9 ms·

Seeing Aaron made to stand shoeless, handcuffed to a metal bar for over 23 minutes as armed men rifled through his belongings and occasionally asked him questio

Seeing Aaron made to stand shoeless, handcuffed to a metal bar for over 23 minutes as armed men rifled through his belongings and occasionally asked him questions, I can't help but think this process is designed to be demeaning. This is no way to treat someone who's not been found guilty of committing any crime. And I'm sure this wasn't the worst of it. If our criminal justice system had more concern for the dignity of the people that went through it, perhaps we'd see less tragedies like Aaron's.

bane 12y ago
I think if there's a lesson to be learned, one-size-fits all treatment of people is the dehumanizing factor. If the person in the video was a 270 pound guy on his 3rd arrest for B&E and had an arrest history that included violent assault, you'd want him to be chained to a bar without shoes while he was booked. Aaron was a slightly built kid, with no priors, on a non-violent arrest. But those kinds of details don't filter down to the booking officer, and most police stations are equipped to handle difficult "customers", that's why there's 3 inches of protective glass between the officer and Aaron. There's no special "well he looks like a nice kid" booking room. The police in the video appeared courteous and non-aggressive. Nobody was tased, beaten or abused. Aaron was arrested and was cuffed and detained, the same as for any other person. As they went through their processing of him, they asked him politely, thanked him for compliance, assured him things would go smooth and he'd be out pretty quick. They asked him about his medication, verified what it was, asked when he needed his next dose. In terms of police treatment of a person under arrest, this is pretty nice. Of course he's going to be handcuffed, he is in police custody after all. They're not going to just find a comfortable chair for him and ask him if he wants to share in the squadroom's latest pizza delivery while the booking officer runs out for lattes? This is what being under arrest actually looks like. Standing for 23 minutes is hardly cruel or unusual. He wasn't being badgered, they weren't using coercive tactics on him, they didn't even ask him any questions about his case. It was Aaron after all who admits to walking onto MIT's property without a question being asked of him! As tragic as what happened to Aaron is, and the feelings about it that I'm sure you and I both share on the subject. Messing around with other people's property and consequently the law enforcement the might come from that is not something you want to be doing ill prepared. Was MIT's handling poor? Was JSTORs? There's a healthy debate to be had about that. But w/r to the police and the circumstances of his arrest he was treated about as humanly as the system allows for now. In the end, Aaron took his own life. The same naïveté that caused him to look at a closed service door and think "that's a place I'm going to set a computer up and harvest hundreds of thousands of research papers, nobody will know" is also what caused him to buckle under the immense pressure of legal entanglement. He wasn't put to death, executed, beaten to death, tortured or any other horrible thing. He did something against the law and ended up in the grind of the system. The system, instead of treating him like a sensitive special snowflake like we'd like them to have, treated him like any of the other thousands of people it handles every day. It's a shitty way to be treated, but if you want to be in a public fight for your principles, it's something you have to be mentally prepared for. If what you are doing might get you arrested, this is how the legal system works. Be prepared.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Aaron was a slightly built kid, with no priors, on a non-violent arrest. But those kinds of details don't filter down to the booking officer, and most police stations are equipped to handle difficult "customers", that's why there's 3 inches of protective glass between the officer and Aaron. There's no special "well he looks like a nice kid" booking room. You make it sound like something unavoidable. Most western countries in Europe have managed to offer a much better experience. >The police in the video appeared courteous and non-aggressive. Nobody was tased, beaten or abused. That's a pretty low bar.
  - bane 12y ago
    Have you been arrested and booked in most Western Countries in Europe? I've actually been in police stations in a few countries (not under arrest) and they all look about the same. What exactly, in your imagination, do you think police stations look like? A comfortable memory foam massage chair and complimentary espresso bar while a soft voice introduced them to their customized "arrest experience"? > That's a pretty low bar. Well, comments here seem to think that his treatment was somehow unusual or egregious when it's pretty normal and pretty nice and the things that could have turned it into a black eye for the police didn't happen. It's just nit-pickery, people looking to blame somebody other than Aaron for taking his own life. It sucks, it's shitty, I feel bad about what happened with him, I'm pretty upset about it also, but I'm not going to get ridiculous and start pointing fingers at places where there's no pointing to be done.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      >Have you been arrested and booked in most Western Countries in Europe? I've actually been in police stations in a few countries (not under arrest) and they all look about the same. No, I've actually seen people being arrested in several Western Countries in Europe (and in the US). And have been in a couple of police stations (and many more in my home country, were we also go for bureacratic reasons, like getting some permits, passports, etc). >What exactly, in your imagination, do you think police stations look like? A comfortable memory foam massage chair and complimentary espresso bar while a soft voice introduced them to their customized "arrest experience"? About that memory foam massage chair. Here is a prison in Norway compared to a US prison: http://theday.co.uk/politics/lessons-in-law-from-world-s-most-humane-prison http://theday.co.uk/politics/lessons-in-law-from-world-s-mos... Check out images from Swedish, Danish, Swiss, German etc prisons. The worst are perhaps the French ones, and even them can be better than US conditions. Oh, and yes, some arrests involve coffee with the interoggator and soft voices. Especially for high profile persons, which would include someone like Aaron.
chongli 12y ago
We will never have justice in our system for as long as we allow plea-bargaining to take place. Plea-bargaining, by its very nature, is fundamentally unjust.
