I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Why were the police and the criminal justice officials apparently angry with him? Because while he was playing his little game, to "prove" that police profile people and to "prove" that getting arrested and jailed can be a violent and unfair experience, someone else was getting away with a purse snatching, or beating up an ex-girlfriend, or playing the knock-out game, or emptying a cash register.
It's not so much that he prevented one of these other cases from being pursued, but that he seems so oblivious of the effects of his actions. Thus, it seems perfectly natural and reasonable for them to say, "OK, you make twice the salary we make yet you wanna be a petty criminal? Poof, you're a petty criminal. Enjoy sleeping in the bed you made, and here's hoping you will be permanently cured of f##king with us in the future, a##hole."
The police are set upon from all sides. If they bend the rules, they are severely punished. If they don't bend the rules, and the rules don't always apply the way liberal suburban white folks might imagine they do on the street, then they get castigated for not "doing their job" i.e. catching the bad guys. At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement, because it's the mission. If you fail the mission, you're facing demotion, punishment, deprivation of public support and sufficient budget, and the public will view you with contempt and disgust.
I'm not justifying that that diabetic guy who wanted his sugar pills should be denied his pills. I'm not justifying that the police handle the lower socio-economic cases more brutally, giving them bruises and cuts that the suburban white boy somehow was spared. I'm not justifying racial profiling.
Yet, to walk a mile in their shoes, both the police and the criminal justice system as a whole, is to see the world a little differently from the average Atlantic Monthly reader or Hacker News reader.
Just my 2 cents.
You're missing the point that police profiling is already focusing attention on people not committing those crimes, or that plenty of people are getting away with the same behaviour but not facing any consequences for their actions.
Police stop and search someone because that person is black - they're missing the real crook.
Police don't take actions against white kids - they're missing real crooks.
> I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings
Whether these crimes deserve any police attention is something that could be discussed, but surely we can agree that prosecuting black kids but not white kids is something that drives inequality in society?
In rural areas riding dirt bikes on the street might conjure up images of a couple of brothers tearing around a few fields, generally making a mess but ultimately just doing it to have fun. In cities however there is often (by no means always, but often) something else going on.
At least in Philadelphia, gangs use dirt-bikes and 4-wheelers to 'patrol their turf' and flee the police (who are largely powerless to stop them, as they travel in groups of 10 or more, and all split the second a cop turns his lights on). In these instances it isn't harmless fun, they are basically neo-'biker gangs'. It is a big problem in north and west Philadelphia.
According to your logic, in this case, everyone wearing a Lonsdale bomberjack would have to be arrested, and they would have to be banned by law? Isn't that outlawing the symptom, instead of outlawing the actual problem?
EDIT: Apparently this was not just an issue in The Netherlands, but more widespread: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/147...
We don't have to invent scenarios to explain away the different results - they are his experience as a prosecutor and he has identified them as being identical. It's not an account from a newspaper where we don't know the details; it's cases he has personally worked on, and hence knows the intimate details we never hear of.
What the percentages are is up for discussion. The usefulness of taking a gang member and making it even harder for them to get employment is something that needs to be discussed.
Gangs are a symptom of other problems. Tackling gangs without tackling those other problems seems odd to me.
I have personally gotten fairly close to hitting a 4 wheeler in ATL and see gangs of them roaming my neighborhood. It seemed to me like they were just having a good time, certainly disturbing the peace and creating dangerous road conditions though. Then again that isn't all too unusual in my neighborhood.
Except when you take into account blacks commit far more crime than whites:
"According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in the year 2008 black youths, who make up 16% of the youth population, accounted for 52% of juvenile violent crime arrests, including 58.5% of youth arrests for homicide and 67% for robbery."
Also keep in mind, these are usually not black on white crimes, but usually black on black crimes. It would foolish to think we should simply start prosecuting more white people simply because there is some form of perceived inequality in the justice system.
Perhaps instead of focusing on the fact more blacks end up in the system (when its already too late), maybe we should take a harder look at WHY they end up in the system and work on preventing them from ever getting there in the first place.
I agree with your final paragraph, though. We as a society have an obligation to try to correct all forms of injustice, whether it's biased enforcement and prosecution, cultural isolation, or financial immobility.
Arrests. Not convictions, and certainly not "crimes perpetrated."
...institutionally racist police officers arrest them for minor offences, and that arrest and conviction fucks any chance of employment, meaning that gangs are the only employer left?
Yes, we can agree on that.
Only if we're punishing them under the same circumstances, which I don't agree is necessarily the case. I think we should punish someone who marks graffiti in order to mark gang territory or intimidate others more harshly than someone who does it as a prank.
This feels like it should make sense, but I think misses the forest for the trees. It's an example what I'd refer to as first-order thinking, or looking only at the immediate situation.
We need to be striving for higher order thinking. That is, we need to be looking at follow-on effects, which I'll analogize to looking at the second and later derivatives of a function, or looking at other elements in an interconnected feedback system (in the control theory sense).
Stop putting people in jail or prison for minor offences.
Stop including weird restrictions in parole orders.
Stop making community service being about "punishment" and move it towards "rehabilitation", of the offender and of their area.
I agree with your suggestion that members of the general public should also become more aware of the working conditions of the police. Many police departments in the United States allow members of the general public to go on a "ride-along" in a police car on patrol (that usually involves signing release forms and promises not to misbehave while on the ride-along) and that too is a good learning experience. Basically, it's good for everyone to understand better how the other half lives.
To me, that suggests that we need sweeping and creative reforms not merely to make the police more effective or impartial, but to actively combat the psychological effect that policing has on veteran officers. Instead, we seem to be pulling them off foot patrols and sticking them into cars to create rapid response forces. That may work as an emergency triage against violent crime outbreaks, but it exacerbates the damage the job does to the professionals who have to do it.
On the other hand: 90% of what was upsetting about this article was the result of judges and the probation system. I have much less sympathy for a judge than I do for a police.
Urban criminal judges are almost completely unaccountable. Chicago judges are elected, and each election cycle, papers and blogs run horror stories about incompetent judges who no rational elector could vote for. And every election cycle, the exact same slate of horrible judges gets reelected. A civic-minded hacker that wanted to improve the criminal justice process in the US could make a large dent in the problem by coming up with something that would help the electorate handle judicial elections. For virtually everyone living in a big city, judicial elections are entirely opaque; city papers don't even cover them.
The UK sometimes has anti drink-driving campaigns. Police forces increase the number of breathalyser tests. They're only allowed to use a breathalyser if they have reason to suspect someone is drunk - they saw them leaving a pub or driving erratically.
