Moderator: Dux
"Without the ill gotten gains, who will build MUH ROADZZZ???"Read back a page or two (before you took the red pill)-- I'm not in favor of civil forfeiture laws. I do recognize the needs of impoverished communities for revenue, and know what it's like when a community descends into Bartertown.
The field tests seem simple, but a lot can go wrong. Some tests, including the one the Houston police officers used to analyze the crumb on the floor of Albritton’s car, use a single tube of a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate, which turns blue when it is exposed to cocaine. But cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners.
In a 1974 study, however, the National Bureau of Standards warned that the kits “should not be used as sole evidence for the identification of a narcotic or drug of abuse.” Police officers were not chemists, and chemists themselves had long ago stopped relying on color tests, preferring more reliable mass spectrographs. By 1978, the Department of Justice had determined that field tests “should not be used for evidential purposes,” and the field tests in use today remain inadmissible at trial in nearly every jurisdiction; instead, prosecutors must present a secondary lab test using more reliable methods.
But this has proved to be a meaningless prohibition. Most drug cases in the United States are decided well before they reach trial, by the far more informal process of plea bargaining. In 2011, RTI International, a nonprofit research group based in North Carolina, found that prosecutors in nine of 10 jurisdictions it surveyed nationwide accepted guilty pleas based solely on the results of field tests, and in our own reporting, we confirmed that prosecutors or judges accept plea deals on that same basis in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle and Tampa.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-an ... iladelphiaFor decades, Philadelphia's property tax system has been criticized as outdated and unfair. In many cases, assessments have had little relation to actual property values—or to assessments of similar structures across the street [...] One reason Philadelphians have been relatively complacent about longstanding inequities in assessments, analysts say, is that they pay less in property taxes (and more in wage taxes) than residents of many other jurisdictions. On a per capita basis, Philadelphia's property tax produces only about one quarter the amount generated in Washington and a third of what is collected in Boston and Hartford. These numbers include taxes that help pay for city government and those that fund the school system.
http://www.phillyvoice.com/aclu-philly- ... residents/The ACLU of Pennsylvania claims 32 percent of cash forfeitures are not supported by a conviction [...] The ACLU found that only 34 percent of property owners received proper notice of their forfeiture cases, including five percent of cases where the DA's Office did not have proof of issuing any notice.
http://ij.org/philadelphia-facts-and-figures/Although Philadelphia’s population is smaller than Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles County, it brings in twice as much civil forfeiture revenue as these two combined [...] On average, Philadelphia’s forfeiture machine revenue equals almost 20 percent of the Philadelphia DA’s general budget. Philadelphia spends nearly 40 percent of its forfeiture revenue on salaries, including the salaries of the very officials doing the seizing and forfeiting.
http://6abc.com/news/philadelphia-viole ... se/927865/Citywide the murder and violence rate is running significantly ahead of last year's. 692 people have been shot so far this year - 161 murdered. In 2014 at this point there were 621 wounded by gunfire - 149 shot dead.
Calm down Nurse Balbricker.tonkadtx wrote:"Without the ill gotten gains, who will build MUH ROADZZZ???"Read back a page or two (before you took the red pill)-- I'm not in favor of civil forfeiture laws. I do recognize the needs of impoverished communities for revenue, and know what it's like when a community descends into Bartertown.
I could write multiple theses in Political Science and Economics on just the BS in this one statement.
You've not even attempted to describe the relationship between where the money comes from and where it goes..Turdacious wrote:I bring Philly up because it's the most egregious abuser of civil forfeiture laws that I know of. But how would Philly raise the revenue it needs without civil forfeiture (i.e. a de facto tax on poor black residents-- the least economically mobile residents)? Raise property taxes and more taxpayers move to the suburbs, and the soda tax will only do so much. If Philly falls apart, the only local beneficiary would be Camden. Other than decreasing unfunded state and federal mandates, I don't know the answer.
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/leg ... &subsctn=0(f) Use of cash or proceeds of property.--Cash or proceeds of forfeited property transferred to the custody of the district attorney pursuant to subsection (e) shall be placed in the operating fund of the county in which the district attorney is elected. The appropriate county authority shall immediately release from the operating fund, without restriction, a like amount for the use of the district attorney enforcing the provisions of The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act. The entity having budgetary control shall not anticipate future forfeitures or proceeds therefrom in adoption and approval of the budget for the district attorney.
