Bystander Hooliganism in Tennessee:
So…they were quite literally arrested for doing nothing.
What are they arrested for violating? If there a law in Tennessee that says I am required to intervene in a fight between other people if I am close by?
Seinfeld is still doing jail time for this very thing. I hear Costanza cut a deal though.
I found another story that says the children were charged with “criminal responsibility for an illegal act.” This sounds as if the claim is that they were involved in some kind of conspiracy to organize or incite the fight. Or that maybe a bunch of kids were standing around the periphery shouting stuff like “hit him!”
It’s a real stretch to claim something like this is criminal, but at least the legal basis is something better than “failure to intervene on someone else’s fight.”
Also, there appears to be as much outrage over the location of the arrests – at a school – as at the arrests themselves. This part I don’t buy. If I’m a cop and I know that my, er, suspects, were all going to be together at one place, that’s where I would go to arrest them. To me the location makes no difference at all so long as there is a legal basis for the cop to be there and the arrest to be made.
While black, one presumes.
[QUOTE=BoyoJim]
Also, there appears to be as much outrage over the location of the arrests – at a school – as at the arrests themselves. This part I don’t buy. If I’m a cop and I know that my, er, suspects, were all going to be together at one place, that’s where I would go to arrest them. To me the location makes no difference at all so long as there is a legal basis for the cop to be there and the arrest to be made.
[/QUOTE]
Unless the officers had any reason to believe those “suspects” were any danger to their classmates or teachers, they could have spared them the public humiliation and waited until end of day, or picked them up at home. Getting arrested is already freak-out worthy enough when you’re a kid, getting arrested in front of the people you spend more time with than your actual family and who also happen to be a bunch of evil, cruel little jerks makes it so much worse.
A white man was ruthlessly slain by police on Friday
Oh, wait …
The story says he called himself an “Imperial Wizard” of the Knights of something-or-the-other. So it looks like the police never actually take serious action against those types.
Or maybe they just scared him to death.
Not exactly current or immediately shocking, but there is a tl;dr article on Raw Story that starts out as a little thing about the disappearance/death in Malibu of one Mitrice Richardson (a black woman, naturally) that descends into complete indictment of the LA County Sheriff’s department. The LASD appears to be a front for gangland mischief, some of its members coalescing into white-pride groups, all of the various gangs acting with a total above-the-law attitude.
One of the most disturbing statements comes late in the article,
This would suggest to me that the county sheriffs around the country feel as though this sort of behavior is appropriate and normal for an average sheriffs department.
…I don’t think this one has been posted, but if it has my apologies.
Cops Taunted Black Veteran as He Died
Yes there is video. No, don’t watch it. 
In their defense, the Sheriff Department said:
This is the same Sheriff’s office where the “Pay to Play” sheriff used his gun instead of his taser. The “Fuck your breath” case.
Another Oklahoma incident:
[How police took $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage and a church](How police took $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage and a church)
Sheriff’s deputies pull over manager for a Burmese Christian band touring the US.
Guess those Asians weren’t their kinda of Christians.
This pretty much sums up civil forfeiture:
Nice, after pulling him over for a broken tail light:
Nawh, there couldn’t be a profit motive here.
Tellingly:
Civil asset forfeiture, at least as it’s currently carried out by so many law enforcement agencies, is one of the biggest disgraces in the American justice system. It’s nothing but legalized corruption.
If an officer asks me if I have money on me, I might tell him “yeah, fifty bucks”. People do not seem to realize that they are not under oath while speaking to the police. I would also make sure my big wad of cash is on my person, not somewhere they can find it searching the car.
Have these types of laws been put to the test in the Supreme Court?
Actually it’s worse - you gotta be at least marginally successful financially before you opt to corrupt someone or something. It’s more like legalized mugging. But hey, as the Patrician would say : since you’re gonna have muggings anyway, might as well give it a legal framework !
Apparently, becoming part of a national news story at least has a sort of shaming effect.
Part of the problem seems to be that they charged him with a crime. In many of these forfeiture cases, no arrest is made nor charges filed, which makes it much harder for the victim to get the money back.
I like how the DA put it:
I read this like he wanted to say: “Oh! But if I could have sustained any kind of bullshit charge, without any of his lawyers looking at it, I sure as hell would have charged him and taken his money!”
Maybe that just the cynic in me.
I wonder how much the attorneys kept and if they were local.
It boggles my mind that nobody has successfully challenged civil forfeiture laws on fourth amendment grounds. Do the police just drop the case if the victim gets a good lawyer or something?
It’s a good question – how far up the chain of courts have these laws been sustained? Have the Supremes ruled on any of them?
I think the term “pro bono” appears in the article.
Actually, the 5th is the one that says “…nor shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process/… just compensation.” The rights of the accused are well-protected by the Constitution – but if you are never accused, you have to fight hard to keep those rights. It is an (un)ethical grey area.