(https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...) Page 77
> • During 2009, there were 813,288 screening breath tests carried out. This is a 14 per cent increase from 711,658 in 2008. This increase coincides with the introduction of new digital recording equipment, which may have streamlined breath test procedures for many forces.
> • The number of positive or refused tests in 2009 increased by three per cent from 91,666 in 2008 to 93,973 in 2009 after a three year decline.
> • The proportion of tests that were positive or refused in 2009 was 12 per cent, one percentage point lower than in 2008.
It seems that traffic officers come into contact with very many people who they think are criminals but who are not criminals.
I spent freshman year of university in The Bronx, an borough in NYC which has highest poverty rate of any urban area in the States and by far the most dangerous of the NYC boroughs. I remember early on being afraid of seeing cops outside the bar we all wen't to that openly served minors, but they had more important things to do, such as protecting us on the walk back to campus. J walking is almost encouraged just so you keep you moving. The people police have to deal with are some of the scariest I've ever seen.
Further, every couple days we get an email about students getting mugged or worse, and every time the assailant is black or Hispanic. Without fail, despite 50+ notices at this point. Please, tell me how a cop can put away racial prejudices with statistics like that? Should they? Of course, but it's not that simple.
Ultimately I think the largest problem is the militarization of the police force. An army is supposed to fight an enemy, the police are supposed to protect citizens and mixing up the two becomes very dangerous very quickly.`
*Edit Typos and clarity
Without another incident, they'd require a suspicion of erratic driving before arbitrarily stopping someone for drink driving.
Why are refused tests counted with positive tests?
That is a weird rule.
Of all the times it's happened to me, I've actually completed one breathylzer test (it was zero).
It's borderline harassment at best, at worst solicitation of a bribe. I always ask, "what caused you to stop me or aroused your suspicions that I have been drinking?" and I never get an answer.
I don't exactly how it works in Illinois, but in many states, the bulk of judges on the bench were appointed due to a midterm vacancy, and only run as an incumbent. In Oregon, at least, this is a sort of unwritten rule, and retiring judges will leave during their term to assure a gubernatorial appointment.
As you say, judicial elections tend not be publicized or greatly contested. So this has the effect of creating an appointment-for-life due to the minimal likelihood of an incumbent loss.
Really? You think that most of the people police come into contact with are criminals? How many arrests does a police officer make on an average night (X) and how many people does the officer contact (Y)? I'm guessing Y >> X.
Whereas now, except for certain exceptions such as in more "progressive" police forces or in downtown urban areas, most cops are somewhat detached from the public, except when responding to a crime.
Most of the people the officers come into contact with on a regular basis that have meaningful impacts on the way the officers view those around them are criminals. Will the cop remember the young man who helped an old lady across the road, or the young man who stabbed and raped the same old lady?
I come into contact with literally thousands of people every week, but the same 20-30 have an impact on my life, and are the ones that I would say I actually come into contact with. Don't argue semantics, it genuinely adds nothing to the conversation.
Still, based on what I know from having worked with cops and having cop family members, the job can change you. Cops are prone to seeing a side of life most of use are lucky to only read about.
I think we all like to believe that were it us we would not become cynical and jaded about humanity but that seems to be tougher than one might expect.
It's sadly common for too many cops to start thinking that everyone they meet is guilty of something and they just haven't been caught (yet).
Do you have a handy link explaining this?
We hold police to a higher standard because they are THE POLICE. They have take a job and a sworn oath to uphold the law. Yes they are human. Yes it is a largely difficult and thankless job. But under no circumstance does that obviate the fact that they chose to be officers. People born into the projects had no similar choice.
I have sympathy for the police and the situations they find themselves in but the fact remains that they are sworn to uphold the law regardless of the humans they have been in regular contact with.
There's real civic value here that greatly trumps any sort of tax payer whining. Especially considering that internal anti-corruption mechanisms clearly aren't working and so many jurisdictions are hopelessly corrupt. We need more money spent on stuff like this and less "Police Department announces new SWAT military vehicles" whose maintenance and lifetime budget over whats essentially war machines in our neighborhoods greatly trumps what this man did.
Also, he's white and educated and thus you're paying attention to him. See, its working.
I infer from your belittling description of his activities as his "little game" and putting "prove" in skeptical quotes that you don't see the value in this particular piece of journalism and aren't swayed by the evidence presented therein. So while I doubt you can swayed otherwise, I will say that I did find it to be valuable and his experience adds another anecdote on the collective pile of evidence that the cops and prosecutors treat brown and black people vastly different for comparable infractions of the law. And both as a native New Yorker, and moreover as a citizen of the United States, I think this is a very big problems worth paying attention to.
>I'm not justifying that that diabetic guy who wanted his sugar pills should be denied his pills. I'm not justifying that the police handle the lower socio-economic cases more brutally, giving them bruises and cuts that the suburban white boy somehow was spared. I'm not justifying racial profiling.
Yeah, but you kind of are; in your very next paragraph in fact.
> Yet, to walk a mile in their shoes, both the police and the criminal justice system as a whole, is to see the world a little differently from the average Atlantic Monthly reader or Hacker News reader.
We really need to get over the cops-jobs-are-so-dangerous-we-can't-question-anything-they-do mantra. The statistics show, in fact, it isn't nearly as dangerous as they'd like us to believe, and even if it were, it still wouldn't justify the kind of double standards the article was shining a spotlight on.
And for those that, quite frankly, don't really care one way of the other about racial profiling (I imagine because it won't ever affect them), I'd argue that everyone should care when the justice system clearly retaliates against a citizen for exposing problems in it's institutions. It shouldn't be okay for a judge to hand down a harsher than normal punishment because screw you for embarrassing/pissing us off.
I think you missed my meaning. Cops, prosecutors, and judges are only human and they're going to react emotionally because that's what we humans are, hormonal emotional creatures.
In the case of the OP, he deliberately set out to test the system by committing a misdemeanor to see what they would do. It was so out of context for a white male in a nice suit to be doing graffiti that the first responders couldn't believe their eyes. They literally just tried to wave him off. Shouldn't have, but did. I imagine that you or I would have reacted similarly in those circumstances -- or are you perfectly rational in all your decisionmaking and split-second reactions? Highly doubtful.
I don't think it was embarrassment that he had exposed racism or profiling behavior or whatever he was obviously digging for. It was just that he was "one of them" and had betrayed their trust. They gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was not actually behaving like a 19-year-old gang banger, when in fact that was precisely what he was doing. Thus, they ultimately had to book him, take him downtown, fingerprint him, write up the charges etc. By the way, that's work. Lots of paperwork. And knowing that he's a criminal lawyer, they probably had to be extra fastidious -- the slightest little mistake or omission and for all they knew he was going to taking them to court.
