Now, these two incidents are in two very different jurisdictions, and for the voyeurism case - there’s no mention made of how what the guy charged does for money, or how well off he might be. (Though if you’ve sharing space with four other people I’m not going to assume you’re Rockerfeller.)
But we have two stories today, which included bail amounts for the accused.
In one case, a 25 yo schlep decided to bug his house’s shower with a webcam for voyeuristic purposes. And when he was arrested, apparantly within days of the camera being found, he was incarcerated, with bail set at $500,000. When the judge finally saw the case, he reduced bail to $250,000, but the guy seems to be still in jail, awaiting trial and sentencing.
In this other case, we’ve got a 25 yo schlep of a cop who was recorded going postal on a bar maid because she cut him off, then tried to get him to stop beating up someone else in the bar. The case also involves allegations that the scummy cop (and possibly his police brothers) tried to pressure both the victim and her employer into dropping charges. Additionally, the beating was last month, but because the scummy cop was supposedly in an inpatient alcohol and drug treatment program, they couldn’t arrest him until he got out. (Which is raising further bullshit flags with me.) The DA asked for $100,000 bail, and the judge set it at $70,000.
What kind of world is it where a Peeping Tom is considered more of a risk to the public than a drunked batterer, who is willing to use his badge to intimidate witnesses?
I know that pre-trial confinement is not really a good idea. And that bail is supposed to be set on two bases: Whether the accused is a danger to the community and whether the accused is a flight risk. I also know that for someone with few resources, a relatively low bail can be just as impossible to raise as the more extravagant ones listed here. Having said all that, the comparison between the two cases is still leaving me scratching my head.