You're missing the point that police profiling is already focusing attention on people not committing those crimes, or that plenty of people are getting away with the same behaviour but not facing any consequences for their actions.
Police stop and search someone because that person is black - they're missing the real crook.
Police don't take actions against white kids - they're missing real crooks.
> I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings
Whether these crimes deserve any police attention is something that could be discussed, but surely we can agree that prosecuting black kids but not white kids is something that drives inequality in society?
In rural areas riding dirt bikes on the street might conjure up images of a couple of brothers tearing around a few fields, generally making a mess but ultimately just doing it to have fun. In cities however there is often (by no means always, but often) something else going on.
At least in Philadelphia, gangs use dirt-bikes and 4-wheelers to 'patrol their turf' and flee the police (who are largely powerless to stop them, as they travel in groups of 10 or more, and all split the second a cop turns his lights on). In these instances it isn't harmless fun, they are basically neo-'biker gangs'. It is a big problem in north and west Philadelphia.
According to your logic, in this case, everyone wearing a Lonsdale bomberjack would have to be arrested, and they would have to be banned by law? Isn't that outlawing the symptom, instead of outlawing the actual problem?
EDIT: Apparently this was not just an issue in The Netherlands, but more widespread: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/147...
What? No. Just no.
It may be different in the Netherlands, but in the US riding dirtbikes on public streets is illegal. The bikes themselves are not street legal. The bikes don't have plates, turn signals, mirrors or horns. They are not registered with the DMV. In Pennsylvania they are wildly in violation of noise laws for motorcycles (they drown out conversations indoors when they pass on the streets). Totally unlicensed and almost certainly therefore uninsured (which is again illegal). Riding bikes of any sort in gangs is further illegal, breaking all sorts of traffic laws.
This going after dirt-bike riders is not about going after a symptom or superficial attribute of some other crime. It is the crime. It is the actual problem.
If I were saying "go after cars with spinney wheels" (which are perfectly legal) or "go after people wearing only red or blue" (which is perfectly legal) then your comparison would be apt, but that is not what is going on here.
We don't have to invent scenarios to explain away the different results - they are his experience as a prosecutor and he has identified them as being identical. It's not an account from a newspaper where we don't know the details; it's cases he has personally worked on, and hence knows the intimate details we never hear of.
TL;DR: I think the writer is either somehow unaware of the issues with dirtbikes in cities (unlikely), or is banking on his audience being unaware of the problem. Either way, I think he is being disingenuous. I do not believe he actually got away with that sort of thing as a teenager.
Asserting that doing this is anti-social is hardly disingenuous.
Even if it were legal, the noise pollution alone would make it unquestionably anti-social as far as I am concerned. I'd rather have tractor trailers using jake brakes in my neighborhood, that's how unreasonably loud these bikes are.
(In case there is a misunderstanding here: dirt-bikes are stripped down light-weight motorcycles meant for off-road use only. They are not street legal. Similar I believe to a motocross bike.)
I was thinking of dirtbikes as their UK equivalent. Here, youth ride scooters / mopeds and some of them are styled as like dirtbikes. And there are probably road legal dirt bikes of more than 125 cc.
The gang context is also really important.
The author probably was not in a dirt-bike biker gang when he was a kid, as far as I know that phenomenon is new.
(And honestly, I am surprised that the police were able to catch any of them in the first place. Chasing them down city streets would be extremely dangerous...)
Even if those kids had nothing to do with those gangs, riding dirt-bikes in a city is clearly anti-social behavior that needs to end. If there is a racial bias in the enforcement of those laws, that needs to end too, and the white kids need the book thrown at them too for it, but I really don't believe that the author use to get away with riding dirt bikes around in cities. That isn't standard teenager shenanigans.
What the percentages are is up for discussion. The usefulness of taking a gang member and making it even harder for them to get employment is something that needs to be discussed.
Gangs are a symptom of other problems. Tackling gangs without tackling those other problems seems odd to me.
I have personally gotten fairly close to hitting a 4 wheeler in ATL and see gangs of them roaming my neighborhood. It seemed to me like they were just having a good time, certainly disturbing the peace and creating dangerous road conditions though. Then again that isn't all too unusual in my neighborhood.
In unpopulated areas? I'm sure the local police have methlabs to worry about, but sure, arrest them too if they ride on the street or trespass.
I am not saying that a racial discrepancy in enforcement is acceptable. I am just saying that the police taking issue with somebody riding around the city on a dirt bike is not necessarily the police making a mountain out of a molehill. If they are arresting only black people that do this, then the problem is that they are not also arresting white people that do it.
Except when you take into account blacks commit far more crime than whites:
"According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in the year 2008 black youths, who make up 16% of the youth population, accounted for 52% of juvenile violent crime arrests, including 58.5% of youth arrests for homicide and 67% for robbery."
Also keep in mind, these are usually not black on white crimes, but usually black on black crimes. It would foolish to think we should simply start prosecuting more white people simply because there is some form of perceived inequality in the justice system.
Perhaps instead of focusing on the fact more blacks end up in the system (when its already too late), maybe we should take a harder look at WHY they end up in the system and work on preventing them from ever getting there in the first place.
These numbers aren't made-up or based on biased arrest patterns; they're pretty much reality, sad but true.
I don't even know what my point was anymore... I just get so tired of hearing everyone blame everyone else except themselves for the directions of their lives.
Bullshit, almost every rags to riches story has a "And I got lucky and _____" it isn't someone overcoming adversity, it is luck that got their talent noticed. I am not saying those who face hardship don't have talent, just saying it rarely gets noticed due to biases.
> Criminals likewise span every demographic in the U.S.
The poor are extremely more likely to commit crimes. You have to exclude economic factors or you cannot compare anything about crime, it is that large of an impact. Heck the "black problem" you list is 90% due to being poor much more often than other groups.
