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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

I had an ex from podunk midwest and one of her town's claims to fame was that the sheriff chaired the local DARE chapter until he got arrested for running a meth ring.

I guess life is easier when you can arrest your competitors instead of just shooting them, but I don't have any idea how nobody narced on him to the feds (or at least their lawyer) for that long.

But then police were organized crime before police were police. To this day I don't know why the Pinkertons still exist as a corporate subdivision name instead of being fully absorbed to distance from that profound emotional baggage.

(Opinions colored by roommates' future BIL being murdered by cops in broad daylight in Chicago for DWB+autism, then moving to and dealing with Seattle PD's corruption/brutality problems)

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> I guess life is easier when you can arrest your competitors instead of just shooting them

Well, with cops it’s “in addition to”, not “instead of”.

American cops sure.

Hollywood is quite fictional, but not as fictional as one might hope for.

Hollywood is smack in the middle of one of the most notorious sheriff's departments in the United States [1][2] with lots of ongoing prosecutions and a history of federal convictions. They know exactly how bad the police are and show a idealized version in media that's very fictional.

If the writers introduced the so-called good guys as the Grim Reapers or Compton Executioners [3], the viewers wouldn't believe it.

[1] https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...

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

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_Executioners

I should have "not nearly as fictional". I know some of it's true, some of it's 'ripped from the headlines', some is rumor, but nothing Hollywood does is ever entirely accurate. Even the documentaries (maybe especially the documentaries)

When I went to high school in the early 80s our in school security / dare officer was known to just take half of whatever he "found" and everyone just walked away with no problems. Unless he didn't like you, then you got tossed under the bus. And I know that mine wasn't the only high school with this issue in the area.

> DWB

Driving while black or am I just making up acronyms?

Nope that's about right

Black + autistic + in Chicago is a bad, bad combination.

Illinois has more problems than Mississippi wrt to racial justice. For a blue state that's pretty fucked up, but then it's only about 55% blue.

I think Chicago is currently winning the competition with NYC for number of convicted mayors as well. Clearly not something anyone should be proud of, but here we are. That whole Eliot Ness/Capone kerfuffle was Chicago, not NYC. See also Valentine's Day Massacre.

> others have said that members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for the killing of a police officer's son played a part. - Wikipedia

What percent blue is Chicago? Bet it's not 55%.

In 2020 Biden got 74% of the vote in Chicago.

I would guess that Biden got a lot of votes from independents and even republicans who were tired of the previous president's shenanigans.

The overall vote was very close in both 2016 and 2020

Chicago (Cook County) went 83% for Clinton in 2016, 74% for Obama in 2012, 76% for Obama in 2008, 79% for Kerry in 2004 and 68% for Gore in 2000. Biden's 2020 numbers were on the low side of average for a Democrat candidate there, probably didn't involve an unusual number of independents or disaffected Republicans...

St. Louis City went 82.71% for Obama for context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidentia... so higher than cook... but the city of stl is generally even more blue and was one of the highest rates for obama nation wide. STL took it as a point of pride to vote more for obama than chicago where obmama is from.

It’s important to parse the language and understand the domain.

Major party affiliation of red + blue usually only adds up to about 60-80% in most regions. Not everyone is eligible to vote, registered to vote, or votes regularly. If people look at the percentage of the vote that Biden/Trump got in the most recent election, they are looking at the narrow end of the funnel. The “55% blue” is likely a cross-section closer to the beginning of the funnel.

Also worth pointing out that Chicago has a 100+ year old “political machine”. I don’t remember the specifics, but each neighborhood has extremely powerful local politicians that hold a party office, but not a government office. It is not typical for American cities.

As it was explained to me, most of the justice problems are in the Greater Chicago Area, so if anything that sidebar by me is being charitable about how fucked up it is.

Aren’t most of the people in Illinois in the GCA?

> Clearly not something anyone should be proud of, but here we are.

At least you manage to convict them, blatant corruption is quite prevalent in other parts of the country.

Does that make you a "jail is half full" or a "jail is half empty" kind of a person? I think I need a diagram.

> For a blue state that's pretty fucked up, but then it's only about 55% blue

fun fact, that's pretty normal. That's why all this talk about a national divorce is boneheaded-stupid. The only reason we have red states and blue states is because of FPTP and winner-take-all voting. But even in a place like california, democrats only outnumber republicans by about 2-1.

Divisions are also fractal. The outskirts of large cities are more conservative than the dense downtown. The center of a small town is more progressive than its outer streets, even in towns as small as a couple thousand people. This isn't the American Civil War of state vs state, it's (relatively) high density vs (relatively) low density.

If we have a wide outbreak of violence it will probably look closer to Rwanda than the organized Union vs Confederacy fighting.

It couldn’t be Rwanda anyway - no group has enough of a majority. Rwanda had 84%/15%

Last I checked New York had fusion voting. Chicago had fusion voting until the 1990s. California had fusion voting as late as the 1940s - not sure when it ended.

So it’s not as simple as “winner takes all.”

NB: fusion voting is where candidates are endorsed by multiple parties. So you can be a Democrat and a Libertarian.

> So it’s not as simple as “winner takes all.”

Yes it is. You just misunderstood what I meant.

from https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/allocation

> All States, except for Maine and Nebraska have a winner-take-all policy where the State looks only at the overall winner of the state-wide popular vote. Maine and Nebraska, however, appoint individual electors based on the winner of the popular vote for each Congressional district and then 2 electors based on the winner of the overall state-wide popular vote.

That is only for presidential elections. I assume the original comment covered elections in general. Washington state, for example, has single primaries (top two advance to general election regardless of party) rather than a partisan primary for every election except presidential.

> for a blue state

Would you just drop the stereotype that Democrats care about black people any more than Republicans do? It's staring you in the face, you admit it and somehow cling to this lie.

what the hell? did you reply to the wrong person?

Psyops

I must've. Ran into some "we are unable to process your request" while trying to reply earlier.

Illinois manages to be as much as 55% blue because Cook County/Chicago overwhelmingly votes Democrat, and always has.

> for a blue state

Would you just drop the stereotype that Democrats care about black people any more than Republicans do? It's staring you in the face, you admit it and somehow cling to this lie.

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