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Comment by oxide | Hacker News Reader

Will this deter police from retaliating against someone recording them with a cell phone? I can't imagine it will. Police have a lot of options for retaliation, after all.

Sure, it won't hold up in court if they take you to jail, but it could possibly make your life hell for 24 hours at the very least.

You could lose your job being detained, for example. IIRC they can hold you that long with no justification or reason required, but I'm not a laywer so take that with a grain of salt.

Or weeks, if they really wanted to fuck with you. Just leaving a patrol car around your house for awhile is pretty unsettling.

Maybe I'm overthinking this. I certainly don't want to get on the wrong side of my local PD. I don't even want them to know my name, much less stop me every time they see me or otherwise retaliate against me because I whipped out a cell phone.

It's almost like a chilling effect, if I have that concept right. I might be mixing that up with another term. Thinking of police retaliation makes me not want to record the police at all, out of fear of retaliation.

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100% agree. They can and do make up shit all the time. A co-worker of mine was arrested last weekend when a crime was committed at his house and they told him to leave the premises. So, he crawled into the back seat of his car and went to sleep (it was 1am Saturday morning and he had nowhere to go). A hour or two later they arrested him because they told him to leave. He was in a parked car on the street. They charged him with obstruction. They dropped the charges 24 hours later.

>"Edward Anthony Anderson, January 15, 1996, shot while handcuffed and on the ground. Frankie Arzuega, fifteen years old, January 12, 1996, shot in the back of the head; the following Mother’s Day, his family received taunting phone calls from anonymous sources: they dialed *69 (call back) and the police answered. Anthony Baez, December 22, 1994, chocked to death for playing football on the streets of New Your City. Rene Campos, whom police said committed suicide in custody by stuffing more than half his T-shirt down his own throat, reaching three-quarters of the way down to his lungs. Garland Carter, seventeen years old, January 8, 1996, shot in the back by police who earlier that day had driven by his home, making their fingers into the shape of a gun and “firing.” Angel Castro, fifteen years old, October 23, 1996. Having already moved out of a neighborhood because of death threats from the police, Castro rode his bike back to the neighborhood to a friend’s birthday party: He accidentally ran into a police cruiser, breaking his teeth, and as he rose from the ground a cop shot him. Sherly Colon, April 25, 1997, pushed off the roof of a housing project, after which police removed the cuffs which had held her hands behind her back….The list is as long as you want to make it..." –The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen

The Culture of Make Believe is a very difficult book to get through. The author talks about hate crimes and power, and how we've developed these very odd cultural norms around violence. It's pretty depressing.

Sounds very similar to some of the most chilling stories from South Africa during Apartheid: political prisoners whose corpses were photographed and clearly beaten to a pulp with the official cause of death listed as, "fell against chair."

O please the old story of the big bad apartheid regime.

For a bit more perspective: During the difficult transition period 1990 - 1994, security forces (police) caused 518 deaths[1]. Compare that with 2013 US police caused 930 - 1240 deaths and South African police caused 409 deaths[2]. Keep in mind that during this transitional period there was basically a civil war of sorts going on, with 14000 political murders between ANC and other freedom factions during this time (1990 - 1994).

And even today under a free and democratic government it is reported that police behavior is a least just as bad as under apartheid[3]. Currently the police death rate, taking into account population differences is twice as bad as the USA police death rate and four times as bad as during the worst years of police brutality during apartheid.

Fact is South Africa is a deeply divided country and single sentence statements such as the one of the parent poster does no justice to the complexities that is the continually worsening South African situation.

[1]https://www.censorbugbear.org/genocide/how-many-people-died-...

[2]http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-10-fdf

[3]http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/africainvestigates/2015/...

1) The US has six times the population of South Africa.

2) A police officer killing someone, is not necessarily murder. You're going to have to break out how many of those are acts of self-defense, because it's a non-trivial number (likely the majority are in fact self-defense). [1] Some of America's inner cities are wildly violent, with murder rates on par with the worst areas of Latin America (ie some of the worst areas on earth for murder). Try policing a perpetual war zone that has been raging for 40 years.