In Philly, 7.3% of the DA's office is AF money. Your 20% number is not sourced well but nonetheless....it doesn't go into General Fund. without Context of how the money can be spent, your assertion is meaningless.Under state civil forfeiture laws, all the revenue generated from forfeiture goes directly to law enforcement and can even be distributed to police and prosecutors as bonuses. As a result, the agencies making enforcement decisions have a strong financial incentive to pursue as many forfeitures as possible. In Philadelphia, the district attorney’s share of forfeiture proceeds is roughly $2.2 million — or 7.3% of its appropriated budget.
9 Million.....total......The raw numbers of forfeiture enforcement in Philadelphia are staggering. Based on data from 2011 to 2013, roughly 6,000 forfeiture cases are filed on an annual basis, including nearly 300 against houses and other real estate. This enforcement activity results in the forfeiture of some 100 homes, 150 vehicles, and roughly $4 million in cash each year, for a total of around $5 million in annual income.
Jesus, I am not sure how much easier I can make it for you. 1/10 of 1% IN YOUR BEST EXAMPLE.Turdacious wrote:Nice try-- that's 9m in money that doesn't have to be allocated from the general fund; and this is a trend that is repeated nationwide.
http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... -and-texas
Is it abused? Absolutely.
Now to get into the details-- the Health Choices Behavioral Health Fund ($1.3b) is overwhelmingly state and federal money; grants ($1.5b) is probably not local money. You've got a decent argument, no need to play fast and loose with the facts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... story.htmlThey’d come to the same church on the same night to confront the same dilemma facing this city’s beleaguered police department. But what they wanted from the police couldn’t have been more different. Eight days had passed since the Justice Department issued a scathing review of the Baltimore Police Department, detailing years of racial discrimination in its law enforcement practices. Yet the 40 or so longtime residents who gathered in a West Baltimore church basement on this August night — many of whom were older black women afraid to walk to the store or leave their homes at night — had come to urge police to clear their corners of miscreants and restore order to their crime-plagued community [...]
The city recorded 344 homicides last year, the highest per capita in history.This year, Western leads the other districts with 35 homicides. Peter Moskos, who served as a Baltimore officer from 1999 to 2001 for his Harvard University thesis and a book called “Cops in the Hood,” said the Justice Department “forgot that people live in the Western District, and they deserve peace and quiet as much as anyone in the city.” A professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, Moskos said that most people want loitering laws and other quality-of-life violations enforced. But the widely embraced “broken windows” approach to law enforcement, which emphasized enforcing littering and graffiti ordinances to prevent further lawlessness, has fallen out of favor with many experts [...]
The disconnect was profound. Those who felt abused by the police didn’t hear their neighbors expressing fear about crime. And those fearful of crime didn’t hear the voices of people who have been harassed by the police.
This is a very interesting topic, and I don't know if there is a simple solution. As a libertarian, I usually fall on the anti-police side. Let me lay out some of the reasons why:They’d come to the same church on the same night to confront the same dilemma facing this city’s beleaguered police department. But what they wanted from the police couldn’t have been more different. Eight days had passed since the Justice Department issued a scathing review of the Baltimore Police Department, detailing years of racial discrimination in its law enforcement practices. [..]
Wow.tonkadtx wrote:This is a very interesting topic, and I don't know if there is a simple solution. As a libertarian, I usually fall on the anti-police side. Let me lay out some of the reasons why:They’d come to the same church on the same night to confront the same dilemma facing this city’s beleaguered police department. But what they wanted from the police couldn’t have been more different. Eight days had passed since the Justice Department issued a scathing review of the Baltimore Police Department, detailing years of racial discrimination in its law enforcement practices. [..]
- Personal experience: I'm Irish and I grew up in Queens NY. I've been surrounded by cops my whole life as family, extended family, neighbors, peers, and friends. Growing up I saw new numerous cops who were alcoholics, one who beat his wife, and one who beat his wife and kids. I used to listen to the old timers joke about beating people with phone books so you didn't leave any marks, lying and tricking people who probably weren't guilty into confessing, and flaking people off with bad evidence when the were angry or didn't like the person. They all routinely carried drop weapons, which they made no secret of. I had to clean out the apartment of a detective after he passed away and found a box full of 007 knives (which I'm sure he took from Skells) a couple of Frankenstein handguns, etc. When I was 12, my friends and I went out throwing eggs on Halloween - the cops chased us. They were so incensed we made them run, when they caught us they beat us with their nightsticks and then dropped us off in the projects thinking the project kids would beat the shit out of us on Halloween (maybe worse). Luckily we knew all the project kids from football and little league. I have also seen drunk cops start bar fights numerous times, lose, and then try to claim an officer was assaulted or pull their gun or both in bars in Woodside or Queens Blvd when I was in my Doorman phase.
