I'm not sure if that's grim, though; don't most people want it to be exactly that way? We grant the police extraordinary power and some amount of immunity on purpose.
But then I live in a place where gun control is a thing and has 6 times less homicides than the USA after adjusting for population, so there's that.
The popo are mostly unarmed and I'd rather things kept that way.
I really don't understand how the US justice system works the way it does.
This has never stoped them from lying, since they already know who will be believed.
I have an experience where a trooper lied to the court twice and I have evidence to back it up. Nobody cares. I tried a the ACLU (bigger fish to fry), a complaint with the department (they counseled him and made the excuse that they have a lot of new guys at this station), I wrote my state representatives multiple times (no reply, except for one, which was a form letter not even applicable to my scenario), we tried the DA's office (they participated in multiple rights violations), we tried the DoJ for civil rights violations (no updates for about 6 months), we submitted complaints against a magistrate and a judge with the board of conduct (no updates and over 6 months), we submitted complaints against the ADAs who participated in incompetent or misconduct to the Bar (was told they only investigate prosecutors if the court formally determines there was prosecutorial misconduct), talked to an civil rights lawyer (was told it was a violation, but the courts don't care unless large monetary damages were involved), and talked to an investigative journalist (ran a story similar to this but said to keep him posted if I find anything explosive).
There's literally nobody to turn to. Almost every person involved in the system made mistakes or misconduct during the process (cop, 2/3 magistrates - 3rd was arrested for an unrelated matter, the judge, 2 ADAs, etc). I have absolutely zero faith in the system.
Judges generally aren't involved I'm the removal of an officer. That typically happens via IAD, and even then the union tells them to resign so the IAD investigation ends and they can just go to a different department.
My wife an I both witnessed him say he was amending the charge because he made a mistake. He then went into the court and told the magistrate he was amending the charge to "cut us a break". The magistrate then issued a continuance (instead of dismissing if he knew the true reason). The incorrect charge carried pretrial restriction only found under that charge and the trooper knew that the charge was incorrect for about 6 weeks. State law only allows amendments if the rights of the defendant were not violated (there were 2 other rights violated later, and multiple procedural mistakes too). Subjecting someone to pretrial restrictions under a charge that is known to be wrong is unusual punishment and also a violation of the state constitution. So it would require dismissing the case. We found proof supporting this in the trooper's later testimony where he stated that he knew it was incorrect for those 6 weeks, yet held it against us anyways. The IAD investigation found that he did tell us the correct thing and then told the court something wrong 10 minutes later. The report said it was a "misunderstanding", without any details or explanation.
Later he claimed that a picture he introduced in court was in the investigative file "since the beginning", yet it was not furnished to us when we subpoenaed the file. Another IAD investigation found that the picture wasn't placed in the file until a later time. The magistrate did not throw out the picture because he thought we had access the whole time and we didn't have access to that IAD finding until after the trial (not sure if I trust this or they were covering). Furthermore, the picture was exculpatory evidence under the incorrect charge and should have been furnished to us regardless of the subpoena. So much for Brady...
He made 2-3 other factually incorrect statements that I did not have hard evidence of (just our word against his). These included things like changing his story in a contradictory way. We did have a recording of his testimony and a phone call with him (both consistent with law).
The complaint process also treated us adversarially, which is a violation of feral policy (hence complaint to DoJ). The state police claim they can knowingly hold incorrect charges against people.
Are you talking only about evidence literally gathered with a gun pointed to your head? If, so, well, my comment wasn't that literal. As a rule, if you have any chance of becoming a suspect, the police here will refuse to interrogate you without your lawyer around, because listening to you can jeopardize their work.
There are two classes of damages police can enact on you in the US, both of which makes interacting with them in any capacity dangerous.
The first class is that they can completely ruin or end your life. This includes anything from killing you, leaving you with lifelong injuries or stress disorders, felony charges, etc. Anything that permanently scars your enjoyment of life.
The second class is non permanent, but extremely inconvenient damages. These are very common, take little effort or thought on their part, and ranges from impounding a car, charging you with a misdemeanor, harassing you, taking large sums of cash from your person, disturbing your house or belongings, trespassing you, holding important belongings or documents as evidence, etc.
