Law and Order 2 - Page 208 - Politics and Economics

http://fox40.com/2016/11/04/woman-fa...ok-food-group/

cliffs: California cops run an undercover sting operation on a facebook potluck recipe exchange group.

""I don't write the laws, I enforce them. And the legislature has felt that this is a crime,” said San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Kelly McDaniel. She says selling any food not subject to health department inspection puts whoever eats it in real danger, not to mention it undercuts business owners who do get permits to make their food."

What a horse **** cop out answer. The DA can prosecute or not prosecute as they see fit. The only constituency who cares about pursuing charges is the police (since they, for whatever reason, cared enough to conduct a sting operation over this) but unfortunately they are the only constituency who matters.

11-13-2016 , 06:55 PM

#5178

Huehuecoyotl

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11-15-2016 , 01:27 PM

#5179

Huehuecoyotl

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Quote:

According the lawsuit, Smith tried to tell the officers she was putting her dogs away, and placed two in the basement and one in the bathroom. As the officers burst into the house, Debo slipped back upstairs. The officers shot it as it sat down by Jones. Next, they charged into the basement and shot Mama, who was pregnant and backed into a corner. Finally, they moved onto the bathroom, where Smoke was closed in.

One of the officers cracked the door open, peeked inside, and closed it again. "Should we do that one, too?" the officer asked, according to the lawsuit, before two of them fired through the closed door, killing Smoke.

In the police version of the story, told through reports filed after the raid, the officers received no response when they announced their presence and forced entry into the house. Inside, they encountered a "vicious grey pit bull" that charged at them. It was shot eight times. In the basement, they encountered another "vicious white pit bull" that charged toward them. It was shot five times. According to police reports, the third dog charged out of the bathroom toward the officers and was shot.

However, extremely graphic photos entered into evidence in the case show bullet holes riddling the outside of the door and the dog dead inside the bathroom.

"They produce two photos of the dead dog in the bathroom," Chris Olson, Jones' attorney, says. "It looks like The Shining. The dog is in the back of the bathroom and just covered in blood. But their story is that the dog opened the door itself and was coming to eat them. The problem is the door handle wasn't a latch. It was a knob. That's how ****ed up it is. That's their story in federal court."

...

After shooting her dogs, the police arrested Smith for possession of marijuana and seized her car under civil forfeiture laws. The charges were later dropped, however, when the officers failed to appear at her court date.

Quote:

Olson, however, says Detroit police have developed a pattern and practice of shooting dogs just for barking. According to an unredacted police report he provided, one of the officers who raided Smith's house, William Morrison, had shot 39 dogs prior to that day.

Quote:

Morrison's kill count is far from the highest in the department. One Detroit police officer in the Major Violators Unit, which has handled drug raids since the city's scandal-ridden narcotics unit was disbanded in 2014, has destroyed 67 animals over the course of his time at the DPD, according to the police reports obtained by Reason.

Quote:

In nearly all of the recent incidents, the owners describe the Detroit police as being callous, even lighthearted, after shooting their dogs.

Two other Detroit residents represented by Olson, Hazell Hayes and Melvin Short, also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city in June after their dog Penny was shot during a police search. "Y'all over here shooting dogs now?" a city employee asked a DPD officer in the aftermath of the raid, according to the lawsuit.

"Nah, it committed suicide," the officer allegedly replied.

http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/1...ent-is-running

11-17-2016 , 09:00 AM

#5180

Huehuecoyotl

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Quote:

Swayzer's lawyer, Jason Jankowski, wrote in the notice of claim that Swayzer told a corrections officer*her water broke and she was going into labor, but*the officer laughed*and ignored her. Swayzer*said she told the officer that she was going into labor around*midnight, gave birth at about 4 a.m., and finally received attention from officers at 6 a.m. Her child was pronounced dead*later that day, although it's unclear at what time.

