Police have been spying on black reporters and activists for years
niemanlab.org
niemanlab.org
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This is a shocking video:
https://www.wral.com/ace-perry-pulled-over-by-sampson-county...
+ white cop pulls over black driver (North Carolina)
+ refuses to tell him why he was stopped until he shows ID
+ asks driver questions about company name on his tee-shirt
+ expresses incredulity when driver says he works at the company
+ asks driver other irrelevant personal questions.
+ tells driver he was stopped for driving UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT (doing 65 in a 70)
+ asks driver: "wouldn't you find it suspicious if someone were doing 65 in a 70?"
+ gives driver a WRITTEN WARNING for driving 65 in a 70.
+ brushes off driver's questions saying "I've got stuff to do"
+ Feb 2020
Googling about the case `"Ace Perry" Sampson` it seems no action was taken against the officer. If anyone has an "in" with the ACLU (or similar), the police dept. could use some publicity.
(Strange how some cases don't get the attention they deserve.)
(Note: in response to a now apparently deleted comment: I'm aware that some roads have minimum speed limits. I remember once seeing on a highway: max75 min40. However, 65 in a 70 is just prudence.)
5mph isn't enough to give a ticket.
Apparently it is just enough to harass a minority though.
I've never seen minimums. Just the speed limit
E.g., I remember on some highway it said max 75mph, and min 40mph.
65 in a 70 is just prudence though.
If there is even a slight incline, and I put my foot on the floor, it will not hold 60mph.
Without an incline it will physically not go 80mph.
Should I get a ticket for going to slow? I thought that's what the slow lane is for.
Min speed limits are usually 45. These days, if I’m not in a hurry, I go slow (55-60) in the slow lane because CO2 (20-25% lower emissions than the normal 70MPH around here).
However, I also support ticketing for going below the rate of traffic in the fast lane. Examples: 64 in a 65, or even 70 in a 65, but only if there are a bunch of cars behind you, and a big gap in front.
Where? That depends on the jurisdiction. That also may depend on what kind of road we are talking about.
I suppose your Jeep is somewhat heavier, but that still doesn't sound right.
That said, it's well documented that blacks get singled out for fishing more but the officer probably treats everyone that way.
With that in mind, this is almost certainly a driving while black stop. The fact that he was stopped without a traffic violation as a pretext for fishing (usually they at least wait for you to go 5-over or touch the yellow line or something) leaves no other plausible explanation for why the officer pulled over a clean late model car and then proceeded to act like a jerk.
the questions combined with the stop suggest the cop was suspicious of drug trafficking because of a rental on the highway going under the speed limit (As you say fishing). Maybe race played a factor but odds are he pulled the rental over under that pretext before knowing the drivers race.
There's a video of looters in Manhattan driving a Rolls Royce, obviously rented. There is no reason that nerds on the internet would know anything street smart like that.
[0] They can still go get the records any time after all.
So in other words cops are guilty of being racists (And everything else) until being proven innocent?
Anyone charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty because we feel as a society it is better to let guilty go free rather than convict innocent...Its why the standard in criminal law is beyond a reasonable doubt. Everyone should be treated equally under the law, regardless of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation and occupation.
This is why the powerless and minorities are heavily impacted. Who writes laws? Who edits laws? It is the powerful people with levels of indirection: lobbyists, politicians. That's why the elite is not impacted, because if they get impacted, they can change the laws.
Immunity came about because if prosecutors were Personably liable for charges where there were no convictions no one would take those positions. Similarly if police were personally liable for arrests where there were no convictions no one would be a cop.
But the same is true to a degree for all government, for example if I were to get hit by a county/city bus, generally the driver won’t be liable and worse my damages against the government are capped (I believe at $200k In FL, unless the government waived the cap and good luck with that).
Police, especially in small towns, are notorious for targeting out of towners (the way a racist cop might target a race they don’t like).