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/how-many-americans-do-cops-kill-each...

From your comment I'm not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me, but:

1)The US has six times the population of South Africa.

Absolutely, thats why I said South Africa currently has about twice the police killings rate the US has. So the math is: South Africa police killings = 409 to be comparable on a per capita basis with the US rate of between 900 - 1200 divide by 6 = 150 to 200 death per year if the US had the same population as South Africa, which is a rate your linked article also supports. Compare that with the apartheid rate of 518 deaths over 4 years, so about 130 deaths per year. (But ok I have not taken 20 years of population growth into account).

2) A police officer killing someone, is not necessarily murder. You're going to have to break out how many of those are acts of self-defense,

Absolutely, but that is a very difficult thing to do, especially only armed with google. Furthermore police statistics these days in South Africa is renowned to be of especially poor quality, so I have to work with what I have.

2) Some of America's inner cities are wildly violent, with murder rates on par with the worst areas of Latin America (ie some of the worst areas on earth for murder). Try policing a perpetual war zone that has been raging for 40 years.

Your joking right. South Africa has an average murder rate of 34 / 100 000 [1], seven times worse than the USA. And if you want to compare the worst with the worst (Detroit), compare it with our farm murder rate of around 300 / 100 000 [2] which is actually worse than most war zones.

So in summary, police killings during the worst years of apartheid was less than or at least on par with police killings in the US currently and police killings in current day South Africa is about twice as bad as both.

>>Try policing a perpetual war zone that has been raging for 40 years.

Yup...South Africa :D

[1] https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-south-africas-2...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_farm_attacks

So your point here is that systematic racism isn't so bad because when the whites ruled the blacks the statistics were better? I.e. you're saying white people are objectively superior?

No that's not my point at all, that's called setting up a straw man argument..., please don't do that.

My point being, I disagreed that in your very first point you mentioned that police killings were a very common occurrence during apartheid ("some of the most chilling stories from South Africa during Apartheid"), and I argued that it was less common than current day USA and much less common than current day South Africa.

Now there is one very interesting conclusion that you might have missed from my point, and that is that in terms of police killings, either currently the USA is as bad as apartheid South Africa was, or that apartheid South Africa wasn't as bad as you remember.

I didn't say anything about how common police killings were in Apartheid. If you could please also not engage in logical fallacies.

I bring up Apartheid because they were notorious for covering up some truly horrific things that police did and the modus operandi was suppressing opposition. When I see similarities in the kind of things they try to pass off to explain deaths in custody, I think that connection needs to be made.

What I take issue with is your dismissal of my negative remark about "big, bad Apartheid." Yeah, Apartheid was bad.

Apartheid was bad, absolutely. But then according to the stats, it was better than current day USA (which was perhaps the connection you wanted to make?) and much better than current day South Africa (at least insofar as police killings are concerned).

Jesus, what a rant because I used the word Apartheid. Yes, I got screwed over by later presidents too, but it doesn't make me afraid to condemn the system that existed before. Get over whatever issues you need to resolve. You say "big bad apartheid regime" like you could take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaner_Weerstandsbeweging and tell me it's all just a big misunderstanding.

Whats your point? You linked to an extremist movement who had marginal support and had no affiliation with the government that existed during apartheid and that somehow proves what exactly? I mean I could link back to KKK or alt-right movements and that somehow vilifies the current USA governments (past and current) just because these groups exists?

Truth be told, I've got no beef with you or an axe to grind on the subject, I just try to provide some perspective to the situation.

For interests sake, do you have a link to the story about suspects getting murdered and then the police report indicating the suspect "fell against a chair". That's certainly the first I've heard about it. There certainly were some atrocities committed by both sides (whites and blacks or goverment and ANC), so I am not denying it is possible. For a good account if you want, there is an excellent book written by the police commissioner Johan van der Merwe: Trou tot die dood toe. I am not sure if it is available in english, and you might question the integrity / truthfulness of the book, but in my opinion it gives a fairly even account of the events of that time from the perspective of the police commissioner, and the commissioner himself is highly regarded, even by Nelson Mandela so that counts for something...

