7 ms·

The thing that gets missed is that a ton of laws on the books are written with the expectation that they will not be applied evenly. Some examples: - Nobody re

by runako 10y ago

The thing that gets missed is that a ton of laws on the books are written with the expectation that they will not be applied evenly. Some examples: - Nobody really expects the cops to sweep the dorms at NYU for marijuana, even though this would probably turn up a ton of arrests. Smoking a joint while looking like a minority and being in a minority part of town carries a much higher probability of being arrested. - Crossing the street against the light at or around the front of MIT doesn't get you cited for jaywalking, ever. - All of New York City has (had?) a prohibition on open containers of alcohol. This prohibition is generally unenforced in non-minority areas. - Open carry laws in Georgia are not meant for dark-skinned Muslim men.

int_19h 10y ago
> Open carry laws in Georgia are not meant for dark-skinned Muslim men. Funny you should bring that up, but not only it's true, there's some considerable history there. Few people are aware of it these days, but historically, South was actually very restrictive with respect to right to carry arms - most of it prohibited _all_ forms of carrying outright (look at this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Rtc.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Rtc.gif - and note where the red color is concentrated in mid-80s). These laws mostly date to the post-Reconstruction era, and during Jim Crow (and later, but that's when it was most prominent) were effectively enforced or not enforced on the basis of race, and, to some extent, political affiliation (say, if you're a white dude who's travelling around the state to help blacks register in the 50s).
pstuart 10y ago
> Open carry laws in Georgia are not meant for dark-skinned Muslim men. Nor for dark-skinned men in California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
simbalion 10y ago
http://www.georgiapacking.org/law.php http://www.georgiapacking.org/law.php While Georgia allows open carry of long-guns without a permit, white people walking around with AR-15 rifles would probably be stopped and questioned by the police regardless. Open carry of handguns, and concealed carry of any weapon, in Georgia is only legal with a Georgia Weapons Carry License, which is only obtained after a background check and review by a local probate judge. While someone of darker complexion might run into trouble with certain racists on certain police forces, I don't think it's fair to damn the whole state's laws based on that. So called "Terry" stops are not allowed, no matter what color someone's skin is.
- runako 10y ago
  > white people walking around with AR-15 rifles would probably be stopped and questioned by the police regardless. Let's assume that's correct. It doesn't address the point that every citizen could not be expected to be afforded this treatment. A group of dark-skinned men who carry long guns into a store are likely to spend some time on the pavement, or worse. (It's a very big subject so I won't post citations, but there have been ample publications indicating that unarmed people of color are killed by police at a higher rate than white people. That's a long way from questioning.) The right to carry long guns in public places is created by legislation that is dependent on our understanding that the police can figure out who should not be allowed to enjoy this right. If our shared understanding was that the outcome of these laws would be vast numbers of swarthy men carrying AR-15s in all public places, an armed minority teenager behind us at every ATM, our public debate around guns would be very different. > So called "Terry" stops are not allowed, no matter what color someone's skin is. If you believe this is how the law is actually enforced in America, you really should spend more time with people outside your current circle of acquaintances. If you don't believe that this is how our laws are currently enforced, then you are in agreement with my post.
  - khedoros 10y ago
    > If our shared understanding was that the outcome of these laws would be vast numbers of swarthy men carrying AR-15s in all public places, an armed minority teenager behind us at every ATM, our public debate around guns would be very different. I'd argue that this statement would stand, even without the racial qualifiers. I don't think I've seen an AR-15 outside of a shooting range or gun show. If "vast numbers" of people felt the need to carry them in all public places, I think I'd look for somewhere else to be, where I could feel safe without being armed.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      > ... I think I'd look for somewhere else to be, where I could feel safe without being armed. That's the beauty of open-carry, you don't have to be armed because everyone around you is! /half-ironicly, half-pointedly
jghn 10y ago
Jaywalking isn't really a crime in MA* so no, you wouldn't get cited at MIT * technically it is, but the fine was set to $1 many years ago in order to effectively make it legal
- runako 10y ago
  Good catch. But it's still roundly unenforced, which was the point. One that still is illegal in Cambridge is underage drinking, and here again the police forces in Cambridge and Boston turn a blind eye instead of making mass arrests every weekend. The point is that behavior is only effectively legal when it's actually legal and not only made so by convention, because relying on convention leads to selective prosecution.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - eru 10y ago
