Two Programmers Expose Dysfunction and Abuse In the Seattle Police Department 249
reifman writes: Programmers Eric Rachner and Phil Mocek are now the closest thing Seattle has to a civilian police-oversight board. Through shrewd use of Washington's Public Records Act, the two have acquired hundreds of reports, videos, and 911 calls related to the Seattle Police Department's internal investigations of officer misconduct. Among some of Rachner and Mocek's findings: a total of 1,028 SPD employees (including civilian employees) were investigated between 2010 and 2013. (The current number of total SPD staff is 1,820.) Of the 11 most-investigated employees—one was investigated 18 times during the three-year period—every single one of them is still on the force, according to SPD.
In 569 allegations of excessive or inappropriate use of force (arising from 363 incidents), only seven were sustained—meaning 99 percent of cases were dismissed. Exoneration rates were only slightly smaller when looking at all the cases — of the total 2,232 allegations, 284 were sustained. This is partly why the Seattle PD is under a federal consent decree for retraining and oversight. You can check out some of the typically excellent Twitter coverage by Mocek from his #MayDaySea coverage.
In 569 allegations of excessive or inappropriate use of force (arising from 363 incidents), only seven were sustained—meaning 99 percent of cases were dismissed. Exoneration rates were only slightly smaller when looking at all the cases — of the total 2,232 allegations, 284 were sustained. This is partly why the Seattle PD is under a federal consent decree for retraining and oversight. You can check out some of the typically excellent Twitter coverage by Mocek from his #MayDaySea coverage.
But they're PHP programmers!! (Score:3, Insightful)
How can we trust them since /. hates PHP so much?
I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean when the police investigate their own misconduct they find there was none?
I'm shocked I tell 'ya.
And the police wonder why they're no longer treated with respect, while being people who regularly abuse their power and ignore the law. All cops need to start wearing body cameras at all times. Because it has reached the point where taking them at their word is a stupid idea.
If the police choose to ignore the law, they should be charged like the rest of us.
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Insightful)
One item the media seems to dismiss is that there are almost 40 million [bjs.gov] police interactions every year. About 1.4% claim there was force used, and the majority state it was excessive. The number that has made the recent news is a dozen or so.
I will be the first to say that 1.4% is far too much, but you can also note that 98.6% follow procedure, and all beat cops have a non-zero probability of being shot when they go to work that morning. Their job is hard (and quoting stats comparing cops to fisherman is pointless, fish don't have shotguns in the back seat).
I have a friend whose husband was killed in the line of duty, he was stopping a warehouse robbery. It didn't make national news, and her kids grew up without their father. Yes, there are issues with the thin blue line and the recent monitoring with cell phones is a benefit, but before anyone goes around blasting cops without considering the whole picture, just imagine what it would be like if they did not protect us and serve us from the anarchy that would be there without them.
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I will be the first to say that 1.4% is far too much, but you can also note that 98.6% follow procedure
What? No, you can't note that. We don't know anything about what they're doing at other times from that statistic.
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really. It's not possible to extrapolate anything from that number. After all one of the biggest abuses of policing is the way that they deliver routine tickets in such volume that it financially cripples a community. Ferguson has more warrants for arrest than people and almost all of them are for failure to pay traffic fines. Living in fear of a police officer pulling you over for being over the limit by a single MPH (Yes this does happen) and giving you a ticket that will put you in debt for years (and possibly prison) is the very definition of abuse.
Granted not all of that rests on the heads of cops. Most of it resides on the government and court system that allow loan sharks to take over the collections of tickets in a way that traps the people in debt. These agencies offer to take over collections for free but then add a service charge to ticket payed by the person cited. All of the money that the person pays goes towards that fee until it is payed off, but the fee keeps increasing with missed payments. The result is that these people are stuck in a cycle of payments until a warrant goes out for their arrest for failing to pay a ticket and then they are sent to prison.
As the Ferguson report on policing practices said: when the city mayor asked the police chief to deliver 10% more revenue he responded "we can try."