I think it's perfectly natural that they reacted angrily to this guy, and threw the book at him, because it was as if he was trying to provoke an angry reaction. Thus as I said, he made his bed and now must sleep in it.
If you want to term this "retaliation", I suppose technically you're right, but your characterization disregards the fact that they're human, with human emotions. I think one of the great mistakes people make when debating the flaws of the justice system is to assume that its people are somehow on a higher ethical pedestal than the rest of society, that somehow they should and must behave more correctly. Unfortunately, they don't, and so it's easy to find biases and injustices in the system.
Which is why there should be an accounting when someone reveals these humans letting their emotions get the best of them. To act like everyone has the same emotional control is absurd -- put people with better emotional control in power and not these people.
He wasted valuable city resources on an experiment the
outcome of which he should have predicted, being a
criminal attorney in Roxbury.
You don't learn to program by watching a movie - you learn by trying it, getting hands-on experience. You don't learn to dance or do sports by reading a book - you learn by getting up and moving, getting hands-on experience. You don't become a judge without seeing the inside of a courtroom. You don't become a poet or a film maker or a musician without trying it. You don't qualify as surgeon without hands on experience or qualify as a pilot without hands on experience or train as a mechanic by watching 'the fast and the furious'.
In all these areas, we acknowledge that fiction and second hand reports aren't a substitute for first-hand experience.
So how can you and I claim to know anything about the justice system if we have no first hand experience?
Don't all of us who care about law and order have a responsibility to inform ourselves about how the system works, as the author of this article has done?
He should have been booked immediately, followed by being given the standard fare for the crime. Potentially upgraded due to having being pompous initially.
He can't be blamed for the fact that they turned it into a full trial (they only offered him jail time for a non-violent crime), nor for the parole time (the duration was way above what is normal), nor for the polices' time (he literally walked into the precinct and then they decided to drive him around town).
> someone else was getting away with a purse snatching, or beating up an ex-girlfriend, or playing the knock-out game, or emptying a cash register
He walked into a precinct, who inside of a precinct is out stopping these things? They could have offered him a year parole and 10 days community service and he would have taken it, being orders worse than the usual penalty.
> Enjoy sleeping in the bed you made
He didn't actually complain about his situation, he complained about those around him. The guy wanting sugar pills, the guys being cramped with another cell available, the beating up suspects. He did a minor complaint about being driven around town to make it seem like they did their job, but that was more related to the absurdity than his time.
> If they bend the rules, they are severely punished.
Protect the Blue doesn't exist in your world? I will not claim that officer's aren't held to a higher standard, but there is plenty of evidence that police standards could be higher given their position of power.
> At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement
This needs to change. 100% coverage is not obtainable nor a lofty goal. Coverage as good as reasonable standards for everyone involved is what we want.
> Yet, to walk a mile in their shoes, both the police and the criminal justice system as a whole, is to see the world a little differently from the average Atlantic Monthly reader or Hacker News reader.
Isn't that the entire point of this article? Whether you agree with him or not, that is what he is achieving here.
The city wasted its own resources trying to teach this guy a lesson for disrespecting their authority.
I'm sorry, when have the police been severely punished for bending the rules?
Examples abound in the other direction, but generally they aren't even fired, let alone prosecuted, for "bending the rules".
Example- in Missouri, the state constitution requires that ALL proceeds that come to government officials from asset forfeiture go to a fund for the public schools. Yet, routinely I see news articles praising county Sheriffs for using the proceeds from asset forfeitures to buy bullet-proof vests and other stuff.
And of course, police would NEVER prioritize enforcing petty laws at the expense of catching dangerous violent criminals. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/09/16/police-made-o...
At the end of the day, the police clock out and go home to families just like anyone else . They want to stay alive just like anyone else.
If people think the police should be risking their lives more than they do, then let's pay them 4x what they get today -- I'm willing to pay higher taxes -- but let's not pay them a 5-figure salary and have unrealistic expectations of how far they should stretch.
Then, too, there's the Giuliani tactic still being applied in a lot of places of arresting people for the tiniest offenses such as spitting or loitering, in order to clean up the streets and convey an impression that the police were in control. It worked in NYC, at least.
Being a police officer is safer than being a cab driver, a house painter, or working in a convenience store. Might have to do with the gun, the stick, and the permission to use them.
The justice system is so disgustingly broke that we absolutely need dedicated, level-headed people to do these types of "social hacks" to prove it.
It takes willful acts of civil disobedience to create real change, to bring awareness in a way that's difficult to ignore.
Catching the bad guy is not the only thing that matters in law enforcement, but sadly that's what the militarization of police forces is creating: a system where the ends justify the means. You would not be so dismissive if you were the habitual target of police laziness. It takes a lot of work to catch the bad guys without breaking the rules.
We can't fix the system if we start from the assumption that the people running the system are basically criminal because they're doing their jobs the way they've always been done.
Demonizing people who are, for the most part, trying to do the right thing with limited resources doesn't help them do their job better, and it doesn't help us talk about how we can change the system to be better. Dialing down the militarization of the police force isn't a matter of humanizing the criminals - we have to humanize the police as well. Calling the police lazy and disgusting dehumanizes them and reinforces the idea of police as shock troops.
> I'm not justifying racial profiling.
As an arab who has come across the 'wrong' side of this at airports and train stations more than once, I completely support racial profiling. Ignoring good data because its politically inconvenient is ridiculous imo.
However what is described in the article is not racial profiling - its violent racism, and there is a very big difference. By all means search me, question me, hassle me for my race - but don't go beating me up for it.
Surely terrorists/drug dealers would dress up like grandmothers if we think like this.
You should probably watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnxnYEVp4U
I never really thought about the sampling bias that way...
I'm sure there is racism as well - it is a big problem - but race is a real thing, I don't think we can pretend everyone is equal either. Certainly nobody should be underprivileged, but I still think discrimination is healthy.
I have "been through the system" and it wasn't by choice, nor did it result in any charges being filed. Some people view that as luck, but given how common that outcome is, the real injustice is that I was ever arrested to begin with.
I'm not complaining about the author's use of public resources - the public resources were wasted by the police, not the author. But I don't think we should pretend that the author discovered anything new. I do think his decisions were a little reckless - people can learn about the justice system without exposing themselves to it first-hand, and exposing yourself to it can be quite dangerous. Sure it's less dangerous if you're white, but police kill white people under suspicious circumstances too.
No. He used city resources to audit a city activity buy running an experiment to prove a hypothesis.
This "should of predicted" point is bullshit. Its like those people who say, "So what about NSA spying, we (smart arses) knew all along". Well, no they didn't. The thought they knew, but they did not know until it was proved with the Snowden leaks. Like wise this prediction you expected this person to make.
