Police earning the hate

Shyster
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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sat Jun 06, 2020 9:56 pm

Cops across US Hiding Badges & Covering IDs — Shielding Them from Accountability for Violence
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops- ... 02oPLkSyM4

To use a common cop saying, if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:03 am


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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:11 am

An article on the compiler of many of the recent posts:

A lawyer is tweeting videos of police using force at protests. There are more than 350
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/st ... protesters

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:13 am


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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:23 am

Man who trains San Jose police about bias severely injured by riot gun during George Floyd protest

https://abc7news.com/man-who-trains-san ... t/6234212/

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:26 am

In protests against police brutality, videos capture more alleged police brutality

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sun Jun 07, 2020 2:05 pm

Journalists Targeted While Covering Protests: 328 Press Freedom Violations And Counting

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeikleb ... e3dcdd184f
As a massive wave of protests unfolded in cities across the country after the death of George Floyd, journalists on the front lines have in many cases been targeted by police, with over 300 so far wrongfully arrested or assaulted, according to press freedom advocates.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Mon Jun 08, 2020 12:21 am

Police Brutality at Home: Cops Abuse Wives and Kids at Staggering Rates

https://www.fatherly.com/love-money/pol ... -violence/
Anthony Bouza, a one-time commander in the New York Police Department and former police chief of Minneapolis, said that ‘The Mafia never enforced its code of blood-sworn omerta with the ferocity, efficacy, and enthusiasm the police bring to the Blue Code of Silence.” That’s reflected in rates at which violence is reported and the degree to which there are consequences.

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Police earning the hate

Postby tifosi77 » Mon Jun 08, 2020 12:49 pm

Cops across US Hiding Badges & Covering IDs — Shielding Them from Accountability for Violence
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops- ... 02oPLkSyM4

To use a common cop saying, if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?
With all of the malignant conduct that has been highlighted in the last few weeks, this is the most disturbing to me by a sizable margin. This is legit scary town conduct; it's effectively the 'secret police'.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't a large part of the active-duty military response involve troops/soldiers/airmen who had removed their unit insignia and name plates? To the extent you could identify them was by the camo pattern of their utilities, which only narrowed it down to the service level.

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Police earning the hate

Postby MR25 » Mon Jun 08, 2020 3:47 pm


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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Tue Jun 09, 2020 6:23 pm

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop


Just part of this essay:
I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our dufflebags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shitbags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.

None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops.

This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Troy Loney » Tue Jun 09, 2020 6:51 pm

Sounds like this goes far beyond a shitty union

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Police earning the hate

Postby King Colby » Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:41 pm

Cops across US Hiding Badges & Covering IDs — Shielding Them from Accountability for Violence
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops- ... 02oPLkSyM4

To use a common cop saying, if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?
To be fair, I'm not doing anything wrong and I'm a racist now

🤷‍♂️

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Police earning the hate

Postby AuthorTony » Tue Jun 09, 2020 8:05 pm

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

That's a tremendously insightful essay. Thanks for sharing it.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Tue Jun 09, 2020 8:20 pm

Lauderdale officer suspended for shoving protester has history of using force, drawing weapons

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... wNTvKzUEbI

I'll give credit when credit is due. This incident is one of the rare cases where another cop did immediately step in to take another cop to task for wrongdoing. Officer Krystle Smith should be commended for immediately and forcefully rebuking Pohorence. But I'll bet that the other cops on the force and her police union wouldn't agree.

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Police earning the hate

Postby tifosi77 » Tue Jun 09, 2020 8:24 pm

"[H]istory of using force" sort of buries the lede there, my man.

"The Fort Lauderdale patrol officer...has been reviewed by internal affairs for using force 79 times in his roughly three-and-half years on the force, according to department records."