I'm sure that most of these stops were perfectly routine. Doesn't mean that the police aren't being abusive.
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Look, policing is a hard, dangerous, often thankless job, and you have to understand that not everybody who wants to do it is qualified. When you hand an unqualified person a badge and a gun, they don't suddenly become qualified -- in fact, they become a liability to police everywhere.
You know how everybody is calling for police to wear cameras nowadays? It's not because we want to see what a day in the life of a policeman is. It's because cops are so untrustworthy that the only way to know if they're lying
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From a privacy standpoint, though, we must also consider adjusting the law so that recordings of unrelated crimes cannot be prosecuted outside of a certain time frame or context. Otherwise, you will have police departments scanning footage, either by eye or software, looking for misdemeanors and
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Look, policing is a hard, dangerous, often thankless job, and you have to understand that not everybody who wants to do it is qualified. When you hand an unqualified person a badge and a gun, they don't suddenly become qualified -- in fact, they become a liability to police everywhere.
It seems that a good solution would be to make sure that people who get badges are qualified. Make police officer a trained profession with standardized requirements. If becoming a police officer required three years of schooling, training and taking standardized tests you'd weed out some of the deadbeats and end up with police officers who have a decent understanding of both the law they're supposed to enforce and of how to enforce it without holding everyone they meet at gunpoint. With time it might turn
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their job is hard (and quoting stats comparing cops to fisherman is pointless, ...
Why is using actual data on how dangerous the job is compared to other jobs pointless? Because it doesn't support your argument?
... fish don't have shotguns in the back seat)
Neither do the vast, vast majority of people.
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Why is using actual data on how dangerous the job is compared to other jobs pointless? Because it doesn't support your argument?
... fish don't have shotguns in the back seat)
Neither do the vast, vast majority of people.
Agreed on the second part, but the issue is the police officer's job is to insert themselves into situations where the suspects are doing wrong and have an interest avoiding prison. This leads to return actions from humans that are often violent, and that is not something most people deal with everyday. No other job, except for firemen and the military, has that as part of the job description.
Maybe it wasn't clear in my first post, but I stated that the abusive cops need to be removed (the thin blue line)
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Their job is hard (and quoting stats comparing cops to fisherman is pointless, fish don't have shotguns in the back seat).
Why is it pointless? Is feeding people less important than guarding them? For every cop who lost a buddy on the job, there's a fisherman who has lost a dozen. Do you truly believe that fishermen don't face that reality every day? For every cop that gets shot, five farmhands drown while cleaning grain silos, falling in and suffocating on corn. Just because they won't get a parade or a headline doesn't mean they don't understand the risks. The cop patrolling the highway is half as likely to die serving you
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Body cameras will help a little, but they won't solve the problem.
Expect body cameras worn by corrupt cops to have serious reliability issues.
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And the police wonder why they're no longer treated with respect, while being people who regularly abuse their power and ignore the law.
No longer? Police have never been the embodiment of the Officer Friendly persona, on the whole. There are bright spots here and there to be sure, particularly in laid back suburban communities with high pay and low crime, but police have a history of abuse and extortion. See *any* third world country for an example of what our own police used to be. Police behavior has
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Personally, if I was a cop, I'd be ASKING to wear a body camera 24/7 now.
But then again, I'm not a cop because I know it's a crazy hard job and that I'd probably just wind up shooting someone for being "1000th person to lie to my face today".
And I'll say it again here as I've said in other places, there should be a "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?: clause in the law, whereby anyone with authority over something is punished at a category-higher severity than a normal person, when the crime relates to that thi
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I live in the Corporate States of America. Here, the more responsibility you have, the less responsible you have to be. The guy hired last week to mop the floors will be fired immediately if a bottle of floor wax should come up missing. The CEO can artfully relocate millions of dollars, and he'll get a bonus for doing it.
Crazy world we live in.
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, we find that various mooks make spurious brutality claims, the vast majority of which are complete bullshit.
