The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system
economist.com
economist.com
> Eric Garner ... guilty only of selling single cigarettes
The cops involved suspected this, but I don't believe it's known that he is guilty of this. Especially in a legal sense: he did not live to see a trial.
Fairly petty crimes, but crimes.
I've heard cigs sell for $5 a pack in South Carolina, which doesn't add on taxes at all, so you can see how much the taxes add up.
EDIT- changed price in SC based on googling.
Truth is, pretty much everything is toxic at some point of consumption or another. Deciding where to draw the line is not black & white to me
You can do a lot of things to the government and get away with it, but the second you take their money all hell breaks loose.
Edit: I mean, it's for the children of course. /s
That's stupid. We can debate the laws too, but you should be demanding police that enforce the laws with due process and respond to threats proportionally. If you're thinking, "well, once the police suspect someone of violating regulations, of course they're going to kill him" then we're never going to get anywhere.
See how that works?
As for the rest, go look up Warren vs. District of Columbia. The police are not there to serve and protect.
There is a huge difference between being "there" to do something, and going to prison or paying out a massive judgement because you weren't successful.
The word "duty" as used in the case is a term of art in tort law. It doesn't just mean you have a generic obligation to do your job, as it does in common parlance, but it means you can be legally liable for someone's damages in a tort lawsuit.
If programmers had a "duty" to do their jobs, most software companies would have been sued out of existence. Software companies would get sued over every bug that caused people to lose time or money, and would be liable not just for the purchase price of the software, but if they were found to be negligent in writing-in that bug, would be liable for the actual damage suffered.
In addition, the prosecutors' powers need to be curtailed. Such crimes should always be charged, regardless of what the prosecutor wants. If there is doubt, bring in an outside prosecutor like the article suggests.
The English jurist Lord Hewart said it best: 'Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Sussex_Justices,_ex_p_McCar...
But there almost always is in reality, if there's a reasonable suspect. The only exception seems to be with law enforcement officers.
Often it never makes it that far. In many self-defense cases involving non-police civilians the district attorney will decide that no crime was committed and that will be the end of it.
One quick example from the top of a google search: http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/janitor-wont-be-charged-i...
Not to mention plenty already "have their financial lives destroyed" through the Civil Forfeiture law.
At the state level it's much higher 3-4%. You can say it's a rubber stamp, but in practice the average is raised by the fact that most criminal cases are slam dunk (that kilo of cocaine found in the accused's car is almost certainly his). And the bar for an indictment is relatively low, just probable cause. It'd be pretty uncomfortable if prosecuto so we're bringing lots of cases where they don't even have enough evidence to convince 3/4 of a grand jury there is probable cause.
[1] The distinction is relevant because federal and state prosecutors handle totally different sorts of crimes.
That goes doubly when the killer is a law enforcement officer. If we want to fix the current problems with policing in America, the only way to do that is to hold LEOs to higher standards than everyone else (and ideally stiffer penalties).
We hear that cases involving police killings get treated differently in an effort to have more transparency, or perhaps to allow grand juries in these cases to make a "more informed" decision. I don't buy this anymore. It doesn't provide more transparency, it plants doubt in a group that isn't supposed to be wrestling with any notion of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I served on a high-profile grand jury case once. I came away deeply disillusioned with how this process is said to work, and how it actually works.
This is an odd statement. It's well known that prosecutors have much greater latitude in what they can present as evidence AND the hurdle for proceeding with criminal charges is much lower.
The other option is to leave decisions to charge somebody up to the prosecutors themselves. You think that will produce a better outcome? I would imagine you'd see a lot more politically motivated prosecutions.
How often do grand juries defy the prosecutor's wishes?
I certainly agree that a check on prosecutorial discretion is badly needed. But the grand jury system doesn't seem to be providing it.
The high rate of indictments, of course, doesn't prove that the grand jury system doesn't act as a check on prosecutorial discretion. An AMA study found that the largest health insurers reject 2.7-6.8% of all claims: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/.... Does the low rate of denials indicate that insurers' claim processes are an inadequate check on fraudulent claims? By your reasoning, it does.
Still, the "ham sandwich" comment disturbs me. Do you think it has no basis in reality? Considering the emphasis we put on adversarial proceedings in this country, does it not seem odd and potentially problematic that grand juries hear only one side?
Speaking from experience I can tell you that high-profile indictments are often discussed and decided before the indictment is presented, outside the juror's room.
