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Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution,

Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high. I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be directly and indirectly laid at the feet of the war on drugs.

senectus1 7y ago
> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? looking back over the years, from the outside, I think that's been the american attitude all along.
- 2804t3qwp 7y ago
  I'd like to hear more about this if you don't mind expounding on it some. I realize that in a certain light that's how it looks (I'm no stranger to a lot of what used to be called conspiracy theories, including the long history of illegal surveillance) but honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion. I realize that's not the same as operating in a legal or legally spirited fashion, but I also don't see it as flagrantly hypocritical enough to warrant the cynicism you've presented.
  - Flozzin 7y ago
    While there is no catching a criminal in this situation. Asset forfeiture is abused. This is where police take items, usually cash, and keep it. There is no trial, just a seizure of property. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/phillip-parhamovich-civil-forfeiture https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/p... It's a good example of what I mean. There are others, I'm just not going to post them all. The police seem to optimize for stats and profit. And the cities/counties/state are on board. That's why we see red light cameras too. There are also documented cases of tweaking yellow light times in order to increase the number of tickets sent for running red lights. The police don't seem to be here to protect and serve anymore. Like most things in America it's all about appearances and money.
    - ddingus 7y ago
      The new doctrine is escalation of force to compliance. I have that info from public court, on the record. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21603136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21603136 Protect and serve died decades ago. Today, people literally die at the hands of police for errors, questions, mistakes, and failure to demonstrate blind compliance. <---that is no joke.
      - Flozzin 7y ago
        I just recently saw the video of the guy picking up trash with a claw/grabber and being told to drop his 'weapon'. Several police showed up to stop this threat from cleaning his property. Luckily though, no one was shot, and the officer that started it all resigned.
        ddingus 7y ago
        I got lucky in the 90's. Ended up in holding for a few hours. Officers escalated a fairly benign scenario into me getting roughed up. They delayed court many times, while trying to make their poor case worse. I took it to trial, won, and those officers were gone. Things are way worse now. Be careful. The attorney I had filled me in. The prosecution presented escalation of force to compliance at my trial. Not doing what they say can escalate to death. The initial event can be ANYTHING.
    - 2804t3qwp 7y ago
      This is a fair criticism, and in line with the comment I replied to, but I still don't know if I agree with the overall sentiment of cynacism. While I'll give you the leaks about Prism/Five Eyes/Mail Espionage (the original government surveillance!), etc. the same documents are in line with what a pattern of being motivated by a fear of being unprepared to defend the greater society from upheaval would look like. Obviously metric gaming is the self serving side of that desire, and I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate here, but a department that doesn't receive adequate resources can't perform its function adequately. At the same time, American justice (I don't know much of other systems) has a long tradition of not just being a government product. Our system is designed to be corrected, lawsuits are easy (if funded) because the (ideally) other side of productive authoritarianism is civil resistance (physical sure but also legal punativism). I realize that these aren't reasons to not be cynical of our LEO organizations, but I guess that's why the cynicism seems strange to me, it's also not a reason to doubt the overall outcomes of the justice system. Whistleblowers (and their checkered history sure), civil disobedients (looking at you MLK and Malcom X), plain old litigants (gay marriage) are the counter balances to the sometimes hostile nature of the bureaucratically empowered entities in the American government. Is the system perfect? Obviously not, maybe not even optimistically close, but it's certainly not something indicative of a populace motivated purely by metric performance from my perspective.
  - stevenwoo 7y ago
    This was covered in popular culture most famously by The Wire, written by retired police beat reporter David Simon, it's called "juking the stats", each police district is judged by different crime stats, and promotions are based on those stats, so naturally everything evolves to optimized for better stats. Not only that, on the judicial side in America over the past 50 years, funding has not kept up with the increase in population so there is an extreme pressure on prosecutors to not go to trial, add to this the political nature of the office and American prosecutors are under pressure to keep up their 95% conviction rate, this is done by going hard after those least able to afford an adequate defense and "laddering", adding on every single conceivable charge so that defendants will plead guilty to a smaller number of charges in exchange for some charges being dropped and not inconvenience the state with an expensive trial by jury. This is covered pretty well by season 3 of the Serial podcast.
    - wahern 7y ago