- tankenmate 12y ago
  There is nothing wrong with mediated and balanced plea bargaining. There is a big problem with mandatory sentencing, discovery hiding, one sided, prosecutor controlled plea bargaining.
  - spacemanmatt 12y ago
    In other words, plea bargaining.
  - chongli 12y ago
    Plea bargaining, no matter how fair and balanced you try to make it, is a gap. In the eyes of legislators, every gap is awaiting a wedge. This is the true flaw in representative democracy. The only solution is to leave no gap by sealing it off entirely at the constitutional level.
bhouston 12y ago
> Seeing Aaron made to stand shoeless, handcuffed to a metal bar for over 23 minutes as armed men rifled through his belongings and occasionally asked him questions, I can't help but think this process is designed to be demeaning. This likely happens dozens of times a day across the US and Canada. I think this is to be expected when you encounter law enforcement in this situation.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >This likely happens dozens of times a day across the US and Canada. I think this is to be expected when you encounter law enforcement in this situation. To "be expected" stasticially, based on experience of how those things happen, yes. But not "to be expected" as "par for the course". No civilized citizenry should accept that thing.
  - bane 12y ago
    Why don't you outline how you think a typical booking should go for a person under arrest for B&E? You appear to have strong feelings on the subject, you keep raising how other countries do it. Bring your international expertise into the picture and outline how you must know they do a similar procedure in say: Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Thailand, South Korea, China and England? Please highlight where those systems provide a particularly good experience for the suspect and where they need work. Compare and contrast to the booking procedures in a typical American police station. Maybe do it as a series of blog posts, with diagrams, furniture photos and fabric selections?
    - coldtea 12y ago
      >Why don't you outline how you think a typical booking should go for a person under arrest for B&E? You appear to have strong feelings on the subject, you keep raising how other countries do it. Bring your international expertise into the picture and outline how you must know they do a similar procedure in say: Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Thailand, South Korea, China and England? Calmly and professinally. I've witnessed arrests in at least 2 of those places (and in general in England, France, Amsterdam (Holland) and Denmark). Not even comparable to things we see in the US. Here are some examples: 1) People CAN and DO get out of their cars when a policeman stops them. They don't stay inside until he approaches out of fear they'll get shot as violent criminals no questions asked. 2) The British police don't even carry guns. 3) Tasering is something that simply almost never happens. Not something the police would use for the first wino or homeless person out in the street. 4) For most simple arrests you are not tied anywhere. You are just taken to the station were they verify your identity and/or temporarily hold you in a holding cell with others. Plus, you keep mentioning B&E. Most cops are able to tell B&E with assault weapons by some thugs in a house from a nerd getting into a university lab for hacking, and treat each case accordingly.
sabarn01 12y ago
That is absolutely the mildest form of intimidation the police can use. Every aspect of our system is designed to dehumanize defendant and victim alike.
cubancigar11 12y ago
Most men don't understand how vulnerable they are because we are always made to take risk, lead and trust the system. The system is intentionally designed to harass people. Powers that be have always treated people outside the system as sheep. First it was the Kings, but at least then common people knew to stay away from strongmen. The System is pretty much the same since then. Men are expected to solve their problems on their own and not whine. Aaron fought the system for a lot of us, but neither he nor a lot of us understand how difficult it is, that the fight is ages old and the system has developed a lot of resistance. The rabbit hole goes deeper than most people understand. We must keep this fight alive if Aaron's life has any value.
- alan_cx 12y ago
  Im with you in spirit, just a thought or two.... "Powers that be have always treated people outside the system as sheep." Isnt it that people inside the system are sheep? People outside the system are considered renegade, some how dangerous to the system, and there for the enemy? People inside the system are implicitly going along with the system, and while they do, no problem. And if you try to fight from with in the system, the system is designed to quickly put the threat you pose down. How that applies to Aaron, I dont know. Was he inside or outside? And frankly, is there a difference these days? Cant help thinking that one of the big illusions these days is the notion that one is off grid, outside the system, and not part of it. The system seems to know no boundary and we are part of it no matter what we want or choose.
  - cubancigar11 12y ago
    By system I mean the lawmakers and the law enforcers. For them law abiders are sheep - or not smart enough (criminals). Politics as an act is how system works and has always worked. No matter how much we cry that politics has gotten worse or that criminals have gotten power, if you look historically smart criminals always had power. And power is the way they work. So, Aaron was indeed NOT part of the system. Neither are you nor me. We, the people, have gotten somewhat into the system by getting involved into politics via democracy. But in reality there is more propaganda about its infallibility than reality. That is where Aaron got caught. He was hacker, he saw the system, and started using it logically (which is like calling APIs, so to say). The problem is that the system doesn't work for you or me or Aaron. The APIs are self-contradictory and designed to entrap you. It works for itself. People are only to be pacified to avoid mass movements. It is true for USA and it is true for China, only difference is how much people get to exert pressure. Quite fucked up! :) Now, there is no demarcation as such, and law abiders also become law enforcers etc. But if you look at the extremes you can see it very clearly. There is a murder, I forget his name, who is serving his sentence because he killed an abusive jailer, then there is Obama who has ordered more drone strikes than anyone in human history because USA has been threatened. I hope I was clear. I will be AFK for sometime.