    By law, German police are required to engage with all crime they are aware off. (But prosecutors have more leeway, and even a mandate to consider the interest of the public when choosing whether to prosecute.) I wonder whether removing the decision making from the police, or at least attempting to, helps in getting laws more evenly enforced.
    - voxic11 10y ago
      In MA jaywalking is a violation of the law and not a crime.
  - spennant 10y ago
    The concept of "Campus Police" allows for Universities to insulate themselves from local laws. Crimes from underage drinking up to rape are generally dealt with internally, in what seems like understanding between the institution an their host cities.
    - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
bpyne 10y ago
Generally speaking, cops won't bother you for jaywalking in the Northeast as long as you don't obstruct traffic. They'll sit and watch you cross against the light. As long as cars don't have to jam on their brakes, the cops won't bother with you. As soon as you cause a hazardous situation, you'll get at the least a tongue-lashing. In the same vein, pedestrians in the city of Providence have the right of way at all crosswalks unless a walk signal is present, in which case the jaywalking rule above applies.
- runako 10y ago
  > Generally speaking, cops won't bother you for jaywalking in the Northeast as long as you don't obstruct traffic. Again, the point of TFA was that minor ordinances are selectively applied ("generally"). What you say is true only in some neighborhoods. But in neighborhoods where the police are looking for a pretext to stop someone, jaywalking ordinances are a handy tool. Selective enforcement of the law has been written about quite frequently, and is a well-studied phenomenon. As such, I won't try to rehash the body of work, but here's an example from NYC I found in a few seconds: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/the-nypd-enforces-jaywalking-when-it-damn-well-feels-like-it-7650140 http://www.villagevoice.com/news/the-nypd-enforces-jaywalkin... "A look at the precincts that report comparatively significant numbers of jaywalking citations over the past few years reveals a pattern: the South Bronx, Harlem, north Brooklyn." (TL;DR; those areas were not selected due to particularly high accident fatality rates.)
  - bpyne 10y ago
    Sorry. Didn't mean to obscure or contradict that point. I was trying to demonstrate a cultural norm in the Northeast, which as you point out, gets selectively applied. I'm not sure about jaywalking citation stats in Boston and Providence, but random stops have been a part of life in poorer neighborhoods in both cities.
JustUhThought 10y ago
You. Are so. White. "Nobody really expects the cops to sweep the dorms at NYU for marijuana, even though this would probably turn up a ton of arrests." Switch out "NYU" with "ghetto" and your statement is instantly absurd. These laws you're sleaking of are intended to be enforced, selectively. This is HN, we all love statistics. What is the probability that a person standing trial for possession marijuana who was apprehended in their home and where the primary reason provided in seeking the exercised warrant or reasoning provided explaining exigent circumstances was suspicion of possession or use of marijuana and the person on trial is white? Black? You can't be evidence based when it suits your world view, but not when it doesn't. The term for that is confirmation bias.
- JustUhThought 10y ago
  Full disclosure. I'm a middle aged, middle income, college educated, male, and am white.
  - MajorLOL 10y ago
    Disgusting.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  The first sentence of their post was: The thing that gets missed is that a ton of laws on the books are written with the expectation that they will not be applied evenly. You should read before jumping down someone's throat.
  - JustUhThought 10y ago
    I can't edit on this device. So, yeah, you're right. Change what I said to, "I totally agree..." And everything else is pretty much still good to go. Sorry. I'm pretty opinionated on this topic. As someone with dual degrees in political science and economics, followed by 15 years of all this great country has to offer the white male, and then living in Baltimore during the uprising, listening to my neighbors, marching with fellow Baltimoreans (?), almost getting arrested for holding a sign while on a public sidewalk during a march, staring down rows of cops 10 deep, having motorcycle cops rev their engines with protestors just feet on front of them laid out on the ground, having the National Guard lock down our city for a week, having government sigint airplanes flying overhead, and then riding my bicycle home, to a safe, warm meal and going to my good paying job with benefits the next day, while some black kid follows his mother's advice and walks into a police station on his own volition to surrender to the ppolice for vandalizing a cop car and then having his bail set higher than what was set for the police officers who where arraigned for manslaughter. But yeah, i blew it all out proportion in that comment.
galdosdi 10y ago
NYC still has its open container prohibition. It's very classist -- it's OK to drink a beer outdoors if you paid $7 for it at a "sidewalk cafe" you're sitting at, but not OK if you paid $2 for it at the grocery store. Drinking outdoors in NYC is legal if you pay more for it.
- btdiehr 10y ago
  You're also not allowed to build a house on a random piece of property, so you must be able to afford to buy property to build a house there. Very classist.
  - galdosdi 10y ago
    I'm confused -- building a house indefinitely consumes an expensive and scarce resource (land). Which expensive and scarce resource is used up when someone drinks a beer outdoors?