> The "poor" in our country live an order of magnitude better than many in the world
Pointless argument. Let me turn it around on you. The poor don't have to worry about starving to death nearly as much as elsewhere, but because of this they have a ton of spare time. How many things can you do that are illegal and are entertaining + cheap? I bet you can make a long list. This could just as easily be used to explain why being poor is a bigger problem in the US when using the level of logic this thread is using.
> I just get so tired of hearing everyone blame everyone else except themselves for the directions of their lives.
Are we talking about one singular person? Take the OP, he never claims he shouldn't have been treated as a criminal, his only complaints are that he should have been able to see his family, and he shouldn't have gotten 3 years parole for a non-violent offense.
Are we talking about a group, like poor blacks? You can't blame individual things like this for an entire population, it doesn't make sense. We aren't saying Johnny didn't go to college because he is poor, we are saying the poor on average go to college this much less, which for these reasons is because they are poor.
Aside from the lotto and other truly marginal edge cases, I'd say that hard work is not sufficient for success but it is required.
That is, if you take 100 successful people, you'll have 100 who needed some luck to get where they are. And of those, you'll have 99 who also had to work their ass off.
Many people build great products and never make it.
Many people build a great business but it doesn't last.
Luck doesn't determine whether you are able to make it but it does often have a lot to do with whether you get the chance.
With regards to the other sure but none of them will guarantee you a great business.
However most people talking about the American dream are talking about it being sufficient, which is what I was talking against.
Statistically you don't get lucky and get rich (guess what happens to lottery winners a year after they win most the time?) and you rarely work hard and get rich. You can get a little lucky and live a good life working hard, and you can get really lucky, work really hard, and get rich.
Make of that what you want. Perhaps black people are just lazy, stupid? Is that your point? In that case I don't think we will agree on much in life.
> poor black community your chances of making it to middle
> class are many times lower than making it to jail.
To what cause or causes do you attribute that?
> Make of that what you want.
I'd rather not make of that what I want; I'd rather try to determine the cause(s).
You seem to be forgetting that the US system is based around money first and foremost.
If you have money you will be able to attend the right university.
Of course their social status is not the only reason but it's a big part of it and especially the fact that it's very hard to get out of your social-economic status. Add to that an industry that actually makes money when people go to jail and you have the perfect spiral.
The only time I experienced racism was taking a vacation in Spain, in a place where there are a lot of french tourists. They get a lot of hate, and me speaking french got me treated like one of them.
I'm a very laid back, cool guy, and I'm usually the last one to get angry. But being at a restaurant and being made fun of randomly by the waiter, and then wondering if someone spat in my food, and having this impression that everyone hated me for now reason...
It was a terrible feeling. But I knew the only reason they were like that was because of a misunderstanding. All I had to do was mentioning I was Swiss or speak Spanish and it would stop instantly.
Now if I had been french, and I had no way to defuse the situation, I can imagine how frustrating it would have been.
Then I can see how things being like that your whole life must feel, specially when its something that stands out as much as your skin color.
I've been extremely frustrated on rare occasions in my life, and I've done things I would never thought I would. Karma is a thing. If people give you shit without a good reason, you'll do the exact same, probably to someone else, just to balance things.
I agree with your final paragraph, though. We as a society have an obligation to try to correct all forms of injustice, whether it's biased enforcement and prosecution, cultural isolation, or financial immobility.
Arrests. Not convictions, and certainly not "crimes perpetrated."
...institutionally racist police officers arrest them for minor offences, and that arrest and conviction fucks any chance of employment, meaning that gangs are the only employer left?
Yes, we can agree on that.
Only if we're punishing them under the same circumstances, which I don't agree is necessarily the case. I think we should punish someone who marks graffiti in order to mark gang territory or intimidate others more harshly than someone who does it as a prank.
This feels like it should make sense, but I think misses the forest for the trees. It's an example what I'd refer to as first-order thinking, or looking only at the immediate situation.
We need to be striving for higher order thinking. That is, we need to be looking at follow-on effects, which I'll analogize to looking at the second and later derivatives of a function, or looking at other elements in an interconnected feedback system (in the control theory sense).
Is not asking whether the graffiti was intended to intimidate somebody considering the follow-on effects?
Sort of. How about an after school "chess club" where the kids who attend get free dinner, and there are a variety of educational activities to choose from in addition to chess? How about a free camp where you bus all the kids out to the nearest wilderness every weekend to learn archery and play sports, and the kids who attend don't have to worry about not having food and shelter for two days out of the week?
> What if the tagger chooses not to go?
Not all of them have to go. You don't have to solve the entire problem at the same time. And if it doesn't work, you keep trying things until something sticks.
The key point is that you need to be willing to spend the resources keeping kids out of jail that you would spend keeping them in jail.
These sorts of clubs exist in some places, such as in my school [0]. They include everything from tutoring to other academic activities to free meals to summer programs.
Stop putting people in jail or prison for minor offences.
Stop including weird restrictions in parole orders.
Stop making community service being about "punishment" and move it towards "rehabilitation", of the offender and of their area.
I agree with your suggestion that members of the general public should also become more aware of the working conditions of the police. Many police departments in the United States allow members of the general public to go on a "ride-along" in a police car on patrol (that usually involves signing release forms and promises not to misbehave while on the ride-along) and that too is a good learning experience. Basically, it's good for everyone to understand better how the other half lives.
To me, that suggests that we need sweeping and creative reforms not merely to make the police more effective or impartial, but to actively combat the psychological effect that policing has on veteran officers. Instead, we seem to be pulling them off foot patrols and sticking them into cars to create rapid response forces. That may work as an emergency triage against violent crime outbreaks, but it exacerbates the damage the job does to the professionals who have to do it.