      A great, empirically based, comprehensive look at the devolution of criminal justice in the U.S. can be found in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by the late criminal law scholar William Stuntz. TL;DR: The trend started nearly 200 years ago, though for various reasons it accelerated in the mid 20th century. Some reviews: "The book is eminently readable and merits careful attention because it accurately describes the twin problems that pervade American criminal justice today―its overall severity and its disparate treatment of African-Americans. The book contains a wealth of overlooked or forgotten historical data, perceptive commentary on the changes in our administration of criminal justice over the years, and suggestions for improvement… Virtually everything that Professor Stuntz has written is thought-provoking and constructive... Well worth reading." -- Justice John Paul Stevens, New York Review of Books "This volume is exceptionally rich, insightful, provocative, and well-written. It is bound to have great influence on academic thinking, and perhaps in time on the criminal justice system itself... Stuntz's book will repay much closer scrutiny than I can give it in a review… [An] important book." -- Richard A. Posner, New Republic
      - pmiller2 7y ago
        Coincidentally, ~200 years ago is about when the modern concept of a police force originated. Make of that what you will.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    > honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion Chomsky has a good point about this, that often the most heinous crimes in history have been done with a genuine belief that they are done for good. So, intentions should play a limited role in your judgment of someone's moral outcome. On the other hand, there have been clear cases where the powers that be in America have gone to violent extremes to protect their interests. Some major examples would be the southern slave holders going to war with the rest of the country to protect their 'right' to hold slaves. Or large industrialists getting help from the army or national guard to stop large scale protests and strikes. Or COINTELPRO, where the FBI used infiltration, blackmail and even assassination against the civil rights movement.
    - Xelbair 7y ago
      Or even international interventions like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... Where USA destabilized 3rd world government for profit of fruit company. USA was never a "good guy", they were, and still are, just a lesser evil - especially if compared to soviet union, or now - china.
- rdlecler1 7y ago
  Yes, let’s take an outlier and extrapolate that to a universal. There are bad people everywhere and in America there are a lot of tools to discourage and identify that behavior.
  - i_feel_great 7y ago
    Outlier? Well that depends on a lot of things - social class, colour, gender, religion, position on the environment etc. What looks like an outlier to you may not be an outlier to lots of other people.
  - root_axis 7y ago
    Police abuse is not an outlier, it's a horrifying reality that many people face.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Worse is the whole guilty until proven innocent scenario the media (and our society) has created. All it takes is being a suspect once to have your life turned inside out. For years people will suspect you of whatever horrors were committed by someone else. The founding fathers are rolling over as they say if they heard where this country has gone.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  You can't say that media and public shame are worse than the abuses of the criminal justice system. Your life may get turned upside down if you are simply accused of some crimes (especially sexual crimes), but you may very well bounce back. Getting rightly accused of possession of light drugs and ending up in prison is a much worse outcome, and it happens to many, many times more people. And unlike the celebrities that usually fall on the wrong side of public opinion, most people who are absurdly put in prison for petty crimes will never bounce back, since they don't have the resources (money, social circle) to do so.
  - FeepingCreature 7y ago
    Let's agree that they're both bad.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    How is actually committing a crime and going to prison somehow worse than being wrongfully accused and affected for life?
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      Agreed. People who willfully commit crimes know what they are doing is wrong and can get them in jail or worse. Those around them and before them have likely been caught before.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      Impacts on life from prison that are independent of guilt or innocence? Now it may make them more /deserving/ but it would be worse for the guilty party. Granted it may be better for society (may because nothing stops the law from being messed up) so the question is worse for who?
panny 7y ago
>Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution You just threw that straw man straight down a slippery slope. >apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high This falls under "punching Nazis". Do you want some guy going around punching people? No, of course not. But if he's punching Nazis, then hey, let him do his thing, man. Same logic here, except it's "tracking meth dealers". >I know I sound dramatic I was thinking "moral grandstanding" I'm okay with the police catching a meth dealer and putting him away. Good job. Keep up the good work.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  What straw man? What slippery slope? That's literally what's happening here, and it's the argument you're making: "this man is a meth dealer, so the ends justify the means".
- catalogia 7y ago
  If we permit police to develop a taste for abusing meth nazis, they might turn it into a hobby and start abusing people like you and me too. There can't be any exceptions when it comes to holding law enforcement accountable.
- x220 7y ago
  Punching that Nazi makes him go viral and gives his movement clicks.

senectus1 7y ago

> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? looking back over the years, from the outside, I think that's been the american attitude all along.