by runako 10y ago

int_19h 10y ago

> Open carry laws in Georgia are not meant for dark-skinned Muslim men. Funny you should bring that up, but not only it's true, there's some considerable history there. Few people are aware of it these days, but historically, South was actually very restrictive with respect to right to carry arms - most of it prohibited _all_ forms of carrying outright (look at this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Rtc.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Rtc.gif - and note where the red color is concentrated in mid-80s). These laws mostly date to the post-Reconstruction era, and during Jim Crow (and later, but that's when it was most prominent) were effectively enforced or not enforced on the basis of race, and, to some extent, political affiliation (say, if you're a white dude who's travelling around the state to help blacks register in the 50s).

pstuart 10y ago

> Open carry laws in Georgia are not meant for dark-skinned Muslim men. Nor for dark-skinned men in California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

simbalion 10y ago

http://www.georgiapacking.org/law.php http://www.georgiapacking.org/law.php While Georgia allows open carry of long-guns without a permit, white people walking around with AR-15 rifles would probably be stopped and questioned by the police regardless. Open carry of handguns, and concealed carry of any weapon, in Georgia is only legal with a Georgia Weapons Carry License, which is only obtained after a background check and review by a local probate judge. While someone of darker complexion might run into trouble with certain racists on certain police forces, I don't think it's fair to damn the whole state's laws based on that. So called "Terry" stops are not allowed, no matter what color someone's skin is.

runako 10y ago
> white people walking around with AR-15 rifles would probably be stopped and questioned by the police regardless. Let's assume that's correct. It doesn't address the point that every citizen could not be expected to be afforded this treatment. A group of dark-skinned men who carry long guns into a store are likely to spend some time on the pavement, or worse. (It's a very big subject so I won't post citations, but there have been ample publications indicating that unarmed people of color are killed by police at a higher rate than white people. That's a long way from questioning.) The right to carry long guns in public places is created by legislation that is dependent on our understanding that the police can figure out who should not be allowed to enjoy this right. If our shared understanding was that the outcome of these laws would be vast numbers of swarthy men carrying AR-15s in all public places, an armed minority teenager behind us at every ATM, our public debate around guns would be very different. > So called "Terry" stops are not allowed, no matter what color someone's skin is. If you believe this is how the law is actually enforced in America, you really should spend more time with people outside your current circle of acquaintances. If you don't believe that this is how our laws are currently enforced, then you are in agreement with my post.
- khedoros 10y ago
  > If our shared understanding was that the outcome of these laws would be vast numbers of swarthy men carrying AR-15s in all public places, an armed minority teenager behind us at every ATM, our public debate around guns would be very different. I'd argue that this statement would stand, even without the racial qualifiers. I don't think I've seen an AR-15 outside of a shooting range or gun show. If "vast numbers" of people felt the need to carry them in all public places, I think I'd look for somewhere else to be, where I could feel safe without being armed.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    > ... I think I'd look for somewhere else to be, where I could feel safe without being armed. That's the beauty of open-carry, you don't have to be armed because everyone around you is! /half-ironicly, half-pointedly

jghn 10y ago

Jaywalking isn't really a crime in MA* so no, you wouldn't get cited at MIT * technically it is, but the fine was set to $1 many years ago in order to effectively make it legal

runako 10y ago
Good catch. But it's still roundly unenforced, which was the point. One that still is illegal in Cambridge is underage drinking, and here again the police forces in Cambridge and Boston turn a blind eye instead of making mass arrests every weekend. The point is that behavior is only effectively legal when it's actually legal and not only made so by convention, because relying on convention leads to selective prosecution.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- eru 10y ago
  By law, German police are required to engage with all crime they are aware off. (But prosecutors have more leeway, and even a mandate to consider the interest of the public when choosing whether to prosecute.) I wonder whether removing the decision making from the police, or at least attempting to, helps in getting laws more evenly enforced.
  - voxic11 10y ago
    In MA jaywalking is a violation of the law and not a crime.
- spennant 10y ago
  The concept of "Campus Police" allows for Universities to insulate themselves from local laws. Crimes from underage drinking up to rape are generally dealt with internally, in what seems like understanding between the institution an their host cities.
  - koenigdavidmj 10y ago

bpyne 10y ago

Generally speaking, cops won't bother you for jaywalking in the Northeast as long as you don't obstruct traffic. They'll sit and watch you cross against the light. As long as cars don't have to jam on their brakes, the cops won't bother with you. As soon as you cause a hazardous situation, you'll get at the least a tongue-lashing. In the same vein, pedestrians in the city of Providence have the right of way at all crosswalks unless a walk signal is present, in which case the jaywalking rule above applies.

