The Racket: Nobody Can Rightly Claim Surprise at Police Corruption WaPo's Michael Sallah, Robert O'Harrow Jr., and Steven Rich explain the situation: After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways. Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively in searching for suspicious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training. The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view: the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back. Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms that teach the techniques of “highway interdiction” to departments across the country. The paraphilia is called lust murder, which is strange enough insofar as its phrasing suggests more a murder for lust instead of a lust for murder, but it probably works better than a neologism like mortophile. In truth, I'm actually surprised that we don't have a —philia for those who get off on the thought of killing other people. (Cidephile? Not quite.) But here's the thing: Recalling those who carry guns for personal protection, especially because they might doubt the ability of the police to do their jobs, how many of those are going to gun down a cop because he's using his badge to steal your money? Because the answer is that if you're not willing to when you are absolutely certain you're being railroaded, then it really isn't about preventing crime; it's about empowerment to kill people. Really there is nothing about what we're hearing from the Washington Post that should surprise anyone. This is how it's gone for years. And this is one among many reasons so many people identify police badges with dangerous corruption. The only real question is why it's gone on this long, and we're still not really doing anything useful about it. This is how it goes, because this is how we want it. And while there are many who find such circumstances repugnant, they are still a minority, and thus must continue to endure the kind wishes of our neighbors who would instead choose to empower poice corruption. ____________________ Notes: Sallah, Michael, Robert O'Harrow Jr., and Steven Rich. "Stop and seize". The Washington Post. September 6, 2014. WashingtonPost.com. September 7, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/
Oh, boy. I might get in trouble, but: Q: How do you get a nun pregnant? A: Dress her up like a choir boy. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This and That Why thank you. I stopped at an apparently inadequate psychology page, and didn't think to jump the extra valence and search "lust murder". D'oh! • • • I wouldn't want to start a knock-up derby, of course, but, yeah, it's better than the one about Italian Jews, which I shan't repeat here, and anyone else who knows that punch line knows why. It's on par with the Sandbox Joke.
Long ago, I ran an auto paint shop. One day a rather attractive young woman, wearing the hint of a nun's habit, pale grey/blue but with the skirt above the knees, came in with an ugly old ford sedan. She was part of a group of nuns who lived among and worked to help the poor and disadvantaged. My bodyman did an excellent job, and we painted the car a conservative powder blue(outside and inside) and didn't charge a penny for it. If it had seemed appropriate, I'd have jumped her bones in 10 seconds flat(sigh). Beautiful body and a beautiful spirit--does it get any better than that?
Reminds me of the movie Serpico. Everyone was in on the corruption and Serpico found out to much what was going on.
It's about personal safety - and threatening a cop with a gun, like stealing from the Mob, is not something a prudent body would do on impulse as a matter of personal safety. Also, we generally presume in the US that there are limits on a cop's behavior and recourse in fact - a cop who is robbing you on the highway is not presumptively threatening your life with impunity, so deadly force is not indicated. Pulling a gun on impulse whenever you are absolutely certain you are being railroaded is a very long way from the use of a gun to "prevent crime". The connection is distant and indirect. As far as police racketeering - it's routine in banana republic political systems, and the growing similarity of the US to a stereotypical banana republic is standard fare in off-broadcast political analysis. As far as the empowerment to kill people - why yes, that is one way to look at it: distribution of the ability to kill people throughout the society, rather than concentrating it in a few hands.
