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exist not because the acts themselves are particularly heinous, but because they're proxies for things that are dangerous, namely gang activity. How does that
by moocowduckquack 13y ago
exist not because the acts themselves are particularly heinous, but because they're proxies for things that are dangerous, namely gang activity.
How does that work exactly? Surely if you want to target violent gangs, you target the violence. Arresting them for painting seems to be about the most backward thing imaginable.
- logfromblammo 13y agoWhat were they finally able to pin on Al Capone? Tax evasion. The reasoning is that if you can't nail them for the thing you can't prove, you wing them with the thing you can.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoSave us from the argument that it worked for Capone. Firstly, Capone was doing tax evasion and the crime of tax evasion had not been brought in to deter gang violence, which is the argument being used here about grafitti, but was considered a serious matter in and of itself. Also the fact that one major crime boss was once able to be jailed through using tax evasion laws, does not therefore mean that this is a broadly applicable tactic and also does not mean that entire areas of law should be made harsher on the idea that some of the people you are doing for grafitti might be murderers. It is just pure nonsense.
- logfromblammo 13y agoNevertheless, lesser offenses are routinely selectively enforced against people whom the police find to be suspicious or even merely annoying, and ignored for everyone else. If you're open carrying a gun in Alabama and carrying an ice cream cone in your back pocket, guess what you will be arrested for--the ice cream cone, the thing that's actually illegal. Never mind that the police were called out in the first place for the gun.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoI haven't found any evidence that anyone has ever actually been arrested in Alabama for having an ice cream in their back pocket, the nearest I could find was that it was possibly once a tactic of horse rustlers or alternatively is possibly made up. As for folk being wrongfully arrested in Alabama for openly carrying arms, well there's the guy who walked into a bank with a handgun who is appealing his arrest. He got a $200 sentence and no jail time though.
- mindcrime 13y agoThe reasoning is that if you can't nail them for the thing you can't prove, you wing them with the thing you can. reply And the problem with that reasoning is that it conveniently ignores the point that once you start down that path, you start catching a lot of people who aren't Al Capone in your net.
- logfromblammo 13y agoYou seem to think that they care about that. A police state is a great place to live in, if you're a cop.
- mindcrime 13y agoNah, I don't really think they care. But a few people still do. Probably not enough though. :-(
- dragonwriter 13y ago> How does that work exactly? Surely if you want to target violent gangs, you target the violence. Arresting them for painting seems to be about the most backward thing imaginable. The idea is to find something that is sufficiently common and easy to prove that people you are likely to want to punish for other reasons are likely to engage in (whether or not people who engage in it are likely to be people you want to punish for other reasons), so that you have a lever for prosecution and don't have to do the hard work of proving the actual offense of concern. Its essentially a hack around the Constitutional requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt for criminal conviction.