On the other hand: 90% of what was upsetting about this article was the result of judges and the probation system. I have much less sympathy for a judge than I do for a police.
Urban criminal judges are almost completely unaccountable. Chicago judges are elected, and each election cycle, papers and blogs run horror stories about incompetent judges who no rational elector could vote for. And every election cycle, the exact same slate of horrible judges gets reelected. A civic-minded hacker that wanted to improve the criminal justice process in the US could make a large dent in the problem by coming up with something that would help the electorate handle judicial elections. For virtually everyone living in a big city, judicial elections are entirely opaque; city papers don't even cover them.
The UK sometimes has anti drink-driving campaigns. Police forces increase the number of breathalyser tests. They're only allowed to use a breathalyser if they have reason to suspect someone is drunk - they saw them leaving a pub or driving erratically.
(https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...) Page 77
> • During 2009, there were 813,288 screening breath tests carried out. This is a 14 per cent increase from 711,658 in 2008. This increase coincides with the introduction of new digital recording equipment, which may have streamlined breath test procedures for many forces.
> • The number of positive or refused tests in 2009 increased by three per cent from 91,666 in 2008 to 93,973 in 2009 after a three year decline.
> • The proportion of tests that were positive or refused in 2009 was 12 per cent, one percentage point lower than in 2008.
It seems that traffic officers come into contact with very many people who they think are criminals but who are not criminals.
I spent freshman year of university in The Bronx, an borough in NYC which has highest poverty rate of any urban area in the States and by far the most dangerous of the NYC boroughs. I remember early on being afraid of seeing cops outside the bar we all wen't to that openly served minors, but they had more important things to do, such as protecting us on the walk back to campus. J walking is almost encouraged just so you keep you moving. The people police have to deal with are some of the scariest I've ever seen.
Further, every couple days we get an email about students getting mugged or worse, and every time the assailant is black or Hispanic. Without fail, despite 50+ notices at this point. Please, tell me how a cop can put away racial prejudices with statistics like that? Should they? Of course, but it's not that simple.
Ultimately I think the largest problem is the militarization of the police force. An army is supposed to fight an enemy, the police are supposed to protect citizens and mixing up the two becomes very dangerous very quickly.`
*Edit Typos and clarity
Completely agree with this.
Over the past few years I have noticed this militaristic attitude creep into the Australian police force (and private security businesses, as they always copy what the police do). It is as though they are all just waiting for some massive global uprising that's never going to happen.
What bothers me is the attitude that comes with this new uniform tends to provoke responses from drunk idiots that are inline with these unspoken fears.
Then you will not be surprised to know that this is happening in the US too. Apparently the police in South Carolina need a "mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle"[1]
[1] http://benswann.com/sc-police-department-gets-u-n-blue-tank-...
Without another incident, they'd require a suspicion of erratic driving before arbitrarily stopping someone for drink driving.
> Under the Road Traffic Act 1988, the police can require a person to take a screening breath test if they have a reasonable cause to suspect that:
> ● the person is or has been driving or attempting to drive or is in charge of a motor vehicle on a road or other public place with alcohol in their body (section 6(2) and 6(3));
> ● has committed a moving traffic offence (section 6(4)); or
> ● has been involved in an accident (section 6(5)).
> The subsequent evidential test carried out at the police station can be submitted as evidence in court.
> The prescribed alcohol limit is 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath, which equates with 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100ml of blood.
> It is an offence to refuse to take a breath test when required to do so by a police officer unless there is a reasonable excuse. Court penalties for refusing an evidential test are the same as being above the prescribed limit.
(in the UK)
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/cyclesafety/article3758...
Why are refused tests counted with positive tests?
From what I've heard in any other state I've lived in (US), it is the same or similar there.
That is a weird rule.
Here (I live in Europe) they make routine breath tests during the holidays and week end for every car in X place (not surprisingly close to bars and clubs, but not always).
As a driver, I'm glad they try to reduce drunk driving, and I don't see how they could do it without regular tests (which are less invasive, than say, car that don't turn on if you fail the breath test inside the car. Yes, that was proposed at some point)
The idea of a forced breath test without any evidence of intoxication is simply mind boggling to me.
I'm in Australia, random breath tests have been around for many years and they have helped a lot with a culture of getting drunk and driving home.
What overly broad reasoning. Flip it around and apply it to other things that you could do to hurt people and you can apply that reasoning to all parts of your life.
If that's not the impression you want to give, you might want to reconsider your approach.
Enjoy it while the delusion of being right lasts!
Where did you get the idea that driving is a human right?
In the US, for probably 90% of the country there is no easily accessible public transit, cabs are financially infeasible for the working class, and attempting to walk down roads without sidewalks is very dangerous, and outright illegal for interstates and some highways. For a large percentage of the population, taking away the "privilege" of driving would entirely remove their right to move about the country freely.
When there is no alternative to driving to reach a grocery store, your place of employment, etc. can it really be considered a privilege?
It's a far easier problem economically to focus on those who can't afford a car than to build out public transportation networks. Perhaps in the future when there are driverless cars everywhere, driving could be a privilege. As it is now, and for the foreseeable future, driving is a requirement for many americans. I moved to a city with public transit to avoid driving, but not everyone has that option, and it's important to remember that.
That's a very shortsighted statement. The costs of universal driving in terms of property damage, human injury and death, unproductive time spent commuting, traffic, inefficient urban design, resource expenditure, road maintenance, etc. are significantly higher than those of public transit.
And if you don't believe me about people who simply can't afford to drive, what about people who physically can't drive, like the blind? Or people who physically shouldn't drive, but are sometimes forced to do so, like people who suffer from narcolepsy or get intermittent seizures?
