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Comment by aub3bhat | Hacker News Reader

Having seen the horrific rikers beating video. [1] I don't understand why in this day and age, prisons are NOT under 100% CCTV monitoring. Is this just out of sight, out of mind approach? As we debate body-worn cameras to prevent police brutality, ensuring prison and jails are kept under constant surveillance might help reduce recidivism.

It's also tragic that there is direct equivalence to the charter/public school debate. A lot of the arguments for/against charters schools can be simply applied by swapping school for prison. And just like test-scores/teaching-philosophy, you have a superior scandinavian approach.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000002996576/foota...

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I agree. I know someone who was arrested for being drunk in public (very, very drunk and belligerent). Once at the jail I guess she continued being belligerent.

At this point she was restrained on a gurney, surrounded by no less than 4 guards. She said something rude and as a result was tazed not once but 3 times.

After I bailed her out we went to the sherrifs office and requested an investigation. After a few days they claimed to not be able to find any video of this happening. They conceded that there are multiple areas where the cameras can't see.

I also found out that the guards at the jail are not sheriff deputies, but employed by a private corporation. But they wear the same uniform as the deputies, sans badge.

The criminal justice system in this country is disgusting. Truly disgusting. If I'm ever fortunate enough to be financially secure (long term) I plan to dedicate my time to induce change in this area of our society.

One interest effect this had on me was respect for local law enforcement. I used to have some level of respect for them and what I had observed as professionalism. That's all out the window now, and I have 0 respect for them. Instead of being polite and reasonable I am now combative and uncooperative in any encounter. They can taser me all they want, Ill just use it as a public campaign against them.

What the guards did was wrong, but don't you think your belligerent drunk friend needs to share even a tiny bit of the blame? People act like civilians should be able to do or say literally anything and fully expect law enforcement to be perfectly rational and fair and gentle with them.

She does. Which is why we didn't push an investigation too hard or go to the newspaper because of this potential reaction from the public.

I don't agree with her and I do not believe she is to blame. The system worked on her and she has subordinated to the system.

My opinion is that it is not OK to blame the victim. She was assaulted. That is illegal. She posed no physical threat to the guards. She was strapped down and out numbered 4:1.

Would you blame a woman for being held down and gang raped because she dressed provocatively and said hello to these men? Of course not.

> I don't agree with her and I do not believe she is to blame.

I didn't say she is fully to blame, but you can't deny she was an instigator by being belligerent and/or drunk. Or rather, her actions were a catalyst to what happened to her.

You can fully expect law enforcement officials to be emotionless machines, but the reality is that they are human as well and sometimes make incorrect choices based on circumstantial triggers.

Yes, and there never seem to be consequences for that. Don't you find that troubling?

I do not deny that she was an instigator. In fact, I nearly explicitly mentioned it by using the word belligerent.

I contend that it's irrelevant.

If some guy on the street is calling me ugly, fat, or stupid and I walk to him and clock him in the jaw, it's still assault and I would still be charged. The same should apply to jail guards.

>If some guy on the street is calling me ugly, fat, or stupid and I walk to him and clock him in the jaw, it's still assault and I would still be charged. The same should apply to jail guards.

I agree that if a jail guard just walked up to somebody who spoke ill of them on the street and punched them, they should be charged.

But I don't think that things should be simplified that much in the correctional environment because there is a big difference. If inmates were loudly talking down to guards and acting belligerent, that would present a disruption to the orderly running of the institution. It would also set a standard for other inmates to act in that manner. Does that mean I'm saying corrections personnel should feel free to beat inmates at any opportunity? No. But the jail and prison environment has more complex factors at play when inmates act up than just somebody is making fun of me.

I agree it's a complex scenario.

I will never agree that beating helpless and restrained detainees is an acceptable response to any scenario in a correctional facility.

There are things like taking away TV privileges or being demoted to janitorial duty that can be an effective deterrent to many behavioral issues in a facility.