And finally, we're having a little crisis currently in Harris county over the threatening of a witness by a grand jury foreman who was also a retired police officer, serving on a grand jury that was deciding to indict a man for the murder of another police officer.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/daily-post/grand-jury-system-tex...
http://www.texastribune.org/2014/09/15/time-ditch-key-man-gr...
How can you have a trial with no one prosecuting?
The decision to charge essentially is up to the prosecutor; the grand jury process for felonies essentially plays an analogous role to the preliminary hearing for misdemeanors, in that it establishes probable cause and allows the case to continue. The difference is that, while felonies are notionally more serious crimes with more at risk, defendants actually have the right to be represented at present evidence at preliminary hearings, while they are entitled to neither for grand jury proceedings. (And that preliminary hearings are before a judge, rather than a grand jury.)
So, the alternative to grand juries doesn't give prosecutors more power, it gives them less. But it still doesn't reduce their ability to refrain prosecuting offenses. You can't do that unless you do something like allow court-appointed independent prosecutors on a citizen complaint with sufficient evidence where the public prosecutor declines to prosecute.
I don't think I understand the two. Grand juries can tell prosecutors "no", but if you remove them it gives prosecutors less power?
In general, criminal trials require establishing probable cause to proceed to a full trial. There are two methods of doing this: indictment by a grand jury, or preliminary hearing before a judge.
In the former, the prosecutor presents evidence with no opposition. In the latter, the defendant is entitled to representation, to cross-examine witnesses, and to present their own evidence.
You're not the first person I've seen suggest this, and I'm baffled by the logic.
Not that it changes the point of your argument, just guessing where the motivation for that statement comes from.
Grand Juries have an especially hard time finding anything wrong with police conduct and are routinely used to "legitimize" questionable police activity.
I'm not ready to agree to eliminating them but it isn't hard to understand why someone might throw it out there as an idea.
No, it doesn't, because eliminating grand juries does not eliminate the gate to a full trial; criminal cases in which that function is not served by the one-sided, prosecution-controlled grand jury process in which the target is not entitled to have representation, cross-examine witnesses or challenge evidence, present evidence, or even be informed that the process is taking place have the function served instead by a preliminary hearing in which the defendant is entitled to all of those things.
The grand jury indictment as an alternative to the preliminary hearing otherwise used is not a safeguard for the accused, it is a means by which the society at large (represented by the grand jury selected from among them rather than the judge handling a preliminary hearing) that the actions of the prosecutor in response to serious crimes are well-directed, it trades away protection of the accused for protection of societal interest in oversight of the executive branch by the public.
> You're not the first person I've seen suggest this, and I'm baffled by the logic.
You seem to think that the alternative to the grand jury is no procedural gateway between accusation and trial, which is not the case. Its understandable that, under that misapprehension, the idea that removing the grand jury would lessen the power of prosecutors would be baffling, because it misses the alternative that actually exists and is, in fact, used for those cases where grand jury indictment is not.
> To improve accountability, complaints should be heard by independent arbiters, brought in from outside.
The prosecutors and police are on the same team.
> If an officer is accused of a crime, the decision as to whether to indict him may rest with a local prosecutor who works closely with the local police, attends barbecues with them and depends on the support of the police union if he or she wants to be re-elected. Or it may rest with a local “grand jury” of civilians, who hear only what the prosecutor wants them to hear.
Yesterday, I was pulled over for not buckling my seatbelt until 2 blocks after pulling out of a parking spot. Turns out I had an unresolved fix-it ticket from 2013 which caused my license to be suspended (had no idea). CHP officer accused me of lying to him (I wasn't) and immediately impounded my car. Getting my car back took visits from 4 places (court, dmv, CHP office, tow yard) with fees at every turn.
I can't imagine how bad it is for people living in larger cities.
For the future: belt up before turning on the ignition. Seat belts save lives.
Michigan claims they sent me a letter, but I never received one. I occasionally had trouble with my mail at that address, so I chalked it up to that, but they got a few thousand extra dollars out of me because of it so I've always been just a little skeptical.
Oh, and later, when I hadn't been in the state for years, and had a license issued in a different state, and my MI license was years expired, they decided to suspend my license again, and claim this time they sent the letter to an old address of mine. Thankfully this time I discovered it without being pulled over.
I've been calling periodically, just to check.
I'm not the OP, but I can vouch that it's totally possible to discover that your license is suspended on being pulled over.
He has a choice.
Second, it's not so much about me getting away with breaking the law. Seatbelt violation? Sure, I'll take it. But suspending my license because of a fix-it ticket (which was fixed immediately but not verified)? Forcing someone with a suspended license to somehow get to 4 different places? C'mon.