-The ubiquity of video: it seems like everyday there are a thousand videos of cops behaving badly. I worry less about the shootings because each shooting is an individual set of circumstances, then I worry about the videos that show a pervasive police state attitude. Tasing little kids and pregnant women. Kicking a seated teenage girl in handcuffs in the face. Any situation where a person asserts their constitutional rights and refuses a search or an interview is immediately escalated to a confrontation. Shooting dogs. Off duty cops believing they can do whatever they want (and lecturing or bullying people while they do it).
The flip side of this coin is:
- I grew up in NY when there where almost 3,000 murders a year. Everyone I know carried a weapon in case you got jumped on the subway on your way to high school (we were targets because we were wearing Catholic School uniforms). Everyone I know, including me, got jumped at least once by a group of "urban" youths. We used to fight with the kids from Queensbridge constantly to keep them from robbing our little brothers, mothers, etc. Giuliani was a dick, but he absolutely cleaned up the city with broken windows policing. People live in parts of the city now they would not have set foot in circa 1991. I walk back and forth to school in a part of Harlem that was a free fire zone.
I really don't know what the answer is. Decent folks have a right to live in their neighborhood without being prey to thugs. Police can't go around abusing people and violating their rights all day. I have a feeling that ending the drug war, and putting less non-violent offenders behind bars would alleviate some of these issues (less contact with police?). Focus on property and violent crime. But that is never going to happen because the drug war and the prison industrial complex it supports are too lucrative.
I don't click linksTurdacious wrote:In the WaPo no lesshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pu ... story.htmlThey’d come to the same church on the same night to confront the same dilemma facing this city’s beleaguered police department. But what they wanted from the police couldn’t have been more different. Eight days had passed since the Justice Department issued a scathing review of the Baltimore Police Department, detailing years of racial discrimination in its law enforcement practices. Yet the 40 or so longtime residents who gathered in a West Baltimore church basement on this August night — many of whom were older black women afraid to walk to the store or leave their homes at night — had come to urge police to clear their corners of miscreants and restore order to their crime-plagued community [...]
The city recorded 344 homicides last year, the highest per capita in history.This year, Western leads the other districts with 35 homicides. Peter Moskos, who served as a Baltimore officer from 1999 to 2001 for his Harvard University thesis and a book called “Cops in the Hood,” said the Justice Department “forgot that people live in the Western District, and they deserve peace and quiet as much as anyone in the city.” A professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, Moskos said that most people want loitering laws and other quality-of-life violations enforced. But the widely embraced “broken windows” approach to law enforcement, which emphasized enforcing littering and graffiti ordinances to prevent further lawlessness, has fallen out of favor with many experts [...]
The disconnect was profound. Those who felt abused by the police didn’t hear their neighbors expressing fear about crime. And those fearful of crime didn’t hear the voices of people who have been harassed by the police.
Discuss.
The funny thing about what you wrote, is that at one point I would have generally tended to agree with most of what you wrote. I was a personal witness to everything in my account except for the bullshit the old timers were slinging. These guys were on much earlier than you, think late 60's and 70's. I don't know if that causes you to revise your opinion.Wow.
I grew-up in Jackson Heights and know Woodside bars very well.
I was also a cop in the 2-3, during the end of Dinkins/start of Rudy when the city was a shithole. I worked midnight to 8's for 3 years. I have personally seen 14 homicide victims. I know the 2-3 vicinity is waaaaay better now, but then it was a hellhole.
With all due respect to your family and friends who told those stories, I shout bullshit. While there were absolute horrid tales (such as nightsticks up the ass and the 'dirty 30'), I saw nothing of the kind. Nothing. And, even if it did happen, who would be stupid enough to tell those stories? No bragging, but I was hand picked for the late tour since there were so few and the jobs were the heaviest, and I was capable and had a level head. I worked with great cops, and we were pretty much smooth as silk in dealing with mopes/skells. On the bad guy's side, it was never in a mope's best interest to get stupid with us and vice versa. Although various degrees of use of force did happen, none of us wanted to do anything that would get us 'jammed up', trust me on this, it was so easy to get into trouble just by way of bullshit allegations....I lived it.
My stories are old and tired, I know. I also realize there is a clear concern about certain cop's conduct, but I do believe it is minuscule relative to the jobs answered or 'pick ups'.
I am a 'Classical Liberal', so I too, am no fan of a shit ton of bullshit laws, but no cop goes to work looking for trouble....that is a farse.
