The Police Are Still Out of Control
politico.com
politico.com
On the issue of suing police, I find it interesting that most of thee civil cases are settled before a verdict. The police admit no wrong-doing yet fork over 2 million dollars.
I'm not entirely sure what should be done about the situation.
Now, whether they are active officers is a completely different matter, and they should not be permitted to active duty until pending cases are resolved.
Finally, settlements are not a legal judgement of guilt nor acquittal. The only thing that can decide that is a court case. Often, they are a pure risk vs reward decision. If the downside of losing a case is $50+ million and they estimate their chances of losing at equal to or more than 5% -- in other words, still very confident of winning -- then it makes financial sense to settle for $2 million instead.
I don't understand this at all. There are all sorts of terrible things that are not quite illegal. You killed that drunk guy that took a swing at you? Not guilty, but still not good behavior. You were a real jerk to a bunch of citizens, but you didn't actually assault them? Not guilty, but still not good behavior.
If an accusation can lose you your job, I can probably dodge my next speeding ticket by threatening to make a false accusation against them. Obviously, this isn't what we're looking for.
But at the other end of the scale, if you're put behind a desk for something that'd have you or I sat in cells awaiting trial, this isn't what we're looking for either.
Seriously, if you're ever up on charges, see if you can plead innocent without the judge counter-offering to put in a plea of Not Guilty instead.
Also, these statements are purely as applies to pending court cases, because cops sometimes do have to do things that would otherwise be illegal for anyone else. And it can take a court case to decide if one particular occasion met those necessary criteria. However, if it's deemed that a cop is not meeting some other performance criteria of their job, then that's a different matter altogether.
We might agree on the first issue.
>However, if it's deemed that a cop is not meeting some other performance criteria of their job, then that's a different matter altogether.
Would you consider a police officer unnecessarily killing a violent drunk to be "not meeting some other performance criteria"?
On the issue of burned of proof we disagree. Employment is a voluntary agreement. If I am your employer and I no longer want to employ you because I am convinced you are a criminal, then that is my call. If I want to lock you in a cage because I am convinced you are a criminal, that is not my call.
Needless hands-on with a person who poses no danger should be a swift firing.
All that means is that the police union has the politician in their pocket.
Same thing when a politician has the support of the teachers union.
It puzzles me when people vote against their own interest by voting for these endorsed politicians. It's much better to have someone there who will have a better chance of representing the voters rather than the unions.
This, even after a decade of revelations ranging from Bush's illegal collection of phone metadata, the creation of the TSA (in violation of the 4th amendment) to the NSA spying Snowden exposed and the installation of porno scanners (which I think under most state laws, when used on children constitute child pornography, and if a child gets patted down, it's pretty close to molestation-- as the statutes are written and applied to civilians.)
It's like, to a lot of people, somehow when the government does it, with a plausible sounding rationalization, the laws of morality don't apply.
In fact, even the laws of the law don't apply. The fourth amendment trumps anything congress can pass. State laws still are in force, even if congress authorizes something (e.g.: it can be legal at the federal level but a crime at the local level.)
The government violates its own laws with impunity-- without even an investigation in most cases. Where's the special prosecutor to root out the criminal activity at the NSA? Instead it's just a manhunt for snowden. Yet people are very upset about "net neutrality" (which is a legitimate issue, but far less damaging than the panopticon)
I don't understand this.
What the TSA actually does in practice, though?
Edit: I think I read too much into it. I agree that the GP should clarify that the routine execution of the TSA's mandate is (in my opinion) clearly unconstitutional, but if the federal government had simply created an agency that did nothing, that would not necessarily violate the fourth.
However, airport security checkpoints existed before the creation of the TSA - it wasn't "the creation of the TSA" that started it.
Further, the mandate of the TSA is much broader than running airport security checkpoints. Removing the unconstitutional pieces would not leave us with "an agency that did nothing".