That's an average of nearly two dozen complaints and investigations per year.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Wed Jun 10, 2020 11:29 pm

Cop arrives on scene where man, who may be under the influence or suffering from mental illness, is acting erratically and walking in the street. He and paramedics attempt to deescalate and coax the man into an ambulance. Second cop (Fairfax County Virginia Officer Tyler Timberlake) arrives on the scene, immediately tases the man, kneels on his back, and then continues to shock him in the back of the neck. Timberlake has now been charged with multiple misdemeanor counts of assault and battery.



Timberlake's defense lawyer said the Timberlake believed that the man in the street was someone named "Anthony," who Timberlake knew had a criminal record. Oopsie! The victim wasn't Anthony. Neither did the defense attorney explain why Anthony would have been deserving of an immediate tasing even if it had been him.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:07 pm

Will the Cops Who Killed Kenneth Chamberlain After Illegally Breaking Into His Apartment Ever Be Held Accountable?
https://reason.com/2020/06/11/will-the- ... ccountable
Around 5 a.m. on November 19, 2011, Kenneth Chamberlain, a 68-year-old former Marine and retired corrections officer with a heart condition, accidentally set off his LifeAid medical alert pendant while sleeping in his White Plains, New York, apartment. Unable to contact Chamberlain via its two-way audio box, LifeAid called the White Plains Department of Public Safety. Seventeen minutes later, police officers arrived to help Chamberlain. Instead they ended up killing him.

...

The details laid out in the 2nd Circuit's May 29 decision, most of which are uncontested, are damning. Responding to the erroneous medical alert, the police dispatcher sent an ambulance and a squad car to Chamberlain's apartment. "Despite the dispatcher's warning that Chamberlain was a person with mental illness," the court says, "the officers began banging loudly on his door and shouting demands that they be allowed to enter." Chamberlain called LifeAid, saying, "The White Plains Police Department [is] banging on my door and I did not call them and I am not sick." The LifeAid operator called the police dispatcher, trying to cancel the supposed rescue attempt. "They're gonna make entry anyway," the dispatcher replied. "They're gonna open it anyway."

Chamberlain repeatedly told the cops at the door he had not called for help and did not need it. At least one officer acknowledged that information, saying, "Mr. Chamberlain, your medical alert went off accidentally." But the cops would not take no for an answer.

"Because Chamberlain continued to refuse to open his door, the officers radioed for tactical reinforcements," the 2nd Circuit says. "There were approximately twelve officers in the augmented police force when they attempted to gain entry. They were armed with heavy 'tactical gear,' including handguns, a beanbag shotgun, Taser, riot shield, and pepper spray."

The police used a master key they obtained from the White Plains Housing Authority, which owned Chamberlain's apartment, to unlock the door. When a slap lock prevented the door from opening completely, the cops used a Halligan bar to stop Chamberlain from closing it. At this point, they could clearly see that Chamberlain was fine, as he had been saying "lucidly, repeatedly, and emphatically" all along.

Seeing the heavily armed officers breaking into his apartment despite his insistence that they had no reason to be there, Chamberlain was understandably alarmed. "You gonna shoot me," he said. "You got your gun ready." Chamberlain "shouted repeatedly that he was convinced that the police were there to kill him." That turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Chamberlain grabbed a kitchen knife to fend off the intruders. "They have their guns out," he told the LifeAid operator. "I have a weapon. I am protecting myself." Now the cops, who had already viewed Chamberlain as a threat requiring "tactical reinforcements," were even more convinced. "Every time we come to the door he sticks a knife out," one of them complained.

While trying to force their way into the apartment, the cops mocked and belittled Chamberlain. "You ain't no young kid," one said. "You a grown-ass man." Chamberlain's relatives allege worse taunts—including "mother******" and "I don't give a ****, n*****"—that the defendants denied. The officers refused to let Chamberlain talk to his niece, who lived in the same building, or his sister, who was on the line with LifeAid from her home in North Carolina.