The only reason people don't have the option of avoiding driving is because of poor public infrastructure decisions and in some cases poor personal decisions when we can easily afford to do otherwise. Why do we make these poor decisions? Because we think driving our fat asses around in 5000-pound behemoths is a "right" that needs to be accomodated everywhere, but walking and cycling aren't. It's not science fiction--people managed to do without cars for thousands of years.
Setting all of that aside, if you're operating a motor vehicle that could easily kill people out of inattention, you're putting the public at risk and you have a responsibility to demonstrate you can do so competently and responsibly. Not being killed by cars is a more important right.
Mass breath-testing programme always get a few complaints, but I think they'd get a lot more if people realised how few drunk drivers are caught, or if police were rude. Blowing into a tube for X seconds is invasive, but sobriety tests (walking a straight line, touching your nose, etc) feel weirder to me. (I realise that in both US and UK neither of these can be done unless they think you're drunk, and GP post was talking about tests done with no suspicion of drunkeness).
From what I've heard, these already exist for repeat DUIs.
I'm actually not opposed to breathalyzers inside of the car - it seems far less invasive than cops doing it for you, with the authority to ruin your life. If the car won't let you drive, call a friend or a taxi.
In any event, I'd prefer to avoid the hassle and feeling of being a suspected criminal that accompanies being stopped on the way home at a checkpoint. Papers please? (jk...?)
You might notice someone being completely drunk that way, but not someone who's just moderately drunk reacting 10 times slower; unless something happens, of course, but you don't want that either.
Of all the times it's happened to me, I've actually completed one breathylzer test (it was zero).
It's borderline harassment at best, at worst solicitation of a bribe. I always ask, "what caused you to stop me or aroused your suspicions that I have been drinking?" and I never get an answer.
I don't exactly how it works in Illinois, but in many states, the bulk of judges on the bench were appointed due to a midterm vacancy, and only run as an incumbent. In Oregon, at least, this is a sort of unwritten rule, and retiring judges will leave during their term to assure a gubernatorial appointment.
As you say, judicial elections tend not be publicized or greatly contested. So this has the effect of creating an appointment-for-life due to the minimal likelihood of an incumbent loss.
Really? You think that most of the people police come into contact with are criminals? How many arrests does a police officer make on an average night (X) and how many people does the officer contact (Y)? I'm guessing Y >> X.
Whereas now, except for certain exceptions such as in more "progressive" police forces or in downtown urban areas, most cops are somewhat detached from the public, except when responding to a crime.
Isn't this a 30 year old complaint, at least?
Parker's experience with the larger by per capita force of his early career led him to estimate that fewer but more professional officers would mean less corruption. Additionally, the strategy of changing the beat posture to one of mobility led to change from foot patrols to one which favored police cars. Not incidentally, this also furthered Parker's belief that isolating his officers from the streets would reduce opportunities for corruption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Parker_(police_offic...
Most of the people the officers come into contact with on a regular basis that have meaningful impacts on the way the officers view those around them are criminals. Will the cop remember the young man who helped an old lady across the road, or the young man who stabbed and raped the same old lady?
I come into contact with literally thousands of people every week, but the same 20-30 have an impact on my life, and are the ones that I would say I actually come into contact with. Don't argue semantics, it genuinely adds nothing to the conversation.
Still, based on what I know from having worked with cops and having cop family members, the job can change you. Cops are prone to seeing a side of life most of use are lucky to only read about.
I think we all like to believe that were it us we would not become cynical and jaded about humanity but that seems to be tougher than one might expect.
It's sadly common for too many cops to start thinking that everyone they meet is guilty of something and they just haven't been caught (yet).
The CPD in Englewood don't spend a lot of time giving directions or registering bicycles or helping get cats out of trees.
Either way, my point was clear. If you disagree with it, I'm happy to hear why. But I'm not interested in this semantic argument.
Do you have a handy link explaining this?
We hold police to a higher standard because they are THE POLICE. They have take a job and a sworn oath to uphold the law. Yes they are human. Yes it is a largely difficult and thankless job. But under no circumstance does that obviate the fact that they chose to be officers. People born into the projects had no similar choice.
I have sympathy for the police and the situations they find themselves in but the fact remains that they are sworn to uphold the law regardless of the humans they have been in regular contact with.
There's real civic value here that greatly trumps any sort of tax payer whining. Especially considering that internal anti-corruption mechanisms clearly aren't working and so many jurisdictions are hopelessly corrupt. We need more money spent on stuff like this and less "Police Department announces new SWAT military vehicles" whose maintenance and lifetime budget over whats essentially war machines in our neighborhoods greatly trumps what this man did.
Also, he's white and educated and thus you're paying attention to him. See, its working.
I infer from your belittling description of his activities as his "little game" and putting "prove" in skeptical quotes that you don't see the value in this particular piece of journalism and aren't swayed by the evidence presented therein. So while I doubt you can swayed otherwise, I will say that I did find it to be valuable and his experience adds another anecdote on the collective pile of evidence that the cops and prosecutors treat brown and black people vastly different for comparable infractions of the law. And both as a native New Yorker, and moreover as a citizen of the United States, I think this is a very big problems worth paying attention to.
>I'm not justifying that that diabetic guy who wanted his sugar pills should be denied his pills. I'm not justifying that the police handle the lower socio-economic cases more brutally, giving them bruises and cuts that the suburban white boy somehow was spared. I'm not justifying racial profiling.
Yeah, but you kind of are; in your very next paragraph in fact.
> Yet, to walk a mile in their shoes, both the police and the criminal justice system as a whole, is to see the world a little differently from the average Atlantic Monthly reader or Hacker News reader.