But here's the real issue IMO: what if I'm a lower-income person living paycheck to paycheck and don't have $800 available? (FYI the storage fees at the impound lot is $50/day). What if I'm a 1-car family? Is it ok if I lose my car or job all because of this?
Maybe my main complaint is that everything seems purposefully inefficient and backwards in order to extract more money and keep more people employed–regardless of the effect it has on people.
And, yeah, some laws should change. I thought HN of all places would understand some of that.
At least in Illinois, the big problem is that it's a nightmare to (a) find out what you owe and (b) pay it. I had to call 3 different places, waiting on hold 15+ minutes each time, to eventually find someone to whom I could give a credit card number to. I got lucky that time; the last time I had this problem, I had to drive 3 hours into Indiana to find the courthouse that managed the speeding ticket I got.
I don't blame the police for any of this. I blame the state administration.
In my experience, CHP is the EASIEST law enforcement agency to live with. 12 years here and not so much as a traffic stop. It's paradise compared to anywhere else I've been.
A key assertion of this article is that guncrime is high because guns are common, and thus police have a somewhat justified reason to shoot first to defend themselves.
I would like to remind everyone that ownership of a military assault rifle is mandatory for 2/3rds of all men between 20 and 34 in Switzerland, and the rifle must be kept at home, by law. Once their service is complete, they may elect to keep their weapon.
This results in one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. Despite this, gun crime in Switzerland is almost the lowest in the world.
US gun crime and police aggression is the result of unhealthy gun culture and an unhealthy attitude towards mental health, not ownership rates.
One of the unhealthy aspects is that the population fears the police will shoot them, so they prepare to defend against the police. The police respond by preparing to preemptively defend themselves, and the cycle escalates until someone thinks it is reasonable to give US police forces mine-proof trucks.
So, while they have arms, the arms are in effect, disarmed.
> "And we don't get bullets any more," he adds. "The Army doesn't give ammunition now - it's all kept in a central arsenal." This measure was introduced by Switzerland's Federal Council in 2007.
[1] http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/soldiers-can-keep-guns-at-home-b...
The USA doesn't have a monopoly on crazy people. What we do have a monopoly on is the most guns per capita of any first world country. If we didn't have the highest concentration of guns of any first world country, we also wouldn't have the highest gun homicide rate of any first world country.
This is the real issue.
1. Killings by the police in the US are daily events but. "nobody knows the exact number as not all deaths are reported" WTF! The police don't report upwards if they shoot someone!
2. 37% of US blacks have confidence in the police (pretty high considering) but just 59% of whites. Good grief how do you police a city or a block if 40% of the nice white middle class people think you are going to cock it up ?!
It's the last that counts the most. Guns and force cannot replace trust - community policing is not some nice to have, Chuck Culson was wrong, Hearts and Minds matter, at home and abroad.
Google link to WSJ article: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newss...
In which an out-of-uniform CHP officer is brandishing a gun in the face of a photographer while another plain-dressed CHP officers wearing a bandana over his face tackles a protester. These cops had no reason to be in this situation, no reason to draw their weapons, certainly no reason to threaten members of the press with lethal force. No reason to hold their weapon sideways like an ignorant thug. These are the kinds of people who would certainly be removed from duty, probably prosecuted in more civilized countries.
Sorry for laughing. I'm really amazed that every single Simpsons reference has an imgur link already made. But you're right--that guy needs canned.
The U.S. is an order of magnitude more violent than the U.K., and always has been: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona.... In 1960 there was no drug war, there was no prohibition, the country was prosperous, but more than eight times as many people were murdered per capita than in the U.K.
> Sentences are harsh. Some American states impose life without parole for persistent but non-violent offenders; no other rich nation does.
In 1993-94, years where the per-capita murder rate in the U.S. was 9x higher than in the U.K., California and Washington voters approved the three strikes laws that lead to these harsh sentences by 3-1 margins.
It's easy to talk about the things that are wrong with the justice system in the U.S., but it's a pretty cursory analysis until you tackle the real question: when exercising their democratic will, whether in the small on grand juries or in the large through referendums, why do voters keep supporting the system?
It's important to keep in mind that murder rates are pretty low in general (save for a handful of countries). It's only when you compare countries to each other that the differences seem large.
In 1993-1994 Canada's murder rate was double that of the UKs. I wouldn't, by an stretch of the imagination say that Canada had a murder problem then.