After an hour-long impasse, "despite Chamberlain's repeated pleas that the officers leave and the availability of a relative on-site to attempt to defuse the situation, the officers forcibly removed Chamberlain's door from its hinges." At this point, "Chamberlain was standing some six to eight feet behind the doorway wearing only a pair of boxer shorts." The cops entered and "in swift succession, tased Chamberlain (unsuccessfully), fired several beanbag shots at him (largely ineffectively), and fired two shots at him with a handgun. One of those bullets passed through Chamberlain's lungs and ribs and severed his spine, killing him."

...

If the leading exemplar of chutzpah is the legal strategy of a man who murders his parents and pleads for mercy because he is now an orphan, the defense used by the cops in this case has to count as a close second. They argued that their armed invasion of Chamberlain's home was justified based on the "emergency aid" exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, meaning the "aid" that Chamberlain did not need and did not want.

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Police earning the hate

Postby mac5155 » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:36 pm

We're here to help you

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Police earning the hate

Postby tifosi77 » Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:48 pm

Kenneth Chamberlain.

An hour-long impasse. An HOUR. TWELVE COPS. What. The. F**k.

To me, this is what 'defund the police' is about, and why the person who came up with that slogan should be sacked from their slogan creation job. Police are tasked with far too much inappropriate responsibility. I get why you might want to send a black & white to a LifeAid/MedicAlert call. How that escalates to a dozen officers in what sounds like a riot response is just................... it's the warped mindset of warrior policing.

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Police earning the hate

Postby MrKennethTKangaroo » Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:16 pm

I wish at my job after an arbitrary amount of time i could just say "f it, im doing what i want" the proceed to do what i want and get away with it. and still keep my job.

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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:26 pm

With the current discussions about ways to reform the police, I decided to come up with my own set of proposals. What follows is how Shyster would reform the police:

1. Abolish Qualified Immunity.
The doctrine of qualified immunity shields government officials from financial liability, even if they have violated the Constitution, so long as they have not violated "clearly established law." According to the Supreme Court, the law is only "clearly established" if a prior decision has held very similar facts to be unconstitutional. In theory, qualified immunity is supposed to protect public officials from vacuous lawsuits that might hinder their job performance. In actuality, it often allows them to get away with offenses that would land a normal person behind bars. Police officers may be entitled to qualified immunity even if they have engaged in clear misconduct, even if they knew what they were doing was wrong, and even if their own actions could be considered criminal in nature. Courts across have granted police officers qualified immunity in cases where the defendants searched homes without probable cause, arrested people without probable cause, stole property in police custody, fabricated evidence, and used outrageously excessive force. The doctrine was created solely by the Supreme Court and has no basis in federal law. To the contrary, many commentators and organizations across the ideological spectrum believe that it is contrary to the Constitutional and federal law, including the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which was the act that first authorized individuals to sue state and local officials, including police officers, who violate their civil rights.

Police officers are fully aware of qualified immunity and know that it shields them from liability. It makes them indifferent, if not hostile, to the rights of those they are supposed to be protecting and serving. The doctrine should be abolished.

2. Put Police on the Hook Financially and Get Real About Discipline.
Even when police officers are held liable in civil-rights suits, studies have shown that more than 90% of the time, they do not bear the financial costs of the judgments they are ordered to pay. Instead, their employing municipalities end up on the hook, which shifts the cost of police misconduct onto the taxpayers. Doctors, lawyers, and a host of other professionals are required to carry malpractice insurance, and so should police officers. This would also provide a way to weed out cops with records of misconduct. Police with a history of accusations or adverse judgments would swiftly find the cost of insurance too high to remain in the profession, and other police would know that tolerating the bad cops on their force will lead to increased rates for their own insurance.

Police know that even if they get hit with a judgment, they won't have to pay. That needs to change. Requiring them to maintain insurance means they have more skin in the game to be responsible for their own behavior.

Putting cops on the financial hook should also carry over to discipline. Many police who are found to have committed misconduct often get nothing more than desk duty or a paid suspension. Police officers who commit misconduct not worthy of termination should still face significant penalties in the form of lost wages, rank demotions, or loss of seniority. No one is dissuaded by the "threat" of a free paid vacation.