We really need to get over the cops-jobs-are-so-dangerous-we-can't-question-anything-they-do mantra. The statistics show, in fact, it isn't nearly as dangerous as they'd like us to believe, and even if it were, it still wouldn't justify the kind of double standards the article was shining a spotlight on.
And for those that, quite frankly, don't really care one way of the other about racial profiling (I imagine because it won't ever affect them), I'd argue that everyone should care when the justice system clearly retaliates against a citizen for exposing problems in it's institutions. It shouldn't be okay for a judge to hand down a harsher than normal punishment because screw you for embarrassing/pissing us off.
I think you missed my meaning. Cops, prosecutors, and judges are only human and they're going to react emotionally because that's what we humans are, hormonal emotional creatures.
In the case of the OP, he deliberately set out to test the system by committing a misdemeanor to see what they would do. It was so out of context for a white male in a nice suit to be doing graffiti that the first responders couldn't believe their eyes. They literally just tried to wave him off. Shouldn't have, but did. I imagine that you or I would have reacted similarly in those circumstances -- or are you perfectly rational in all your decisionmaking and split-second reactions? Highly doubtful.
I don't think it was embarrassment that he had exposed racism or profiling behavior or whatever he was obviously digging for. It was just that he was "one of them" and had betrayed their trust. They gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was not actually behaving like a 19-year-old gang banger, when in fact that was precisely what he was doing. Thus, they ultimately had to book him, take him downtown, fingerprint him, write up the charges etc. By the way, that's work. Lots of paperwork. And knowing that he's a criminal lawyer, they probably had to be extra fastidious -- the slightest little mistake or omission and for all they knew he was going to taking them to court.
I think it's perfectly natural that they reacted angrily to this guy, and threw the book at him, because it was as if he was trying to provoke an angry reaction. Thus as I said, he made his bed and now must sleep in it.
If you want to term this "retaliation", I suppose technically you're right, but your characterization disregards the fact that they're human, with human emotions. I think one of the great mistakes people make when debating the flaws of the justice system is to assume that its people are somehow on a higher ethical pedestal than the rest of society, that somehow they should and must behave more correctly. Unfortunately, they don't, and so it's easy to find biases and injustices in the system.
Which is why there should be an accounting when someone reveals these humans letting their emotions get the best of them. To act like everyone has the same emotional control is absurd -- put people with better emotional control in power and not these people.
He wasted valuable city resources on an experiment the
outcome of which he should have predicted, being a
criminal attorney in Roxbury.
You don't learn to program by watching a movie - you learn by trying it, getting hands-on experience. You don't learn to dance or do sports by reading a book - you learn by getting up and moving, getting hands-on experience. You don't become a judge without seeing the inside of a courtroom. You don't become a poet or a film maker or a musician without trying it. You don't qualify as surgeon without hands on experience or qualify as a pilot without hands on experience or train as a mechanic by watching 'the fast and the furious'.
In all these areas, we acknowledge that fiction and second hand reports aren't a substitute for first-hand experience.
So how can you and I claim to know anything about the justice system if we have no first hand experience?
Don't all of us who care about law and order have a responsibility to inform ourselves about how the system works, as the author of this article has done?
He should have been booked immediately, followed by being given the standard fare for the crime. Potentially upgraded due to having being pompous initially.
He can't be blamed for the fact that they turned it into a full trial (they only offered him jail time for a non-violent crime), nor for the parole time (the duration was way above what is normal), nor for the polices' time (he literally walked into the precinct and then they decided to drive him around town).
> someone else was getting away with a purse snatching, or beating up an ex-girlfriend, or playing the knock-out game, or emptying a cash register
He walked into a precinct, who inside of a precinct is out stopping these things? They could have offered him a year parole and 10 days community service and he would have taken it, being orders worse than the usual penalty.
> Enjoy sleeping in the bed you made
He didn't actually complain about his situation, he complained about those around him. The guy wanting sugar pills, the guys being cramped with another cell available, the beating up suspects. He did a minor complaint about being driven around town to make it seem like they did their job, but that was more related to the absurdity than his time.
> If they bend the rules, they are severely punished.
Protect the Blue doesn't exist in your world? I will not claim that officer's aren't held to a higher standard, but there is plenty of evidence that police standards could be higher given their position of power.
> At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement
This needs to change. 100% coverage is not obtainable nor a lofty goal. Coverage as good as reasonable standards for everyone involved is what we want.
> Yet, to walk a mile in their shoes, both the police and the criminal justice system as a whole, is to see the world a little differently from the average Atlantic Monthly reader or Hacker News reader.
Isn't that the entire point of this article? Whether you agree with him or not, that is what he is achieving here.
The city wasted its own resources trying to teach this guy a lesson for disrespecting their authority.
I'm sorry, when have the police been severely punished for bending the rules?
Examples abound in the other direction, but generally they aren't even fired, let alone prosecuted, for "bending the rules".
Example- in Missouri, the state constitution requires that ALL proceeds that come to government officials from asset forfeiture go to a fund for the public schools. Yet, routinely I see news articles praising county Sheriffs for using the proceeds from asset forfeitures to buy bullet-proof vests and other stuff.
And of course, police would NEVER prioritize enforcing petty laws at the expense of catching dangerous violent criminals. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/09/16/police-made-o...
At the end of the day, the police clock out and go home to families just like anyone else . They want to stay alive just like anyone else.
If people think the police should be risking their lives more than they do, then let's pay them 4x what they get today -- I'm willing to pay higher taxes -- but let's not pay them a 5-figure salary and have unrealistic expectations of how far they should stretch.
Then, too, there's the Giuliani tactic still being applied in a lot of places of arresting people for the tiniest offenses such as spitting or loitering, in order to clean up the streets and convey an impression that the police were in control. It worked in NYC, at least.