Here you have to understand the training/experience of highway patrol. Here we have a rental and it was traveling below the speed limit...a highway cop might immediately think drug trafficking (again not knowing the race, something you probably never thought without the training and experience), And being under the speed limit gives him the right to make the stop (but what he really wants to do is check up on his suspicion). This would explain the questions about the job and where the driver was going to/coming from.
Maybe I missed something but there are hundreds of thousands of stops everyday, many like this one are ridiculous...I’m not sure how much attention this really deserves nor if the officer (who shouldn’t have made the stop to begin with) deserves to be labeled a racist (especially because now a days that is tantamount to being fired and losing your livelihood as well as all the targeting him and his family would endure).
Maybe a potential policing solution would be something akin to jury duty where citizens are selected to shadow officers on every shift, maybe require a mismatch Of the officer/citizen pairing Based on race/sex.
Read my comment, where did I say this was suspicious? What I said in regards to the stop is:
> there are hundreds of thousands of stops everyday, many like this one are ridiculous
>shouldn’t have made the stop to begin with
The law on police stops is very clear you need a violation of a statute or pc...so if there is a minimum and you are under it that is a violation and a cop can stop you...just the same as if you violate the maximum speed statute the cop can stop you. In Florida they even have a “catch all statute” to pull you over if you are driving the exact speed limit if that wasn’t safe based on “conditions of the road” which of course is purely subjective.
I’m not arguing for or against the laws in any capacity and the laws are not my logic.
Anyway I think you might be missing the point where the poster stated:
>”under is suspicious according to your thinking...”
I never said driving under the speed limit is suspicious, and I specifically said I think this stop was ridiculous...still I don’t think we can say he was stopped for being black (it’s possible) but more likely due to being a rental car driving under the speed limit.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.newsobserver.com/news/polit...
"Drive too fast" JAIL
"too slow" JAIL
We moved away from intent in the 1970s.
What matters now is impact, not intent. If excessive police stops disproportionately affect black drivers those stops are racist, and the people performing the stops are racist.
But we know this, from Fergusson and similar.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm
> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.
> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding the law and promoting road safety.
> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.
So black police in those jurisdictions are racists against blacks because the jurisdiction as a whole disproportionately stops blacks?
I don’t think that’s how it works.
Is there any other occupation(s) you strip people of their racial identity Or just police?
So, just in case you actually mean what you say, what I'm getting at:
if your colleagues have a certain conduct, you follow suite. It's human nature. That doesn't mean every police officer, black or other other ethnicity is inherently racist. But they as a group act according to a pattern. A Blue pattern. You watch out for your own, no matter race or creed. I hope that cleared things up.
That is the complete opposite of being a racist.
Thanks for writing that
At what point do these abstractions become ridiculous? White and Black are races but Blue is a different category and yet equivalent?
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. Impact can reveal underlying issues but is not necessarily racist in and of itself.
Consider the policy of "draw 100,000 names out of a hat and search those people for drugs". It is very unlikely that the demographic of those arrested as a result perfectly matches the demographic of the nation as a while, but I think it is hard to argue discrimination or prejudice here, because there is not even an opportunity for a human to have exercised discrimination.
Fishing stops like the OP posted try to be like this policy - a random dragnet. The issue, of course, is that the randomness is implemented by a racist police force. Black people are "randomly" stopped disproportionately, and treated harsher during the stop. So the disproportionate result is plausibly explained by racist intent.
James Mickens, using logic and humor, makes this point in a way that even geeks might understand.
"Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible?"
You're probably right, but suspect you'd find quite a few of people who would not agree (we have a whole legal system based on intent for all sorts of crimes -- most people think it matters.)
With that assumption, don't think it's super constructive to harden oneself to an academic definition that can interpreted as weaponization. There are so many unambiguous examples of racism that can galvanize the majority / help facilitate understanding -- don't see the point in the flippancy / pushing to ball to a place that will be polarizing. You're not changing any minds.
On the way home, the sheriff or some bullshit village police would frequently pull over a black driver I recognized from fishing. You’re talking old men in their 70s.