The only evidence uncovered is that the PD has a robust system for reporting and investigating claims. That a small percentage find any real misdeeds could be an indication the the bar for accepting complaints is too low, as much as it could mean they don't follow through or dismiss real misdeeds. I am not saying it is one or the other, but the information presented is not enough to go on.
Need more data (Score:5, Insightful)
The only evidence uncovered is that the PD has a robust system for reporting and investigating claims.
That's not quite true - the evidence suggests only that they have a robust system for reporting and recording claims. I've not seen any evidence to suggest that they robustly investigate them and the OP claims that there is evidence of them using unnecessary force and racist language without repercussion which, if substantiated, would be clear evidence of very poor investigation.
I completely agree that having a large fraction of claims refused is not evidence that the system is not working. It does suggest that the system should be investigated to understand why there are such a lot of dismissed complaints because either cops are having to endure a lot of frivolous discipline cases or they are getting away with serious misconduct. Either possibility is bad but the statistics provided do not distinguish between the two cases.
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Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is, until the video surfaces.
There have been enough high profile instances of police officers outright lying about what happened that I simply am not willing to assume they're telling the truth. Because often when a video shows up the police are proven to be lying.
If the good cops can't weed out the bad ones, then it's time to treat them all like children who can't be trusted.
If you or I did that, it would be perjury and obstruction of justice.
This is a police force which was already under a federal consent decree ... which means they've been acting like this for a long time.
Boo hoo ... the poor police feel all ganged up on because they can't break the law and get away with it.
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is, until the video surfaces.
There have been enough high profile instances of police officers outright lying about what happened that I simply am not willing to assume they're telling the truth. Because often when a video shows up the police are proven to be lying.
If the good cops can't weed out the bad ones, then it's time to treat them all like children who can't be trusted.
If you or I did that, it would be perjury and obstruction of justice.
This is a police force which was already under a federal consent decree ... which means they've been acting like this for a long time.
Boo hoo ... the poor police feel all ganged up on because they can't break the law and get away with it.
You mean like the video in the Ferguson Michael Brown shooting case: "Ferguson Police Officer Exonerated in the Shooting of Michael Brown"
I agree that there are bad cops who lie in order to cover up their incompetence, poor police work, etc. But there are also cases where video would show that the officer followed procedure. In my opinion, Police officers should be begging for tamper resistant body cams. It helps the honest cops and would help weed out the bad ones.
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In my opinion, Police officers should be begging for tamper resistant body cams. It helps the honest cops and would help weed out the bad ones.
Assuming the majority of cops are in fact honest 'good cops', we should expect to see some serious begging for tamper resistant body cams.
Do we? (Or rather, do you? I don't live in the US)
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Sure they should.
There should be clear rules about when it has to be on, with serious consequences of breaking those rules.
And by serious consequences i don't mean "internally investigated"...
Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. So - let's have the video. In one case, the video proves me wrong. In the next case, the video proves me wrong again. In the next case, I see the evidence that "my side" is right. And, that's the way it should be.
A cop's word should carry no more weight than your word or mine in a court of law. The cop should have to PROVE HIS CASE.
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Would you like to be filmed going about your job? Of course some cops don't want to be the stars of their own reality shows. That implies nothing other than it feels intrusive to them.
That said, they have the power to arrest and to use deadly force. They need to be held to the highest standard. If body cams will do that, then they should be wearing them.
They're not perfect, however. There will still be some incidents where the camera footage is misleading or inconclusive about what may have happened du
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That may or may not be true. It hardly matters though, does it? If the cops are wearing body cams, and three cops arrest some mook, then when he cries "Brutality", the evidence is available. If the evidence shows the mook to be lying, so be it. If the evidence shows that the cops bludgeoned him half to death, then let him roll around in the back of a paddy wagon for half the day before calling for medical assistance, then so it should be.
Put the cameras on the cops. Justice will win, no matter how many
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Re:I'm shocked ... (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if it's reached a point where abuse of power is regular, or if it always has been and it's only the fact that nearly everyone carries a camera.
