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How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

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

#641

Post by downandout »

qwerta wrote: post #634
jtimberlake wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or something that would happen in the Czech Republic or Greece

I am not saying it could not happen in EU or post-soviet country, but I find it unlikely. Neglect is criminal offense here, he was diagnosed by doctor so there was paper trail. Also approach to medical care is totally different. And maximal imprisonment without conviction here is 1 year. Not so popular ex-politician was held for 18 months on corruption charges and it was national scandal.

Sadly, in our "free" country you are held until the charges are resolved if you are denied bail or don't have enough to post it. He told me someone he was there with had been in for over 8 years fighting his case, and he still hadn't gone to trial. The defendant does have to agree to such extensions, but given that essentially every crime on our books carries penalties up to 30 years, it's not hard to see why people postpone them while preparing a defense.

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

#643

Post by tombrossman »

blackzoid wrote: post #590
gcv wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why hire a lawyer for a traffic ticket? Would that not cost more and kind of be a waste of time for everyone.

In the US and many other countries you have an adversarial legal system [1]. Cooperating or waiving any rights seldom gives you a tactical advantage. Be polite when stopped but don't be a pushover.

I used to drive for a living and would speed all day. Every day. Not excessively or recklessly, I had over a million miles without any preventable accidents. But still I would always exceed the speed limit on a clear stretch of road by 10-30mph or so. The extra income from this more than offset the occasional legal bill. By a large margin (somewhat ironically my job's 'safety' bonuses usually covered the lawyer fees). I sped, kept my record clean, and never accepted a ticket without legal representation.

I'm not advocating that others do this or that it was smart, I'm just saying that for some people it makes mathematical sense to speed + hire lawyers versus doing the speed limit and/or accepting tickets without challenging them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system]

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

#644

Post by lawnchair_larry »

rayiner wrote: post #227
ryguytilidie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for providing a nice example of a rock bottom terrible comment. Yes, the problem with this person being beaten up, put in solitary and abused for no reason simply comes down to their inability to shut up. If only they had the wisdom to know that the police, who are paid by our tax dollars just HAVE to beat you up and abuse you if you say anything they dislike. I mean, its not as if they had a choice of whether…

We can both blame the author for not shutting up and the police for not responding reasonably to someone who was nothing more dangerous than a smartass.

Nope, we can't. This type of thinking is a strong indicator that one may be suffering from antisocial personality disorder.

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

#645

Post by vidarh »

krisdol wrote: post #489
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.

That evidence will never be available to be used against cops. This was in Texas. I don't recall the exact details. My bosnian friend was racially profiled (as hispanic) by the police. He was ticketed after not coming to a full stop, then arrested because the officer incorrectly assumed that his real driver's license was fake and that he was not a legal citizen. At the precinct, he was told some racist stuff by a wor…

You'd have to combine it with systematically firing people if footage goes missing.

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

#646

Post by qwerta »

downandout wrote: post #641
qwerta wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying it could not happen in EU or post-soviet country, but I find it unlikely. Neglect is criminal offense here, he was diagnosed by doctor so there was paper trail. Also approach to medical care is totally different. And maximal imprisonment without conviction here is 1 year. Not so popular ex-politician was held for 18 months on corruption charges and it was national scandal.

Sadly, in our "free" country you are held until the charges are resolved if you are denied bail or don't have enough to post it. He told me someone he was there with had been in for over 8 years fighting his case, and he still hadn't gone to trial. The defendant does have to agree to such extensions, but given that essentially every crime on our books carries penalties up to 30 years, it's not hard to see why people…

I just looked up criminal law in Czech rep. Maximal length depends on maximal length of sentence:

* normal crime (under 4 years) such as less violent robbery, bar fight... 1 year

* violent crime with death or permanent injury (around 8 years sentence) 2 years

* 4 years in exceptional violent cases (over 15 years or life-time sentence).

There is also condition that trial must start within first 1/3 of time period.

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

#647

Post by Terretta »

herbig wrote: post #240

Back in November, I was arrested in Brooklyn for running a red light on my bike while on my way to work in Manhattan. Normally you're given a ticket and let go, but in this instance, the officers took issue with the fact that I was not carrying ID. Both officers told me that I "could be arrested for not having ID." For clarification, I asked if it was a city, state, or national law, and the officers adamantly maintai…

Cop's language was fuzzy but they were right in principle and you were mistaken. You have right to not carry ID. But if you broke law and they can't readily ID you, they have right to hold you till arraignment for belief of citable offense.