I won’t claim the same treatment, but I would get pulled over at least monthly for various bs offenses. I found out later it was because my car was purchased and registered in a big city, and you could tell the county of registration from the plate.
The link literally said the officer faced no consequences.
I mean, if being labeled a racist was a dangerous as you seem to think, you'd really think that people in comfortable positions of power would go out of their way not to act racist. And as links like this show, they don't. So frankly I think that's an existence proof to the contrary.
I'm pretty confident that going 5 MPH under the speed limit does not endanger anyone else on the road and does not constitute reasonable suspicion to stop the driver.
That said you can be confident all you want in NC if you are driving slow on a highway it’s a traffic offense because driving slow impedes traffic and is dangerous (not my argument, but the rationale for the law)Z
It was harassment and country-of-residence profiling (driving while Canadian, though admittedly it was also a major corridor for pot smuggling at the time). Crooked police cultures can set in for all sorts of reasons.
Additionally, all around MSFT campuses in the old days there'd be cops waiting to catch exiting employees going 36 in a 30 (exactly 5+ over) at the end of the month to fill their quota.
There used to be a host of lawyers on the Eastside who specialized in getting rid of traffic tickets for MSFT employees on technicalities. It was cheaper than having your insurance jacked up.
I got a traffic ticket every 6 months or so in WA (all of them for 6 miles above in a residential, because I drove like an old man even when I was young). Since moving to CA, in almost two decades I've gotten exactly one for rolling a stop sign. My driving habits haven't changed.
All that to say traffic enforcement is a relied-upon income stream for some places in the US.
Throw in waze and you're in a situation where you can basically cruise at 90 for a long distance vs. 75. Escort or V1
For these kinds of stops, where they were waiting on side roads for you drive by, a radar detector might not even help much ?
I did have friends with detectors for highway driving, so your suggestion is solid. I wish cars had them as options like leather seats :-)
Okay. Why did this trooper then ask for reg and ID, do a background check, and issue an unexplained warning?
Back to your point: I just watched the linked video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODmT-KDfkC0
How could the trooper NOT know the driver's race before pulling him over?
How can you conclude the officer knew the drivers race and that’s the reason for the stop?
"How can you conclude the officer knew the drivers race"
What measure of proof do you require?
At least some before I label someone a racist. Like I said he might be racist but I didn’t see anything to label him that.
Just because he is a white cop pulling over a black driver Doesn’t make him racist. If everything was the exact same but the cop was black would you label him a racist or just a dickhead cop?
I said many times I’m not ok with the stop, but based on the stop and questions I was clearly a bias of being rental/out of towner (which is wrong too, but doesn’t make someone a racist)
Forget what proof I need, what did you see that makes him a racist? You think he has never stopped a white person for no good reason and asked them similar questions (Maybe, but I doubt it)?
They said they "were blind to". It is easy to miss things when they do not affect you personally.
Like it is a privilege to be able to absorb the potential ticket, that you might be able to get out of like this guy did with a warning.
It seems more likely that the cop would create pretexts to escalate the situation by not talking to them.
His encounter with those same officers a few minutes later was caught on body cam: https://youtu.be/28w6xvRj9EM
This is a guy who is arguably as “privileged” as it gets for someone pulled over by the police: highly educated white guy attorney who hadn’t done anything wrong. And he was charged with two (very minor) crimes.
It’s easy to give the advice to exercise your rights but it’s difficult in practice when the retaliation by those in authority is so clear.
I'm not sure reality works that cleanly, but I think that's the thought.
I once was pulled over when I did a cross-country road trip. I was given some bs reason that I cut off a semi truck when changing lanes and that my GPS unit in the car was too high and blocking my view. I'm not a POC and the cop asked tons of questions, wanted to inspect my trunk, called the k9 unit, etc. I ended up also getting a warning. Subsequently the cops followed me for miles which felt like they're trying to harass me and find another reason to pull me over. So these things exist regardless of skin color.
Your attempt to dismiss racism as a factor in police actions is a big part of the reason why the police are able to get away with it so much.