Quote:

Four people have died at the Milwaukee County Jail since April

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/l...abor/93988574/

11-18-2016 , 10:58 AM

#5181

vhawk01

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good god

12-22-2016 , 10:15 AM

#5182

Huehuecoyotl

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Quote:

After the police officer had a quiet exchange with the attacker, he strolled over to the mother, identified by family members on social media as Jacqueline Craig, and asked condescendingly, “What’s going on with you?”

“My daughter and son came home, saying that this man grabbed him and choked him,” Craig said as her daughter recorded. “I came around here and asked him. I said, ‘Why did you put your hands on my son?’ He said, ‘Oh, he threw some paper and I told him to pick it up.’ He said he defied him and that’s why he did it…you don’t have the right to choke somebody’s son. My son is 7-years-old, you don’t have the right to grab him and choke him.”

In response to Craig’s distress, the police officer asked in an accusing tone, “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?”

“He can’t prove to me that he did or didn’t, but it doesn’t matter,” Craig said. “That doesn’t give him the right to put his hands on him.”

To which the officer responded, “Why not?”

The officer then tackles the daughter of the mother when she tries to talk to her mom, the pins down the mom and the person taking the video and arrests them all. It doesn't say anything about the man who grabbed the boy.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news...fort-worth-pd/

12-28-2016 , 01:58 PM

#5183

pvn

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-calif...192312988.html

12-31-2016 , 11:06 AM

#5184

vhawk01

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Seems fine to me. If you have enough caffeine in your system to impair your driving, then you are driving impaired. We have a very outsized disgust for anyone driving while drinking alcohol and far too little for people driving in dangerously impaired ways for any reason OTHER than alcohol, like exhaustion, anger, on a cell phone, apparently on caffeine, etc. Mostly this is a reaction to MADD and a very effective PR campaign rather than any sort of science or rational thought. People think its "bad" to drive while on their cellphone in the same way its bad to not wear your seatbelt or to not fully stop at stop signs, but they dont appreciate that being on a hands free has basically no impact on safety and driving while on the phone is equivalent or worse to driving at the legal limit of alcohol. Similarly, driving when tired or depressed or angry or otherwise distracted are fundamentally "dangerous" activities in the same sense that driving "buzzed" is.

12-31-2016 , 12:05 PM

#5185

pvn

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how much coffee would you have to drink to be "impaired"?

more likely: the guy said something to the cop/DA and they're just really mad at him

12-31-2016 , 01:22 PM

#5186

Melkerson

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While it's possible to have so much caffeine that one is impaired, it doesn't sound like that's what is actually going on here, despite the title of the article.

This is from the article as well:

Quote:

The chief deputy district attorney in the county where Schwab was held, Sharon Henry said her office was “conducting further investigation in this matter," The Guardian reported. “The charge of driving under the influence is not based upon the presence of caffeine in his system."

Based on the limited details the article, this whole thing makes little sense. If I had to guess something, I'd go w/ pvn's guess.

12-31-2016 , 01:51 PM

#5187

AngusThermopyle

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They've dropped the charges. TV story

DA seems convinced that he had something else in his system that didn't show up on the tox screens.

12-31-2016 , 02:50 PM

#5188

vhawk01

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Quote:

Originally Posted by pvn

how much coffee would you have to drink to be "impaired"?

more likely: the guy said something to the cop/DA and they're just really mad at him

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melkerson

While it's possible to have so much caffeine that one is impaired, it doesn't sound like that's what is actually going on here, despite the title of the article.

This is from the article as well:

Based on the limited details the article, this whole thing makes little sense. If I had to guess something, I'd go w/ pvn's guess.

Ok, that seems like a fair reading, I did read the article but mostly was just responding to the idea that its prima facie ridiculous to get a DUI for caffeine. In response to how much caffeine would you have to consume to be impaired, the answer is probably "any at all" since there isnt some magic line between impaired and non-impaired, but from a more practical POV it would depend significantly on the person. For me personally I doubt there is any level that I could consume that would impair me because I drink a ****load of coffee and in fact going a day or two without would probably put me at a significant impairment.