Being a police officer is safer than being a cab driver, a house painter, or working in a convenience store. Might have to do with the gun, the stick, and the permission to use them.
The justice system is so disgustingly broke that we absolutely need dedicated, level-headed people to do these types of "social hacks" to prove it.
It takes willful acts of civil disobedience to create real change, to bring awareness in a way that's difficult to ignore.
Catching the bad guy is not the only thing that matters in law enforcement, but sadly that's what the militarization of police forces is creating: a system where the ends justify the means. You would not be so dismissive if you were the habitual target of police laziness. It takes a lot of work to catch the bad guys without breaking the rules.
We can't fix the system if we start from the assumption that the people running the system are basically criminal because they're doing their jobs the way they've always been done.
Demonizing people who are, for the most part, trying to do the right thing with limited resources doesn't help them do their job better, and it doesn't help us talk about how we can change the system to be better. Dialing down the militarization of the police force isn't a matter of humanizing the criminals - we have to humanize the police as well. Calling the police lazy and disgusting dehumanizes them and reinforces the idea of police as shock troops.
> I'm not justifying racial profiling.
As an arab who has come across the 'wrong' side of this at airports and train stations more than once, I completely support racial profiling. Ignoring good data because its politically inconvenient is ridiculous imo.
However what is described in the article is not racial profiling - its violent racism, and there is a very big difference. By all means search me, question me, hassle me for my race - but don't go beating me up for it.
Surely terrorists/drug dealers would dress up like grandmothers if we think like this.
It's a tired cliche, and I know it's not something you can do in the US, but Israeli's have a pretty good profiling system in place. You don't base it purely on race or gender, but they are factors with the biggest discriminator being your story under questioning.
You should probably watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnxnYEVp4U
I never really thought about the sampling bias that way...
I'm sure there is racism as well - it is a big problem - but race is a real thing, I don't think we can pretend everyone is equal either. Certainly nobody should be underprivileged, but I still think discrimination is healthy.
I have "been through the system" and it wasn't by choice, nor did it result in any charges being filed. Some people view that as luck, but given how common that outcome is, the real injustice is that I was ever arrested to begin with.
I'm not complaining about the author's use of public resources - the public resources were wasted by the police, not the author. But I don't think we should pretend that the author discovered anything new. I do think his decisions were a little reckless - people can learn about the justice system without exposing themselves to it first-hand, and exposing yourself to it can be quite dangerous. Sure it's less dangerous if you're white, but police kill white people under suspicious circumstances too.
No. He used city resources to audit a city activity buy running an experiment to prove a hypothesis.
This "should of predicted" point is bullshit. Its like those people who say, "So what about NSA spying, we (smart arses) knew all along". Well, no they didn't. The thought they knew, but they did not know until it was proved with the Snowden leaks. Like wise this prediction you expected this person to make.
To many people think they know things then really they dont, they just believe them, and they cant know anything until its proved. This guy proved it.
OK, my use of the word "prove" is probably going a little too far, but you get my drift. He has at least added to a body of evidence. Which is a damn good use of city money.
As for the reaction of the authorities, well that is a disgrace. Presumably this guy is a local tax payer, and there for paying for these authorities. He has every right to discover if he and his fellow tax payers are getting value for money.
Oh... and that's bad because? Letting petty crimes go unpunished is way better for society than jailing every other black young male (as the US have elected as their policy).
> At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement
There are no "bad guys". There is no "evil". There are just people trying to get by.
> to see the world a little differently
Look at the incarceration rates in the US; no other country jails (or has ever jailed) as many of its citizens as the US (NO OTHER COUNTRY, whether democratic, despotic or theocratic). So "the world" is more like what HN readers see than like what you think you see.
I don't expect to convince you with just this little comment, but try and think about it. Try to argue that bad guys don't exist and see what arguments you come up with.
(PS: In the 40+ years I've been on this planet, I've been robbed, mugged, assaulted -- twice in NYC; in retrospect, nothing that was super-life threatening, but it sure felt real enough at the time.)
No bad guys? You've got to be horribly naive.
He provided a priceless civic service, that had significant personal and presumably financial costs to himself.
He is heroic.
Are they? I see a lot more police-brutality videos than I do reports of police being punished for brutality.
In dictatorships you're arrested by the secret police, accused of immoral acts, tortured, made to confess and made an example of anyway.
In the US you're arrested by the intelligence unit, accused of "related" charges, thrown in custody for 34 hours, made to accept a plea bargain and made an example of anyway.
Disfavor, smear, pressure, self-incriminate and then abuse. Same pattern.
As an ex-prosecutor, the guy clearly knew nothing about the justice system, sure.
The author begins with a litany of ways that unneeded, necessary prosecutions work to injure the neighborhoods of people of color based on his own years of experience on the job. The point is that a lot of the average activity of the police is counter-productive. If this guy preempted the cops from, say, arresting a black convenience store clerk from "trespassing" at his own store, he's hardly derailing crucial activity.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/21/3769823/in-miami-garde...
BUT: I think, this testimony is important, because it shows, how crooked the whole legislative system in the US stinks. It not only verifies the things we see in better documentaries, but shows, that the system is totally corrupt.
It shows, what happens, when race and wealth have become the main decision factor in a system that claims to give even rights to anybody.
In my opinion, this man was punished in this disproportional way, not because he deliberately did a crime or wasted state money (what a ridiculous argument!), but because he uncovered a corrupt system.
This article has good parallels with the NYT reporters who feigned being asylum seekers to travel to Australia by boat and document the horrible treatment experienced at all stages by those who take this journey [1]. I could easily imagine you arguing that these NYT reporters were terrible because they could have been on board a boat that sank and caused search and rescue people to go out and waste their time trying to find them. Equally, I could imagine you arguing that they denied a few genuine asylum seekers the room on a boat and therefore they're still stuck in a dangerous situation. However, that's completely missing the point.