Read about Frank Serpico, an NYPD cop that blew the whistle on endemic corruption and graft in the 1970s. His partner, with the assistance of other officers, tried to have him killed, but Serpico survived (with a bullet lodged in his skull). Even though he is one of the most highly decorated retired NYPD officers, he still gets hate mail from active-duty cops for his testimony to the Knapp Commission.
The only difference today is that more people carry cameras.
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Which is a huge difference, and the reason brutal cops are finally starting to be prosecuted. So many Americans are clueless authoritarians that will go along with any claims from those in power, so it takes incontrovertible evidence to hold them accountable for their crimes against the American people.
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I wonder if it's reached a point where abuse of power is regular, or if it always has been and it's only the fact that nearly everyone carries a camera.
I'm sure there was way more outright police corruption in the early 20th century.
Power corrupts. Money corrupts. It has been true as long as they have been around.
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There is already a fix for this. A cop that has a malfunctioning Video camera during an interaction with the public is put on unpaid leave until the investigation is over. And will be paid retroactively if it was actual equipment malfunction. This would require the officer to report malfunctioning equipment and get it replaced before the next interaction.
Stay objective. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, routine dismissal of serious allegations suggests protection of corruption.
On the other hand, allegations do not imply guilt. Any criminal that dislikes being caught by the police can make such allegations.
I will reserve judgment until the evidence is available.
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I will reserve judgment until the evidence is available.
This is both the point and not the point. That is the question. The people with the power and authority to collect and present the evidence are the people with the power to suppress the evidence about themselves.
A free press and real public oversight are supposed to be the answer in a free society. But many state have laws make it a felony to record the police without their knowledge and if you make the police aware they are being recorded while they are committing what you perceive as a criminal act th
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The people with the power and authority to collect and present the evidence are the people with the power to suppress the evidence about themselves.
Not so much in Washington State (Seattle). Body cam and dash cam videos are available via the Public Records Act [wa.gov]. So, not much suppression going on here. In fact, adoption of body cams has been hindered. Not by concerns of the authorities, afraid that their behavior will be observed, but by members of the public who might end up as the subject of a recording and want to protect their privacy.
police aware they are being recorded while they are committing what you perceive as a criminal act then you endanger yourself.
This needs to be fixed. Probably at the federal level*. If members of the public are far enough back from some activi
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police aware they are being recorded while they are committing what you perceive as a criminal act then you endanger yourself.
This needs to be fixed. Probably at the federal level*. If members of the public are far enough back from some activity to not be interfering with it, then holding a camera shouldn't change that.
Agreed. The former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court was on the radio today saying that this was her strongest dissent in an opinion. The same supposedly liberal court that legalized gay marriage also said that people could be prosecuted under the state wiretap law for recording audio of what they perceive is police misconduct.
If it is a felony to record audio of public officials performing public duties in a public place, then there is no freedom of press.
News at 11 (Score:5, Funny)
Two Seattle programmers were arrested on alleged drug charges, and passed away while in police custody. The SPD will investigate the incident.
Isn't Seattle already under a "consent decree"? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't Seattle already under a "consent decree"? (That's basically when the Feds descend on a police force - ala Ferguson - because they want to clean it up.)
http://www.seattletimes.com/se... [seattletimes.com]
And isn't there already a full body - with it's own web site - monitoring it?
http://www.seattlemonitor.com/ [seattlemonitor.com]
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It seems like neither of those sources are doing anything good. If Seattle is already being cleaned up and has it's own monitor website and then a couple of nerds uncover troves of issues, then neither the government nor the monitor is doing it's job and is more likely helping to cover things up rather than expose them.
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>> neither of those sources are doing anything good
Failure ahead for Obama in Baltimore, then? However, note that the "nerds" research only covers 2010-2013: that's BEFORE the consent decree went in. In other words, if they can show it's STILL going on...
>> more likely helping to cover things up rather than expose them
Admittedly, that's half the attraction of a consent decree to a local police department. The Feds come in but no one gets sued.