It is probably not really legally practical to consider caffeine impairment in like a "0.08 BCC" way and the only real way would be to just count failing field "non-impairment" tests like tests of focus or just calling it erratic driving. Basically it would involve injecting a ton more subjectivity into stops (the same would be true of tired driving or other forms of impariment). If there werent a test for BAC and if we couldn't hang our hats on arbitrary numbers like 0.08 there probably wouldnt be the same view on drunk driving.

12-31-2016 , 05:54 PM

#5189

stinkubus

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In Pennsylvania you can still get a DUI if 0 < BAC < .08 and the cop thinks you are too drunk to drive.

01-02-2017 , 01:54 PM

#5190

Huehuecoyotl

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Kind of amazing the police used the "we didn't know it was against the law" defense for something they did for multiple years.

Quote:

For as long as anyone can remember, the U.S. Justice Department reported recently, anyone walking the streets could be taken into custody for questioning if detectives had the slightest hunch they knew something about a crime — or perhaps knew someone who did. They were jailed indefinitely without probable cause or charges, let alone access to a telephone or an attorney.

The Ville Platte Police Department and Evangeline Parish Sheriff's Office conducted more than 900 of these unconstitutional arrests over a single three-year period, federal authorities found. Suspects, witnesses, persons of interest — and their relatives — were strip-searched and detained for days in cells without beds. At least 30 of these cases involved juveniles.

"The willingness of officers in both agencies to arrest and detain individuals who are merely possible witnesses in criminal investigations means that literally anyone in Evangeline Parish or Ville Platte could be arrested and placed 'on hold' at any time," the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division wrote.

Quote:

Ville Platte Police Chief Neal Lartigue doesn't deny the practice was widespread. But to hear him tell it, no one in a position of authority here ever suspected that investigative holds flew in the face of the 4th Amendment, which requires authorities to have probable cause to detain people. It's just how things were handled, he insisted, passed down through generations of local law enforcement like a recipe for boudin sausage.

"We never intended to violate anyone's constitutional rights," Lartigue said in an interview with The Advocate last week. "This went back way before my administration and any administration that I worked under here in the past 25 years. We were all trained into it."

http://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/...e=lift_amplify

01-04-2017 , 02:04 AM

#5191

Huehuecoyotl

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Minnesota's forced commitment for sex abusers for life even after their sentence is up is deemed constitutional

Quote:

Minnesota’s*program for keeping sex offenders confined*after they complete their prison sentences is constitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, reversing*a lower-court judge who said it violates offenders’ rights because hardly anyone is ever released.

...

Minnesota’s offenders are confined by court order for treatment at secure facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter that are ringed by razor wire, though there’s a section outside the wire at St. Peter for people who’ve progressed to the later stages of treatment and been given some limited freedoms. They’re officially considered patients or residents, not prisoners. But the lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 700 offenders argued that the program amounts to a life sentence.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesot...appeals-court/

01-04-2017 , 02:46 PM

#5192

Autocratic

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Maybe a strange fit for this thread, but Governor Cuomo issued an eleventh hour veto of a bill overhauling New York's failing and underfunded public defense system on New Year's Eve. The bill was passed last summer, so the last minute veto was strategic.

Quote:

The legislation would have established statewide standards for effective counsel and shifted financial responsibility for public defense services from counties to the state – reforms based on the results of a settlement in the NYCLU’s lawsuit, Hurrell-Harring v. New York. The new standards would have included limits on public defense attorneys’ caseloads, the presence of counsel at a criminal defendant’s first court appearance and access to the resources necessary to provide adequate representation.