The point is that without people undertaking these experiences and documenting them, the harsh reality of the situation is never quite realised. You don't end up humanising the debate around how these situations are handled, so people show less empathy towards the situation. This is a terrible situation to be in, because we then forget that we're dealing with actual human beings and not just nameless, inert objects.
In the case of the judicial system, it's one thing to know that the system mistreats and punishes people but it's another thing to actually hear the stories about the diabetic being denied proper medical treatment because of some power-tripping guard. That's why you had to go out of your way to clarify that you weren't justifying their ill treatment of him - it was humanised and put into real-world context.
In the case of the asylum seeker report, it's pretty widely known that they experience harrowing conditions and receive pretty repulsive treatment by the various governments in an effort to deter their coming to Australia. But without actually hearing the stories of the hopeful children excited about the journey as they kill time in a refugee safehouse playing in the pool with literal spare parts of broken equipment as toys, or the blind hope of the guy wanting to make a better future for his kids whilst simultaneously denying to himself that he won't just be chucked in a jail on a third world island, you don't experience the same empathy for their situation.
It's a direct counter to the rhetoric used to de-humanise the whole situation. In the case of asylum seekers, they go from being 'asylum seekers' to 'boat people' because the thought of turning away people fleeing some war-torn hellhole to find a better life is harder than turning away a few people who decide one day to hop on a boat to 'jump the queue'. The re-humanising of the whole argument through actual stories and events is the strongest way to put some emphathy back in to the argument and highlight that we are in fact dealing with other human beings, capable of thinking for themselves and having their own families and loved ones.
In the case of the judicial system, it's that these people are criminals who exist in some isolated void without family or former childhoods or any of that and simply must be dealt with so that they can't commit another crime, rather than humans with a story and a life larger than the crime they allegedly committed. Hell, the author himself said that when he was practicing, he always assumed he was trying actual guilty criminals and that once they'd been dealt with, it was all over. It was only afterwards that he started wondering about the broader implications of what he was doing.
So because of that, I completely reject your statement that it's a waste of resources and time to undertake these sorts of investigations. Does it divert theoretical resources away from the ideal task that those resources would be addressing? Sure. But it's an extremely valuable use of those resources to highlight the broader issues at play and put some human empathy, so often sorely missing, back in to the debate.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/the-impossible-re...
> The whole process this guy went through to report on the state of affairs is valuable because it puts the depth of reality on what is otherwise a known but relatively abstract situation. We all know that the judicial system is unfair in an abstract sense, but without seeing actual, real-life examples it does not get driven home nearly as strongly.
The key point here is that you get can get real-life examples by interviewing people caught up in the legal system. There are plenty of them, it isn't difficult to fact check the circumstances of their arrest. All this is possible without wasting police time.
How many police officers are there in New York city? How many people do they arrest or otherwise spend time on every single day? How many hours did his case take out of the total hours spent? 0.001% ?
That's not "waste" in any meaningful way of the word, and not even an argument in this discussion.
I am sure the math could be done on the actual cost of this persons misadventure. The cost of reporting the incident, trawling through CCTV, looking for the person responsible, holding the person responsible in a cell, processing the paper work, the courts time, cleaning up after him etc.
It is likely to be tens of thousands of dollars when everything is said and done. Such a waste of resources just so someone could write a story about his experience..
Imagine if more people wanted to spend their weekend in a cell just to see what it is like.. its rediculous and takes the police and prosecutors away from dealing with real criminals.
Granted some light has been shed on the state of the system in this article but the author could have achieved the same effect by interviewing people who have been through it.
I didn't really, I just pointed out that the "wasting of resources" argument is pretty silly since he actually used very little resources, in the scale of things.
I do however think he did (try to) do something worthwhile, at a personal expense.
> Imagine if more people wanted to spend their weekend in a cell just to see what it is like..
Yeah, call me when that happens.
Also, it doesn't matter that it would be bad if everyone did it. What would happen if everyone decided to take the subway at 10.00 tomorrow? IT WOULD BE CHAOS!! Does that mean I can't take the subway at 10 tomorrow?
> the author could have achieved the same effect by interviewing people who have been through it.
No-one would read that.. I'm sure I can dig up thousands of pages of reports like that.. not exactly making the headlines.
Dude...he didn't do it so that he could write about the experience, he did it so that we could read about it. That's a qualitative difference.
Someone who steps out of their comfort zone, and gets "the experience" has a more visceral feeling - for those who can't imagine themselves poor, unfortunate, or having to turn to crime, this is the only way they can truly "experience" it.
I'm not without reservations about the utility of this man's approach in documenting the harsh criminal "justice" system, but it does add another angle.
The DA wasted court time. The judge was accepting the plea bargain and the DA decided to waste time. They could have easily fined him to more than make up for any wasted time it took to track him down after he turned himself in.
Either the "system" is responding fairly and accurately to the level of "wrong" or it's just a bunch of power brokers in exercise, not contemplating justice.
What kind of person do you think I am?
The de facto situation in a worryingly large portion of people involved in debate about these topics is that it's not humanised to them, because it's at arm's length and they don't see it happen or feel any effect from it. It's no different to why seeing video footage of some atrocity is far more shocking than reading about it in a paper. That's why stuff like the OP and the link I posted is important - it's the next closest thing to shoving someone there themselves.
Think of the OP as a laywer dogfooding the judicial system he helps operate.
As an aside, there was a series on TV here a while ago called "Go Back to Where You Came From" [1]. It took a bunch of people, including some prominent anti-asylum political commentators and actually took them over to Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Congo, etc. and showed them first-hand what life is like for the people fleeing these places. Unsurprisingly, their reaction to it in person was markedly different to their reaction to it when they're sitting in an office at home reading about it in a paper.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Back_To_Where_You_Came_From
This argument is wrong. Let me rephrase it to make that more evident.