I used to live in Wilmington, DE, where 0.038% of people in the city get murdered each year. Vanishingly small odds, to be sure, but high enough where in the year I lived there several scary incidents "hit close to home." There was someone gunned down a block away from my wife's office (in the business district of downtown). There was another person killed on a street corner a few blocks from our house, which we used to pass regularly on the way to our favorite Indian restaurant. That sort of thing weighs on a community's psyche. I have to admit, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up when I was walking around Wilmington at night.
Also, it's reasonable to believe that murder rates are a proxy for violent crime in general. The former is a more reliable statistic, because different jurisdictions' definitions of violent crime differ dramatically.
The US has a high murder rate, but it is very localized not only in certain cities, but certain parts of cities. Outside of those areas the homicide rate is vanishingly low.
> According to the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment report, gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions, and up to 90 percent in others.
Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Carolina are heavily rural with few major urban centers to speak of, yet have 3-5x the murder rate of the U.K.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1....
At one point I suppose the police felt they were members of the community. So they treated people with some measure of respect and dignity while carrying out their duties. They would see these same people at church, at the store, at baseball games, at funerals etc. So it was different.
Now, the police are often unreasonably rude and hostile immediately and without provocation. For example, the case of M. Brown... sure, it's understood Brown probably did attack the officer and was shot. But, the officer pulls up squealing tires and shouts for Brown to get the F* out of the street. So he gets Brown angry and is physically attacked. Then he _has_ to shoot the kid. Certainly Brown shouldn't have been walking in the middle of the road. But what if the officer had pulled up and said "Fellows, how are you doing today? Can I get you to get off the street? I wouldn't want to see you get run over." Then, if they didn't comply, ramp it up a little bit at a time as needed. Chances are there never would have been a shooting. But as it is, the officers hostile speech and generally dickish attitude led to a situation in which deadly force eventually was used. That officer is morally in the wrong, he did help create this situation, he should be fired, he should be punished.
We should demand our officers act with politeness and basic respect even as they enforce the law. If they can't do the job without behaving like psychotic bullies, we should find some people who can.
On the other hand, looking at the people they deal with day in and day out, it's easy to understand how they could get this attitude. Many citizens officers deal with have no basic respect nor manners themselves. Still... officers should be held the a higher standard (and appropriately compensated if it comes to that). They are still nominally public servants and should be acting in the best interests of the community. A community which includes the people they may be arresting btw.
But one party is (in theory), a professional state agent, paid at least in part by the other. (Sounds like you didn't quite make it to the bottom of my post.....).
I'm not quite catching your point... it seems to be that Brown was acting up so it was acceptable for Wilson to act as he did. And if that is your point I don't agree. At all. And no, this isn't a "red herring". It is an often overlooked point that is entirely relevant to the issue. The behavior and general attitude of police officers sometimes helps cause these types of situations.
Also you say I can't blame Brown for being partially responsible for his own death? I can't blame Wilson for inflaming the situation? Oh yes I can. On both points. And I would be right. Not sure why you would say this......
My point is... we would all be better served if officers behaved in a more respectful manner. So ultimately would they. That people walked around cocky in the street and annoyed you is irrelevant to this simple fact. Two wrongs don't make a right. And one party, in particular, should definitely be expected to be above this behavior. We should demand it.
"Total" responsibility? Where do I attribute that? Did you actually read my post? You reject my point that society would be better served if police officers behaved in a more civil manner?
I don't think this worth continuing.... Have a good evening.
It's a common American meme that when police fire a gun, the only rational decision is to shoot to kill, but it's just not true.
2. As for the GP, you should neither shoot to kill nor shoot to maim. You should shot to stop the threat. Whether they live or die is not as important as stopping a lethal threat (and if there is no lethal threat, you should not be shooting). And if your intent is to stop the threat rather than kill or injure, the best chance of stopping the threat is to shoot center of mass until the target goes down. (Which will, in most cases, kill the target, incidentally)
This would only be true if air resistance wasn't a thing. Physics is against you on this one.
Lightweight rounds, such as birdshot, are safe when fired into the sky. That is the exception.
It is only because German police have to fire their guns so infrequently that this has not caused innocent fatalities. The practice violates numerous firearm safety rules.
Do you have a link or cite that German police shoot to disable? Five minutes of Googling didn't turn up anything relevant for me. Thanks.
I had a cousin who retired as an NYPD Patrol Sergeant. He was proud that he had never fired and rarely pulled his pistol over the course of a 40 year career. But he sure as hell cracked his share of bones with a baton.
From what I've read very few police officers have the time to selectively shoot someone. If deadly force is called for, you aim for the center of the person.