3. Create Independent Oversight Boards to Investigate Misconduct.
When a lawyer at a certain law firm is accused of malpractice, we don't allow the other lawyers at that firm to investigate the alleged misconduct. But police accused of misconduct are typically "investigated" by members of the exact same police department. Studies of police internal-affairs investigations have revealed a pro-police bias in which the investigators often view their goal as exonerating the officer rather than conducting a fair and impartial investigation of the alleged misconduct. Cops should not be permitted to investigate themselves. Accusations of police misconduct should be investigated in independent tribunals that are as distanced from local police and politics as possible, such as boards that operate on a statewide basis.

4. Shift Prosecutorial Decisions Away from Local Officials.
Local state/district attorneys work closely with police on a daily basis to investigate and prosecute crimes. That close working relationship creates a conflict for those same prosecuting attorneys when it comes to accusations of police misconduct. DAs know they need the cooperation of the police in order to do their jobs, and that cooperation might be threatened or withdrawn if the DAs prosecute cops. This is one of the reasons that many police officers are never charged with crimes, even for egregious misconduct. In order to avoid these conflicts of interest, prosecutorial decisions for police should be made by officials who are not beholden to, and have no relationships with, local police departments.

5. Curtail the Police Unions.
Police unions are one of the major structural obstacles to holding rogue police officers accountable. Over and over again, unions have defended bad policing and bad police. Multiple investigations reveal that police-union contracts in major cities routinely include provisions that erase disciplinary records, obstruct meaningful discipline (let alone prosecution) of police officers who abuse their authority, and give police privileges that are not afforded to the broader public. For example, union contracts often prevent officers from being questioned quickly after incidents, give them access to information not accessible to private citizens, require cities to shoulder the financial burdens of officer misconduct, and limit disciplinary measures.

Police are public servants granted enormous power over the citizenry. They are tasked with protecting the public and serving their interests. We literally give them guns and authorize them to kill if necessary. Police unions, in contrast, are tasked with protecting police and serving their interests—even if those police interests are in direct contravention of serving the public. That distinction makes police unions a barrier to reforms aimed at improving public safety and increasing oversight of how law enforcement behaves.

Police unions should be permitted to continue to negotiate salaries, benefits, and other basic terms of employment, but no union contract should be permitted to limit methods of discipline, shift any financial responsibility for wrongdoing or criminality, expunge or hide records of misconduct (all of which should be public records), or give the police any substantive or procedural rights that are not available to any member of the public.

6. End "Gypsy Cops" with National Databases and Prohibitions on Employment.
Even when police are terminated for misconduct, they often just end up working for a new police department in the next county or next state. These "gypsy" cops roam from department to department, often staying for a few years before accusations of misconduct move them on. Due to poor record keeping of complaints and misconduct (often required by the union contracts mentioned in the preceding section), the new departments often aren't even aware of their new hire's history of misconduct or discipline. Police departments should not employ serial offenders.

At a minimum, states should cooperate on implementing a national compulsory database of police officers and police misconduct so that every department can conduct checks on its potential hires and have access to full and complete records of their employment history. And states should also prohibit serial offenders from continuing to work in law enforcement. For example, thanks to reciprocal agreements as to the disciplinary process, a lawyer disbarred in Pennsylvania will also be disbarred in any other state in which that lawyer might have a license to practice, and a history of disbarment is grounds to deny a lawyer a license in every state where a lawyer might try to apply. No one wants to permit shyster lawyers to merely get a new job in the next state over. But cops can be fired from one department for gross misconduct and still get work as cops in the next town, county, or state. That should not be allowed to continue. Police officers who are terminated for gross misconduct should be "disbarred" from reemployment in the profession.