The problem is that you're assuming the system is fair and therefore the statistics that come from it are a reflection of reality. If the system is racist then the statistics will be a reflection of that racism. Until you can demonstrate that isn't the case then using crime statistics as an excuse for police actions will be questionable at best, and actively enabling racism at worst.
What else can be used other than statistics? Is there some other common frame of reference out there?
So there are plenty of ways to acquire statistics and data other than through the biased system you are trying to examine. Think of it like going after a computer system that you suspect has been rooted. Do you want to use the system tools from that system to examine itself? Probably not.
If I recall correctly, there's a few confounding factors there - one is that survey results for "have you used drugs in the past week" show much higher relative use by African Americans than "have you used drugs in the past year". Another is that in other surveys African Americans were significantly more likely to answer "no" to "are you a convinced felon" given that they were actually convinced felons, so the survey results aren't necessarily accurate anyways.
Qualitative research eg talking to people. Use empathy and compassion. Don't try to distill everything down to numbers.
-Mark Twain
https://www.bing.com/search?form=MOZLBR&pc=MOZI&q=blacks+lie...
The problem with statistics is that you need to take lots of time and care to have all sides fully explain their position and be able to rebut counterarguments with more data. If you do this, you will get to the truth, which is why people who are wrong tend to push conspiracy theories in order to dismiss the data instead of putting forward testable arguments. There is no better (or worse) non-argument than the one that you assert can not be falsified a priori.
Ive seen a lot of evidence of black people not being able to fully prove their innocence and taking a plea deal because they would rather spend 6 months in jail over fighting, with the aid of an incompetent public defender, to avoid a 10 year sentence.
With all the corruption caught on officer body cameras in just the last 5 years (planting drugs, killing innocent people, unnecessary excessive force, death penalty/life sentence convictions overturned, prosecutors caught hiding evidence of innocence, etc)... It is safe to assume that this level of corruption (which is in many cases protected by both qualified immunity and prosecutorial immunity) has been going on for decades, heavily skewing black crime stats with false entries.
Police officers should be beyond reproach. Their behaviour should be exemplary. If an officer is harassing people that's already enough reason to question whether they're fit for the job, and if there's any doubt whether they're being racist or not then it should be on the officer to demonstrate that they're not (using their record, bodycam evidence, etc). The police have had decades of unquestioning respect from the public and they've abused that privilege. Now it's time for the police to earn that respect back.
He has no venue to respond. No one even accused him of being racist, besides you. How is he supposed to defend himself, come onto hacker news and write a reply?
The police dept released a statement said they'd review the video and take any action deemed necessary. What you would have them do?
That, but with an independent third party instead of the police dept. Police are clearly not capable of policing themselves.
Stop murdering or otherwise harassing black people...?
Stop switching cameras off, stop blocking any attempt at creating accountability, stop working for the police.
Quick question. How many black people did US police murder last year? Order of magnitude. How many would be few enough for you to say that the police have "stopped" - 100? 10? 1? 0?
My guess is that the actual number is a lot lower than you're thinking, even when counting unintentional things like "police officer made a mistake, shot innocent person" and "pig strangled someone a little too long". Not to say that that's excusable when it does occur, but...
The thing that goes after the but is called an "excuse".
Are there PR firms out there trying to set public perception?
They're being asked to do literally everything but are armed and trained for anti-violence first and foremost.
The thing is, police brutality is heavily promoted on the news right now because, well, it outrages people, that's the point. It generates more ad revenue that way.
But if you hear it and see this every day, and someone says the word "police", your mind immediately thinks of "brutality". Not that it doesn't exist, but availability bias makes the issue seem much bigger than it actually is. This is why it's a bias.
And to put the danger of racist white police officers into perspective: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/163/274/fbf...
Yes, racists are a problem, but not a very big one.
I'll put this to you - people of color are absolutely justifiably fearful of any interaction with the police, and they have to experience it much more frequently. You need a source? Here - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/03/us/minneapoli... Hope you'll read it.
