âŚAnd thatâs just this week.
To add another bit of good news, a cop in <a href=âhttp://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2015/04/wayne_county_prosecutor_issuin.html"target=â_blank"> Inkster, MI is getting charged with two felonies and was outright fired for pulling a motorist out of his car, beating him rather mercilessly and allegedly planting drugs in the victimâs car.
Probably get a desk job for a week or so.
I guess at least he didnât use the rifle on her.
Hmmm⌠he looks like an âundercoverâ cop.
He didnât do a good job at âprotectingâ his cover as heâs known nationwide now.
Translation: They (authorities) shouldnât send undercover cops on duty with âpoliceâ vests.
That Marshal carries around the US Constitution, but never read it.
[note sarcasm]
Looks a bit like uncontrolled gangs of armed comrades whose main function appears to be to generate income for municipal authorities in order that said authorities may maintain such gangs. This might appear to be slightly insane, but Iâm not competent to judge.
The legitimacy of the police is quickly crumbling. Itâs vaguely reminiscent of the civil rights era, where news cameras actually started filming and broadcasting images of Jim Crow. It wasnât that the situation was new, just that it was being finally documented in a way nobody could deny.
For the police to exist in their current form, society has to pretend that these things arenât happening. And thatâs getting harder to do every year.
just the other day one of my acquaintances on facebook reposted a message about teaching your children to appreciate cops and not to fear them. White male in Texas, devout Catholic⌠there are lots of them out there.
Dueling videos released after kidnapped Fairfield boy found safe
A woman called the police to report her car had been stolen, with her child inside. The police arrived at her home, and demanded to search her home, without a warrant. She refused, partly because she had dogs in the house and was afraid the police would shoot them. She was upset, naturally, because her child had just been kidnapped, and now the police were threatening her rather than searching for her son. So, they arrested her.
Three and a half hours later, the car was found, abandoned, with her son, still asleep in the back of the car, and unharmed. It was a bystander who found him, not the police.
So, important lessons:
- The police are absolutely no help whatsoever. The only thing that helped was the Amber Alert â i.e., a general call for volunteers.
- Video from police body cams is selectively released only for police PR purposes.
Destroying evidence and harassing witnesses. Obstruction of Justice, not just for the mob anymore.
= 
+ 
Sounds about right⌠A large armed team (they described it as a SWAT team) in a city next door to South Gate descended on my friendâs parents house last year â it was because an aerial survey indicated that they might have an un-permitted addition to the house. They did have a room that was added back in the 70âs⌠They were fined and told to either tear it down or have it rebuilt (using only contractors that were pre-approved by the City). Using an armed team like that and the requirement to use specific contractors smelled rather rotten to me.
Cops do the following with equal investment:
- eat,
- breath,
- lie.
Cops will no sooner quit eating or breathing than they will lying. The irony of the SCOTUS ruling is that they gain favor with the public through the general principles the ruling endorses while, on a case-by-case basis, the Roberts court will relentlessly chip-away at Constitutional guarantees by protecting the exercise of authoritah! by the cops and other agents of state control.
Why the hell would the police be the ones with control over bodycam footage? Thatâs just asking to be abused.
Itâs the judges who should get to decide exactly how much to withhold from the public domain, rather than the people the bodycams are supposed to keep honest choosing what to show to the public.
If the disposition of the footage isnât held by a third party, then bodycams are a useless gesture.
Well, itâs like they say with computer security â once your opponent has physical access to the hardware, itâs effectively over. If the cameras are attached to the cops, theyâll find ways to defeat them, one way or another. Covering up the lenses would be the simplest, if they canât just switch them off.
Well, there actually are body cams that canât be switched off in the field without the proper software and being connected by usb to a PC with the right certificates.
In any case, itâs very easy to just stop paying, or fire the damn cops trying to play all coy and shit with their monitoring.
You canât make anything absolutely 100% tamper-proof, but you certainly can make things nearly 100% tamper-evident, and nearly 100% tamper-proof. And any arrangement that gives the cops the authority to decide how and when to release bodycam footage to the public is antithetical to the whole purpose of making them wear the bodycams anyway.
Thereâs also the easy solution of just, fining/punishing/firing cops who seem to break their equipment all the time. Enforcing the law isnât a right, itâs a responsibility, with certain levels of trust that the police keep violating. If thereâs to be any resolution, we canât trust the police to behave anymore and whether they like it or not, the monitoring is going to be better for everyone. They shouldnât get to call the shots on it any more because they donât have that authority, and they donât deserve our trust.
Some of the discussion around bodycams Iâd seen was questioning why authorities were so quick to agree to it as a reform. Police have a lot of political power, city government officials are very hesitant to actually move against them, and it hasnât seemed like the wave of protest against police has yet reached a point where the authorities really feel that much pressure.
Youâre likely right, that police cameras could be made to work, between actual enforcement of policies and some technical refinement.
Personally, I think that short of abolishing police, I think the best course for reform would be to disarm them.
Exactly right!
From the article: âHowever, the police donât have authority over marshalsâ is utter BS. Certainly, local police canât order US Marshals around, but Federal agents are still subject to local laws. Plain and simple, that woman was the victim of assault.
This article by George Ciccariello-Maher in Salon is quite good.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