bane 12y ago

I think if there's a lesson to be learned, one-size-fits all treatment of people is the dehumanizing factor. If the person in the video was a 270 pound guy on his 3rd arrest for B&E and had an arrest history that included violent assault, you'd want him to be chained to a bar without shoes while he was booked. Aaron was a slightly built kid, with no priors, on a non-violent arrest. But those kinds of details don't filter down to the booking officer, and most police stations are equipped to handle difficult "customers", that's why there's 3 inches of protective glass between the officer and Aaron. There's no special "well he looks like a nice kid" booking room. The police in the video appeared courteous and non-aggressive. Nobody was tased, beaten or abused. Aaron was arrested and was cuffed and detained, the same as for any other person. As they went through their processing of him, they asked him politely, thanked him for compliance, assured him things would go smooth and he'd be out pretty quick. They asked him about his medication, verified what it was, asked when he needed his next dose. In terms of police treatment of a person under arrest, this is pretty nice. Of course he's going to be handcuffed, he is in police custody after all. They're not going to just find a comfortable chair for him and ask him if he wants to share in the squadroom's latest pizza delivery while the booking officer runs out for lattes? This is what being under arrest actually looks like. Standing for 23 minutes is hardly cruel or unusual. He wasn't being badgered, they weren't using coercive tactics on him, they didn't even ask him any questions about his case. It was Aaron after all who admits to walking onto MIT's property without a question being asked of him! As tragic as what happened to Aaron is, and the feelings about it that I'm sure you and I both share on the subject. Messing around with other people's property and consequently the law enforcement the might come from that is not something you want to be doing ill prepared. Was MIT's handling poor? Was JSTORs? There's a healthy debate to be had about that. But w/r to the police and the circumstances of his arrest he was treated about as humanly as the system allows for now. In the end, Aaron took his own life. The same naïveté that caused him to look at a closed service door and think "that's a place I'm going to set a computer up and harvest hundreds of thousands of research papers, nobody will know" is also what caused him to buckle under the immense pressure of legal entanglement. He wasn't put to death, executed, beaten to death, tortured or any other horrible thing. He did something against the law and ended up in the grind of the system. The system, instead of treating him like a sensitive special snowflake like we'd like them to have, treated him like any of the other thousands of people it handles every day. It's a shitty way to be treated, but if you want to be in a public fight for your principles, it's something you have to be mentally prepared for. If what you are doing might get you arrested, this is how the legal system works. Be prepared.