With the advent of the TSA and the enforcement of its policies, now the government is searching my belongings before every flight, and the room in which the airlines could compete on features like privacy, is gone.
Even if buckeroo bob wanted to start his own airline that was full-size-shampoo friendly, they no longer can, because the government disallows it completely. If Virgin airlines wanted to eliminate the invasive body scanners and compete on convenience, they could not, because the government has decided that it wishes to scan the contents of every bag and person.
"[1972:] The FAA in December issues an emergency rule requiring all passengers and carry-on baggage to be either screened by metal detectors or searched by hand and requiring airports to station armed guards at boarding checkpoints."
"[1974:] The 1974 Air Transportation Security Act sanctions the FAA's universal screening rule, which spurs U.S. airports to adopt metal-detection screening portals for passengers and X-ray inspection systems for carry-on bags."
And progressively more as we go on.
Thanks for the information.
People tend to give the government the benefit of the doubt, moreso than they do the police. But unlike with the police, you can take direct action to remove bad actors in government. Vote, and convince others to vote. There's an election coming up soon. I don't agree with you on policy, but I want you to exercise your franchise all the same.
Personally, I never vote, because to play a rigged game is to be complicit in its outcome. If you vote, you can't complain about anything the government does -- you agreed with the existence of the system as a whole. Sometimes your team wins and sometimes your team loses, but to play the game, lose, and complain is merely to be a sore loser.
It is perfectly possible to take direct action to stop police injustice. The Black Panthers are a good example. It's also possible to take direct action to stop surveillance. The Tor Project is a good example.
Don't vote. Don't play a rigged game. Take real action and make real change. Stop begging and take control of your life.
Sore loser, are you kidding? Politics is a game, yes, but played by politicians. I'm not playing any game when I make an informed decision to vote for what I think is, well, less bad. I can complain all I want and do, regardless of my vote. It's my right to vote and then it's my right to complain when things are wrong, they're separate responsibilities and one doesn't infringe on the other. I think you need to view politics with a bit more nuance, because you're a big part of the problem, that is: we need less citizenship dropouts.
Sure you are. You're playing the voting game. Your team tries to mass agreement for some candidates, the other team tries to mass agreement for other candidates. This agreement comes with the knowledge that you are handing your autonomy, and your right to complain, off to the winner of the game.
If you lose you have no right to complain. You knew the risks.
>Sure, direct individual action and activism is very helpful, but doesn't replace electing good representatives
Direct action is exactly a replacement for representative action. Action can only ever be one of those two things. Similarly, representation is a replacement for direct action -- if you delegate your power to someone else, you cannot exercise it.
>I think you need to view politics with a bit more nuance, because you're a big part of the problem
I think you need to stop confusing yourself with nuance and realize that you're the problem -- you're handing over your autonomy to these people that are using you to build careers on corruption and subjugation.
Stop confusing yourself with the trees and look at the forest.
All of the programs you mentioned, phone metadata collection, the TSA, fall within the recognized contours of what the Supreme Court has recognized as "reasonable" searches.
Now, that's not to say that the Supreme Court's interpretations are the best ones, or that people can't advocate for a different interpretation. What it does mean is that the people supporting these programs can do so with the entirely good faith belief that they are not violating clearly established Constitutional law.
So what you should be looking for is a delegation of the right to search with out a warrant, it's not there.
The Constitution gives the federal government sole authority over national security, from both domestic and external threats. That was in fact one of the purposes of creating the federal government (the states' trouble in putting down Shays' rebellion). It also gives the federal government authority over interstate commerce. Ensuring the security of planes from terrorism is right at the core of what the federal government was created to do.
It bans unreasonable searches and seizures, period.
Hopefully, a warrant will only be issued when the search is reasonable, and a search with more oversight and checks will be more reasonable than the same search without.
To understand why the Fourth Amendment governs both searches and warrants, it's helpful to read up on what a "General Warrant" was at the time of the founders. Hint: they often didn't really have much to do with generating evidence.