Expand to other jurisdictions? (Score:3)
Can they expand their investigation to include other jurisdictions? This kind of information needs to be available (and compiled) for every police jurisdiction in the country. If we can do that we might get some accurate records of police actions since the government is disinclined to do so (even though they passed a law requiring it 4 or 5 years ago.)
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It sounds like not all states have the kind of public records disclosure laws that Washington has.
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I wasn't suggesting they do it themselves, that's ludicrous. I assumed they had written some sort of program (can't view the article here at work for some reason) that pulled the records automatically.
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It sounds like just a lot of public records requests, I doubt most places have a way to automate that. I'm not sure if the fact that they are programmers is relevant to this story, I didn't see a connection.
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No, they don't "pull records". They have to plead, beg, threaten, cajole and go to court to get the records. They have submitted requests for tons of records, and they've gotten some small percentage of what they've requested. But, even that small percentage is a treasure trove of data.
Long story short - the cops are still deciding what to release, when, and how. You don't get any data until the PD has approved it's release.
The "and order" part. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Once a decision to use a firearm is committed to, putting a stop to whatever that threat is takes precedence. At this point (condition red: the Cooper Color Code philosophy) speed and violence of action to immobilize the threat has to be your only goal. That usually means multiple rounds as close to center mass as possible regardless of what may happen to the target until the threat is no more. This is just common sense and a reality some may not want to acknowledge no matter who is wielding the gun: cri
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It would probably depend on how vigorously he thrashed about on the ground. If the officer thought he looked lively enough to get back up he would be justified in continuing to shoot. This does of course set up a situation like you mention where someone will likely die needlessly. Where do you draw the line though such that it's not easily abused? As it is now that part of the use of force sounds fine to me.
The problem that I see is officers jumping straight to deadly force when it isn't warranted in the fi
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Actually it's quite the opposite.
Abuses arise when cops don't care about law, they care about "order". Order is a nebulous concept that they can enforce however they see fit.
This is, likewise, why many people don't see the problem with cops murdering a black man in Baltimore, but they are very upset about people burning down a CVS. The first is in keeping with the order of things -- cops are supposed to beat up black people -- whereas burning down a store is the essence of disorder.
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" in days gone by any person who ran for any reason was subject to being shot"
Here, you err. In days gone by, fleeing and evading the police was a mere misdemeanor. In the years immediately before 9/11/01 there was controversy about making fleeing and evading a felony. A cop was NEVER authorized to use deadly force to prevent a misdemeanor. Cops have ALWAYS been authorized to use deadly force to prevent the commission of a felony. The controversy over this issue was pretty lively - until 9/11/01. So
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Yes, absolutely. You shoot until the threat is eliminated.
The threat is eliminated long before the victim stops moving.
Continuing to shoot after the threat has passed is treated as a crime in the UK. That feels reasonable to me.
Cue the bleating about attacking the police... (Score:2, Insightful)
Look, I get that the assumption from TFA is that the 99% exoneration rate is too high, but what have we in the way of substantive evidence that this is actually so? [crickets]
Yeah, thought so, and that is a problem. It's always a case of who do you believe, the cop or the criminal, when investigating cases of corruption and brutality, and it is more than reasonable to assume that, more often than not, the criminal is full of shit. So how do we do justice to those who actually do have a va
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The criminal or the accused?
Every time it comes up where the police have murdered some guy in the news, in the ensuing investigation in the following weeks, it always transpires that the police lied and covered up.
Fills one with a great deal of confidence.
Everyone in prison is innocent... (Score:2, Insightful)
Statistics (Score:2, Informative)
In 569 allegations of excessive or inappropriate use of force (arising from 363 incidents), only seven were sustained—meaning 99 percent of cases were dismissed.
Okay, those are some numbers. Are they good? Are they bad? What percentage of dismissals would be "good" if - as is implied - this statistic is indicative of something being wrong?
In a less rhetorical tone, how does this compare to other similar-sized forces around the country?