Either of these classes of damages can be the result of an interaction with police, stemming from saying the "wrong thing", "acting nervous", "acting suspicious", being in the vicinity of a possible crime, being accused of witnessing an event, being too close while they are conducting police business, "making them feel uncomfortable or unsafe", being the victim of a crime, etc.
Each time you speak to police, you risk a chain of events occurring that result in one of these two classes of damages. It's just not worth it. They aren't worth talking to, given some of the possible outcomes.
Basically if you don't interact with police at all you can't have bad (or good) interactions. Since there are lots of things (race, wealth as indicated by clothing or vehicle, someone having a bad day, ticket/arrest quotas, etc) that can make interactions worse and few that can make them better it's often easier to just avoid contact.
Personal example: I'm doing laundry at a laundromat following the tragic death of a washing machine not long ago. On a recent Sunday night the attendant appears to have quit sometime in the afternoon or early evening (note on the counter "back in 2 hours" but clearly gone much longer than that). I cleaned up the place a bit while my stuff was in the dryer, but since I was the last person there and it was after their last load (and no answer on any of the numbers on the call list behind the counter), I called the local police to see if they could have patrols keep an eye open overnight. I felt fine doing that as a late middle age white guy in whitebread suburbia, but if I was a 20something minority? I suspect the wisest move would be to simply finish my laundry and leave just like I would any other visit to the business.
I didn't know there was such a place?
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
The USA has 4.96 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. 93rd in the world out of 230 countries or territories, below the global average of 6.2 and well below the average in the Americas of 16.3. It's also below the African average of 12.5.
CAF and Puerto Rico are the major territories with a figure closest to 4 times the US, and Puerto Rico is 20th on the list. Higher than Puerto Rico are 18 territories in the Americas, and 2 in Africa.
Of the 10th most populous countries in the world, the US is 5th and lower than Brazil, Nigeria, Russia, and Mexico. However, it _does_ have the highest rate of the 3, 4, and 5 most populous countries (Brazil is the 6th most populous, and with a murder rate of 27.38, more than 5 times the US rate).
Of its neighbours, Canada's figure is 1.7 (lowest in the Americas), while Mexico is at 29.07, 13th highest in the world.
In the Americas, only 4 countries or territories have lower rates than the US: Chile, Martinique, Aruba and Canada. On the other hand, 45 other countries or territories have a higher murder rate.
My own country is at almost 6 times the US rate, too, btw.
That schizophrenia between demands for law and order, and the reality of law and order, is why we lock so many people up and have fairly tough policing.
One option is to accept that hey, the government can't really stop all this crime, so let's not investigate or prosecute that much. This is the approach taken by the latest crop of liberal DAs. And it's been a disaster for local communities.
That's also when you start seeing stores with their own armed guards, and armed gated communities as the wealthy privatize security for themselves -- and the poor are subject to a lot of violence. I remember visiting the Phillipines and seeing men with shotguns outside basically normal stores and in shopping malls.
But hey, you don't have government jails filled with people and the police are a lot less visible. So, there is an upside, it's not necessarily a bad approach as long as we are willing to tolerate private security engaging in private violence against criminals.
But what you can't do is pretend that we should have Swiss levels of incarceration while at the same time having a much larger criminal class and a completely different society.
Fun Fact: In Switzerland, if you leave your windows open during the winter, people will call the cops on you (for wasting energy). It's a much more rules-following society that would drive most Americans nuts.
This phrase omits the key issue: Crime, physical abuse, and political suppression by the legal system (including law enforcement officers), unrelated to reducing crime. When police arrest or shoot, DAs prosecute, and courts jail innocent people, it doesn't reduce crime. And criminalizing harmless activity, such as using marijuana, increases crime (including by creating a black market) and does nothing for public safety.
If we're going to be 'tough on crime', why aren't we tough on people in power or on ethnicities with power. How is that related to reducing crime?
> One option is to accept that hey, the government can't really stop all this crime, so let's not investigate or prosecute that much. This is the approach taken by the latest crop of liberal DAs.
