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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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 Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 6:57 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
More generally, I'd agree that citations are a poor way to fund a local government, but one of the points of local government is that it's for the local populace to decide such matters for themselves. And Black residents are a part of that decision making process
. . .
The author suggests there are no easy answers, but I can't help but feeling like the first step towards an answer needs to be a deep, honest consideration of why the political process doesn't seem to offer any relief at all to these ostensible problems, even when the demographic plagued by them controls said process. |
Sorry to flip back and forth from Ferguson to Baltimore.
Look at how cities reward their cops. This is not the populace's will reflected through local legislature. Its fascism and careerism.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish
| David Simon wrote: |
How do you reward cops?
Two ways: promotion and cash. That's what rewards a cop. If you want to pay overtime pay for having police fill the jails with loitering arrests or simple drug possession or failure to yield, if you want to spend your municipal treasure rewarding that, well the cop who’s going to court 7 or 8 days a month — and court is always overtime pay — you're going to damn near double your salary every month. On the other hand, the guy who actually goes to his post and investigates who's burglarizing the homes, at the end of the month maybe he’s made one arrest. It may be the right arrest and one that makes his post safer, but he's going to court one day and he's out in two hours. So you fail to reward the cop who actually does police work. But worse, it’s time to make new sergeants or lieutenants, and so you look at the computer and say: Who's doing the most work? And they say, man, this guy had 80 arrests last month, and this other guy’s only got one. Who do you think gets made sergeant? And then who trains the next generation of cops in how not to do police work? I’ve just described for you the culture of the Baltimore police department amid the deluge of the drug war, where actual investigation goes unrewarded and where rounding up bodies for street dealing, drug possession, loitering such – the easiest and most self-evident arrests a cop can make – is nonetheless the path to enlightenment and promotion and some additional pay. That’s what the drug war built, and that’s what Martin O’Malley affirmed when he sent so much of inner city Baltimore into the police wagons on a regular basis. |
His solution:
| David Simon wrote: |
| [I]f a Baltimore State’s Attorney told all his assistant state’s attorneys today, from this moment on, we are not signing overtime slips for court pay for possession, for simple loitering in a drug-free zone, for loitering, for failure to obey, we’re not signing slips for that: Nobody gets paid for that bullshit, go out and do real police work. If that were to happen, then all at once, the standards for what constitutes a worthy arrest in Baltimore would significantly improve. Take away the actual incentive to do bad or useless police work, which is what the drug war has become. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Plain Meaning wrote: |
Look at how cities reward their cops. This is not the populace's will reflected through local legislature. Its fascism and careerism. |
I don't disagree; no one really wants to be on the receiving end of this kind of "taxation through citation." So why is the local political process failing to provide relief in these majority Black municipalities the way it should? Mr. Simon's suggestion seems like a fine one to me, but it also requires state-level actors to essentially step in and save municipalities from themselves by unilaterally dictating the re-engineering police incentives rather than the locals to politically resolve these issues, so what's the principle here? It's also worth noting that Mr. Morgan's interactions with the police didn't seem to be predicated upon "drug war" offenses. Mr. Simon's proposal doesn't seem like it would provide him any relief, and it's harder to see how his alleged situation could be resolved by "state attorney" fiat, so the question of local political solutions appears to remain keenly important. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2015 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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Civil Liberties Activists: Body Cameras Could Make Things Worse (If Not Regulated)
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This morning, to much buzz nationwide, a coalition of over 30 privacy and civil rights organizations released a statement of shared principles outlining their vision for the future use of police body cameras. The coalition statement argues that body camera footage documenting police interactions with the public “can have a valuable role to play in the present and future of policing,” but insists that safeguards be put in place to ensure that body cameras do not become a “tool for injustice.” Signatories include ACLU, the NAACP, Color of Change and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The coalition’s five principles are that police departments must:
• develop policies for body cameras in public
• specify narrowly defined purposes for their use
• create clear policies for the recording and retention of footage
• make footage publicly available, with privacy safeguards
• prevent police officers from viewing the footage before filing reports
Some observers are concerned such recommendations may be counterproductive, especially if used to legitimize a technology that in the end will likely be left up to the self-regulation of police departments or their local government allies across the country. |
It will be tough to ensure that the Federal money Obama has devoted to body cameras will actually result in meaningful change as long as police departments control the cameras and the policies (flashbacks from HAMP and banks's perversion of the mortgage relief programs they managed).
Basically internal affairs or a separate department needs to control access to the body cameras. In addition, the cameras should be publicly available, and not simply by subpeona. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Wed May 20, 2015 12:29 am Post subject: |
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Can I lock a thread?
No?
Okay, thread is unofficially locked. Go ahead and post concluding comments if you would like, but I recommend everyone just let it drop. |
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