There are a sequence of laws resulting in you locked up (not exactly arrest, but held, same difference to you in the moment) if not carrying ID (you did), doing citable offense (you did).

1. If NYC cops suspect you of citable offense, felony or misdemeanor, they have right to stop you and demand you identify yourself:

http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/LAWSSEAF.cgi?QUERYTYPE=LAW...

2. Next step is, if you are going to be cited (the cop's discretion, so de-escalate first) then if they can't verify your ID, they can take you in till identified. Also true in many states, here's how Colorado sheriff puts it about cyclists:

"Another warning – When issuing a citation for a violation, if we can’t verify the identification of the cyclist, they WILL be taken to jail pending identification and their bicycles impounded. This isn’t a threat. Its the way we operate."

http://www.bicyclelaw.com/articles/a.cfm/legally-speaking-yo...

TL;DR:

In practice, if you might screw up to level of risking citation, your trade off is carry ID or donate your time:

"It's not against the law, of course, to be out on New York's streets without identification--but the courts can detain people without identification in jail until their arraignment in lieu of issuing them a summons."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/york-city-cop-imprisons-...

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

#648

Post by siculars »

apayan wrote: post #521
jjoonathan wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't recommend enough watching this video. The law professor explains why you should never speak to the police. It's 46 minutes long, but every minute is pure gold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

This. A thousand times this.

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

#649

Post by marvin »

kelnos wrote: post #85
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mistake is your idea of "they". They aren't all one. I don't know that I can blame you for taking the "safe" approach and avoiding police, but don't punish them for your irrationally-negative outlook.

I don't find the parent's attitude irrational at all. If police brutality was a rare unicorn-like event, then I could understand your point of view, but it's not. Not even remotely so. I've been lucky in that my interactions with police have ranged from professionally neutral (mostly traffic cops) to indifferent and bored (cop at a police station clearly not giving two shits that I'd just been mugged). (Of course, me…

I hate to be the "Norway" guy again, but here we go: The current situation in the US is a perfect example of one of the bad outcomes when running a police force: Systemic misconduct by police officers undermine the police's trust among the population. This leads to a lack of will from the citizens to cooperate with the police, also in situations where it would be in everyone's interest to cooperate with the police.

In my country, you have to go through a 3-year training program in order to become a police officer, and these principles are underscored time and time again in training. As a result, most people do in fact trust and respect the police. This makes the job of the police much easier, which in turn leads to a safer society. You never hear normal people say "don't talk to the police", which is something that seems really weird when reading about the US. Granted, I've heard it so often that it doesn't surprise me anymore - especially given stories like the ones in this thread.

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

#650

Post by mherdeg »

vidarh wrote: post #622
mherdeg wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western Europe has its own problems. The U.K. has "superinjunctions" and aggressively punitive libel laws and press restrictions. In some places in Switzerland, relationships with non-Swiss residents are so strained that local authorities have sometimes sought to ban "asylum-seekers" from public places because they are seen as dangerous criminals ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/26/swiss-segregati... ). In…

A bit of a nitpick: Maybe you have their nationality from another source (though I googled the case and didn't find any articles stating their nationality), but this article does not state the nationality of the Roma girl or her parents. Roma or Romani refers to the ethnicity of a people that emigrated from India as a group, and does not in itself have anything at all to do with Romania. While Romania has one of the…

Oops, sorry, you're right — I had misread the Guardian's reference to a different case in which the parents were in fact from Bucharest and their son was taken from them.

No, I don't have any special knowledge about the nationality of the folks in Ireland whose daughter was taken from them.

But yeah, I am a little uneasy about the casual way the word "Roma" is used today to refer to people who were formerly referred to as "Gypsies".

It's particularly confusing to see this particular word ("Roma") used to refer interchangeably to three different, differently sized groups of people ("Roma", "Romani", "Romanichal").

I'm used to hearing "Roma" to mean a very particular sub-group of the Romani people who live in Central and Eastern Europe.

But in today's usage, the word also seems to be used to other folks from various subgroups of the overarching "Romani people" group. Many of the Romani people living in the UK come from a subgroup traditionally called "Romanichal", which is very much different from the "Roma" group — but in conversation today the distinction does not come up and we often see news stories use "Roma" instead of "Romani".

How that happened, I dunno; maybe the words just all sound the same?

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