See my other comment for the rest, but the "fell against chair" case was documented in Donald Woods' book. It wasn't Biko specifically (though I believe his official explanation was "hunger strike", which was even bigger bullshit), but I believe it was more or less a contemporary of his.

Thank you I know about Steve Biko, will have look at some time at Wood's book.

While those are horrifying examples, I dislike this approach of cherry picking and focusing on the worst cases. It can make a problem seem much worse than it really is and make it difficult to tell what is the result of systemic problems and what are individual bad actors.

It's akin to someone mentioning flying and then going into gruesome detail about all of the terrible airline accidents over the years to suggest that flying is unsafe.

You're considerably more likely to be abused by police than be involved in an aviation accident.

Aviation is by far the safest mode of transportation in the world, so that is not surprising.

I disagree. The question isn't if this is representative, the problem is this happens at all.

Expecting no problems is absurd. Zero is very different from small, in terms of possibility and cost.

The real issue is, how did the system react to this? How does it self-correct? This is where so much of government falls down as they close ranks around themselves, identifying with the role they have first instead of identifying with their fellow citizens.

This is a natural way to be (tribal), but it is also extremely problematic.

Bringing examples like so is important for correction.

Wow. That's pretty bad.

I have a similar story of inept police and injustice:

I have an uncle who is a real piece of work. A druggie who my great-grandparents adopted, raised and supported until they both died.

One night he was at my great-grandparents house, harrassing them for money and threatening them. My poor great-grandfather, a 71 year old man at the time, called 911. The operator heard my uncle scream something about killing my grand-grandmother. I guess he was coming off of drugs.

By the time the local sheriff's office responded to the call, my uncle Tim was long gone. The only male present was my 71 year old great-grandfather, so the two deputies incompetently assumed he was the perpetrator.

They didn't even let him put on shoes.

They manhandled my poor grandfather. They took him to jail and he slept on the floor of a cell. He was extremely injured, my mother was furious and encouraged him to press charges. But he was a stubborn old man who spent most of his life as a fire-and-brimstone pastor of a church, in other words he was too polite to take them to court.

The pictures of his injuries are burned into my brain. Massive scrapes, his thin skin peeled back. Bruises all over his face and body. The idea of him sleeping on the floor of a cell...absolutely sickening.

He died a few years later, stomach cancer. He was a great man. I miss him.

p.s. I also have a story of that same department doing me great justice, so keep in mind that it was the two assholes who responded, not the entire sheriff's office that was to blame.

Some of those deputies were good people who saved my ass a few times, let me off the hook a few times, etc. I will say that I'm glad to have moved, though.

From an outsiders perspective it seems that a lot of the problems originate from the amount of training required to wear the uniform.

Yes, this will deter police from retaliating. Rulings like this in other circuits already have. Will it stop it completely? Of course not.

No, they cannot (lawfully) hold you for 24 hours with no reason.

Quick lesson (note: everything I say below is about what is legal, not what might happen -- people (including cops) can do illegal things after all):

Reasonable Articulable Suspicion (RAS) -- A set of specific facts that would cause a reasonable person to believe a crime has been, is being, or is about to be committed. You may be detained if a cop has RAS on you. But RAS is a pretty low bar.

If a cop has RAS and is detaining you, he's trying to get Probable Cause (PC) to arrest you. Talking will likely help him get it. I suggest you use your right to remain silent.

If a cop has PC, you can be arrested. In that case, you might spend the weekend in jail before having an opportunity to get bail, or they might just release you.

If you have been unlawfully detained or arrested, you can sue. It won't be easy to win, but you can sue. In many cases, police officers have what is called Qualified Immunity (QI). This means they literally cannot be sued.

But now, in the Fifth Circuit, it's a clearly established right to record. This means that the officers would lose QI and could be sued for their actions.

Thank you for clarifying some of the mysticism behind all of this. I had no idea QI even existed.

As the saying goes, you can beat the rap but not the ride.

Though I think this is a little tangential to the recording issue. It's just the more universal problem of police misconduct. Hopefully, body cams and little brother recording of police can change this.