On a slight tangent, the disgrace is most 'ghetto people' are good people who just want to live a good life; white liberals spin it so 'bad people' of color do crime because they are poor....absolute horseshit and they have no genuine point of reference.
I don't know if it's bullshit, part of the collective unconscious, dead correct or faulty memory but by grandfather and great uncle were cops in the 50's and 60's when Seattle was just a sleepy little stain of a Port town. They told identical stories...my grandfather most vocally who impressed upon me very early to never turn your back on a cop and never answer questions.tonkadtx wrote:- Personal experience: I'm Irish and I grew up in Queens NY. I've been surrounded by cops my whole life as family, extended family, neighbors, peers, and friends. Growing up I saw new numerous cops who were alcoholics, one who beat his wife, and one who beat his wife and kids. I used to listen to the old timers joke about beating people with phone books so you didn't leave any marks, lying and tricking people who probably weren't guilty into confessing, and flaking people off with bad evidence when the were angry or didn't like the person. They all routinely carried drop weapons, which they made no secret of. I had to clean out the apartment of a detective after he passed away and found a box full of 007 knives (which I'm sure he took from Skells) a couple of Frankenstein handguns, etc.
The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:
BD,
As you well know The Common Law Right of Inquiry gives cops the right to ask for your name, address and explanation of conduct, in a public place. You, and anyone else, has every right to say fuck you and walk away. I think, in the moment, the line between CLRI and Reasonable suspicion is when things get hairy. Your grandfather could have meant that never turn your back means don't do your part in causing potential escalation, and just be cool vs. don't turn your back or you will get a blackjack across your neck. Turning your back on a cop most definitely creates the thought of a threat from the cop's perspective as he is engaging you verbally and cannot necessarily see your hands. Most mopes are smart about this, BTW. As you stated, memories can be flawed and all....
Two summers ago, I had cops banging on my door and ringing my bell in the middle of the night. Apparently, someone ditched on a Uber fare and used our address. Before I opened the door, I got all my visible, non-lethal 'stuff' out of sight and out of any 'lungeble area'. Most definitely be smarter than the cattle you're herding, but that works on both sides of the shield (badge). Everyone is safer that way.Blaidd Drwg wrote:The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:
BD,
As you well know The Common Law Right of Inquiry gives cops the right to ask for your name, address and explanation of conduct, in a public place. You, and anyone else, has every right to say fuck you and walk away. I think, in the moment, the line between CLRI and Reasonable suspicion is when things get hairy. Your grandfather could have meant that never turn your back means don't do your part in causing potential escalation, and just be cool vs. don't turn your back or you will get a blackjack across your neck. Turning your back on a cop most definitely creates the thought of a threat from the cop's perspective as he is engaging you verbally and cannot necessarily see your hands. Most mopes are smart about this, BTW. As you stated, memories can be flawed and all....
He was very clear on what he meant. Never Ever Ever Ever Trust the Police...just as as you would never ever ever trust any random stranger with a gun regardless of his authority.
I am baffled by anyone's implicit and or automatic assumption of good will and or authorities...the same people who can't manage to navigate the UN Conspiracy that is the DMV, will slip up their skirt quicker than a prom queen when dealing with Local PD. I don't interact with dangerous people that are unknown to me. If you know the officer, that could be a mitigating factor for you to use individual judgement. I know the beat cops near the gym by name and the ones in my neighborhood by sight...so the ROE could be changed...BUT trust and faith in individuals is earned, trust and faith in groups of people is pathologically stupid. Hence, I treat all police interactions in this country in the same fashion as you would traveling south of the border. I've had many, I've never had a problem...be smarter than the cattle you're herding.
LOL...wasn't necessary. Could be due to the fact that it was a cute female deputy and for some insane reason, women love me. Funny side note: she asked me if I had a son and if he perhaps just got home. I was like "yeah, I have a son, but he's 5, so I don't think he ordered a cab...." That literally cracked her up.Blaidd Drwg wrote:You need my doormat.....
I think one of the easiest ways (aside from ending the drug war), to clean up some of the excess would be to force police officers to carry personal liability insurance just like medical providers or other professions that can ruin someones life. The basic policy could be paid for by their department and anything over that would need to be paid out of pocket. Bad cops would become un-insurable.Civilian police oversight types want to criminalize substandard police behavior - if a cop mistakes a cell phone or toy gun for a weapon and kills a citizen, that cop is charged with murder.
Nobody's losing track of the ball. It's both.Blaidd Drwg wrote:Let's not lose track of the ball...
It's not about serving justice it's about insuring compliance.