runako 10y ago
> Generally speaking, cops won't bother you for jaywalking in the Northeast as long as you don't obstruct traffic. Again, the point of TFA was that minor ordinances are selectively applied ("generally"). What you say is true only in some neighborhoods. But in neighborhoods where the police are looking for a pretext to stop someone, jaywalking ordinances are a handy tool. Selective enforcement of the law has been written about quite frequently, and is a well-studied phenomenon. As such, I won't try to rehash the body of work, but here's an example from NYC I found in a few seconds: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/the-nypd-enforces-jaywalking-when-it-damn-well-feels-like-it-7650140 http://www.villagevoice.com/news/the-nypd-enforces-jaywalkin... "A look at the precincts that report comparatively significant numbers of jaywalking citations over the past few years reveals a pattern: the South Bronx, Harlem, north Brooklyn." (TL;DR; those areas were not selected due to particularly high accident fatality rates.)
- bpyne 10y ago
  Sorry. Didn't mean to obscure or contradict that point. I was trying to demonstrate a cultural norm in the Northeast, which as you point out, gets selectively applied. I'm not sure about jaywalking citation stats in Boston and Providence, but random stops have been a part of life in poorer neighborhoods in both cities.

JustUhThought 10y ago

You. Are so. White. "Nobody really expects the cops to sweep the dorms at NYU for marijuana, even though this would probably turn up a ton of arrests." Switch out "NYU" with "ghetto" and your statement is instantly absurd. These laws you're sleaking of are intended to be enforced, selectively. This is HN, we all love statistics. What is the probability that a person standing trial for possession marijuana who was apprehended in their home and where the primary reason provided in seeking the exercised warrant or reasoning provided explaining exigent circumstances was suspicion of possession or use of marijuana and the person on trial is white? Black? You can't be evidence based when it suits your world view, but not when it doesn't. The term for that is confirmation bias.

JustUhThought 10y ago
Full disclosure. I'm a middle aged, middle income, college educated, male, and am white.
- MajorLOL 10y ago
  Disgusting.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
The first sentence of their post was: The thing that gets missed is that a ton of laws on the books are written with the expectation that they will not be applied evenly. You should read before jumping down someone's throat.
- JustUhThought 10y ago
  I can't edit on this device. So, yeah, you're right. Change what I said to, "I totally agree..." And everything else is pretty much still good to go. Sorry. I'm pretty opinionated on this topic. As someone with dual degrees in political science and economics, followed by 15 years of all this great country has to offer the white male, and then living in Baltimore during the uprising, listening to my neighbors, marching with fellow Baltimoreans (?), almost getting arrested for holding a sign while on a public sidewalk during a march, staring down rows of cops 10 deep, having motorcycle cops rev their engines with protestors just feet on front of them laid out on the ground, having the National Guard lock down our city for a week, having government sigint airplanes flying overhead, and then riding my bicycle home, to a safe, warm meal and going to my good paying job with benefits the next day, while some black kid follows his mother's advice and walks into a police station on his own volition to surrender to the ppolice for vandalizing a cop car and then having his bail set higher than what was set for the police officers who where arraigned for manslaughter. But yeah, i blew it all out proportion in that comment.

galdosdi 10y ago

NYC still has its open container prohibition. It's very classist -- it's OK to drink a beer outdoors if you paid $7 for it at a "sidewalk cafe" you're sitting at, but not OK if you paid $2 for it at the grocery store. Drinking outdoors in NYC is legal if you pay more for it.

btdiehr 10y ago
You're also not allowed to build a house on a random piece of property, so you must be able to afford to buy property to build a house there. Very classist.
- galdosdi 10y ago
  I'm confused -- building a house indefinitely consumes an expensive and scarce resource (land). Which expensive and scarce resource is used up when someone drinks a beer outdoors?