This isn't fantasy. Police retaliated against Ramsey Orta for recording the murder of Eric Garner

http://www.theroot.com/nyc-man-who-recorded-eric-garner-s-ch...

While I'm sure it happens, is there any indication this happens on a large enough scale to actually worry about it? Seems like they'd just get more bad press when you record them harassing you because you recorded them the first time.

First of all, this kind of thing happening on any scale is something to worry about.

Second, considering that we know there are instances of it, we're faced with a question. Which is more likely?

1. The officer(s) in question suddenly and for no discernible reason completely snapped and committed actions they knew were immoral and illegal and which they had been trained and conditioned by the culture of their department never to do under any circumstances, or

2. The officer(s) in question were trained and worked their entire careers in a culture in which abuse of authority was routine, accepted and unquestioned, to such a degree that they felt it was the natural course of things and that no significant consequences would fall on them.

Time and again, investigation of corrupt and abusive police departments has turned up evidence for case (2) and not for case (1). We should be assuming case (2) unless and until we see significant evidence otherwise.

What makes you think the police care about bad press?

When it gets them fired. And if it especially makes them hard to hire again somewhere else.

Cops in the US regularly shoot unarmed civilians and get off with desk duty.

The idea that a cop will lose his job for harassing someone is wishful thinking.

That's why they do it, because they don't get fired.

They'll start caring a lot more when they lose their jobs and suffer penalties, and it's not hard for it to happen when they do that.

Cops have tough jobs, the vast majority of police officers mean well and are good people trying to serve their community. I think people in threads like this forget that. But like any group of people there are assholes, we need to have a zero tolerance policy for police officers that violate rights. And for egregious situations we need to hold them even more accountable. Police aren't the law but an agent and servant of it.

That's the complaint I've heard any reasonable person make: the culture of covering up for the disgusting actions of the bad apples implicates far more than the bad actors themselves. It may be beyond any individual cop to change the way the system works, but the culpability doesn't stop at the bad actors themselves.

I can't remember who pointed it out, but someone said that everyone is missing the point when they talk of bad police being a 'few bad apples' and the rest are fine. The full phrase is 'A few bad apples spoil the whole barrel'.

Correct. In addition, someone covering up for a bad apple is, well, a bad apple.

How exactly can a cop in a different precinct/city/state be held responsible for "covering up" bad actors in an unrelated department?

> How exactly can a cop in a different precinct/city/state be held responsible for "covering up" bad actors in an unrelated department?

I truly do not understand how you took this away from reading my comment. I even went out of my way to say that it's more complicated than individual honest cops being to blame. You may want to work on your reading comprehension.

>the culture of covering up for the disgusting actions of the bad apples

This implies to me like you think this culture is prevalent in most police departments. Yet you base this of the events a tiny minority of police departments.

>You may want to work on your reading comprehension.

Try to keep insults off of HN. If I misunderstood you, you should take that as a reflection of your own communication skills and clarify in another comment. Don't just waste everyone's time by just expressing your state of bewilderment.

>Cops have tough jobs, the vast majority of police officers mean well and are good people trying to serve their community

Depends on the department. My local precinct is across from the subway and parks nearly 100% of their vehicles on the sidewalk. It's on both sides of the street and so bad two people can't pass at the same time.

They've actually even spray painted ranks onto the street, which have now almost faded since they've been doing it for so long. The sidewalk is crumbling under the weight of the cars. At town halls they shrug when asked about it.

Despite being a high density area complete with multiple subway lines and a low crime rate, they do all patrols by car. No foot patrols whatsoever.

Meanwhile other NYPD precincts have different behavior.

A representative streetview link:

https://goo.gl/maps/e2FRX9K56GE2

Keep in mind this is an older streetview image; the parking lot on 50th Avenue next to the precinct no longer exists. There are also usually more police vehicles, though most of them shown in this streetview link are the personal vehicles of officers or the security shop (they are friendly with the police and don't get ticketed or perhaps the cops feel bad about parking this way and writing tickets for others on the same block - either way, no tickets)

Here is NYPD literally painting their own parking spots onto a bike lane:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jooltman/status/65433607376670720...