To many people think they know things then really they dont, they just believe them, and they cant know anything until its proved. This guy proved it.
OK, my use of the word "prove" is probably going a little too far, but you get my drift. He has at least added to a body of evidence. Which is a damn good use of city money.
As for the reaction of the authorities, well that is a disgrace. Presumably this guy is a local tax payer, and there for paying for these authorities. He has every right to discover if he and his fellow tax payers are getting value for money.
Oh... and that's bad because? Letting petty crimes go unpunished is way better for society than jailing every other black young male (as the US have elected as their policy).
> At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement
There are no "bad guys". There is no "evil". There are just people trying to get by.
> to see the world a little differently
Look at the incarceration rates in the US; no other country jails (or has ever jailed) as many of its citizens as the US (NO OTHER COUNTRY, whether democratic, despotic or theocratic). So "the world" is more like what HN readers see than like what you think you see.
I don't expect to convince you with just this little comment, but try and think about it. Try to argue that bad guys don't exist and see what arguments you come up with.
(PS: In the 40+ years I've been on this planet, I've been robbed, mugged, assaulted -- twice in NYC; in retrospect, nothing that was super-life threatening, but it sure felt real enough at the time.)
No bad guys? You've got to be horribly naive.
He provided a priceless civic service, that had significant personal and presumably financial costs to himself.
He is heroic.
Are they? I see a lot more police-brutality videos than I do reports of police being punished for brutality.
In dictatorships you're arrested by the secret police, accused of immoral acts, tortured, made to confess and made an example of anyway.
In the US you're arrested by the intelligence unit, accused of "related" charges, thrown in custody for 34 hours, made to accept a plea bargain and made an example of anyway.
Disfavor, smear, pressure, self-incriminate and then abuse. Same pattern.
As an ex-prosecutor, the guy clearly knew nothing about the justice system, sure.
The author begins with a litany of ways that unneeded, necessary prosecutions work to injure the neighborhoods of people of color based on his own years of experience on the job. The point is that a lot of the average activity of the police is counter-productive. If this guy preempted the cops from, say, arresting a black convenience store clerk from "trespassing" at his own store, he's hardly derailing crucial activity.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/21/3769823/in-miami-garde...
BUT: I think, this testimony is important, because it shows, how crooked the whole legislative system in the US stinks. It not only verifies the things we see in better documentaries, but shows, that the system is totally corrupt.
It shows, what happens, when race and wealth have become the main decision factor in a system that claims to give even rights to anybody.
In my opinion, this man was punished in this disproportional way, not because he deliberately did a crime or wasted state money (what a ridiculous argument!), but because he uncovered a corrupt system.
This article has good parallels with the NYT reporters who feigned being asylum seekers to travel to Australia by boat and document the horrible treatment experienced at all stages by those who take this journey [1]. I could easily imagine you arguing that these NYT reporters were terrible because they could have been on board a boat that sank and caused search and rescue people to go out and waste their time trying to find them. Equally, I could imagine you arguing that they denied a few genuine asylum seekers the room on a boat and therefore they're still stuck in a dangerous situation. However, that's completely missing the point.
The point is that without people undertaking these experiences and documenting them, the harsh reality of the situation is never quite realised. You don't end up humanising the debate around how these situations are handled, so people show less empathy towards the situation. This is a terrible situation to be in, because we then forget that we're dealing with actual human beings and not just nameless, inert objects.
In the case of the judicial system, it's one thing to know that the system mistreats and punishes people but it's another thing to actually hear the stories about the diabetic being denied proper medical treatment because of some power-tripping guard. That's why you had to go out of your way to clarify that you weren't justifying their ill treatment of him - it was humanised and put into real-world context.
In the case of the asylum seeker report, it's pretty widely known that they experience harrowing conditions and receive pretty repulsive treatment by the various governments in an effort to deter their coming to Australia. But without actually hearing the stories of the hopeful children excited about the journey as they kill time in a refugee safehouse playing in the pool with literal spare parts of broken equipment as toys, or the blind hope of the guy wanting to make a better future for his kids whilst simultaneously denying to himself that he won't just be chucked in a jail on a third world island, you don't experience the same empathy for their situation.
It's a direct counter to the rhetoric used to de-humanise the whole situation. In the case of asylum seekers, they go from being 'asylum seekers' to 'boat people' because the thought of turning away people fleeing some war-torn hellhole to find a better life is harder than turning away a few people who decide one day to hop on a boat to 'jump the queue'. The re-humanising of the whole argument through actual stories and events is the strongest way to put some emphathy back in to the argument and highlight that we are in fact dealing with other human beings, capable of thinking for themselves and having their own families and loved ones.
In the case of the judicial system, it's that these people are criminals who exist in some isolated void without family or former childhoods or any of that and simply must be dealt with so that they can't commit another crime, rather than humans with a story and a life larger than the crime they allegedly committed. Hell, the author himself said that when he was practicing, he always assumed he was trying actual guilty criminals and that once they'd been dealt with, it was all over. It was only afterwards that he started wondering about the broader implications of what he was doing.
So because of that, I completely reject your statement that it's a waste of resources and time to undertake these sorts of investigations. Does it divert theoretical resources away from the ideal task that those resources would be addressing? Sure. But it's an extremely valuable use of those resources to highlight the broader issues at play and put some human empathy, so often sorely missing, back in to the debate.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/the-impossible-re...
> The whole process this guy went through to report on the state of affairs is valuable because it puts the depth of reality on what is otherwise a known but relatively abstract situation. We all know that the judicial system is unfair in an abstract sense, but without seeing actual, real-life examples it does not get driven home nearly as strongly.
The key point here is that you get can get real-life examples by interviewing people caught up in the legal system. There are plenty of them, it isn't difficult to fact check the circumstances of their arrest. All this is possible without wasting police time.
How many police officers are there in New York city? How many people do they arrest or otherwise spend time on every single day? How many hours did his case take out of the total hours spent? 0.001% ?
That's not "waste" in any meaningful way of the word, and not even an argument in this discussion.
Someone who steps out of their comfort zone, and gets "the experience" has a more visceral feeling - for those who can't imagine themselves poor, unfortunate, or having to turn to crime, this is the only way they can truly "experience" it.
I'm not without reservations about the utility of this man's approach in documenting the harsh criminal "justice" system, but it does add another angle.
The DA wasted court time. The judge was accepting the plea bargain and the DA decided to waste time. They could have easily fined him to more than make up for any wasted time it took to track him down after he turned himself in.
Either the "system" is responding fairly and accurately to the level of "wrong" or it's just a bunch of power brokers in exercise, not contemplating justice.