7. Improve Police Training and Eliminate "Warrior" Training.
Police training is woefully insufficient. Both lawyers and police officers are charged with enforcing the law, but police receive vastly less training than lawyers. In fact, in many states, police receive less training than hairstylists, electricians, and other licensed workers. For example:

North Carolina – Barbers need 1520 hours of training; police officers only need 620.
California – Licensed cosmetologists need 1600 hours of training; police officers need 664.
Florida – Interior designers must have 1760 hours of training; police officers only need 770.
Massachusetts – HVAC technicians need 1000 hours of training; policemen need 900.
Louisiana – Manicurists need 500 hours of training; police officers only need 360.

It is patently ridiculous that someone needs twice or three times the training to cut hair or paint fingernails than to carry a gun and enforce the law. The quality and duration of police training needs to change. Police need more and better training on the use of force, constitutional law and individual rights, deescalation, and recognizing and interacting with those suffering from mental-health issues, among other topics.

In addition to more and better training, the whole surrounding culture of police training needs to change. Current training often teaches police to fear the public and assume that everyone is out to kill them. Officers are trained to cultivate a “warrior mindset,” the virtues of which are further extolled in books, articles, and seminars. From their earliest days in the academy, many would-be officers are told that their prime objective is to go home at the end of every shift and that their daily survival requires treating the public with suspicion, if not hostility. Under this "warrior" worldview, officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies. But who are the enemies under this "warrior" view? The very members of the public that the police are supposed to protect and serve. "Warrior" training teaches cops to view their beats as battlefields and everyone who isn't a cop as a potential terrorist or enemy. This mindset necessary creates a barrier between the police and the public, with the "thin blue line" not being the police standing between the public and the bad guys, but rather representing the line between the police on one side and everyone else on the other.

Police need more and better training on appropriate ways to interact with other people, especially those who might be intoxicated or physically or mentally ill. A search of the news media reveals dozens of cases in which police were called to deal with people who were suffering from a mental-health crisis are killed by police. In 2015, Justin Way of St. Augustine, Florida, threatened to kill himself. He sat down on his bed, drunk, brandishing a knife that he said he intended to use on himself. His girlfriend, Kaitlyn Christine Lyons, called a non-emergency police number to get him help. She expected the authorities to institutionalize him for self-protection. Instead, two sheriff's deputies arrived, armed with assault rifles. They made Lyons wait outside while they stormed Way's room. And then they killed him. What happened to Way has happened to hundreds if not thousands of other people. And it's not limited to mental illness. In 2014 Carl Leadholm was beaten and pepper sprayed by Colorado police after the police received reports that he was driving erratically. Police believed Leadholm was likely a DUI driver, and they believed they had proof when Leadholm didn't immediately pull over. But after eventually getting Leadholm's SUV stopped and beating the tar out of Leadholm, officers eventually realized they did not smell any liquor on his breath, nor did he have any symptoms of drug intoxication. In fact, Leadholm is a Type 1 diabetic who was in diabetic shock. And even after learning that they had beaten and arrested a man who was in a serious medical crisis, police still police cited him for reckless driving, failing to yield to an emergency vehicle, and resisting arrest. Not only were those charges dismissed, Leadholm sued the department and eventually settled for $825,000 (with the officers involved most likely not paying a penny).

Police training is woefully insufficient. Police cannot serve and protect the public when they are trained to be hostile to the public. When cops are trained to view the public as potential enemies out to kill them, is it any surprise that cops so often employ force—even deadly force—at the slightest provocation? "Warrior" training should be abolished and replaced with a greater focus on the appropriate use of force, deescalation techniques, interpersonal relations, and appropriate ways to recognize and deal with mental illness and crisis. Do police still need training on fighting and shooting? Absolutely. But training should instill the point that any use of force–whether in the form of a fist, pepper spray, taser, baton, or firearm–is a last-resort option and not the first option.

8. End the Blue Wall of Silence.
Police have a silence problem. As Anthony Bouza, a former NYPD commander and police chief of the Minneapolis Police Department from 1980 to 1989, once put it, "The Mafia never enforced its code of blood-sworn omerta with the ferocity, efficacy and enthusiasm the police bring to the Blue Code of Silence." This is unacceptable. Lawyers, for example, are under an ethical obligation to report the misconduct of another lawyer (or even a judge) to the appropriate disciplinary authorities. Police should be under the same obligation.

