The Trials of White Boy Rick (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Trials of White Boy Rick (2014)

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41 pointssamclemens7 comments

Some high quality journalism right here. I think a lot of people involved with traditional newspapers believed his type of reporting would not happen online. The funding for drawn out investigations, the editorial oversight, the resources to get research information. But articles like this make me think maybe real journalism is still alive in the new medium.

tl;dr: The article is a stunning account -- though it can hardly be surprising at this point -- of what pigs actually get up to.

It's about a white boy who was apparently hanging out with the major players in the Detroit coke/crack game in the 80s, and moving some weight as a juvie, though he certainly wasn't a central figure. He also was an underage informant (at 14!!!) for the FBI, something that could easily have gotten him killed. They and local cops got him out of a serious weapons charge: shooting at a moving vehicle, in order to allow him to keep informing.

These local cops, btw, were quite clearly actively helping certain dealers: guarding shipments, warning of homicide investigations, etc, including helping the mayor's niece who was dating various serious dealers. Anyway, kid got caught while 17 (I think) and was sentenced under a draconian so-called 650 law guaranteeing life in prison for possession of 650g of cocaine.

Now it gets interesting. The so-called 650 law was repealed and most people sentenced under it have been paroled. So why is this guy -- and remember, he went to prison at 17 -- so why are the adults all free and he's in jail? For example, the guys selling $55m/year of cocaine were out in 11. He maybe sold a million dollars total.

Roughly, it seems that he helped the FBI go after the corrupt local cops, and in revenge, at his parole hearing, the pigs sent a bunch of cops who were, at most, tenuously connected to him and uninvolved in the investigation to testify how dangerous he is. Using illegally leaked grand jury testimony. One of these cops who testified against him was later imprisoned for his own mortgage fraud scam, amongst other things.

Oh, and all the dirty cops sent to prison have naturally already been released while this guy rots in prison.

And don't forget the parole board who decided to uncritically listen to testimony from pigs who were completely uninvolved in the case, testimony informed by leaked grand jury testimony.

Calling law enforcement officers "pigs" seriously reduces your statement's credibility. We all know that it's a logical fallacy to consider the personal details of an arguer, but as humans with limited amount of time to evaluate each other, we often take these shortcuts. Using that word handicaps your otherwise informative comment.

I'm not telling you this not because of an emotional connection to cops, I'm telling you this because your word choice harms your credibility.

I totally disagree -- call a spade a spade (a pig a pig!)

The only people who will discount an argument because of that think Walter Scott had it coming. And they'll believe so right up until it's their family member, and maybe even afterwards.

Also, it's important to correctly convey they are no good cops (1), just pigs. That not one of them can be trusted unless on video from multiple angles. That even the supposedly good ones know and knew what their coworkers were up to and choose to look the other way, even when they don't actively help. That somewhere around our ten thousandth repetition of "just a bad apple" modestly intelligent people have to start considering that it's the whole bushel that's rotten.

(1) yes yes, I'm sure there is at least one in America. Maybe two. The statement stands at 99.99%, ok?

It's better to couch your prejudices in euphemistic language? Why is such minute dishonesty more credible? Do you fancy yourself capable of perfect impartiality?

I think if we’re competent enough to disambiguate ad hominem abuse from logical fallacies, we’re competent enough to extract the signal from the noise.

Of course, some may be swayed one way or the other by the word “pigs.” My guess is that anybody who turns their nose up at the word, or who embraces it for that matter, does so because they have their own built-in biases.

In which case, it may end up being neutral, because the kinds of people dismayed by its use may not have been persuaded by the facts either.

The most interesting revelation in the entire piece to me was that a number of high level people close to the mayor were dirty. Mayor Coleman Young may have run Detroit into the ground (according to Time Magazine) but I never heard any allegations that he or his people were taking bribes.

A few years back we went though the trials of another Detroit Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick and his aides, who were taking bribes, lots of bribes and they were all convicted. Kilpatrick's Mother was a Congresswoman and was part of the group around Coleman Young. I have to think that a young Kwame who would have had a front row seat to all this craziness was merely trying to emulate his idol Coleman Young when he sought the office of Mayor of Detroit. The main difference is that unlike his idol Kwame got caught.

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