Exoneration rates were only slightly smaller when looking at all the cases — of the total 2,232 allegations, 284 were sustained.
Exoneration rates might be "slightly smaller" - 87% down from 99%, which isn't that slight - but if you look at it the other way, the "sustainment" rate is over 10x higher. Tricky things, numbers.
Among some of Rachner and Mocek's findings: a total of 1,028 SPD employees (including civilian employees) were investigated between 2010 and 2013. (The current number of total SPD staff is 1,820.)
Okay, sounds pretty bad. What were the
Things like this will only increase (Score:3)
I think that most people understand there are a certain percentage of truly bad cops who will tamper with evidence, lie, etc. to get what they need. The thing that's new is the Internet, social media, and the ability for guys like these to collect and publish records. If a bystander hadn't taken (or published) the video of that guy in South Carolina being shot, the cop would still be working today and no one would have said a thing. It used to be extremely rare that something like this surfaced, and it often took a major news organization to do the kind of investigating and analysis.
You can't go into law enforcement without having at least some tendencies towards being a bully. I think that, plus the unlimited authority police get, plus the fact that they deal almost exclusively with "bad" people produce the police that make the headlines. I don't know how most are able to keep their bully tendencies in check when they never work with good people, plus racism and fellow officers reinforcing bad behavior probably have an effect over time as well. The end product of that is the stereotypical "bully with a badge" that gets the most media attention.
In the age when anyone can post video of bad police behavior, the only answer is to have tamper proof cameras on police every time they interact with the public. It's too easy for people to make false claims, and it used to be too easy for the police to sweep things under the rug.
not just police, also local govt (Score:2)
I think the police must and can change. The bullying can be kept to a minimum, through screening and training. The training also needs to change.
One problem is higher up. It's not just the police, it's local governments. For example, a few weeks ago, I got a letter about my grass being too high. In a neighboring city, the bureaucrats actually escalated an unmown lawn into jail time! [wfaa.com] They had kept a dossier of lawn care violations dating back nearly 20 years! Wow, welcome to East Germany. I had mow
Vexatious Intent (Score:2)
I have no doubt a lot of allegations they get are vexatious. However they are likely obligated to investigate just about all of them. So in one sense it is good that so many investigations have taken place (i.e. they are following rules/guidelines).
However still it does make you wonder with just the numbers involved.
I know for things like FOI there are exemptions for vexatious requests, just as I am sure there probably is for allegations. However I know to meet those requirements the bar is so high as to it
Re:To think I once subscribed to this site (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think government abuses is something limited to a concern of the left then you a totally out of touch with reality and the libertarian wing of your own (assumed) party.
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The left-wing assumes people never abuse a system, and are shocked when they are forced to acknowledge that it happens.
The right-wing assumes everyone will abuse a system, whatever it is, and usually starting with themselves.
Libertarians are to the right of Republicans (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't assume all libertarians find the police beyond reproach, or support the republican party!
The Libertarians have been the far right of the Republican Party since they nominated Ron Raul as their presidential candidate. At the time of Paul's nomination he had most conservative voting record in congress since the end of WWII.
Re:Libertarians are to the right of Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying Libertarians are "far-right" is like saying sqrt(-1) is more positive than zero.
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The facts, that is voting records of their candidates, contradict their claims to the otherwise.
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So, where are these "voting records" you're referring to?
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Fact is, there has never been a Libertarian member of Congress. The Libertarians who do hold office are overwhelmingly at the city/county level.
So, where are these "voting records" you're referring to?
Barry Goldwater?
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By "Far Right" you mean those that oppose government forcing people to things, then yes, I am "far right"
Left wingers love to use government force, but hate it when applied to them. I oppose Government force for just about everyting, except to stop an actual crime in progress, or to arrest someone who actually harmed someone (unlike Eric Garner, who harmed nobody but the state)
Re:Libertarians are to the right of Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
Authoritarians, of both the "left" and "right" wings, love to use government force. The authoritarian-libertarian axis is completely unrepresented in the left-right political spectrum.