If a police officer engages in misconduct in the presence of other officers, then those other officers should at a minimum be under a legal obligation to report that misconduct, and they should be subject to severe discipline if they do not. And ideally, police should be required to step in and stop misconduct committed in their presence. Police reform is nearly impossible when cops willfully ignore and even protect the rotten apples among them. The blue code of silence must be crushed.

9. End the "War on Drugs" and Reduce the Number of Victimless Crimes.
In his 2011 book Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, civil-rights attorney Harvey Silverglate describes how federal criminal offenses have exploded in number and become impossibly broad and vague to the point where it is entirely possible that each and every one of us unintentionally commits a number of criminal violations every single day. States have been no less active in creating a multitude of new criminal offenses. And this isn't even necessarily including to the so-called "War on Drugs" which has been waging for decades, shows no sign of ending (or victory), and has turned literally millions of Americans into criminals.

Eric Garner was killed by police as they attempted to arrest him for the heinous crime of selling single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. George Floyd's death in police custody arose out of his alleged use of a counterfeit $20 bill (and even if the bill was counterfeit we don't know if Floyd knew that). Every contact between police and the public represents another chance for something to go tragically wrong, and a host of petty laws only increases that number of encounters. That is particularly true for drug offenses. The "war on drugs" rhetoric has been employed for decades, and if the police are told that they are soldiers in that "war," then it should come as no surprise that they treat even minor drug offenders as enemy soldiers. And the war on drugs has been particularly burdensome for minority communities, where higher rates of poverty induce higher percentages of people to pursue illegal ways to make money. Much of the friction between the police and minority communities can be placed squarely at the feet of the "drug war," and that won't get better until the drug war stops.

Minor offenses should either be converted into civil offenses with civil fines or eliminated entirely. Ending the war on drugs, which has disproportionately been focused on minority communities, would greatly reduce the interactions between the public and the police. Moreover, criminal offenses should be reserved only for behavior that actually causes harm to people or their property. If someone didn't pay a tax on cigarettes, then that is a matter for the taxing authorities–not the police. A profusion of petty, victimless "crimes" only increases the number of potential interactions between police and the public, and every encounter is an opportunity for something to go tragically wrong for either side.

10. End civil asset forfeiture.
Civil asset forfeiture permits police to charge property itself with a crime, and thus seize it. This permits police to seize your home, your car, or any other property without ever having to charge you with a crime. In many states, being innocent is not a defense. Even in states that permit the “innocent owner” defense, the burden of proof is on you: your property will be forfeited unless you prove that you are innocent. The police need only to show a preponderance of evidence that the property committed a crime. Civil asset forfeiture is closely related to the war on drugs, as it was intended to give law enforcement a tool to attack organized crime—especially drug dealers and their organizations.

In many states, the police get to keep what they seize. Cash? It goes into department's bank account. Cars? They can keep them or sell them. Houses? Auctioned off with the proceeds going into the department's bank account. And in most states there is next-to-no oversight over how that money is spent. Giving the police a tool to generate revenue for themselves simply by seizing any arbitrary property from any arbitrary person is a vastly corrupting power, and there are countless examples of police departments in every state outrageously abusing civil-asset forfeiture. Milwaukee sent 50 cops to Disney to attend a "Disney’s Approach to Business Excellence" seminar using forfeited funds. Officials in Texas spent over $50,000 in forfeited funds on tequila, rum, kegs, and a margarita machine. A sheriff's office in Georgia spent over $90,000 on a Dodge Viper for its DARE program. Colorado bought leather bomber jackets for the Colorado State Patrol. Albany, N.Y., spent over $16,000 for food, gifts, and entertainment for the police department.