That's not the approach, only the false characterization by political enemies. The approach is that the behavior I described above has nothing to do with reducing crime; it is criminal and should stop (this seems so obvious that it doesn't bear explanation). And that mass incarceration hasn't worked - the war on drugs was ineffective (and arguably a means of political oppression of minorities) - damages communities socially and economically (when large segments lose parents and felons are unable to work productively), and of course is harmful to its victims. let's find out what works and implement it.
Some things that work to reduce drug crime are sites where people can obtain and use drugs safely, decriminalization of drugs (especially harmless ones such as marijuana), and treatment of drug addiction as illness (which is what is already done to drugs for wealthy people). Also, providing services to young people, including activities, quality schooling, mental healthcare and counseling, as well as means for a hopeful future, do a lot to reduce crime.
> And it's been a disaster for local communities.
Do you have evidence of that? Crime is generally at generational lows, though shootings have been up during the pandemic. Can you show a correlation between these new approaches and increased crime?
Critically, people in those communities don't agree: They've long asked for these approaches and vote in large numbers for these DAs. It's people outside those communities that, bizarrely, try to overrule them and impose these things on them. That looks like political oppression to me; what other business do these outsiders have?
If he beats you up after you are compliant, then we are talking about abuse. Forces you to confess, abuse. Any unnecessary roughness while you are in custody (e.g. The Ride), also abuse. But if he legitimately suspects you are committing a crime and asserts his control to stop it, then he is merely doing exactly what we (society) have paid him to do. It only becomes a problem if he abuses that power after control has already been gained.
That's hardly something that everyone believes without qualification. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, just that I perceive a social context where it is normal to consider it a potential misuse of power depending on various factors.
For instance, suppose you were stopped and had a gun pointed at you because you resembled someone involved in an armed robbery, but it appeared they had little more to go on than race and gender.
You'd agree it's a fact that some people have perceived a situation like that, as victims, right? And if it was as they perceived, and a pattern, wouldn't it then be correct to consider it an institutional misuse of police power?
One thing to consider is that pointing a gun at a person is not harmless. It carries a risk of inadvertently discharging the weapon. How many times have you heard the admonition to not point a gun without the intention to shoot?
Accidents happen, and sometimes make the news, especially when the officer says they thought they had their taser. Pointing a gun is also a threat that suggests the victim might be shot with impunity. Statistically, there are probably people who have heart attacks or strokes due to the stress. Even if most officers are professional and trustworthy, there's no way to know in such a situation before the outcome.
I know that this discussion is about US law, but I want to add this here to put in perspective how skewed law enforcement regulation is in the US.
Much of what's perfectly acceptable in the US would be considered abuse of power in Europe. Such as pointing a gun at someone just because that someone could possibly be in the process of committing a felony.
Could you provide some examples of anything on the ballot that influenced police behavior?
Sure, a lot of people just vote party line. But a lot of local elections are non-partisan.
Have you ever belonged to a club or nonprofit or something? Often they are begging people to run for office unopposed. If nobody wants to, you can't force them. People who do want to, eventually get tired or die and then it can be kind of a crisis to find a replacement.
It's similar in small local political races. If you don't vote every year, you might not have noticed?
Sometimes the incumbent goes unchallenged, and sometimes there is a challenger that is obviously not serious, but at the same time, the incumbent has a lot of murky dealings and connections that make it hard to have enthusiasm.
I only vote if there is a choice, but the "choice" is usually the incumbent in a de facto one-party government.
Yes, I have. Actually I'm part of the founding team of a nonprofit engaged in developing software to make parliamentarians' voting behavior transparent for their constituency.
Voter apathy is a depressing fact I'm confronted with almost every day. The sad truth is that many people ... simply don't care. The reason we founded votelog is to make people understand what their representatives are up to and make better decisions.
> If you don't vote every year, you might not have noticed?
I try to vote as often as I have the chance to and cherish everyone participating in an informed way in our democracies. Unfortunately for many people, voting is not a duty to be fulfilled but a right to be enjoyed. Just having the right is enough for them.
I guess I'm a bit jaded because I still haven't found out how to make them care to actually fulfill the duty.
Fine, but isn't it true that candidates are needed before voter apathy is relevant?
I struggle to understand why.