The Amendment has two goals: first, to give the courts, rather than Congress or the President, authority in determining what a valid search is, and second to ensure that no branch of government could arbitrarily generate a piece of paper authorizing police to turn someone's house inside out.
My impression of most citizens is the exact opposite: that police are seen as mostly good people stuck with a hard job (and a few bad apples here and there), and that politicians are seen as two-faced snake-oil peddlers (with a few good apples here and there).
My take is a little more nuanced, in that I'm more interested in good and bad systems and institutions, rather than good or bad people (as if there's such a thing).
There are six stages of moral development.
The first, which you'll see in small children, is to act merely to avoid punishment. This is a small wrapper around classical conditioning. Acts associated with things like pain are bad.
The second, which you'll see in slightly older children, is to act to be rewarded. By this stage, morality is now a wrapper around operant conditioning, and children are able to seek out things they want.
The third is social convention; things are moral if people are okay with your doing them. By the time a kid is 12 or 13 they're probably in this stage if their development is normal.
The fourth is authority. Things are moral if an authority says they're moral. This comes with the realization that the people in your life aren't important just because they're the people in your life, they're important because they were appointed by some authority. A teacher is a representative of a school system, and a principal is a higher representative of that system. Police are representatives of governments. Politicians are higher representatives of the abstract idea of governments.
There are two other stages, but the classification breaks down at this point and they represent more what the psychologist writing the paper thinks more than what actually exists, because almost nobody gets past the fourth stage.
Most humans are entirely content to backend all of their reasoning on authorities.
For most people, it's impossible for the government to violate laws. The government is the law. And further, it's not wrong for the government to violate laws. They're the government. They create morality.
Finally, outside of the entire argument I've made up to this point in my comment, people pick politicians -- not in a meaningful sense, but they join the team surrounding the politician. A politician is either on their team or not. Politicians on the other team are corrupt all the time -- but not politicians on our team.
My only hope is that eventually people wake up and realize no politician, no police officer is on their team.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Do all the things you think of as "pop" come from the 50's? Have you heard this great new pop singer Elvis lately?
Politicians make more money and work in a safer, friendlier environment. Perhaps that makes some people see them as having less reason to be corrupt?
I'm just a Ph.D. applied mathematician and software guy writing code and gathering data for my start-up I hope people will like; the project is for nothing illegal, immoral, objectionable, offensive, politically incorrect, etc.
But if the project works, then I'll have to get out from where I am now, get out from behind my desktop computer writing code and gathering data, get out into the community, have a light truck for my business, rent office space, contract for routine services, say, water, electric power, Internet access, telephones, trash pickup, hire people, get business insurance, a bookkeeper, an accountant, a lawyer, make some use of consultants, do billing, handle revenue, pay taxes, etc.
I will need routine police protection against vandalism and theft, etc.
And maybe there will be police walking a beat near my offices.
So, then, I may have some interactions with the police. Then, I need to know what are the rules. What are the real rules?
Aside from making your first line of defense private security, make offsite backups for all your business records, and refresh them regularly. Insure your business against damages from typical property crimes, and against potential liabilities for visitors to your premises, and follow your agent's advice on things to do that will decrease your premiums. Hire a registered agent so that legal documents do not arrive via deputy at your regular office.
The best interaction you can have with the cops is to never need one or see one. Second best is to be assisted by a cop that acts with honesty, respect, and professionalism. Beyond that, results will vary drastically according to your locale.
Rule number one is to not have routine interactions with the police. (Unless you're running a doughnut shop, I guess.)
Some of what you said I'd guessed but didn't know the details or the level of importance you made clear. E.g., I suspected that I needed business insurance, but I've been unclear on all the reasons why.
The rest, I didn't know. Yup, I'm learning now.
Partly I was wondering if it was expected and required and in practice permitted to make gifts, say, cash to the local police. I very much hoped not, and would have checked with a street-wise, SMB lawyer. Your advice of just do not have routine interactions with the police sounds about right.
Thanks.