Police have used civil asset forfeiture to literally turn into highway robbers. As related by the Institute for Justice in his March 2010 "Policing for Profit" report, in October 2007, law enforcement officials in Tenaha, Texas, pulled Roderick Daniels over for allegedly traveling 37 mph in a 35 mph zone. Upon discovering $8,500 in cash that the Tennessee man had planned to use to buy a new car, the officers took Daniels to jail and threatened to charge him with money laundering unless he would agree to surrender the cash. Daniels surrendered his property. “To be honest, I was five, six hundred miles from home. I was petrified,” he said. Daniels’ experience was far from unusual in Tenaha. Between 2006 and 2008, police stopped more than 140, mostly black, out-of-state drivers, including a grandmother from Akron, a black family from Maryland and an interracial family from Houston. Once arrested, officers took them to jail and threatened to file charges unless they signed pre-notarized statements relinquishing any claim to their valuables. Officers seized cash, cars, cell phones, jewelry, and even sneakers. In most cases, criminal charges were never filed and there was no evidence to conclude the motorists were engaged in any illicit activity. The police simply took their property.

Civil asset forfeiture must be reformed. Police must be denied any proceeds from civil asset forfeiture. The burden of proof must lie on police departments to prove guilt, not on property owners to prove innocence. And a higher standard of evidence than “preponderance of evidence” should be used.

11. End the transfer of surplus military equipment to police departments.
In the United States, since 1997, the 1033 Program has transferred more than $5 billion of surplus military equipment to local police agencies. Like civil asset forfeiture, the 1033 Program was an attempt to aide police departments in fighting the war on drugs. The purpose of weapons of war is to kill people and break things. This is antithetical to the mission of police departments, which is to serve and protect. Much as everything looks like a nail to the person who has a hammer, when police departments have armored vehicles and grenade launchers, they inevitably begin to see their neighborhoods as war zones, and the people residing within them as enemy combatants. This reinforces the "warrior" mentality (point #6).

The 1033 Program should be terminated in its entirety. A true military response should ideally never be necessary within an American neighborhood, but if it is, that response should fall to the National Guard or the actual military—not police officers.
Last edited by Shyster on Wed Jul 22, 2020 5:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Jim
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Police earning the hate

Postby Jim » Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:47 pm

Maybe no on actually quote that when replying

shafnutz05
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Police earning the hate

Postby shafnutz05 » Fri Jun 12, 2020 5:44 pm

Shyster, I would write you in for public office if I could. I wholeheartedly support all of those.

Shyster
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Police earning the hate

Postby Shyster » Sat Jun 13, 2020 7:36 pm

Bargaining the Badge: How Hundreds of Accused Texas Officers Avoid Prison
https://www.kxan.com/bargaining-the-badge/
Investigative Summary: Across Texas, hundreds of law enforcement officers have permanently surrendered their peace officer license in the past four years. A KXAN investigation of 297 of those surrenders has discovered nearly all the officers were accused or charged with a crime – most often felonies. And, in almost every case the officers used their license as a bargaining tool by agreeing to surrender it as part of a deal to avoid jail or prison.
Officers who agreed to surrender their licenses received little or no jail time for offenses including sexual assault of children and women in custody, taking bribes and dealing narcotics to prisoners, lying about the circumstances of a police shooting and destroying evidence in criminal cases.

In some instances, the accused police officers already had histories of misconduct yet were able to trade their badges in a plea bargain and walk away with deferred adjudication and probation.

“What it appears is that police officers are being treated differently than a person who would be charged with the same crime that is not an officer,” said Kali Cohn, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Cohn said the deals give the appearance of a two-tiered system in which law enforcement officers are treated more leniently than normal citizens.

“When we see they are treated better than the average citizen, when we see they are treated differently, when we see that they are given preference, that makes the law enforcement office less legitimate in the public eye and starts chipping away at the credibility of the rule of law in our society,” she said.
It doesn't give the "appearance" of a two-tiered system. There is a two-tiered system in which people on the cop side of the blue line are treated more leniently than normal citizens.

Note also that while these cops agreed to give up their Texas licenses in exchange for leniency, that might not prohibit them from moving to other states and getting new police jobs there.

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