I have some idea that this because things nowadays happen so far away - as in; I hear news and happenings from the capital - but people usually don't have the means to influence these happenings, they learn to just not participate. Maybe?
The people who are not having police encounters with any regularity, who aren't drawn on when they do get pulled over, who perhaps have property or other reasons to be invested in the status quo, often want things this way.
The people on the wrong side of the gun feel differently. Giving cops lethal power does not create safety. It shifts around what the danger is and who is in danger.
Making something illegal for law abiding citizens is the point!
When someone (either in authority or anyone) sees a person with X, and it's legal, then they don't know if it's a criminal or not without further investigation.
When they see a person with X, and it's illegal, then they do know it's a criminal. This is an enormous advantage to enforcement, if that is the goal.
Obviously you can, and many people do, make arguments based on crime statistics that outlawing guns works, but I prefer a logical approach.
A phrase I've seen on HN is "thought terminating cliché". Would that be a better way to express my opinion, by calling it that?
Currently both anti-social and pro-social individuals possess firearms. If possession of firearms is criminalized, those who tend toward pro-sociality will give them up disproportionately. Such a policy would therefore tilt the balance of power toward those with anti-social inclinations. This is a bad outcome.
And I don't take a position on whether the authorities are grouped with the "anti-social" crowd. Some people would say they are.
Purely for the sake of discussion, I presumed the conceit that there is a "justice system" which is "pro-social".
In that context, it seems clear to me that criminalizing things is a very useful tool.
If you reject the premise, you might be perfectly correct, yet I would still expect people to be addressing those who believe there is a "justice system".
Surely all sensible anarchists can imagine believing in "law and order", and assume that a random person probably does?
Even if one doesn't believe there is a justice system, one might believe there could be. I automatically assume anyone who wants to discuss topics like crime and justice believes in the concepts.
The judgement "obtuse" comes with the sense I have that the context is otherwise violated.
And then, stringent training can be mandated for drivers too! Just make simulators of the quality used for pilot training and require people to pass difficult tests where they react to unexpected events while driving.
We're up to something like 1/3 of the population having some kind of criminal record, though, so the balance could tip in the coming years. The culture wars we are experiencing right now may be a manifestation of that.
That is definitely not a tautology. It is common that the majority of people views the status quo as undesirable.
The status quo is likely to always be some sort of local maxima/minima.
So most people may prefer it to most available small changes, but most people may prefer a large change if there was a way to get there in a coordinated way.
No, that's still not true.
I can't believe it if I can't imagine it, and if you think it's possible, you should share how.
I think this is a dispute over semantics. It's not very productive to argue whether something is true or false when people define terms differently. Better to explain how you define them.
As for most people wanting it that way, I think it is because most people have not actually encountered it. They want it in the abstract, likely not so much when it happens to them. Kind of the classic...the people who want wars typically don't want their children in those wars.
It's basically the same advice Dr. Phil gave, and just about the only advice of his that ever resonated with me. Some people get it, some people don't, and when the cop is putting his boot on your face you aren't going to back talk. People fantasize online about all the things they will do in such a situation, but only people who have a good bit of experience with cops are going to be comfortable enough to talk smack to them.
And frankly, for most of us, "don't ever talk to the police, never, never, never" will actually lead to worse outcomes on average. The trick is to recognize when you should follow that advice, and when you should not. Sometimes it's obvious.
You might think that the courts would sort this out, since the cop obviously won't have any solid evidence, but it turns out that they don't have solid evidence in a great many cases and still manage to get convictions. The truth matters less than the system, and the system is designed to put people in jail.
> There are many countries where police officers are actually scared of using their weapon.
I'm curious 1) the countries, and 2) why the officers are afraid.
In the US there are almost no significant repercussions for any actions taken by a police officer whether correct or not. See also "qualified immunity," where things can happen like officers literally stealing from a crime scene and the victim having no recourse because there's not a previous decided case with exactly that scenario within the same jurisdiction.
https://reason.com/2020/05/19/qualified-immunity-supreme-cou...
Quite possibly. But the cold truth is that the only people who matter at all are the ones who show up to vote. And yes, "most people" is literally defined as everyone with enough economic power that they aren't forced into a life of crime. That's by far the majority.