And this includes ALL white people, much less "white people who happen to be police officers". My argument is not saying police brutality doesn't "exist", I'm saying it's "overblown".
Finally, I am a "person of color" myself and I don't find the police behave to me in the way you describe. They don't act that way towards my father either, not even once in his life. Or any of my person-of-color friends for that matter. Admittedly, this is anecdotal, but my main point is the overall data does not point towards your premise.
WTF, there's zero reasons to believe this is a shill account. Looking at the commenters history it looks like a run of the mill HN account (Oh but that's just more proof of shilldom! right?)
Just because it's posting something critical to the police you jump to "shill"? Because posts critical of the police are so rare and not at all something that's been common on the internet for more than 25 years?
For those that drive to Mammoth, they'll know there's the town of Bishop. After cruising freeway speeds for hours on end, the speed limits drop dramatically fast. They're easy to miss. At night that tiny town will have cops hidden and ready for speeders, but also cars that look suspicious. A car filled with young guys is a prime target.
I've been pulled over multiple times there, and after finding nothing they let you go.
-sunnydaze-
i called Sampson Co just now, and Deputy Snow told me they promoted the officer
[this is where i would post their phone number if the rules didn't tell me not to]
That was back in the ‘30s, and it didn’t start then.
Edit. Anslinger was the head of the Bureau of Narcotics, which eventually became the DEA. (At the time, most (all?) famous jazz musicians were black:
> Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with rebels like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, and—as the journalist Larry Sloman recorded—he longed to see them all behind bars. He wrote to all the agents he had sent to follow them and instructed: “Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day.” His advice on drug raids to his men was always simple: “Shoot first.”
He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not “the good musicians, but the jazz type.”
It not racist just because jazz musicians, by random historical accident, happened to mostly be black.
It is unethical, without any racism, to go looking for excuses to arrest people who play jazz. The proper response is to leave the music venue. Jazz isn't awful enough to merit such heavy-handed tactics.
Seriously, don't assume there is racism under every rock. That is a dismal, pessimistic, miserable, negative, and hateful way to go through life. Bad people exist, yes, but it is terrible to presume the worst out of every unpleasant interaction and terrible to take it as a matter of faith that the world is all about tormenting any particular group of people.
Cheer up. It's good for you. Appreciate the improvement and opportunity.
This is political control vs. democracy.
How do we do helpful surveillance without destroying everybody's freedom?
Perhaps we can't? Perhaps we just need to focus on response and deterrence measures to bad things people do?
Are we sacrificing too much by having 'prevention' measures (surveillance) in place?
Before we can even begin, let's dispose of the notion that the government serves "us".
There's nothing to begin though unfortunately.
Who give orders for this ?
Remember that modern societies allow their governments (nearly) exclusive use of firearms and jails, and yet those societies did not turn into a dystopian hellhole. Because laws, courts, checks and balances, all that stuff.
Step outside of the modern world and think about it - the tremendous imbalance of power still allows the freedoms we have today. Properly securing information access rights is a child's play by comparison.
If they surveil you without your knowledge, you don't know. They're just one step ahead of you. They can gaslight you. Know where you're about to be and leave something there for you to trip over.
Or they can just evaluate whether you're too much of an inconvenience and then arrest you -- Three Felonies a Day and all that, easy to find when you're spying, and then parallel construction and you're out of the way.
Surveillance is secret, and that's the problem - secret surveillance that gives law enforcement an advantage. As well as whoever in governmental and political power may choose to abuse this secret surveillance.
Throwing people in prisons or gunning them down is visible and able to be protested against - like is happening now.
How can people protest against something they don't know is even happening? It took Snowden to even know that.
Secrecy is fire, and humans ought not to play with it too much.
If a ring of doctors were caught illegally selling organs, we wouldn't title an article "Doctors have been selling organs for years". If bank tellers in a specific city were taking some money off the top of deposits, we wouldn't write "Bank tellers have been stealing money for years".
I'm sure there are some national issues with policing in the United States, but most police organizations are local. It's very unlikely that every local organization is bad, and even if they were, it would be very unlikely that every local organization is bad in quite the same way.
