This is exactly why we should not let the police run their own oversight (internal affairs) department. The potential for corruption and harassment of citizens reporting police misconduct is laughable high.
No other governmental agency is responsible for its own oversight. Why are the police?
Yes it is. Thankfully it looks like the incident hasnāt escaped their attention, ACLU Florida head Howard Simon has been quoted saying the Police Chief should have stopped this long ago and the City Commission is exposing the city to massive liability for civil rights violations.
Well, out of OUR control at any rate.
I drink Molson Canadian, thanks, but only if it comes from the Montreal or Vancouver breweries - Labatt Blue otherwise. (Someday Iāll go into the vagaries of provincial control of alcohol sales and its regional effect on national brandsā¦)
I think you are underestimating just when Saleh started reacting. He has already installed video cameras (by June 2012), made reports to Internal Affairs over a year ago, turned over videos to them and the state attorney, and he has already caught illegal searches and so forth on-camera since the complaint. When something like this reaches the press, a lot of action has already taken place. Now, given that video recorders and public exposure can be two-edged swords, Saleh either has incredible chutzpah or a clean conscience.
Iāve read Sampsonās rap sheet - most of the charges are ones that are easy to concoct and difficult to dispute (trespass, mainly). The rest are simple possession, the last being in 2009. Even a number of those were dismissed or ānol prosā, The exception seems to be one arrest for dealing that was also ānol prosā (also pre-2009). He aināt worth going after on a daily to thrice-daily basis.
Yeah, I donāt doubt there are people congregating at the store, and there may well be deals and drinking going on in the parking lot - his clientele is, in the main, dirt poor, and small convenience stores tend to be where poorer folks congregate because that is where they shop. (Right around the world, as a matter of fact - Pinoy āsari-sariā stores, for instance, arenāt any different. Who else knows the customers well enough to put things on a tab when theyāre flat broke?)
But to put things in perspective, petty crime in Miami Gardens is dropping while serious, violent (read āganglandā) crime is skyrocketing, I donāt think the people who come to a convenience store by foot and beat-up bikes are behind that (but they seem to be the ones that āzero toleranceā is aimed at, eh?).
Yup. Call me cynical, but those āreal criminalsā are also unlikely to upset the apple cart - organised crime depends on the status quo.
When I hear people refer to the declining crime rate, I wonder if the rate of violent crime has really increased. Prisoners are subjected to horrific violent crimes. Did the violent crime rate as published go down because it was shifted into the prisons with the drug offenders, where it was multiplied by prison conditions? I think that the published crime stats should include in-prison crime. Does anyone even track in-prison crime, as opposed to the conduct offenses and āgang associationsā that get prisoners punished?
And then how can we expect people to come out of that environment and function according to productive social standards? That burden of emotional damage sits under the economic damage to the black and Hispanic communities that the speaker describes.
Hiding a what?? I have no āagendaā beyond operating distinct disgust at kneejerk gawkery. But I do that quite openly.
Oh - and trolls. Yeah - I want all trolls electronically locked up in wretchedly bad plea bargain deals secretly operated by a ginormous conglomeration of unknowable identity and dubious merits. Because, dammit - that kind of power oughta be good some something thatās actually worthwhile.
i donāt disagree at all that something bad is going down there. I merely reserve judgement until we hear what that āsomethingā actually is. Saleh couldāve easily garnered press coverage with nothing but a couple of phone calls. The local press is always, always hungry for stories. Something delayed him, and that delay makes me very interested in what that something might be. Iām not hopping on the racism train that easily - too diversionary, and weāve had more than enough of that lately, donāt you think
Whether cops go after users in order to get at the real players for law enforcement or greed enforcement is always a question. Not to mention, a plot line for gazillions of movies and tv series. Because - not even close to new.
Make mine Kirin. Iāll cover the tip.
If this kind of thing were true, why wouldnāt police officers speak up? There should be several cases of cops talking about these things, despite threats from their coworkers.
I remember chilling stories from Dallas, Texas about the police getting gangbangers to take out people who tried to sue the police department, in exchange for dropping cases against him. My friend in jail for warrants on traffic tickets got to watch cops watching ācopsā on TV. He said the cops were screaming ākill that bitch and put a gun in his handā at the TV. He also said they strapped a black man to a bed because he got angry when they told him not to drink out of a ācops onlyā water fountain, and taunted that man until he cried. Iāve read about Houston DAs faking DNA evidence, and Dallas cops getting busted for taking hits out on people, and all the rest. I remember seeing a cop car in Dallas with a confederate bumper sticker.
Iāve also worked with Dallas cops who said most were good, and definitely there were bad apples, but not as a ruleā¦ and that internal affairs would use the same dirty tricks that cops used to bust people, to bust cops.
If you are right about bad cops driving out the good, then the institution of the police is a machine for creating monsters, and should be carefully but radically reformedā¦ and opposed until then. We have the right and responsibility to overthrow a government that violates our rightsā¦ I think dirty cops and dirty police departments fall into that category.
After voicing his concerns, Schoolcraft was reportedly harassed and reassigned to a desk job. After he left work early one day, a SWAT unit illegally entered his apartment, physically abducted him and forcibly admitted him to a psychiatric facility, where he was held against his will for six days.
Wow.
What do you mean?
Are you saying itās a problem that a fair number of people have been pointing out lately that the U.S. is still a white supremacist society? And pointing to various incidents as likely manifestations of this ongoing reality? Would you rather they not do that?
No. Weāve had enough racism for hundreds of years and still do but still not quite enough pointing out racism and trying to make it stop.
Iād be careful about how your anti-trolley measures are implemented. I suspect your own comments might occasionally generate a false positive.
