Enforcers category archive
Immunity Impunity
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Brenda Salter McNeil has a question.
The Sticking Together Point 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Arthur Dobrin explores why good cops, who are sworn to uphold the law and do, protect bad cops, who are sworn to uphold the law and don’t.
It is an especially timely read.
Presumption 0
Police pummel passenger for being in a “ride share” with a broken tail light.
It is difficult for citizens to respect law enforcers when the law enforcers do not respect either citizens or the law. Just sayin’.
It’s All about the Algorithm, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Dept. 0
The EFF reports that Santa Clara, California, has ended its near-decade long experiment with “predictive policing” after finding that it just does not deliver. Here’s a tiny bit from their article (emphasis added):
There is a reason why the use of predictive policing continues to expand despite its dubious foundations: it makes money. Many companies have developed tools for data-driven policing; some of the biggest arePredPol, HunchLab, CivicScape, and Palantir. Academic institutions have also developed predictive policing technologies, such as Rutgers University’s RTM Diagnostics or Carnegie Mellon University’s CrimeScan, which is used in Pittsburgh. . . .
It is almost serendipitous, in a darkly sardonic way, that, in the same week that the EFF released its report, the Tampa Bay Times published the results of its investigation into how predictive policing lead to a cesspool of police surveillance and harassment in Pasco County, Florida. A nugget (again, emphasis added):
Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.
They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.
One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”
If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0
Robin Abcarian looks at the mental contortions that (mostly white) persons put themselves through to deny reality sitting right before their eyes to justify unjustifiable police shootings of black persons, mostly young men.
But step back for a moment. Think of the bigger picture.
And look at it this way: No one should have put a knee on Floyd’s neck in the first place. No one should have shot Blake in the back. No one should have barged into Taylor’s home unannounced.
And, by the way, how is it OK for a 17-year-old white kid to freely roam the streets of Kenosha with an AR-15-style rifle — that he later uses to kill two people while police look on — but a Black man with a knife in his car is considered a threat to a cop standing behind him?
Immunity Impunity
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My local rag investigates how the “bad apples” manage to stay in the barrel. A snippet:
State law makes it impossible to strip an officer of their certification unless they have been convicted of a felony or certain misdemeanors. And even when officers’ conduct reaches those narrow criteria, many are not decertified by the state board with that responsibility.
Immunity Impunity, Driving while Black Dept.
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There’s a reason different states’ license plates have different color schemes.
Plus, in my experience, automobiles are generally somewhat larger than motorcycles (emphasis added).
(snip)
Police then determined they had stopped the wrong car. It had Colorado license plates but a motorcycle with the same license plate number from Montana was the vehicle that had been reported as stolen on Sunday.
More at the link.