I say many (as opposed to most) because our jails/prisons are regularly used to house the mentally ill these days which creates another layer of complexity. We should fix that problem and remove that layer first and foremost.

It is irrelevant. You are right.

> You can fully expect law enforcement officials to be emotionless machines, but the reality is that they are human as well and sometimes make incorrect choices based on circumstantial triggers.

The bad thing isn't that cops are human, it's that their status insulates them from responsibility when they screw up in all but the most high-profile cases.

Who watches the watchers?

Bingo.

How do you know her version of the story is the correct one? Are you sure she was really strapped down and tasered while restrained? We know she was drunk and belligerent, her recall might be imperfect.

I am not saying that police and prison guards don't abuse prisoners, but people in custody aren't always right either.

I think it boils down to:

- she was seen leaving the scene strapped to a gurney en route to jail

- the taser marks were visible for weeks in 3 separate areas of her body

- she was psychologically damaged. Literally broken for weeks emotionally. It still manifests in strange ways over a year later.

- we ran into another girl she was in jail with at court during pre trial. She was really concerned for my friends emotional well being after "what happened in there".

I 100% believe that "civilians should be able to do or say literally anything and fully expect law enforcement to be perfectly rational and fair and gentle with them."

And I don't see why that's not feasible.

The problem is our collective perception of what criminal justice means to Americans.

The parent poster immediately shifted "partial" blame to the victim because she is a "criminal".

Until we change the perception that criminal = bad person and therefore subject to any punishment nothing of importance will change.

> And I don't see why that's not feasible.

Because law enforcement is made up of the same imperfect, mistake making humans as the bone-headed civilians that committed the offense.

The thing is that they have less expectations than civilians in many cases. If someone was restrained and I tazed them three times I would be arrested immediately.

And you solve that problem structurally. Saying boys will be boys is not how you fix things.

If we could put them in soundproof safe rooms after they've been detained so they do not disturb others (and monitor them so they don't hurt themselves), sure. Probably will increase the fines and taxes tremendously to do that.

You can expect law enforcement to be 'perfectly rational and fair', but expecting them to always be gentle is unrealistic. When people are being violent, it sometimes requires physical force to restrain them, and oftentimes that physical force can't be gentle.

In addition, being 'perfectly rational' does not always mean doing the correct thing every time, with the benefit of hindsight. You can be rational, but in real life we have imperfect information. Innocent people are sometimes hurt because of this imperfect information, even if everyone behaves rationally. It sucks, but is unavoidable.

If "always gentle" is unrealistic, I'd like to set the bar a little higher than "tazing a restrained person 3 times".

None of us was there. If she was belligerent drunk, how could she reliably remember everything that happened ? More likely story is she refused orders to calm down, assaulted CO's and got tazed before being restrained. That would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

She was strapped to the gurney prior to leaving the scene of arrest.

Right.. and if she assaulted CO's to the point where it required three tazings, do you really think she'd escape without a charge?

None of us was there, as you said. I do not take it as "more likely" that the victim earned three tazings. I also don't believe that effective policework would ever require tazing a drunk person three times.

And as has been said elsewhere, she was restrained all throughout.

Both law enforcement and correctional officers are trained in similar facilities with similar skills emphasized, and both physical and verbal techniques are part of that.

Emphasis is key. Grappling, weaponry, and mediation are each taught, but it's individuals that decide on application.

The idea that cops respond with reasonable force in a rational manner is a fantasy. They are not some innocent victims of misunderstanding, they regularly fight back with as much force as they are allowed to employ, and if noone's watching a whole lot more. It's part of their dichotomous mentality. There is tons of evidence for the idea that cops regularly appoint themselves judge, jury and occasionally even executioner. Having the right information means nothing if your entire mindset is bent around the idea that you're there to mete out punishment to the deserving and all you're doing is waiting for someone to stick out their neck to be made an example of.