Cognitive Conflicts? What an interesting analogy. Defending yourself, like committing a crime is not something a prudent body would do on impulse as a matter of safety. It's not that I don't get where you're going, but that line is so full of shit on the following grounds: I will attempt to reject future assertions by firearms advocates concerning "crime prevention", and they will, of course, complain that I am misrepresenting gun owners. See, at this point, the firearms lobby and its gullible citizen ranks are just like the religious zealots; others are expected to address the body politic, and then the body politic spontaneously and temporarily disassociates itself in order to stand on individuality. In the end, what it looks like is people rallying around a label, not any particular principle. And while that is certainly their right, I would also point to Randall Munroe, who noted, "I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express." While Munroe was aiming more at the Palinites and Tea Partiers, among others, who think other people enjoying their own First Amendment rights are somehow violating said rights of Christians and Republicans simply by disagreeing, there is an application here. And it's not necessarily the fact of the First Amendment, but more an appearance that the firearms lobby is simply jerking people around because it can. There's no principle, here. Which is all well and fine for pub talk, but the human costs of unprincipled behavior have this nasty tendency to persist. It's true, though, people aren't going to be shooting cops. But that's also part of the problem. Well, okay, the shooting part is an open question. But for all our tough on crime talk, the trade-off is that we let the police fill the void. And in these United States, this is what we want. Or, at least, this is what we have made. And, frankly, I dissent. The Revolution was lost when we adopted the U.S. Constitution with a three-fifths compromise written into it. And we have repeatedly rubbed the world's noses in that fact. None of this would be particularly frustrating, except that rational discourse is nearly impossible. And when it comes to crime and punishment? I remember driving on the road the day we held services for four shields gunned down in a Tacoma coffee shop. Police cars made a point of pulling over on the sides of roads where people could see them get out of their cars and lay a black diagonal band over their license plates as part of the funerary commemoration. How sickeningly sweet. They never show such respect for the people they murder. But thank you for clearing up that guns aren't really about crime prevention. Given what people will threaten with guns for, and even shoot one another to death for, you are suddenly describing a culture that does not appear to exist. Again, though, thank you for clearing up the deceiving rhetoric from your gun-toting fellows about preventing crime. This is what we made. America the Beautiful, eh? Liberty and Justice for All. I'm sure the dead toddlers will appreciate that outlook. See, the problem is that it's not the "empowerment to kill people" that the firearms advocates are protecting, but, rather, the "right to kill indiscriminately". That much is obvious. Then again, if we cross political lines to a faction where you will find much support for your firearms outlook but little else—e.g., Republicans—there is also the tough-on-crime, law and order argument that has helped render our police departments nothing more than rackets. One thing we can do to reduce the amount you might feel compelled to protect yourself with a gun is take back all the insanely dangerous privileges we've given police for the sake of political expedience and not having to think about hard issues. Oh, right. Sorry. Cops get away with crime. That's my bad for having forgotten. And the hard question here is how do you solve a problem like polizia? ____________________ Notes: Munroe, Randall. "Free Speech". xkcd. (n.d.) xkcd.com. September 8, 2014. http://xkcd.com/1357/
Simple, remove their immunity, and every single time that a policeman shoots someone try them in a court of law by a jury of peers, rather than letting them decide internally if the shooting was justified. If we claim to be a nation of laws, and "no one is above the law" then perhaps we should behave that way?
If only... then people like Martha Stewart and Justin Beiber wouldn't have immunity because of their socio-economic status, and politicians wouldn't be immune because of their political status...
Functional Challenges And a wonderful answer it is. That's not sarcasm, either. Although I don't have a way around the political problem. That is to say, what about American history tells us what pathway to follow in order to achieve that outcome? I have yet to find a route where the road isn't washed out by a deluge of chest-beating, tough-on-crime machismo intended to distract voters from rational thought. Therein lies a functional challenge. We have, historically, made so many excuses for abrogating constitutional obligations to due process and equal protection that reclaiming that standard would be the extraordinary assertion. After all, abiding by the Constitution is really inconvenient for law enforcement, which is why they don't have to.
There's a greater problem. The politicians, etc. want us to keep watching the puppet show while they do their own thing, law or not.
Yeah, it is. Pulling a gun on a cop, in the US, is not defending yourself in very many circumstances - certainly not the kind described, where highway cops are robbing people. I went so far as to point out why, although one would think it's pretty obvious to a fellow American. It's the difference between defending yourself with a gun, and endangering yourself with a gun. Those are opposites, in the gun owner's view, and so your take there misses the issue at hand. Are you possibly so deaf here that you don't flinch a little, listening to that ? Lessee: Gun owners are either loose cannons blazing away without consideration for circumstance and hazard, or they are deceptive hypocrites for leaving the guns out of situations in which they are more of a hazard than a help - or both, in alternation, depending on the latest news event. Sure I'll vote for enforcing that by law - why wouldn't everybody? Meanwhile my contention remains: we have gridlock, and it's going to be a while before we can get sane gun control in the US.
