Jails get money from the state for every inmate, calculated for every hour the inmate spends there, just like schools.
Traffic schools make money from the state for every attendee; and in many states like it is here in Texas, traffic schools are privately held companies.
Many police departments have citation quotas, if not dollar amount bottom lines that need to be achieved monthly or their revenue tanks and they don’t get to buy more tanks.
You see where this is going…
These quotas are completely illegal. To the point where anyone instigating them technically can be indicted on major charges of corruption. If you know of any police department with a quota system, you need to call the ACLU immediately and furnish any evidence you have to them.
Which they learned was okay over the past decade and a half of the war on terror from our own federal government… the Feds did shit like this, they reason, so why can’t we?
It doesn’t have to be written. Every department gets a report on ticket revenue if not weekly then biweekly. The rest is wink wink nudge nudge but do you think an officer is going to say no to superiors suggesting they are not fulfilling certain fiduciary obligations?
Adrian Schoolcraft was one of those rare, heck nearly mythological, “good cops” who put his money where his mouth is. He recorded the illegal orders of his superiors, and he recorded them when they chewed him out for his “not making the cut”. He was put on foot patrol as “punishment” for not making enough arrests and not writing enough tickets. Eventually the pressure got to him so badly that he had somatic symptoms.
The police department including the commissioner then tried to have him committed once they figured out that he gathered all this evidence.
It was a debacle. And he’s lucky nobody on the force decided to try and have him killed.
Good cops have no reward other than the knowledge that they are serving their country. Bad cops have the wonderful and exclusive rewards of favoritism, not being harassed by their coworkers, and the material benefits of just going ahead and taking people’s shit then intimidating or arresting them when they complain.
What I’m saying is, you’re better off tattling to not-the-governement in any situation of police misconduct, because the ACLU is much better at weeding out police corruption than the police or any governmental agency.
The story of Adrian Schoolcraft is proof that the “thin blue line” is made out of the blood of civilians.
He was NOT addicted to drugs as the imbecilic author states. He was on a prescription medication - Klonopin - for panic attacks and anxiety.
Just because it’s a prescribed drug doesn’t mean that you can’t develop a dependence to it. I was prescribed methylphenidate for a decade, and recently managed to get off it. The withdrawal is horrible, painful even, and has left me feeling exhausted for the last few months since I got off the stuff.
Klonopin is worse in terms of withdrawal. Sudden total cessation can lead to fatal seizures and brain damage.
In anycase, I’m 99.999% certain that @frauenfelder wasn’t indicating drug addiction or dependence as a justification for the way the deceased was treated. Instead it just shows one more callous failure of the police to treat humans humanely. They dehydrated the guy to death while he was also dying of withdrawal syndrome. You can’t treat a lab animal like that, much less a human being.
Honest question: who’s in charge of watching how prisoners are treated in the USA?
Amnesty International?
Prisoners of war are protected by the Geneva convention, monitored by the ICRC; normal prisons are a domestic function and therefore not part of the international law. So it seems you (as in US society) are on your own.
I’m not aware of international treaties covering the rights of prison inmates, except the ECHR with the possibility to call the ECtHR.
eta: sorry, way too many abbreviations…
ICRC - International Committee of the Red Cross
ECHR - European Convention on Human Rights
ECtHR - European Court of Human Rights
Considering recent events, I’d assumed America isn’t a signatory of the Geneva Convention…
The US government was very creative to simulate Geneva Convention compliance (the new category of unlawful combatans, CIA’s black sites, …).
The Geneva Convention only protects enemy soldiers. So you can’t use pepper spray in a war, because it violates the conventions. But whether you use pepper spray on your own populace is decided by your own domestic laws.
This video is horrific. The newscaster mentions at the end that the dead man’s brother had an ordeal that ended with him being hospitalised. This incident is, therefore, not entirely isolated.
My understanding was that debtor’s prisons were illegal in the US, meaning you cannot jail a person for being unable to pay a fine. (Let alone let the person die by refusing them medication…)
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