coldtea 12y ago
>Aaron was a slightly built kid, with no priors, on a non-violent arrest. But those kinds of details don't filter down to the booking officer, and most police stations are equipped to handle difficult "customers", that's why there's 3 inches of protective glass between the officer and Aaron. There's no special "well he looks like a nice kid" booking room. You make it sound like something unavoidable. Most western countries in Europe have managed to offer a much better experience. >The police in the video appeared courteous and non-aggressive. Nobody was tased, beaten or abused. That's a pretty low bar.
- bane 12y ago
  Have you been arrested and booked in most Western Countries in Europe? I've actually been in police stations in a few countries (not under arrest) and they all look about the same. What exactly, in your imagination, do you think police stations look like? A comfortable memory foam massage chair and complimentary espresso bar while a soft voice introduced them to their customized "arrest experience"? > That's a pretty low bar. Well, comments here seem to think that his treatment was somehow unusual or egregious when it's pretty normal and pretty nice and the things that could have turned it into a black eye for the police didn't happen. It's just nit-pickery, people looking to blame somebody other than Aaron for taking his own life. It sucks, it's shitty, I feel bad about what happened with him, I'm pretty upset about it also, but I'm not going to get ridiculous and start pointing fingers at places where there's no pointing to be done.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >Have you been arrested and booked in most Western Countries in Europe? I've actually been in police stations in a few countries (not under arrest) and they all look about the same. No, I've actually seen people being arrested in several Western Countries in Europe (and in the US). And have been in a couple of police stations (and many more in my home country, were we also go for bureacratic reasons, like getting some permits, passports, etc). >What exactly, in your imagination, do you think police stations look like? A comfortable memory foam massage chair and complimentary espresso bar while a soft voice introduced them to their customized "arrest experience"? About that memory foam massage chair. Here is a prison in Norway compared to a US prison: http://theday.co.uk/politics/lessons-in-law-from-world-s-most-humane-prison http://theday.co.uk/politics/lessons-in-law-from-world-s-mos... Check out images from Swedish, Danish, Swiss, German etc prisons. The worst are perhaps the French ones, and even them can be better than US conditions. Oh, and yes, some arrests involve coffee with the interoggator and soft voices. Especially for high profile persons, which would include someone like Aaron.

chongli 12y ago

We will never have justice in our system for as long as we allow plea-bargaining to take place. Plea-bargaining, by its very nature, is fundamentally unjust.

tankenmate 12y ago
There is nothing wrong with mediated and balanced plea bargaining. There is a big problem with mandatory sentencing, discovery hiding, one sided, prosecutor controlled plea bargaining.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  In other words, plea bargaining.
- chongli 12y ago
  Plea bargaining, no matter how fair and balanced you try to make it, is a gap. In the eyes of legislators, every gap is awaiting a wedge. This is the true flaw in representative democracy. The only solution is to leave no gap by sealing it off entirely at the constitutional level.

bhouston 12y ago

> Seeing Aaron made to stand shoeless, handcuffed to a metal bar for over 23 minutes as armed men rifled through his belongings and occasionally asked him questions, I can't help but think this process is designed to be demeaning. This likely happens dozens of times a day across the US and Canada. I think this is to be expected when you encounter law enforcement in this situation.

