hispanic men.

When cops are found to be engaging in criminal activity and racism like this, they ought to be run out of law enforcement and never allowed to get another cop or security job. They should also be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

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

#205

Post by simonh » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:15 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #133

will_brown wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the articles? Police officers were the first ones to report on their fellow officers for their misconduct (i.e. planting evidence) triggering the investigations of Internal Affairs. I suppose the irony here is under your logic you would not believe the whistle blowing officers because they only had eyewitness accounts - and you don't believe a single damn word out of a police officer's mouth - rather you…

> Did you read the articles? Police officers were the first ones to report on their fellow officers for their misconduct In those cases. Not in tons of others, where it took a lawsuit or some investigation started from an independent organization (NGO etc), or even pure chance, to bring misconducts to light. "Internal Affairs" people are notoriously not popular with regular police.

I'm sure that's true, but responding to an article in which honest cops bring to book their dishonest colleagues by saying all cops are bad and can't be trusted is hard to swallow.

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

#206

Post by jensen123 » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:21 AM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #27

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opinion: 1) Police are corrupt. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them that "police are corrupt" is true. This will always be the case. Police don't fight crime, nor prevent it. They create it. If you think this isn't so you haven't had enough exposure to them. Maybe my opinion is coloured by my experience: illegal search of person, car, and house. They ransacked my house, stole money and property from me. It took…

A lot of police are corrupt, and there is an absolute ton of racism in this country so we believe it when the cop tells a lie that implicates a black guy. Not racist like we're out in klan hoods on the weekend, and it's definitely not like we're consciously choosing to be racist--this is just lifetimes of unexamined biases, media information, etc. We have these little biases that tell us not to trust the black guy's…

I guess you are correct that there is a lot of racism here and there. However, there is also a lot of rabid anti-racism. For example, you'll never read an article in the mainstream press about how blacks, on average, have lower IQs than white people, although this clearly is relevant in the whole crime debate. Why are blacks more likely to commit crimes than whites? The IQ explains a lot, but mentioning it is taboo, it seems. What happened here in Alabama is of course horrible, but it seems unlikely that corrupt and racist cops is the whole explanation for the high crime rate among blacks elsewhere in the US.

This shouldn't be necessary, but I probably need to point out that not every single black person has a lower intelligence than every single white person. It's just the average. Some black individuals have higher IQs than some white individuals, of course. Which means that solutions like segregation/apartheid are ham-fisted and totally unfair to these high IQ blacks.

For more info on the IQ and race thing, I recommend the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen.

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

#207

Post by makomk » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:28 AM UTC

will_brown wrote: post #119

zaroth wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I don't believe a single damn word out of a police officer's mouth. Particularly so if they are under oath. It has nothing to do with race, I don't care who the defendant is. They say the least reliable form of testimony is eyewitness accounts. Actually, I think the police have the eyewitness beat on this account. Too bad I've never had jury duty, and even if I did I'd probably be dismissed, so unfortunat…

Did you read the articles? Police officers were the first ones to report on their fellow officers for their misconduct (i.e. planting evidence) triggering the investigations of Internal Affairs. I suppose the irony here is under your logic you would not believe the whistle blowing officers because they only had eyewitness accounts - and you don't believe a single damn word out of a police officer's mouth - rather you…

Yes, and the honest officers were driven out of the police force while the ones involved in planting evidence got promotions. That seems like a pretty good additional reason not to trust police officers most of the time - anyone who's honest probably isn't police anymore.

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

#208

Post by saiya-jin » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:34 AM UTC

bcoates wrote: post #147

pipermerriam wrote: post #106

This is an honest question. Realistically, how do we dismantle the police state. It seems like the NSA, FBI, and some not insignificant percentage of the police forces have gone entirely rogue or lost track of their mission entirely. It feels hopeless. So much outrage but so little actual ever changes. Does anyone have any ideas because I'd love to hear them.

The police are as much members of society as anyone else, and they require the active cooperation of you and the rest of society to survive. You can be part of the solution by depriving them this support: Do not cooperate with them in their job. Do not call them. Decline to speak with them if they contact you. Do not associate with them officially or socially. Do not permit them to shop at your place of employment, d…

very narrow-minded suggestions, some outright illegal. if "non-significant" part of police force is actually gone "rogue", it means rest is +- still OK normal human beings. These actions will alienate also these, fostering "us vs them" mentality.

Good job, you just proposed how to make things even worse.

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

#209

Post by prawn » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:37 AM UTC

purpled_haze wrote: post #173

prawn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

No, I think it goes without saying that ethics classes would find common ground with major religions. But I think we have everything we need to have learnt from a history with religion and can do without the ridiculous bits in 2015+.

Not saying that people can't practice freely, but that it has no place in state education and government. No need for it in ethics classes either.

FWIW, I come from a country where religion doesn't play a big part in life and can think of two friends out of 50-100 that would be considered at all religious. Religion might seem more relevant to people in other countries obviously.

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

#210

Post by saiya-jin » Wed, Dec 02, 2015, 10:38 AM UTC

policestate101 wrote: post #124

America is a police state, ruled by a corrupt elite Willing to break laws, rewrite them if possible, create secret ones when needed, they will torture, murder, commit war crimes, this the country Americans reside in, only they do not want to except this increasingly glaring truth. What happens instead is people who speak out are ignored, derided, and silenced.

actually, what stroke me hard when I went from Europe to US in 2003 for summer student work was how much more repressive the whole system felt. For example coworkers (in central Hollywood) openly afraid of cop cars going in opposite direction, because they had forgotten an unscrewed bottle of alcohol which was not in the trunk.

It might very well be we'll be in similar place in 10 years here, but it was quite a shock to experience back then.