Truth in advertising
(Link thanks to David Houser.)
Posts filed under Police
Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?
In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley wants patrol cops in the inner city to carry M4 assault rifles on the streets.
In Springfield, patrol cops in the inner city are going to switch to black, military-style uniforms
on the streets. According to cop mouthpiece Sergeant John Delaney, the purpose of the new uniforms is in order to make sure that the cops spread a sense of fear
.
Do you feel safer now?
Further reading:
We need government cops because private protection forces would be accountable to the powerful and well-connected instead of being accountable to the people.
NEW YORK — The wail that came up from the crowd was as if they heard that Sean Bell had died again.
No!they shouted, while dozens of people, wearing Bell’s face on hats, T-shirts and buttons, burst into sobs.The scene unfolded outside the courthouse Friday as three police officers were cleared of all charges in the 2006 shooting of Bell, who died in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day.
Hundreds of friends of Bell and others wanted vindication for what they called a racially motivated shooting, and they reacted with tears and explosive anger to the officers’ acquittal.
Many people in the predominantly black crowd began reciting other cases where black New Yorkers were shot by police, and the officers, they said, got away with it.
This was a disgrace, what happened today,shouted Calvin Hutton, a Harlem resident.We prayed for a different result, but we got the same old bull——.Inside the packed Queens courtroom, gasps could be heard when Judge Arthur Cooperman acquitted the officers. Bell’s mother cried; her husband put his arm around her and shook his head. Bell’s fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, left the courtroom immediately. . . . Scores of police officers formed lines in the middle of traffic to block the crowd from charging the courthouse.
. . . Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said the judge sent a message to officers that
when you’re in front of the bench, that you will get fairness.. . . William Hardgraves, 48, an electrician from Harlem, brought his 12-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter to hear the verdict. . . .
I hoped it would be different this time. They shot him 50 times,Hardgraves said.But of course, it wasn’t.
Further reading:
Professional courtesy
(Boing Boing 2008-04-07, via Roderick Long 2008-04-08.)
It’s 1:45 p.m. on a Wednesday in February and a Toyota Camry is driving west on the 91 Express Lanes, for free, for the 470th time.
The electronic transponder on the dashboard – used to bill tollway users – is inactive. The Camry’s owners, airport traffic officer Rudolph Duplessis and his wife, Loretta, have never had a toll road account, officials say.
They’ve never received a violation notice in the mail, either. Their car is registered as part of a state program which hides their home address on Department of Motor Vehicles records. The agency that operates the tollway does not have legal access to their address.
Their Toyota is one of 996,716 vehicles registered to motorists who are affiliated with 1,800 state and local agencies and who are allowed to shield their addresses under the Confidential Records Program.
An Orange County Register investigation has found that the program, designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees — from police dispatchers to museum guards — who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too.
This has happened despite warnings from state officials that the safeguard is no longer needed because updated laws have made all DMV information confidential to the public.
The Register found that the confidential plate program shields these motorists in ways most of us can only dream about:
Vehicles with protected license plates can run through dozens of intersections controlled by red light cameras and breeze along the 91 toll lanes with impunity.
Parking citations issued to vehicles with protected plates are often dismissed because the process necessary to pierce the shield is too cumbersome.
Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that the drivers are
one of their ownor related to someone who is.Exactly how many people are taking advantage of their protected plates is impossible to calculate. Like the Orange County Transportation Authority, which operates the tollway, many agencies have automated processes and have never focused on what happens to confidential plate holders. Sometimes police take note of the plate and don’t write a ticket at all.
…
I would highly doubt that anybody is registering their vehicles on a confidential basis to do anything but protect themselves,Garden Grove Police Capt. Mike Handfield said.I just don’t think people are thinking they’re getting away with anything.... Is the value of having a confidential plate and protecting the law enforcement community from people who might hurt them, is that worth that risk? I believe it is.The Register asked the DMV for a list of the number of motorists participating in the program and the agencies they claim as an employer. But the DMV refused to provide those records unless The Register paid $8,442, which officials said was the cost of extracting the list from its database.
…
Some police officers confess that when they pull over someone with a confidential license plate they’re more likely to let them off with a warning. In most cases, one said, if an officer realizes a motorist has a confidential plate, the car won’t be pulled over at all.
It’s an unwritten rule that we would extend professional courtesy,said Ron Smith, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who worked patrol for 23 years.Nine out of 10 times I would.California Highway Patrol officer Jennifer Hink put it a little differently.
It’s officer discretion ... (But) just because you have confidential plates doesn’t mean you’re going to get out of a citation.Many police departments that run red light camera programs systematically dismiss citations issued to confidential plates.
It’s a courtesy, law enforcement to law enforcement,San Francisco Police Sgt. Tom Lee said.We let it go.
The term professional courtesy
comes from the traditions of medicine: many doctors will not charge money when they treat another doctor’s immediate family. When doctors talk about professional courtesy
they are talking about a very old system of mutual aid in which one doctor agrees to do a favor for another, at her own expense, for the sake of collegiality, out of concern for professional ethics (to offer doctors an alternative to having their own family as patients), and because she can count on getting similar services in return should she ever need them.
But when the Gangsters in Blue start talking about professional courtesy,
they’re talking about something quite different: a favor
done for a fellow gang member at no personal expense, with the bill sent to unwilling taxpayers who must pick up the tab for the roads and parking; and a favor
done in order insulate the gangsters and their immediate family from any kind of ethical accountability to the unwilling victims that they sanctimoniously insist on serving and protecting.
Professional courtesy
in medicine means reciprocity in co-operative mutual aid in healing sick people; professional courtesy
in government policing means reciprocity in a conspiracy to make sure that any cop can do just about anything she wants by way of free-riding, disruptive, dangerous or criminal treatment of innocent third parties, with complete impunity, and the rest of us will get the bill for it and a fuck you, civilian
if we don’t like it.
To be sure, letting a traffic ticket slide is, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty small thing. But it’s a small thing that is intimately connected with bigger things–with a pervasive, institutionalized system with consequences that are as terrible as they are inevitable and predictable.
Isolated incidents
 Death of an innocent. |
 Death or injury of a police officer. |
 Death of a nonviolent offender. |
 Raid on an innocent suspect. |
 Other examples of paramilitary police excess. |
Unnecessary raids on doctors and sick people. |