2804t3qwp 7y ago
I'd like to hear more about this if you don't mind expounding on it some. I realize that in a certain light that's how it looks (I'm no stranger to a lot of what used to be called conspiracy theories, including the long history of illegal surveillance) but honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion. I realize that's not the same as operating in a legal or legally spirited fashion, but I also don't see it as flagrantly hypocritical enough to warrant the cynicism you've presented.
- Flozzin 7y ago
  While there is no catching a criminal in this situation. Asset forfeiture is abused. This is where police take items, usually cash, and keep it. There is no trial, just a seizure of property. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/phillip-parhamovich-civil-forfeiture https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/p... It's a good example of what I mean. There are others, I'm just not going to post them all. The police seem to optimize for stats and profit. And the cities/counties/state are on board. That's why we see red light cameras too. There are also documented cases of tweaking yellow light times in order to increase the number of tickets sent for running red lights. The police don't seem to be here to protect and serve anymore. Like most things in America it's all about appearances and money.
  - ddingus 7y ago
    The new doctrine is escalation of force to compliance. I have that info from public court, on the record. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21603136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21603136 Protect and serve died decades ago. Today, people literally die at the hands of police for errors, questions, mistakes, and failure to demonstrate blind compliance. <---that is no joke.
    - Flozzin 7y ago
      I just recently saw the video of the guy picking up trash with a claw/grabber and being told to drop his 'weapon'. Several police showed up to stop this threat from cleaning his property. Luckily though, no one was shot, and the officer that started it all resigned.
      - ddingus 7y ago
        I got lucky in the 90's. Ended up in holding for a few hours. Officers escalated a fairly benign scenario into me getting roughed up. They delayed court many times, while trying to make their poor case worse. I took it to trial, won, and those officers were gone. Things are way worse now. Be careful. The attorney I had filled me in. The prosecution presented escalation of force to compliance at my trial. Not doing what they say can escalate to death. The initial event can be ANYTHING.
  - 2804t3qwp 7y ago
    This is a fair criticism, and in line with the comment I replied to, but I still don't know if I agree with the overall sentiment of cynacism. While I'll give you the leaks about Prism/Five Eyes/Mail Espionage (the original government surveillance!), etc. the same documents are in line with what a pattern of being motivated by a fear of being unprepared to defend the greater society from upheaval would look like. Obviously metric gaming is the self serving side of that desire, and I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate here, but a department that doesn't receive adequate resources can't perform its function adequately. At the same time, American justice (I don't know much of other systems) has a long tradition of not just being a government product. Our system is designed to be corrected, lawsuits are easy (if funded) because the (ideally) other side of productive authoritarianism is civil resistance (physical sure but also legal punativism). I realize that these aren't reasons to not be cynical of our LEO organizations, but I guess that's why the cynicism seems strange to me, it's also not a reason to doubt the overall outcomes of the justice system. Whistleblowers (and their checkered history sure), civil disobedients (looking at you MLK and Malcom X), plain old litigants (gay marriage) are the counter balances to the sometimes hostile nature of the bureaucratically empowered entities in the American government. Is the system perfect? Obviously not, maybe not even optimistically close, but it's certainly not something indicative of a populace motivated purely by metric performance from my perspective.
- stevenwoo 7y ago
  This was covered in popular culture most famously by The Wire, written by retired police beat reporter David Simon, it's called "juking the stats", each police district is judged by different crime stats, and promotions are based on those stats, so naturally everything evolves to optimized for better stats. Not only that, on the judicial side in America over the past 50 years, funding has not kept up with the increase in population so there is an extreme pressure on prosecutors to not go to trial, add to this the political nature of the office and American prosecutors are under pressure to keep up their 95% conviction rate, this is done by going hard after those least able to afford an adequate defense and "laddering", adding on every single conceivable charge so that defendants will plead guilty to a smaller number of charges in exchange for some charges being dropped and not inconvenience the state with an expensive trial by jury. This is covered pretty well by season 3 of the Serial podcast.
  - wahern 7y ago
    A great, empirically based, comprehensive look at the devolution of criminal justice in the U.S. can be found in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by the late criminal law scholar William Stuntz. TL;DR: The trend started nearly 200 years ago, though for various reasons it accelerated in the mid 20th century. Some reviews: "The book is eminently readable and merits careful attention because it accurately describes the twin problems that pervade American criminal justice today―its overall severity and its disparate treatment of African-Americans. The book contains a wealth of overlooked or forgotten historical data, perceptive commentary on the changes in our administration of criminal justice over the years, and suggestions for improvement… Virtually everything that Professor Stuntz has written is thought-provoking and constructive... Well worth reading." -- Justice John Paul Stevens, New York Review of Books "This volume is exceptionally rich, insightful, provocative, and well-written. It is bound to have great influence on academic thinking, and perhaps in time on the criminal justice system itself... Stuntz's book will repay much closer scrutiny than I can give it in a review… [An] important book." -- Richard A. Posner, New Republic
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      Coincidentally, ~200 years ago is about when the modern concept of a police force originated. Make of that what you will.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  > honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion Chomsky has a good point about this, that often the most heinous crimes in history have been done with a genuine belief that they are done for good. So, intentions should play a limited role in your judgment of someone's moral outcome. On the other hand, there have been clear cases where the powers that be in America have gone to violent extremes to protect their interests. Some major examples would be the southern slave holders going to war with the rest of the country to protect their 'right' to hold slaves. Or large industrialists getting help from the army or national guard to stop large scale protests and strikes. Or COINTELPRO, where the FBI used infiltration, blackmail and even assassination against the civil rights movement.
  - Xelbair 7y ago
    Or even international interventions like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... Where USA destabilized 3rd world government for profit of fruit company. USA was never a "good guy", they were, and still are, just a lesser evil - especially if compared to soviet union, or now - china.
rdlecler1 7y ago
Yes, let’s take an outlier and extrapolate that to a universal. There are bad people everywhere and in America there are a lot of tools to discourage and identify that behavior.
- i_feel_great 7y ago
  Outlier? Well that depends on a lot of things - social class, colour, gender, religion, position on the environment etc. What looks like an outlier to you may not be an outlier to lots of other people.
- root_axis 7y ago
  Police abuse is not an outlier, it's a horrifying reality that many people face.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