coldtea 12y ago
>This likely happens dozens of times a day across the US and Canada. I think this is to be expected when you encounter law enforcement in this situation. To "be expected" stasticially, based on experience of how those things happen, yes. But not "to be expected" as "par for the course". No civilized citizenry should accept that thing.
- bane 12y ago
  Why don't you outline how you think a typical booking should go for a person under arrest for B&E? You appear to have strong feelings on the subject, you keep raising how other countries do it. Bring your international expertise into the picture and outline how you must know they do a similar procedure in say: Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Thailand, South Korea, China and England? Please highlight where those systems provide a particularly good experience for the suspect and where they need work. Compare and contrast to the booking procedures in a typical American police station. Maybe do it as a series of blog posts, with diagrams, furniture photos and fabric selections?
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >Why don't you outline how you think a typical booking should go for a person under arrest for B&E? You appear to have strong feelings on the subject, you keep raising how other countries do it. Bring your international expertise into the picture and outline how you must know they do a similar procedure in say: Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Thailand, South Korea, China and England? Calmly and professinally. I've witnessed arrests in at least 2 of those places (and in general in England, France, Amsterdam (Holland) and Denmark). Not even comparable to things we see in the US. Here are some examples: 1) People CAN and DO get out of their cars when a policeman stops them. They don't stay inside until he approaches out of fear they'll get shot as violent criminals no questions asked. 2) The British police don't even carry guns. 3) Tasering is something that simply almost never happens. Not something the police would use for the first wino or homeless person out in the street. 4) For most simple arrests you are not tied anywhere. You are just taken to the station were they verify your identity and/or temporarily hold you in a holding cell with others. Plus, you keep mentioning B&E. Most cops are able to tell B&E with assault weapons by some thugs in a house from a nerd getting into a university lab for hacking, and treat each case accordingly.

sabarn01 12y ago

That is absolutely the mildest form of intimidation the police can use. Every aspect of our system is designed to dehumanize defendant and victim alike.

cubancigar11 12y ago

Most men don't understand how vulnerable they are because we are always made to take risk, lead and trust the system. The system is intentionally designed to harass people. Powers that be have always treated people outside the system as sheep. First it was the Kings, but at least then common people knew to stay away from strongmen. The System is pretty much the same since then. Men are expected to solve their problems on their own and not whine. Aaron fought the system for a lot of us, but neither he nor a lot of us understand how difficult it is, that the fight is ages old and the system has developed a lot of resistance. The rabbit hole goes deeper than most people understand. We must keep this fight alive if Aaron's life has any value.

alan_cx 12y ago
Im with you in spirit, just a thought or two.... "Powers that be have always treated people outside the system as sheep." Isnt it that people inside the system are sheep? People outside the system are considered renegade, some how dangerous to the system, and there for the enemy? People inside the system are implicitly going along with the system, and while they do, no problem. And if you try to fight from with in the system, the system is designed to quickly put the threat you pose down. How that applies to Aaron, I dont know. Was he inside or outside? And frankly, is there a difference these days? Cant help thinking that one of the big illusions these days is the notion that one is off grid, outside the system, and not part of it. The system seems to know no boundary and we are part of it no matter what we want or choose.
- cubancigar11 12y ago
  By system I mean the lawmakers and the law enforcers. For them law abiders are sheep - or not smart enough (criminals). Politics as an act is how system works and has always worked. No matter how much we cry that politics has gotten worse or that criminals have gotten power, if you look historically smart criminals always had power. And power is the way they work. So, Aaron was indeed NOT part of the system. Neither are you nor me. We, the people, have gotten somewhat into the system by getting involved into politics via democracy. But in reality there is more propaganda about its infallibility than reality. That is where Aaron got caught. He was hacker, he saw the system, and started using it logically (which is like calling APIs, so to say). The problem is that the system doesn't work for you or me or Aaron. The APIs are self-contradictory and designed to entrap you. It works for itself. People are only to be pacified to avoid mass movements. It is true for USA and it is true for China, only difference is how much people get to exert pressure. Quite fucked up! :) Now, there is no demarcation as such, and law abiders also become law enforcers etc. But if you look at the extremes you can see it very clearly. There is a murder, I forget his name, who is serving his sentence because he killed an abusive jailer, then there is Obama who has ordered more drone strikes than anyone in human history because USA has been threatened. I hope I was clear. I will be AFK for sometime.