I don't think headlines like this help us balance the discourse. There's no concerted effort by police nationwide to spy on black reporters and activists. This is about a problem in Memphis, Tennessee. The content of the article doesn't imply anything beyond that. The title is extremely sensationalized, and many people will only read that far.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-us-hospitals-push-organ-blac...
(Spoiler alert: maybe, some, some of the time)
I don’t see how the current treatment of the police in the press is any different than other life-and-death professions.
> Mark McCarren, a New Jersey federal prosecutor involved in the case, said Rosenbaum indicated that the transplants he brokered took place at more than one U.S. hospital and that the hospitals were duped and were not in on the scheme.
If exclusively New York-Presbyterian were potentially involved in pushing the organ black market (for example), and the title still said "US hospitals", this would be a fair comparison.
I see headlines like this daily. They're meant to be eye catching and make it seem like everyone is being hit by it, then a few lines into the article, they rapidly cut back on the scope because they've already got your ad money.
But the FBI and police departments around the country have used intimidation tactics for as long as they've been around. This author is writing about their personal experience in Memphis. It's possible that other people will come forward with similar experiences. We've already seen videos of police arresting/intimidating journalists around the country for no reason these past two weeks, so it's definitely not a problem confined to Memphis.
I'm not certain it's fair to compare standard clickbait to a title on NiemanLab - it seems like you agree with me that it's a not a positive thing. I think we've definitely seen increasing amounts of this behavior from more prominent publications, but I wish we wouldn't.
I'm sure other people will come forward with similar experiences, but they haven't yet. It seems like a dangerous approach to assume the worst until then.
The problem I find with arguments such as yours is that you're looking at the few exceptions to the norm and not the trend of policing in America. Yes, there are likely a few good police organizations just like there are likely a few good cops or a few good politicians. But the point is that when the institution as a greater whole is corrupt, then it calls into question even the few good people that remain complicit in its existence. You should be demanding answers from even the good apples and making sure they stay good, not give them a pass because they haven't gone bad yet.
This article is not about the institution as a greater whole. It's not about the bigger picture. It's about the Memphis PD. That's what's on the table here, and that's what the title should make clear.
Sensationalism is the concern, not criticism of police.
The article is about her experience with the local PD, yes. The context of the title relates to the here and now which is a data point in the greater picture of how the police in general behave. It's only sensationalism if you ignore everything else going on around us.
I think I understand what you're aiming at. I think I would agree with you if the title wasn't so rigid, but it feels to me like a significant claim that extends beyond the here and now reality.
But there was, wasn't there? And one could argue that what Snowden revealed about the NSA hints that there still is.
> In his new book, James Comey describes his deep admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. and decries the FBI’s treatment of him as “a dark chapter in the Bureau’s history.” Shortly after he became FBI director in 2013, Comey instructed the entire workforce of the FBI to read King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” one of Comey’s favorite writings. He created a curriculum for new agents to “remember how well-meaning folks lost their way,” and introduced an exercise for the new recruits to visit the King memorial, pick one of the quotes inscribed on the marble wall, and write an essay “about the intersections of that quotation and the FBI’s values.” On his desk at the bureau, Comey kept a copy of the letter authorizing the wall-to-wall surveillance of King as a reminder of this “shameful” history.[1]
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/24/james-comey-mlk-martin-l...
The title is a dishonest representation of the content of the article. That's what I take issue with. Nothing more, nothing less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol
>... There's no concerted effort by police nationwide to spy on black reporters and activists.
Are you serious? There has always been a suspicion of the black community and the people in it from COINTELPRO to the modern day FBI fiction of "Black Identity Extremists"
https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist...
Your whole post is a hamfisted attempt to discount the interactions between race, policing and power as well as the historical context.
The current display has a little bit of everything (pandemic, social unrest, narcissistic depravity, a few Trillion of deficit and China being China.
Hollywood can do dumpster fires, but this is way out of their league. Its about the same on bad actors though.