giancarlostoro 7y ago

Worse is the whole guilty until proven innocent scenario the media (and our society) has created. All it takes is being a suspect once to have your life turned inside out. For years people will suspect you of whatever horrors were committed by someone else. The founding fathers are rolling over as they say if they heard where this country has gone.

tsimionescu 7y ago
You can't say that media and public shame are worse than the abuses of the criminal justice system. Your life may get turned upside down if you are simply accused of some crimes (especially sexual crimes), but you may very well bounce back. Getting rightly accused of possession of light drugs and ending up in prison is a much worse outcome, and it happens to many, many times more people. And unlike the celebrities that usually fall on the wrong side of public opinion, most people who are absurdly put in prison for petty crimes will never bounce back, since they don't have the resources (money, social circle) to do so.
- FeepingCreature 7y ago
  Let's agree that they're both bad.
- manigandham 7y ago
  How is actually committing a crime and going to prison somehow worse than being wrongfully accused and affected for life?
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Agreed. People who willfully commit crimes know what they are doing is wrong and can get them in jail or worse. Those around them and before them have likely been caught before.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Impacts on life from prison that are independent of guilt or innocence? Now it may make them more /deserving/ but it would be worse for the guilty party. Granted it may be better for society (may because nothing stops the law from being messed up) so the question is worse for who?

panny 7y ago

>Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution You just threw that straw man straight down a slippery slope. >apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high This falls under "punching Nazis". Do you want some guy going around punching people? No, of course not. But if he's punching Nazis, then hey, let him do his thing, man. Same logic here, except it's "tracking meth dealers". >I know I sound dramatic I was thinking "moral grandstanding" I'm okay with the police catching a meth dealer and putting him away. Good job. Keep up the good work.

jakelazaroff 7y ago
What straw man? What slippery slope? That's literally what's happening here, and it's the argument you're making: "this man is a meth dealer, so the ends justify the means".
catalogia 7y ago
If we permit police to develop a taste for abusing meth nazis, they might turn it into a hobby and start abusing people like you and me too. There can't be any exceptions when it comes to holding law enforcement accountable.
x220 7y ago
Punching that Nazi makes him go viral and gives his movement clicks.