>We're dealing with humans, so it sort of by definition of the term requires [we treat them well].
or maybe
>We're dealing with humans, so it sort of by definition of the term requires [we don't reduce them to a statistic].
It clearly does not follow by definition.
>is far more shocking than
>their reaction to it in person was markedly different to their reaction
Yes. But is that better?
I don't think it was a waste, I think the information we all have received is more valuable to New York than the resources used to prosecute him. I think prosecuting acts of civil disobedience is an extraordinarily important and valuable function that the city performs. Dollars spent as intended.
Is petty vengeance a natural and reasonable reaction you expect and accept from the people that have power over you and almost everybody else?
It doesn't work this way, unless it he tried his experiment at the busiest time of the day, and even then it is not 100% sure.
> The police are set upon from all sides.
We all are, we can all take the easy route by bending the rules, and risk getting in trouble.
Treating an entire group of individuals as criminals is bound to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Between confirmation bias and people living up to expectations you are guaranteed to see what you expected to see. To believe in the rule of law you must believe the law is fair, and large numbers of people see every day that it is not.
I'm not sure he is the one that wasted resources though. Wasn't he about to plea bargain before they decided to "make an example of him" at the expense of wasted resources? They could have fined him to easily cover those "wasted resources." It really revealed that personal vendettas are easily carried out by DAs, police, and judges when it comes to sentencing and treatment.
> The police are set upon from all sides. If they bend the rules, they are severely punished. If they don't bend the rules, and the rules don't always apply the way liberal suburban white folks might imagine they do on the street, then they get castigated for not "doing their job" i.e. catching the bad guys...the public will view you with contempt and disgust.
It's hard to have sympathy when your excuse is that you're worried about being seen with contempt and disgust, so you have to strive to ruin lives as much as possible.
> here's hoping you will be permanently cured of f##king with us in the future, a##hole."
So they want to be viewed with contempt and disgust or not? That is a pretty disgusting view.
Its not a waste of time if he's a report, reporting on a social condition that requires attention - and that is exactly what this is all about. The fact is that there is a police state industry in the USA and any light being shone on it is positive.
Huh. Ever heard of the "Blue Shield"?
Check out the "bad cop no donut" subreddit sometimes. There's some petty stuff posted on there, but also quite enough to make the hair on the neck of any thinking, feeling person stand up.
The author of this article or the police department for wasting taxpayers money incarcerating people left and right, giving the sentences way out of proportion with what they did and so on.
> If they bend the rules, they are severely punished.
No they aren't, they get paid vacation days until another cop lies and says they're innocent under a so called investigation. They should be fired when found to break the law; they should be investigated by outside agencies rather than internal investigations. You can't enforce the law justly if you can't even follow the law.
> If they don't bend the rules, and the rules don't always apply the way liberal suburban white folks might imagine they do on the street, then they get castigated for not "doing their job" i.e. catching the bad guys. At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement, because it's the mission.
The mission is enforcing the law, not catching the bad guys. More importantly it's not up to police to determine who the bad guys are nor should it be. The rules do always apply and there's no justification whatsoever for breaking them. Better criminals go free than innocent people be harassed by police who think they're on an episode of 24.
> If you fail the mission, you're facing demotion, punishment, deprivation of public support and sufficient budget, and the public will view you with contempt and disgust.
False conclusion from a faulty idea of what the mission should be.
And I have walked a mile in their shoes because I'm an ex-cop. Just my more informed 2 cents.
Not saying it's ideal, but it's a response to two real pressures.
Sure, but this is what happens in any other job, you don't get paid when under investifation.
[details: she set a misbehaving 3 year old on a stool. Officially, it's not permissible to "use force" on a child unless it's to prevent them from causing physical harm to themselves or others; placing a child on a seat where they don't want to sit qualifies as "using force" in some peoples' eyes.]
All of those things would've happened anyway. Every single one of them. If you read the story (did you?) you'd see that the cops routinely ignored him to chase after darker-skinned "criminals" instead, anyway.
Why were the police and the criminal justice officials apparently angry with him? Because while he was playing his little game, to "prove" that police profile people and to "prove" that getting arrested and jailed can be a violent and unfair experience, someone else was getting away with a purse snatching, or beating up an ex-girlfriend, or playing the knock-out game, or emptying a cash register.
It's not so much that he prevented one of these other cases from being pursued, but that he seems so oblivious of the effects of his actions. Thus, it seems perfectly natural and reasonable for them to say, "OK, you make twice the salary we make yet you wanna be a petty criminal? Poof, you're a petty criminal. Enjoy sleeping in the bed you made, and here's hoping you will be permanently cured of f##king with us in the future, a##hole."
The police are set upon from all sides. If they bend the rules, they are severely punished. If they don't bend the rules, and the rules don't always apply the way liberal suburban white folks might imagine they do on the street, then they get castigated for not "doing their job" i.e. catching the bad guys. At the end of the day, not catching the bad guys is the biggest sin in law enforcement, because it's the mission. If you fail the mission, you're facing demotion, punishment, deprivation of public support and sufficient budget, and the public will view you with contempt and disgust.
I'm not justifying that that diabetic guy who wanted his sugar pills should be denied his pills. I'm not justifying that the police handle the lower socio-economic cases more brutally, giving them bruises and cuts that the suburban white boy somehow was spared. I'm not justifying racial profiling.
Yet, to walk a mile in their shoes, both the police and the criminal justice system as a whole, is to see the world a little differently from the average Atlantic Monthly reader or Hacker News reader.
Just my 2 cents.