Almost all of the politicians in DC are somewhat, to extremely, authoritarian. Most citizens are considerably less authoritarian than our politicians and many citizens are very libertarian. As long as everybody is totally obsessed with the left-right dichotomy, though, and assumed that the other wing embodied authoritarianism, we'll keep getting more and more authoritarians in our system.
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Agreed, look no farther than reactions to the war on drugs. A local government banning Big Gulps because it's bad for you is government overreach into areas of your life and people should have the personal responsibility not to overuse, but we need to spend billions of dollars at the federal level to prevent people with no personal responsibility from smoking a plant they grew in their own backyard because it's bad for you.
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I think the challenge lies with socialism. It is difficult to have socialism without a fair bit of authoritarianism.
As soon as you pay for somebody's diabetes, you start to care about what they're eating. My main concern with that is that the kinds of restrictions that everybody wants to impose are based on conventional wisdom but rarely have any kind of serious clinical outcomes behind them. Granted, that is pretty hard to measure when it comes to diet, but if we're going to tell people what they can/ca
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Even if this is true, are you actually familiar with Paul's position on police abuses and militarization?
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Re:Libertarians are to the right of Republicans (Score:5, Informative)
By an objective, international standard, US politics falls right of center.
That means that what an American describes as "right" is actually far right, what an American describes as "center" is actually right, and what an American describes as "left" is actually center.
Hopefully that clarifies things for you. It's not that there's a global conspiracy to describe things as further right than they actually are. It's that your perspective, as an American, makes things appear that way.
That being said, American neoconservatives and "libertarians" are both far right, by an objective, international standard.
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Thanks for clarifying that you aren't an American. From my subjective point of view, our left is to far left, our center is more correct than either the left or right, and our right is to far right.
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Re:To think I once subscribed to this site (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, look, fascists defending corrupt police forces.
How cute.
When the police ignore the law without consequence, someone needs to be doing something, because clearly the damned police are incapable of it.
Sorry, but crooked cops are just criminals like the rest of them ... and they deserve the same treatment.
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There are any number of abuses that can go on behind the shield, cops can be among the best criminals because they know the job and know how not to get caught, they know forensics etc etc etc. There are dirty cops out there and unfortunately in this day and age the good ones are the minority. I don't think cops in Seattle with dysfunction and abuse is a localized problem to either the department or the region, it is a national problem.
Re:To think I once subscribed to this site (Score:4, Informative)
There are any number of abuses that can go on behind the shield, cops can be among the best criminals because they know the job and know how not to get caught, they know forensics etc etc etc. There are dirty cops out there and unfortunately in this day and age the good ones are the minority. I don't think cops in Seattle with dysfunction and abuse is a localized problem to either the department or the region, it is a national problem.
Not only that, but when they do get caught, they get a free pass from their fellow pigsxxxx cops who refuse to arrest them, from the district attorneys who refuse to prosecute them, from judges who pretend to believe blatant lies, and from the juries who talk themselves into believing blatant lies.
http://www.vice.com/read/testi... [vice.com]
Testilying: Cops Are Liars Who Get Away with Perjury
February 3, 2013
By Nick Malinowski
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Or you can put on your tin foil hat with the following scenario that is taking place.
Discredit all local/state jurisdictions and abolish them.
Put in place a national police force that is under control of the fed.
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Nearly every criminal arrested files a complaint about something, regardless of merit.
Citation needed.
Re:To think I once subscribed to this site (Score:4, Insightful)
"criminals or otherwise people on the police radar."
And, in this day and age, just what does it take to show up on "radar"? For instance - DHS has stated that "extremists" includes veterans, Christians, survivalists, sovereigners, on and on and on. Oh - note that it's not just "Christian fundamentalists" anymore, but "Christians" in general. Funny that one - all the gays are clamoring to be accepted into the churches - which makes gays extremists now too!
I'm on the "radar" multiple times. I don't even try to get through an airport. I'd have to kill someone.