But but, donāt you see? Pointing out racism is the NEW racism!
:-/
Iām guessing she means that always painting everything as being primarily about racism does no service to efforts to actually do something about racism.
Well, if thatās what she means, she certainly chose the wrong place to mean it ā a post accurately entitled āMiami Gardens police arrest black man for trespassing 56 times ā at the store where he works.ā
Really great questions, man. Definitely the kinds of things that I ask myself frequently in light of all the crazy news I see these days.
Note: My answers are based on being a mostly white man (I have a significantly Native American complexion for my region due to a very small percentage of unidentified (forgotten) Native American ancestry that happened to present itself in my fatherās and his childrenās appearances and no one else in the entire family) of low means in Minnesota. The experiences of different situations and locales will vary widely across the US.
Is it the case that the system is so much more powerful that āthe peopleā are unable to stand-up for themselves?
Indeed it is!
Well, in perception, at least, and thatās really what counts.
The fact is that the majority of regions in the US have more than enough privately-owned firearms, individuals of significant expertise in combat or destruction of some kind (often hobbyists, but still potentially able to more than defend themselves and generate mayhem should they ever desire to), and general survivalists who spend their days and nights imagining how they would defend themselves against their fellow man should the situation call for it, that a revolution would most likely be both possible and successful if it occurred.
In addition, most of the active and former military personnel Iāve met (and Iāve known a lot of them) would find it extremely distasteful to be set against their own people and would likely either refuse or perform the duty fairly lacklusterly.
Finally, the US is a very, very big place that, when we really look at it, is not governed all that well or all the uniformly. We simply donāt have the resources to keep an invisible chain on the neck of every citizen.
So, yes, the people are more powerful than the government in reality, but in practice the perception is that the government is vastly more powerful than the people and fear of its powers keeps people accepting a lot of unpleasantness on a daily basis.
Most United Statians believe, to some degree, that their every action (or at the very least their communications) is being recorded and analyzed 24/7 for any sign of dissidence and that level of concern keeps most who would cause trouble for the system well in-line.
In fact, even now Iām afraid that this message might get me in trouble and I donāt know anyone who doesnāt consider how their tweets, Facebook messages, emails, and texts might be taken out of context and doesnāt make an effort to edit certain colloquialisms and colorful phrases to avoid suspicion.
And, of course, over the course of the past 10+ years since the US turned its eye towards combating terrorism, our system has proven itself to be not only suspicious, but paranoia-level suspicious, with stories of average people being profiled, arrested, and multiyear tortured for doing nothing more than going about their lives and being law-abiding citizens becoming commonplace.
I donāt know if any of the stories are true, or if the fear they instill in the populace is justified, but the phenomena of believing one is being constantly and tirelessly researched and targeted by oneās government is common.
And, though I mentioned earlier that many military members would find it unpleasant to turn their attacks towards their own citizens, most of us get the impression that police officers would have no such issues. In fact, everything from uncontrolled cops going around harming/killing people entirely to satisfy their own prejudices to the fact that most of us have been pulled over and shouted at by an officer for simply being on the road during a time when they were either having a bad day or simply bored, to videos of casual tasings and peppersprayings make many of us deeply terrified of the attentions of our local police.
Unfortunately, well there are many officers who do their jobs with dignity and give citizens the dignity they deserve, there are enough that do not, and plenty that either turn a blind eye to those who are out to harm people or even actively defend them, which leaves many of us who otherwise would never even consider a law enforcement agent a threat instead keep well out of their radius and avoid them at all costs, and, of course, fear the possibility of them one day being sent after us.
Just seeing videos of occupiers being peppersprayed relentlessly is enough to put a bad taste in your mouth at the thought of even peaceful protest.
Why isnāt there a large scale push-back against this stuff?
Unfortunately, the answer to this question isnāt fully covered by the fear aspect. There is also a significant level of complacency involved.
Most of us are happy to simply live our quiet lives under the radar and keep attention off of us while we enjoy the modest gains of our hard work. So long as we still have iPods and computers and TV and video games to keep our minds occupied, and we have an adequate amount of food in our bellies and feel that economically weāre at least surviving, the vast majority of people are perfectly content to attempt to burry their heads in the sand and ignore the world around them.
Add to that the constant hope that weāre just one smart move away from being monumentally wealthy and able to transcend the problems within our country, and you have a complacency stew.
Itās really more a matter of that hope than anything. Weāve all been told two things over the course of our lives. First, everyone has a really good chance at tremendous wealth that will allow all your wildest dreams to come true. And second that chance would be completely dashed should our current system come to an end because every piece of media weāve had about a post-revolution/post-government-collapse/post-āapocalypseā world from Mad Max to Revolution has told us that any world without our current government would be a rotting cesspool of desperate men running around stabbing eachother with any sharpened object they can get their hands on in an effort to gain some minor advantage under the watchful tyrannical eye of some former-office-worker warlord who used pent-up rage to take over huge swaths of the country.
Iām not sure Canadians think anything like this, but most of the people I know in my region at least have some version of these two interests/concerns rolling around in their heads helping them make decisions about their lives.
Am I naive in asking these questions?
You most certainly are not.
Most United States citizens even ask themselves these questions. Itās just that weāre all too deeply in it to really see any way out, so we just try our best to get through our lives and hope against hope that things will eventually start improving, at least on a local scale.
That got a bit long, and as I said from the beginning itās only based on my own experiences in a very small portion of Eastern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, but I hope it helped you understand the United Statesian mentality to some degree.
I think it would be better for the world at large if they just all died in a fiery auto accident. In fact, it would be hilarious.
Jail time holds the possibility of precedence - that other corrupt police will face the same treatment.