Again, I am not trying to argue whether too much force is used too often or not. I am simply stating that, even if we lived in a world where reasonable force was used every time by police, we would STILL have cases of citizens being harmed by the use of force by police. Since we know this, we can't use the fact that someone was injured by police to be our yardstick for determining if a police officer did the right thing or not.

You are of course accepting completely that a belligerent drunk woman had sufficient unbiased recall to fairly assess the ordering and significance of events. If you're a belligerent drunk, its usually because you believe everyone is being belligerent with you, regardless of whether they are or are not. If drunk people had good powers of decision making and memory, we'd allow them to drive.

The scars from the taser guns were visible for several weeks. As were the psychological effects. She was broken.

I've known this woman for most of my adult life and have never found her to be one to embellish a story for theatre.

oy vey. When you give law enforcement a gun and taser, you expect them to use it appropriately. Your question begs the question that their action was reasonable in light of the "rude" behaviour.

There is no situation where it's okay for LE to shoot or tase someone because of non-threatening words.

> There is no situation where it's okay for LE to shoot or tase someone because of words.

ftfy

> Instead of being polite and reasonable I am now combative and uncooperative in any encounter.

Just remember: they can get away with anything. It's their word against yours, and they will always win. If you are lucky enough to have any evidence against them, it will just get lost eventually (your case in point).

> They can taser me all they want, Ill just use it as a public campaign against them.

No one in a position to do anything about it will listen. You'll just be adding insult to your injury.

When encountering law enforcement, it's best just to "yes sir"/"no sir" them, and hope you don't come out of it with a charge, or worse. Every question they ask you is an attempt to get you to incriminate yourself. They are not there to help you. It's in your best interest to do everything you can to end the encounter as soon as possible.

Wise advice. I never insult them or anything like that. I don't use sir or ma'am. I love asking if I'm being detained. I never carry ID on me (not in a must identify state). I love denying to answer questions.

I agree that they are never here to help. I don't answer questions as a matter of course.

Another guard trick if you are drunk & being hostile is to claim you 'struck an officer'. Since you are blacked out drunk you have no memory of the altercation and now face a felony charge.

Don't you think you could better promote change by working for the system rather than being a dissident outside the system? Everytime I see threads that talk about "bad apples" I find it strange that I never see comments that encourage getting "good apples" to apply.

I've thought about it. I've even contended in debates that if society restored respect for civil service the situation would likely improve.

Anecdotally I've known multiple people pretty well before they became cops. They were all good people and believed everyone had rights. Then, the gang mentality set in. Now is "us" versus "them". It got to the point where I no longer associate with them.

It sure is a tough problem.

I ran into an old work acquaintance a while back and he was wearing a new prison guard uniform. I blurted out, "Oh no! You've gone over to the dark side!"

Authority figures are regularly given a sort of indoctrination on induction. It's us vs them, they're criminal scum, etc etc. You can't have a civil conversation with a cop, even an off-duty one, about how criminals might be driven to criminal acts by things beyond their control and how they're still people. They simply choose that lifestyle and therefore are unequivocally The Bad Guys. It's in the entire culture, one person isn't going to change it. I do generally dislike cops, and I know there are still some good ones - but they're holdouts, and even they usually only hold out so far or so long before they fold to the cultural expectation for them to be overbearing bullies and thugs. Good people don't become good cops, good people lose themselves becoming cops.

> Everytime I see threads that talk about "bad apples" I find it strange that I never see comments that encourage getting "good apples" to apply.

Are you serious? Or being sarcastic?

The whole point of the "bad apples" metaphor is that the bad apples cause the good apples to rot.

https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/one+bad+apple....

Plenty of "good apples" apply, but are spoilt.

Are you saying that it is morally repugnant to pay money to attend private school?

I am not saying that at all, in fact having grown up in a country with predominantly private school system, it always amazes me how the land of capitalism ended up with essentially socialist system for education.

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