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I'm not going to pretend I know which side is correct, if either. But to play Devil's advocate, I'd bet dollars to donuts the vast majority of the people making these completes are criminals
I've complained about police several times, and I wasn't arrested but I thought they were behaving in an unprofessional and illegal manner. I spend days on my complaints, and got nowhere.
The stop and frisk laws in New York City (which were discussed before on Slashdot) have given us an enormous database of complaints by people who were clearly innocent, and of cops who were clearly abusive. Like a black college teacher who was minding his own business on his own stoop when a cop came over and (illegally) de
Re:To think I once subscribed to this site (Score:5, Insightful)
"especially since Rodney King, which made it en vogue"
En vogue?
Rodney King did not make a fucking fashion statement; he got the shit beaten out of him like I'd never seen before by several officers, who punched, kicked, and Tasered him with several dozen baton blows thrown in for good measure.
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Well, these allegations just don't pass the common sense test. Almost any organization is going to have at least 5% annual attrition, and many organizations have far higher rates. So out of 1028 employees, about 200 would be expected to leave during the 4 year period covered. Yet they expect us to believe that the actual attrition was ZERO? Somebody is either mangling the statistics, or outright lying.
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Uhhh, I think it reads that all of the 11 most investigated officers are still on the force. You are applying the predicate of one sentence to the subject of the previous one. By your logic (applied to this post) the 11 most investigated officers are mixing up their sentence structure.
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Leftists harassing cops - fun times. Now that I know this site might as well be Kos, it's time to go forever.
More like cops harassing everyone, especially Black people. I didn't realize abuse of power was only a concern for the Left. Patriot groups have nothing to fear from government overreach I guess.
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So actually bothering to read the government's account of what it has done makes you a "leftist" then? And then telling other people what you found is "harassment"?
It must be easy to whip up that old self-righteous anger when you're so -- let's say, "semantically flexible".
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Another good story in Vice. Just remember, perjury is a felony, these cops are committing crimes on the witness stand, and the district attorneys and judges let them get away with it and encourage it.
http://www.vice.com/read/testi... [vice.com]
Testilying: Cops Are Liars Who Get Away with Perjury
February 3, 2013
By Nick Malinowski
(Former NYPD Detective Carlton Berkley says that police routinely lie in order to justify arrests, and district attorneys and judges knowingly accept those lies.)
On November 17, 2012, a 40-year
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The GP did.
Which puts him on the wrong side.
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Leftists are authoritarians who hate authority on themselves, but want it on everyone else. Just like Rightwingers.
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You're obviously totally lost. Maybe you'd be more comfortable at a wingnut propaganda site that will reinforce your leftt-wing delusions. Salon, Slate, MSNBC and HufPo are good possibilities for people like you who don't want to be troubled by reality
FTFY
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I suppose you think White people are the greatest thing since sliced white bread...
Re:The Elephant in the Room (Score:5, Insightful)
All this talk about the police, and how bad they are. Sure, there are some bad ones, but on the whole, I do not fear the police. It is the niggers I fear. THAT is the conversation this country needs to have. Why the niggers are completely out of control, and what needs to be done about it.
Maybe if you stopped calling them niggers, they'd be nicer to you. Know what I mean, asshole?
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>> why does it matter to the story that they were programmers?
As we move toward Idiocracy, programmers and other people who understand algebra and can use spreadsheets will be considered geniuses. We're halfway there now.
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You are really full of crap, statistics prove the mainn beaters and rapers of blacks, are, wait for it, blacks. Also, they tend to vote Democrat
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Yes - no - maybe. How DO you winnow out the bad cops in the hiring process? Have the social workers come up with a test for morality? Honesty? How do you weed out an authoritarian asshole, before he acts out?
I'm half sure that the cops winnow out a lot of the worst cretins. But, anyone who is sure that they weed out all of the bad actors is some kind of a fool. People with god complexes are often attracted to police work, because it is one place where they can ACT like the gods that they know they are