The de facto situation in a worryingly large portion of people involved in debate about these topics is that it's not humanised to them, because it's at arm's length and they don't see it happen or feel any effect from it. It's no different to why seeing video footage of some atrocity is far more shocking than reading about it in a paper. That's why stuff like the OP and the link I posted is important - it's the next closest thing to shoving someone there themselves.
Think of the OP as a laywer dogfooding the judicial system he helps operate.
As an aside, there was a series on TV here a while ago called "Go Back to Where You Came From" [1]. It took a bunch of people, including some prominent anti-asylum political commentators and actually took them over to Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Congo, etc. and showed them first-hand what life is like for the people fleeing these places. Unsurprisingly, their reaction to it in person was markedly different to their reaction to it when they're sitting in an office at home reading about it in a paper.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Back_To_Where_You_Came_From
I don't think it was a waste, I think the information we all have received is more valuable to New York than the resources used to prosecute him. I think prosecuting acts of civil disobedience is an extraordinarily important and valuable function that the city performs. Dollars spent as intended.
Is petty vengeance a natural and reasonable reaction you expect and accept from the people that have power over you and almost everybody else?
It doesn't work this way, unless it he tried his experiment at the busiest time of the day, and even then it is not 100% sure.
> The police are set upon from all sides.
We all are, we can all take the easy route by bending the rules, and risk getting in trouble.
Treating an entire group of individuals as criminals is bound to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Between confirmation bias and people living up to expectations you are guaranteed to see what you expected to see. To believe in the rule of law you must believe the law is fair, and large numbers of people see every day that it is not.
I'm not sure he is the one that wasted resources though. Wasn't he about to plea bargain before they decided to "make an example of him" at the expense of wasted resources? They could have fined him to easily cover those "wasted resources." It really revealed that personal vendettas are easily carried out by DAs, police, and judges when it comes to sentencing and treatment.
> The police are set upon from all sides. If they bend the rules, they are severely punished. If they don't bend the rules, and the rules don't always apply the way liberal suburban white folks might imagine they do on the street, then they get castigated for not "doing their job" i.e. catching the bad guys...the public will view you with contempt and disgust.
It's hard to have sympathy when your excuse is that you're worried about being seen with contempt and disgust, so you have to strive to ruin lives as much as possible.
> here's hoping you will be permanently cured of f##king with us in the future, a##hole."
So they want to be viewed with contempt and disgust or not? That is a pretty disgusting view.
Its not a waste of time if he's a report, reporting on a social condition that requires attention - and that is exactly what this is all about. The fact is that there is a police state industry in the USA and any light being shone on it is positive.
Huh. Ever heard of the "Blue Shield"?
Check out the "bad cop no donut" subreddit sometimes. There's some petty stuff posted on there, but also quite enough to make the hair on the neck of any thinking, feeling person stand up.
The author of this article or the police department for wasting taxpayers money incarcerating people left and right, giving the sentences way out of proportion with what they did and so on.
> If they bend the rules, they are severely punished.
No they aren't, they get paid vacation days until another cop lies and says they're innocent under a so called investigation. They should be fired when found to break the law; they should be investigated by outside agencies rather than internal investigations. You can't enforce the law justly if you can't even follow the law.
> If they don't bend the rules, and the rules don't always apply the way liberal suburban white folks might imagine they do on the street, then they get castigated for not "doing their job" i.e. catching the bad guys. At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement, because it's the mission.
The mission is enforcing the law, not catching the bad guys. More importantly it's not up to police to determine who the bad guys are nor should it be. The rules do always apply and there's no justification whatsoever for breaking them. Better criminals go free than innocent people be harassed by police who think they're on an episode of 24.
> If you fail the mission, you're facing demotion, punishment, deprivation of public support and sufficient budget, and the public will view you with contempt and disgust.
False conclusion from a faulty idea of what the mission should be.
And I have walked a mile in their shoes because I'm an ex-cop. Just my more informed 2 cents.
Not saying it's ideal, but it's a response to two real pressures.
Sure, but this is what happens in any other job, you don't get paid when under investifation.
All of those things would've happened anyway. Every single one of them. If you read the story (did you?) you'd see that the cops routinely ignored him to chase after darker-skinned "criminals" instead, anyway.
It reminds me a bit of Eddie Murphy's skit for SNL where he dresses up in white-face so he can experience society on the other side. This is almost as funny as that skit, no exaggeration. The tragedy is that this story is true.
As I moved the can back and forth, a police officer in an Interceptor go-cart saw me, slammed on his brakes, and pulled up to the curb behind me. I looked over my shoulder, made eye contact with him, and resumed. As I waited for him to jump out, grab me, or Tase me, he sped away and hung a left, leaving me standing there alone.
And in the next paragraph...
I woke up the next morning and Fox News was reporting that unknown suspects had vandalized City Hall. I went back to the entrance and handed the guard my driver’s license and a letter explaining what I’d done.
Fox News, unknown suspects... Maybe it's just me, but this had me laughing out loud.
Have you seen American Psycho? (Of course you have...)
I always had this 'alternate theory' that the movie is about how the top of society can pretty much do as they please.
The judge [...] ordered three years of probation, a $1000 fine, a $250 surcharge,
a $50 surcharge, 30 days of community service, and a special condition allowing police
and probation officers to enter and search my residence anytime without a warrant.
The 5th and 14th amendments provide that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". He was convicted of a crime. The punishment can include random searches, drug tests, ankle monitors, etc., as long as it is provided for by law.
When I read the parent comment, I didn't see someone surprised that it CAN be done, but someone surprised at where the line of when it is an appropriate remedy had been drawn.
That horribly low standard for a justice system. Especially that due process of law basically boils down to judge deciding what tickles him the right way.
In this case the value of his life and liberty given his lack of background is probably worth more than the protection the state gains by being able to search his house at will. Which is the entire purpose of the 4th amendment.
They say ignorance of the law is no defense, but when the government can't even supply an accurate count of the number of the laws, maybe we should re-think that. We all commit a lot of crimes.
The beginning seems to be him talking about how difficult it was for him to get the police to think he was suspicious. The article was really interesting, and it seemed to be a point about racial/socio-economic profiling.
But once he got into the system, he was treated terribly. Probation, not being allowed to visit his family, for a misdemeanor.
--
Honestly, his conclusion sounds more like justice /is/ being applied evenly, it's just that it was harder for him to get the police's attention while he was wandering around in a suit and tie.
Not really. The idea is the system is flawed both ways:
At first, he was ignored because he was white, well groomed and such. (Racism).
In the second part, he was punished harshly not because suddenly the system made a u-turn and decided to "apply justice evenly", but because they didn't appreciate him making waves and questioning their practices.
