Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why police lie under oath

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 130 posts

Re: Why police lie under oath

#71

Post by Spooky23 »

ObnoxiousJul wrote: post #10

Well it is a known QA practice: never base incentive on metrics or people will cheat one way or another with the metrics. If your dev have a prime based on SLA or tickets solved guess what? You are giving them an incentive to cheat. You will have nice figures to show your investors, ypur stock options' values will raise and coder will be better paid. Everyone is happy, who cares about the truth, the unfairness, the l…

Is even worse in NY -- quotas are illegal, yet they exist. But there is no record of what quotas are assigned to a given detail of officers.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#72

Post by dionidium »

Alex3917 wrote: post #51
jacalata wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only section of that page that might be relevant to what you just said was " police and military personnel, groups with more reason to deny past illegal drug use, were twice as likely to recant than the general population." You appear to be arguing that police are intrinsically more likely to lie, but this study doesn't support that, it actually supports the quote you are trying to refute.

"You appear to be arguing that police are intrinsically more likely to lie, but this study doesn't support that, it actually supports the quote you are trying to refute." I actually wasn't arguing that cops are more intrinsically likely to lie, only that they are more likely to lie. Although I do also believe that they are probably more intrinsically likely to lie. Why? I think you're right that of the non-police pop…

Homosexuals in a homophobic culture are more likely to lie about sex. But it's entirely situational and tells us nothing about homosexuals in general.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#73

Post by linuxhansl »

In the US perjury is a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to five years.

Does that somehow not apply to the police? If a cop's performance is measured by number of arrests or convictions, and the repercussions of lying under oath is maybe a suspension with pay or worst case being fired, I do not see how this is going to change.

IMHO, law enforcement officials should be held to higher standard.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#74

Post by nsp »

mst wrote: post #46
forrestthewoods wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggestion 1 - all on duty cops should at all times wear a chest mounted video camera recording all of their actions.

How would you propose to preserve police discretion under such a system?

Well assuming they're given limited leeway the context of the event is captured as well so it could be determined if the office acted appropriately.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#75

Post by lutusp »

rosser wrote: post #70
lutusp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you provide a citation or point to some case law for my edification, please? A reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury Point 1 -- materiality: "Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or of falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding ." Point 2 -- resulting in a miscarriage of just…

Perjury, as a Federal crime, is defined under 18 USC § 1621 [1], which, to my reading, is silent about whether its commission results in a miscarriage of justice or not. It describes the elements of the crime as: an oath, an intent, a falsehood, and the materiality of that falsehood. Not to disparage that august institution, but I think something more authoritative than a Wikipedia citation is probably warranted to e…

> Perjury, as a Federal crime, is defined under 18 USC § 1621 [1], which, to my reading, is silent about whether the commission of perjury results in a miscarriage of justice or not.

So it seems. In researching this, I see that the "miscarriage of justice" issue has two effects -- it often determines whether a case of perjury is pursued at all, and it affects the nature of the punishment (the sentencing phase). But it's not part of the formal definition that might lead to a determination of guilt. So I was wrong to state it the way I did earlier.

The "miscarriage of justice" issue is important, but it's not part of the definition of perjury -- it only affects whether a case is pursued by a prosecutor, and it may then influence the punishment.

Thanks for posting and correcting me.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#76

Post by mitchty »

csense wrote: post #55
Firehed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have speed limits at all then? I've heard anecdotes of professional drivers getting out of massive speeding tickets because they know how to handle a vehicle at that speed (and presumably had the good sense not to be driving way faster than traffic if there even was any) and its certainly possible to get a speeding ticket when traveling under the limit if conditions do not permit. Seems to me that they should be…

> professional drivers getting out of massive speeding tickets That seems unlikely. > Why have speed limits at all then? To reduce the frequency and severity of crashes. To give people a baseline for safe speed. If most people's usual driving speed is "10 mph over the limit," then the effective speed limit is simply N+10 mph, where N is the number on the signs. > tailgating It's easy to deal with this effectively on…

Sadly sometimes tailgaters don't get off your ass if you slow down. I slowed down to 30 once on a 70mph stretch before one guy finally passed while flipping me the bird.

My new rule is to just floor it to get other cars in between me and them.

Re: Why police lie under oath

#77

Post by btilly »

philwelch wrote: post #14
DenisM wrote: post #7

On a historic note, Stalin's first, bloodiest purges were also governed by quotas and the heads of various departments of the secret police (NKVD) trying to one up each other, exerting pressure on their subordinates, and in the absence of judicial oversight. Stalin ended up replacing over-enthusiastic NKVD chiefs twice, and the last one, the one we remember the most and whose name, Beria, we come to associate with th…

> Stalin ended up replacing over-enthusiastic NKVD chiefs twice You know things are bad when Josef Stalin replaces you because you're overenthusiastic.

No, he was just following Machiavelli's advice for how a prince (ie dictator) should enforce law and order when extreme measures are called for. Namely assign the job to a henchman, and then when the deed is done, convince the people that the henchman was acting on his own, and execute the henchman:

http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/churchhistory220/Lecture13...

Re: Why police lie under oath

#78

Post by [deleted] »

evanmoran wrote: post #48
politician wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, it never occurred to me that the seatbelt law is particularly weird given motorcycles.

Just because people are insane on motorcycles doesn't mean the state should pay for the health care of people in cars who could wear a seatbelt. The legality of motorcycles is a separate issue. And lets be honest. We already have to drive regulated cars, with regulated emission, with gas that is regulated, at the speeds that are regulated, and only if we have regulated licenses. Is a seat belt really a big deal? Wear…

[deleted]

Re: Why police lie under oath

#79

Post by nnq »

...how expensive would it be to have all policemen use something like mini-cameras with mikes on them and have a full video archive of all police actions? If things like Google-glass catch on, the cost of a one way system without the projector, plus a streaming system via mobile phone app will make this disposable cheap (yeah, then we'll get into the privacy matter - like a video of you being stopped for speeding with a hooker in your car risking to get on youtube for your wife to see... but still)

Re: Why police lie under oath

#80

Post by MartinCron »

Mz wrote: post #67
politician wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| Is that so bad? Please, I wasn't making a value judgement, but one of consistency. We all know that laws are inconsistent and applied inconsistently, but I was surprised that I'd never considered that particular inconsistency in the seat belt debate. Now I'm curious, do you have to wear a seat belt on an ATV? If the desire is maximum safety, then why a lap belt and not a 4-point harness? Why not a motorcycle helmet…

Sort of OT: I processed accident claims for over five years. You don't have to do anything "insane" on a motorcycle to get seriously racked up. What would be a minor fenderbender in a car leading to minor whiplash, where the policyholder was trying to see how many neckrubs he could get covered, on a motorcycle can be them picking gravel out of your road rash and involve broken bones that don't want to mend right and…

And the motorcyclists who do not get injured? You saw their insurance claims, too?

You have the most biased perspective on this as is possible :)

Post reply on HN