I assisted with the lawsuit that led to this legislation, and can attest that public defense in the state is a joke. Cuomo is basically taking the standard GOP line on the issue -- guaranteeing due process rights is too expensive.

http://www.nyclu.org/news/governor-r...defense-system

01-08-2017 , 12:48 PM

#5193

pvn

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Tampa police keeping the city safe

http://www.cltampa.com/news-views/lo...g-the-homeless

01-18-2017 , 10:28 AM

#5194

Huehuecoyotl

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I think this has already been posted before but it's a good article about how and why police lie. There's a Doctor Seuss section in the article of when police lie but it's something like 8 paragraphs so I didn't want to copy it

Quote:

The consensus police version of this story is that the abuse and the lies and the unjustified killings are the work of “bad apples.” A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for example, found that two-thirds of officers believe that the police killings of black people in recent years are “isolated incidents” and not “signs of a broader problem.” If this conclusion is not entirely convincing, it might be because of how deeply embedded the misconduct appears, how normalized, how easy it seems to come to the officers performing rogue acts with minds untethered from consequences. It’s a comfort that suggests institutional acceptance. “It’s not just the rotten apples,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina. “It’s the rotten culture that allows the rotten barrel that creates the rotten apples.”

....

It was one of a growing number of recent cases exposing the emerging rift between prosecutors and their longtime allies in blue, as district attorneys navigate the political pressures to crack down on police misconduct captured on film in the post-Ferguson era. The New Mexico Office of the Attorney General reported that the Albuquerque Police Department pursued a “politically motivated” investigation into Brandenburg after she filed the murder charges against the officers. After Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby filed criminal charges against six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray, who died in custody in 2015, a police union magazine ran her photo on the cover under the headline “The Wolf That Lurks” and a column that listed past criminal allegations against her parents. After San Francisco DA Gascón, a former SFPD chief, led a blue-ribbon panel investigating racial bias in the department in February 2016, a police union press release blamed him for an uptick in property crimes, declaring that Gascón, “instead of fighting a war on crime, is fighting a war on the police department.”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamah...5EB#.uyoOBoxq3

01-18-2017 , 09:10 PM

#5195

Huehuecoyotl

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A fun little read on a law professor who fights a red light camera ticket.

Quote:

One does not expect municipal officials to be paragons of lawfulness. But it is a bit jarring to encounter a City*Attorneywho evinces no interest in, much less knowledge of, her constitutional duties.

I asked her whether this was a criminal action or a civil action. She replied, “It’s hard to explain it in those terms.” I asked whether she intended to proceed under criminal procedural rules or in civil procedure. We would proceed under the “rules of criminal procedure,” she answered because this is a criminal case. I asked when I could expect to be charged, indicted, or have a probable cause determination. She replied that none of those events would occur because this is “a civil action.” So I could expect to be served with a complaint? No, no. As she had already explained, we would proceed under the criminal rules.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/01/18093/

01-19-2017 , 09:37 AM

#5196

EfromPegTown

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That's funny. Did I read that correctly though? He basically paid double the fine in the form of a non-refundable bond? So he won, but it really cost him twice as much, plus time invested.

01-26-2017 , 11:17 AM

#5197

Huehuecoyotl

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl

The officer cam footage got posted. It shows the man who chocked the kid admit to it, and the officer instigate the woman all the way, and kick the minor and admit to it on camera, but denying he did in the report.

Hopefully the women get a fat check from the police department for such shoddy service.

01-26-2017 , 01:05 PM

#5198

microbet

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Anyone have a name on that cop?

02-06-2017 , 05:03 AM

#5199

Huehuecoyotl

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http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Vid...owTwt_DFWBrand

A cop almost shoots a guy but takes a second look and doesn't.

02-06-2017 , 08:28 AM

#5200

heehaww

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl

youtube

Mother: He doesn't have a right to grab, choke my 7-year-old son.

Officer: Mhmm, well why don't you teach your son not to litter?

Mother: First of all, he can't prove to me my son littered, but even if he did, that doesn't give him the right to choke him!

Officer: Why not?

1:56 in and I can't even keep watching. Shouldn't have started my day with something infuriating.

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