This guy is a professional agitator. He didn't get arrested for carrying graffiti tools, so he tagged city hall. The officer present decided to not deal with a political speech issue and moved along. Then he decided to be a smart ass and annoy people who have the power and broad discretion to apply the letter of the law upon him. When you do that, you tend to attract harsh treatment.
The second part isn't a problem per se -- the District Attorney's office and Probation Department are legally invested to use their own discretion. I suppose that if he built a rapport with the PO and had his requests granted, that he would be complaining that he received favorable treatment for being white.
He doesn't come out and say it, probably to avoid the perception that he's complaining about something he did voluntarily, but reading between the lines that's exactly what's going on.
He points out that standard practice for a simple non-violent misdemeanour would have been dismissal with a slap on the wrist and a tiny bit of public service. The justice system couldn't handle the volume of cases it does if every misdemeanour graffiti case got probation.
Having his file flagged 'do not dismiss' by higher ups at the DA's office and the judge come down abnormally hard on him (more than what the DA was asking for) is almost certainly retaliation for them being aware he was doing it for a story.
Rights Advocate Maintains Police Beat Him in a 'Sting' He Arranged
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/16/us/rights-advocate-maintai...
Alleged Police Abuse Case Is Settled : Litigation: Long Beach will pay $170,000 to Don Jackson and friend over a secretly videotaped confrontation with officers after a traffic stop in 1989.
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-10-12/local/me-49365_1_long...
The instant he did that, he lost all hope of seeing how justice works for normal folks. How is anyone to know whether his ill treatment was due to his actual crime or due to the pseudocrime of creating bad publicity for the powers that be?
He is one of their own who had gone out of his way to make them look foolish. Once that was clear he was treated more harshly than an equivalent first offender, not less. edit - and not equally.
> I accepted the sentence and the clerk began reading it into the record.
> “Your honor, wait!” the assistant state attorney interrupted. Startled by the outburst, the judge looked up and scowled as the attorney read something written on her file. She blushed and continued, “I’m sorry, I have to withdraw my offer.” As the judge shook his head and set a date to return, I felt an odd pang of empathy for her. Once, as a rookie prosecutor, a judge had humiliated me in open court for being evasive about a file that had an ominous yellow “do not dismiss” sticky note on it.
It then describes the stupid sub-optimal workings of the punishments, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusion about how someone subject to those restrictions is supposed to move away from crime.
It is stupid that a non-violent misdemeanour offence can prevent someone from travelling outside an area.
You could say that justice has been applied evenly but only if you average out severe neglect at the beginning and revenge at the end. If he didn't piss of the judge (by being who he is) he'd get 15 days of community service after long trial and if he didn't influence the prosecutors (by being who he is) he'd get 3 days without much fuss.
So as a non-lawyer white guy he'd get arrested (if he wanted to be), inconvenienced and get 3 days of community service. As a black guy, he'd get snatched of the street much earlier, get beaten up, and get much more severe sentence (maybe year of probation).
Be white professional == not get arrested. Expose the system == get inordinately punished as severely as possible even if (or maybe more so) you are white professional.
The system is unjust and abuses its authority to intimidate / curtail anyone pointing that out (or otherwise embarrassing the system, it's components or people).
They aren't supposed to be used (e.g to crime being black).
They are supposed to use their eyes and investigate.
That's their work.
Compared to what? And where else has he personally has experienced?
While I'm sure it wasn't a walk in the park (or a stay at the Four Seasons) even reading hotel reviews different people can say wildly different things about the same hotel on different days.
He had the basis of a good article here though no matter what. A good experience or a bad experience gives him the basis for something that people would find interesting that have never been arrested before.
"Two Intelligence Unit detectives arrived and testily walked me outside to a waiting unmarked police car. Court papers show that they’d staked out my apartment to arrest me, and that I unwittingly kept eluding them. In one dramatic instance, two officers had tailed me as I walked down Eastern Parkway. I’d entered the subway station at the Brooklyn Museum, unaware that I was being followed. One of the officers had followed me through the turnstiles while another guarded the exit. The report states that the officers then inexplicably lost contact with me."
Alternative take on what has happened here.
>>> This reporter accompanied Constantino on one of those trips, watching as the lawyer handed a guard his passport and driver's license. After calling City Hall staffers from inside the guard booth, the officer told Constantino to come back the next day.
>>> Instead, Constantino dramatically turned himself in at Manhattan Criminal Court that Friday, after the stop-and-frisk protesters were convicted of disorderly conduct.
>>> "Your Honor, I refuse to leave this court," Constantino told the judge. "I am choosing in peace and love not to leave this court."
------------------
The purpose of getting arrested was to protest the Stop and Frisk laws in NYC. It seems like Bobby Constantino is milking the story for all its worth though, and turning it into something else.
Not that it is a bad perspective or anything, but I think it is important to remember his original purpose for getting arrested.
This is not news, this is a political piece. He's free to publish such a thing, but people need to be more discriminatory when giving so much weight to his "facts".
> But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs.
However, I think he ignores a really salient distinction: a lot of these "crimes" like the laws against graffiti, exist not because the acts themselves are particularly heinous, but because they're proxies for things that are dangerous, namely gang activity.
In not going after the author, the police simply did the analysis they are required to do: is this guy a threat within the spirit of the law?
Now, obviously there are shortcomings in the heuristics the police are using here. It's not okay to conclude that someone is a threat because they're a black teenager in a hoodie and aren't a threat because they're a white professional in a suit. But I don't think we really want a mechanical justice system that follows the mere letter of the law instead of the spirit. We don't want police to ignore the distinction between someone tagging a public building to make a point, and gang members tagging a private building to "make a point."
Right -- and that's the problem. Because once you start down that road of criminalization of proxies for bad acts, you end up with proxies for proxies, like when the city I lived in criminalized -- no joke -- possession of spray paint, marker pens, and other things by teens on public right-of-ways. Because graffiti as a proxy for gang activity was still not easy enough of a prosecution lever, so they wanted to prosecute possession of items which could in theory be used for graffitti (which itself was a proxy for gang activitty).
And eventually you just criminalize everything as a proxy for being bad -- and then criminal justice is no longer really driven at all by law (since you've criminalized all kinds of things that you don't want, or expect, to enforced against everyone), its about arbitrary determinations by police and prosecutors -- guided by personal biases -- about who really "needs" to be punished, and you always know you'll have a convenient lever to prosecute once that determination is made.
And the whole concept of rule of law and proof beyond a reasonable doubt becomes meaningless, because you no longer are prosecuting for the real offense, but for distant meaningless proxies for harmful activities chosen specifically because people are certain to violate many of them in ways that are easy to prove whether or not they are doing any of the acts for which they are notionally proxies.