Also, shooting to injure rather than kill is not exactly easy. If you take a bullet in a major artery in a leg or an arm, you can bleed out just as quickly as a bullet to the chest.
Proponents of this usually have no experience firing a weapon, let alone while in distress. It's nearly impossible to disable-but-not-kill a person by shooting them.
> even when confronted by someone armed with a knife
Again, usually someone who is not aware of how deadly a knife really is.
Its not really nearly impossible to disable-but-not-kill a person by shooting them (it happens all the time, actually), it is just hard to do that reliably compared to disable-without-regard-to-killing, which is why the general rule is don't shoot unless willing to kill, and then aim center of mass -- not because hitting center of mass is the most likely place to disable or kill (though its pretty close -- the head is better for either, though), but because missing center of mass makes you more likely to at least disable than missing pretty much any place else you might aim to disable.
Given the fairly high cost of failing to disable in any situation where shooting is justified at all, adding a "but not kill" constraint is generally an unacceptable risk.
If you want a better society pass better laws. That means funding rational candidates for office.
They qualify the above statement in the prior paragraph: "One reason why so many American police shoot first is that so many American civilians are armed."
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/04/a-minority-o...
Arresting somebody who owns one or two guns is really not inherently safer than arresting somebody who owns a few crates of guns, so the number of guns in the country is irrelevant. The number of gun owners is relevant.
The apparent upward trend in police militarization and the number of Americans that own guns simply do not correlate. The Economist's unfamiliarity with American culture (particularly American gun culture) explains how they could make this mistake.
Police in America are less likely today to encounter guns than they were 40 years ago, but police shootings are apparently at all time highs. If their theory held water, that would not be the case.
Your hypothesis does not fit the data.
The thing is both sides are kind of wrong. London has far more gun crime than much of the US does (personally I ran into three firearms incidents without trying) which really should provoke much more soul searching in the UK than it does (they delude themselves into thinking the whole US is uniformly dangerous), however, British cops, while by no means perfect, are enormously less likely to be in aggressive by default mode. Obviously it does happen quite a bit, but nothing like the same antagonism that you have in North America.
Can we get a figure to back that up please? The MET places gun crime figures in greater London at 1570 (http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/) with a population of approx 8 million. Which American populations would you compare this to and what are their figures?
I've spent a significant amount of time in London and have never once run into any firearms incidents. It would be interesting to me to see the data behind this.
Whether or not this is a fair comparison is another matter.
Clearly, arresting a suspected drug dealer is far more dangerous in the US than in the UK - and widespread gun ownership is a reasonable explanation for that diference.
First, police often act with worst case scenarios in mind. That is err on the side of the suspect inflicting immediate harm. Why? Because oftentimes proven offenders actually had arms. Now, the UK, Japan, the police may not be any nicer but they have the privilege of correctly presuming suspects are unarmed.
As Americans i don't think we'll get to a place where arms are well regulated, so I think other options will be necessary. Training in defusing confrontations, perhaps sending in officers in exoskeletons and armor. Something which allows for the suspect to actually intend harm but unable to execute on the officer. That way police don't feel they have to err on the side of safety given the propensity of arms in The US.
The police are trained to neutralize a suspect rather than "wing" them. I think it has to do with how "baddies" can have actual firearms whereas in many other countries firearms are heavily regulated for the general pop.
In any event, the police and the general pop need to be able to feel more at ease with each other otherwise we'll be on our way to judge dredd and that's not a good path.
what wonder that people get shot.
[Edit: what wonder I get downvoted, kind of expected this]
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOKWcH1zBl2kfnCwyyZWk...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_of_the_Plebs
A modern tribune should play both the role of sheriff and prosecutor. The powers of a tribune should be constrained to act for the people against government agencies. To that end, they would have power to arrest and detain government officials, convene grand juries, and prosecute trials.
To do their job, a modern tribune and their family would require lifetime immunity from local law enforcement. To enforce this immunity, any interaction by local law enforcement would need to be punishable by suspension and jail time and the burden is strict liability.
But the tribune could not be a position of total local authority. Their powers would need to be constrained to local government officials. And they would need to be under the jurisdiction of country Sheriff's or State police.
This would break the incestuous relationships between the DA office, the police, and the judiciary.
> This year 46 policemen were shot dead and
> the police shot and killed at least 458 people last year
10% or so of death involving police is a policemen. Not that it justify the police force level, but an interesting statistic.
Law enforcement is actually pretty good here in my opinion (when you look at the big picture). But our legal system (as in, the court system) benefits mostly lawyers, wealthy people, etc.