One cop in Seattle issues 80% of city's marijuana tickets

Herbert West might be a better choice for this guy.

It makes sense in the context of most states laws that prohibit the use of alcohol in public, this is an extension saying “No public use of intoxicants”. It may not make logical sense but it makes legal sense.

Yeah. I wonder if Mark would like it if people called him racist because 100% of the permanent BoingBoing team are white, and sexist because only 20% are female.

Law enforcement as a whole may have huge racial biases and be institutionally racist, but that’s very different than saying that an individual law-enforcement officer is racist.

The last time I tried looking in a mirror on acid, I got very distracted by my teeth. I’m not convinced anything useful could come out of your suggestion, other than I’d pay money to watch the highlight reel.

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Would that make me a Job Creator?

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Your idea that calling someone a “racist” is akin to “knowing what” someone thinks is interesting. My adolescent teen son always flared with anger over imposed restrictions based on his behavior and his strongest argument was always “you don’t know what I’m thinking”. As a functioning adult, it is almost impossible not to “assume” what your children, your mate, your employer, an approaching stranger in an ill-lite parking facility at night, are thinking. And yet we all make assumptions about other people’s intentions without verbal or physical interaction, If you deny that McCarthyism was not mired in apoplectic bias - judgement based on assumed affiliation(s) - then you will never understand what it means to live black in most of America.

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When I say that racist is the new communist, I don’t imply that both are exactly equal, just that they both make sweeping statements about how a person ideologically stands, often without taking into account any other evidence. And in both cases, it’s impossible to defend or rebut, because you’re claiming that a person feels a specific way, and for the same reason that people can’t defend themselves from these charges, I say that we shouldn’t be making those charges without good evidence, and this evidence is fairly poor.

For instance, if you read the article in the Seattle weekly posted here, most of his tickets were given out in an area heavily populated by poor or homeless, and many of those are african americans. It’s also likely he did not specifically pick his beat, as that’s not very common - this means that it’s much more likely that the percentage of people who were smoking pot that he ran into were african american.

Now, am I saying he’s not racist? No, absolutely not. Because I cannot clearly say either way what his intentions were, due to the lack of evidence on it, and it’s irresponsible for me to do so. For example, I work with two teams, one of which is comprised of folks in China, and another comprised of folks in India. 100% of the complaints I’ve sent recently have been to managers of the China team due to quality of work problems. Does that mean that I am racist against Chinese people? If you’re using weak metrics like pure percentages, I would be almost twice as racist as this police officer.

Racism is a terrible thing. We should stand up to it wherever we find it. But in the same way that calling anyone a murderer or a rapist without good evidence is irresponsible, we should also not be assuming racism without clear examples why. By my luck next week we’ll find audio records of this guy talking to his boss about all the ‘damn n*****s on the streets’ and I’ll end up looking like a fool, but based on what we have here, I stand by this.

Guy’s still an asshole though.

Seriously? Is it an automatic reaction on some level to take every single aspect of a story and invert it.

The story states (not implies) that they documented something he did (wrote tickets to minorities 4x as often as anyone else).

What you said is the exact opposite of the facts. You focus on personality, and you said that --after-- you were the one imagining things (his beat, which you know as well as I do) and relying on them as facts (while calling other people out for using their imaginations!)

0 of 10 tables turned, would not buy you a beer. Would shun in person.

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Well you know, in any story involving racism, the most critical thing is to make sure that it is unquestionably, absolutely documented to a criminal court standard of proof that the person involved in doing or saying things that contribute to institutionalized racism and inequality is themselves, without any shadow of a doubt, a card-carrying, life-long, avowed KKK/neo-Nazi style racist (the only type that actually, unequivocally exists).

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I don’t know if I agree with your analogy of your two work-forces. I agree that racism is an ugly reference, but, underlying that label are egregious acts perpetrated by individuals who were/are in fact racists. My main objection to your response was your statement that a human being cannot perceive what another person is thinking. As human beings we have developed life-preserving instincts that function solely on intention(s). Because of a change in perception by the American liberal society about the issues of race in the 1990’s almost any claim of racism by a person of color is dismissed, regardless of how heinous the crime. If we cannot use words that define experience and if further conversation to clarify the full meaning of the word in a specific situation, have we not lost a crucial part our being human?
I wouldn’t “worry” about tapes surfacing in this Seattle Washington’s policeman’s file. The news cycle has passed and no one really gives a damn!

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If you are Black or Latino in America today, the chances of being long-term unemployed is far, far higher than if you are White or Asian. Smoking pot is one way to help control the anger that such rampant and social racism engenders. I am white, but my grand-children are 1/2 Black, so I understand this probably better than most white, 60+ assholes.

FWIW, my 2 Black grandkids don’t smoke pot, and are true geniuses. My grandson designs and builds from scratch UAVs (Unmanned Areal Vehicles), including the control electronics, navigation systems, etc. My granddaughter is going into medical school.

True story: when he was 8, my grandson re-wried my daughter’s kitchen radio so it could receive his kid walky-talky transmissions from the back yard - “Hey mom, can you bring me out some lemonade!”… We’d buy him some electronic robotic gear for birthdays or Christman. He’d play with them for about 10 minutes, take them into his room, and 1/2 hour later, would bring out something built from that plus other cruft he had, that would be totally different and awesome!

What does this mean? Color doesn’t matter. Race doesn’t matter. National origins dont matter. People are what matter!

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