Millions of people do graffiti -- and very few of them have anything to do with "gang activity".
This "proxy" notion doesn't hold. Neither would such retribution to such "offences" be fair even if it was so.
In fact, sending people to jail for such trivial stuff is a more effective introduction to serious crime than their initial offences.
At the least, they are not fully independent events, so it's not totally idiotic. If you combine that with broken window theory, it makes a lot of sense [to the cops] to rely on such statutes as a way to fight gangs at the same time as other petty crime.
Millions of people do graffiti -- and very few of them have anything to do with "gang activity".
The problem is that the only people who seem to benefit from laws being enforced based on their spirit not their letter are white people. Minorities on the other hand don't seem to enjoy the same benefits.
And getting past the issue of faulty heuristics, the authors experience post-arrest was pretty ridiculous.
How is anyone or anything served by treating arrested people like that?
Keeping in mind that hypothetically you are innocent until proven guilty. You should not be punished until you've been convicted of something.
There are 5 ways to commit a crime: * Accidentally (usually not a crime) * Through negligence (Malpractice) * Recklessly (Manslaughter) * Knowingly (2nd Degree Murder) * On Purpose (1st Degree Murder)
In the case of murder, all 5 cases leads to someone innocent dying. But the justice system is completely designed around figuring out the state of mind of the individual, and then punishing them either more severely or less severely... based on the state of mind.
We are looking at a man who premeditated and purposefully committed a crime. The justice system will be exceptionally harsh on him.
In what percentage of cases of vandalism that could be called tagging could the person be said to have committed the crime accidentally? Virtually none[1]. This crime is more or less always committed on purpose. Not always with journalistic intent, but still.
The author was punished more harshly because (it seems) he embarrassed people. That is unjust.
Not to mention the generally deplorable conditions in the holding cell where he was kept, filled with other people who presumably were guilty of nothing.
[1]Please. I understand that you could create any scenario in which anything happens. But the vast majority of people who commit a similar crime (spray paint on unowned surface) certainly are doing it on purpose.
This was no schoolboy on a dare, this was a political activist making a political point. The author was punished severely, but do not trust his reasons for it. (Last year, it was because of Stop and Frisk. This time, he doesn't even seem to have a political excuse... it seems more like a call to a generic "$%#$# the police").
He did NOT seek to "learn about the justice system", he explicitly tried to get arrested to protest the stop and frisk laws that were being implemented in New York City. Jailtimes and Probation are the expected risks you take when you a political dissident like that.
Besides, there are less obtrusive ways of protest than spray painting a public building.
How does that work exactly? Surely if you want to target violent gangs, you target the violence. Arresting them for painting seems to be about the most backward thing imaginable.
The idea is to find something that is sufficiently common and easy to prove that people you are likely to want to punish for other reasons are likely to engage in (whether or not people who engage in it are likely to be people you want to punish for other reasons), so that you have a lever for prosecution and don't have to do the hard work of proving the actual offense of concern. Its essentially a hack around the Constitutional requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt for criminal conviction.
The reasoning is that if you can't nail them for the thing you can't prove, you wing them with the thing you can.
Firstly, Capone was doing tax evasion and the crime of tax evasion had not been brought in to deter gang violence, which is the argument being used here about grafitti, but was considered a serious matter in and of itself.
Also the fact that one major crime boss was once able to be jailed through using tax evasion laws, does not therefore mean that this is a broadly applicable tactic and also does not mean that entire areas of law should be made harsher on the idea that some of the people you are doing for grafitti might be murderers. It is just pure nonsense.
If you're open carrying a gun in Alabama and carrying an ice cream cone in your back pocket, guess what you will be arrested for--the ice cream cone, the thing that's actually illegal. Never mind that the police were called out in the first place for the gun.
And the problem with that reasoning is that it conveniently ignores the point that once you start down that path, you start catching a lot of people who aren't Al Capone in your net.
You are referring to the broken windows policy of policing, where minor crimes or infractions are pursued heavily under the notion that catching people that do this early will somehow curb harsher or violent crimes in the future. However, crime rates in NYC have been falling even before that policy came into existence in the 90s and that policy also has been applied in a way that ties in to racism.
And then there's the question of what "the spirit of the law" means. The courts wouldn't allow a blanket prohibition on "gang activity," even if that may be what legislature had in mind.
I hear Banksy is the head of a premier criminal gang in the UK.
I don't think we know that. Maybe it's true, but I can't rule out other possibilities.
But otherwise a tag is a tag.
This small experiment doesn't have a control, but I believe that black drug dealers are given more than a mild verbal rebuke. In NYC, you can't even walk down the street while black.
Where I used to work, in Chelsea, I used to see a trio of policemen frisking and/or questioning a different young, black man or woman at the entrance to the subway three out of the five days in the week.
Chelsea is a fairly wealthy (and white) neighborhood. Go out to East New York, and you'll see much worse.
Even among those that dress this way, the stop and frisk profiling still overwhelmingly targets black and hispanic people. Tattoos, piercings, and casual wear are extremely common in NYC, far more than suits, esp. in Brooklyn.
Are you trying to argue that the colour of your skin is not a factor in the perception of your appearance?
[I strongly question whether "based on looks" is a simpler hypothesis than "based on race", by the way. Given the long, well-documented history of racial discrimination in the US, I might actually lean in the opposite direction.]
How is that relevant to his point?
You are wrong.
We might as well call in the Criminal Punishment System, or the Government's Justice System, as it doesn't engender my views of justice, and nor should it for you.
No, and when it comes to white people in the suburbs we largely don't do that (except serious financial crimes).
When it comes to the inner city and gang activity, that's not so clear cut. What are you going to do, issue monetary fines?
What are you going to do, prosecute black/brown teenagers with extreme prejudice while giving white teenagers a ride home and a stern talking to? And then wonder why the statistics wind up how they are, why so many black kids don't have a father in the house?
If more policy-makers had to deal with this situation in their neighborhoods, seeing their nephews get locked up with hardened criminals, the situation would change. They don't, so it doesn't, and young black men turn into statistics.
You can still issue monetary fines. Often the judge will ascertain the defendant's ability to pay, and then arrange for monthly payments to be made toward the total. Failure to pay those fines could result in a few days of jail time.
Well, except that is exactly what happened here. A white, presumably affluent (it sounds like he's a lawyer) guy gets arrested for a misdemeanor (graffitti), and enters the hellhole known as our legal system.
Unless it's a serious serious financial crime in which case they get to remain the CEO of large financial institutions with bailouts and increased bonuses!
We probably shouldn't send people to prison for first-time trivial crimes (which this might have been) but "trivial" and "non-violent" aren't the same.
Well it does punish them. It punishes them with what many would consider torture, and again, my point is that most of these sentences are for non-violent crimes.
> it's also (theoretically) a deterrent to other potential criminals
Yes. Because people will stop smoking pot, stop being dumb drunks, and stop making non-violent mistakes, because of mandatory minimums, 3 strike laws, and horrific legal processes that threaten defendants with maximum sentences for confessions and settlements.
> a chance to rehabilitate the prisoner
Yes, sticking non-violent prisoners in with entrenched gang societies helps rehabilitate people. Also, we rehabilitate them with punishment. Great job state.
If you believe we should lock people up for non-violent crime, my statements stand.
It's a criminal punishment system that punishes not only non-violent and trivial crimes, but also meaningful dissent/experimentation that doesn't hurt anyone, with cruel and unproductive punishment. If we want to continue to "punish" people, and yet talk about "rehabilitation", then I believe there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance happening if you agree these things can coexist.
Wow, is police that common in NY / the states? That's more police than I have seen in my entire life.
The murder rate in NYC and Chicago is higher than Mexico City
I've never seen an assault rifle in my life, but that's what I assume they were, and I still find it very bizarre that's an every day occurrence for tens of millions of Americans
Places like those are not "the subway," they're massive junctions that literally millions of people pass through 24 hours a day.
Same goes for Times Square. You'll see cops on horses with assault rifles in Times Square.
Oh yeah, and don't forget the Staten Island Ferry. Transit cops and the coast guard float around down there (literally).
But if you also count police in police cars, and the likelihood of undercover cops and unmarked cars, and pass a police station, well... that's a stretch, but you could pad your numbers with an amount of assumption.
Oh and by the way, to provide context, he was travelling from Brownsville, which, if by subway, might take an hour to reach.
https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q...
But consider where he was headed: City Hall.
City Hall is an area teaming with cops. He might see 150 officers there alone, given their proximity to the courts.
IIRC, police force to population ratio (or at least, "on duty at any time" to population ratio) in the US tends to vary in a fairly narrow range among cities.
Has anything changed since Aaron's death?
I would expect a more severe sentence if I keyed a cop car vs some random car on the street. While I'm uninterested in discussing the severity of the sentence (I have no experience or knowledge to be able to judge), it stands to reason that if you directly attack the justice system you will not be treated kindly.
If everyone is equal, then so are the cops. It might not be... smart to pick a cop car, but I don't think it should make much difference in punishment.
And it's probation, not prison.
The author was a journalist who wanted to do a story on the prison system in New York State. The Department of Correctional Services froze him out and refused to give him any sort of access or interviews. To get the story, he actually took a job as a correctional officer officer in Sing Sing prison and worked there for a year. His account of the entire experience is fascinating. I think the whole discussion around these sorts of issues could really benefit from more accounts like this that introduce some transparency into the criminal justice system.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Newjack-Guarding-Sing-Ted-Conover/dp/0...
i find the last statement just as disturbing as the rest of the article. carrying this sentiment around plays a big part in the apathy we see all around us, towards most of the atrocities being committed these days.
The answer is "threatened with expulsion, arrested, and charged with multiple felonies". Google or HNSearch "Kiera Wilmot".
Are you serious ? And I make fun of Indian laws.
Next the judge exercises his discretion to come up with a non-standard sentence for the crime. Any non-instigator first offender would have gotten the slap on the wrist. A minority, we are lead to believe, probably much worse. Same crime but the discretion is wide in the sentence.
Later, the issue swings the other way. He has some real cause to go the rally in honor of the fallen student. Here, the discretion is taken away from the parole officer.
Discretion is power. In some instances, society grants too much discretion. In others, too little. We know this is the case but it still shocks us and we like to second guess.
This is a little bit too much even for me (an immigrant) to stomach, you know?
If they voted Obama into Presidency… what racism? Bunch of racists and secret Ku-Klux-Klan lovers voted for a Black President? Like really, some people have way too much time on their hands. If I can be consulting for 60-100usd/hr after 6 years of living here, why some people need to steal and deal drugs instead is beyond me.
There is equality in Cuba and Canada. If these people are for real why don't they just immigrate there?
I will be honest. I see a Pole in the US I think he is doing construction or picking up garbage or baby sitting, taking care of elderly. I see a Mexican I suspect he doesn't speak English. I see a black person I check if my wallet is safe.
Everybody does that. Trying to change the way we think about Blacks without them changing their ways is never going to work. Not all Poles in the US are in the construction business. Not all Mexicans in the US are illiterate. Not all Blacks in the US are criminals. But big chunk of all these peoples are, so it's good to be opened minded and don't pretend that things like AIDS epidemic in DC being on levels with Sub-Saharian Africa aren't true. Because they are. And this isn't fault of anybody else but people who live there and make choices they do. I came to this country with 300usd in my pocket. I could have excuses to do nothing and portray myself as a victim too. But who does that in this country?
Regarding Obama's 2012 Election: according to [2]and[3], 62 million of 221 million possible voters cast their ballot for Obama. ~28% of citizens voting for you does not really signal the end of racism in the US.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#Institutio... [2]http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2012G.html [3]http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/common/pop_vote.h...
Consent of the governed, yeah, right.
And has nothing to do with racism.
If institutionalized racism in fact existed it wouldn't have allowed us to have a Black President in the first place. Actually, it wouldn't allow Obama to even be considered a contender. You can talk your talk but the facts speak for themselves. The Leader of the Free World (or however you want to call it) is Black. What type of institutionalized racism built in the system in the US would allow for that? Because the institutionalized racism is a myth, we do have a Black President. If you want to find out what institutionalized racism is look at apartheid system that existed in South Africa and not at the United States. IMHO, you are intellectualy dishonest to suggest racism in the US. Try having a black president in any of the European or Asian nations. Go doing shopping with a black person in Paris. You will find out what a real racism is. When I worked for IBM there was this Black Lady hired by us. She was late her first day for 2 hours. When gently asked by the Manager what happened, she started yelling at him and never showed up at the office. A month later we find out she sued IBM for racism on false accusations that the Manager didn't like her skin color. The Manager's wife is Black. There institutionalized racism if you talk about "affirmative action". That's the only example of institutionalized racism I can see in the US.
And any arguments instead of usual Marxist "there are a lot of things that are wrong in what you say" ????
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
There's nothing new in the article. He proved nothing other than dressing decent makes a good impression, we all knew that. Nothing of race or the justice system in general was proved one way or the other in my opinion.
Interesting new phenomenon: People doing an "audit" of the justice system by themselves arrested.