Ray-
You’re new so I’ll cut you a break, here. It is specifically against the rules of The Straight Dope Message Board to accuse another poster of trolling. Please don’t do so again.
…So the crime is that the officer’s paperwork was incorrect?
I know of no clause of the Constitution that prohibits the police from forcefully arresting those who engage in violent resistance.
If the man refused to get out of the car, then how was Tasering him unjustified?
…You mean like lying about your first name?
I am very American, which is why I have no tolerance for those who think that being of a certain ethnicity entitles them to different treatment at the hands of the law.
For it to be a crime requires an ‘intent’ to commit a crime. There is no reason to believe that by simply answering the questions in a natural manner (giving the name he actually uses, and his current address) that he was intending to mislead the officer. The point of the story is not to argue specific aspects of the story, but that the officer’s actions in toto (for instance, drawing his gun on a person who had apparently given no indication of being armed, or a physical threat) were unreasonable. You are claiming, throughout this thread, that is is reasonable for an officer to charge a person with crimes that the officer did not witness the person committing, or stop a person and demand identification without any probable cause that the person committed a crime, merely because the officer ‘guessed’ for no specific reason that he might be able to find some reason to write a citation. This behavior by the FPD officers was patently not due to any legitimate public safety interest, but merely to allow the city to extract the maximum possible amount of revenue through issuing as many citations as possible. It is obvious that such behavior on the part of a police department is going to cause the populace to resent and mistrust the police department. It’s blatantly counter-productive… there are instances in the report of the police arresting, and jailing, a person who was voluntarily assisting the police with the investigation of a violent crime on the basis of a code violation, and arresting a woman for violating ‘maximum occupancy’ restrictions after she had called the police to report that her ex-boyfriend (the ‘excess person’) had assaulted her. Such behavior is blatantly detrimental to actual ‘public safety’, as it motivates the victims of crime to not report it, and witnesses to violent crimes to not cooperate with the police department.
Sorry for that, I was unaware.
Yes. I am.
In this case, “extracting the maximum possible amount of revenue through issuing as many citations as possible” is a legitimate public safety interest, because the voters have deprived the state of the means to raise funds otherwise.
Those who do not break the law have absolutely no reason to resent the police department.
So don’t violate code.
So don’t violate maximum occupancy.
Public safety is not served by ignoring crimes out of fear of being called politically incorrect.
Well, duh! If the officer didn’t want to be a criminal, he should have filled out the paperwork correctly.
[quote=“Smapti, post:382, topic:714604”]
…So the crime is that the officer’s paperwork was incorrect?{/QUOTE]
I did not say that the officer commited a crime, I said that the use of such force was not justified.
The report specifically states, to quote it again, “Video captured by the ECW’s built-in camera shows that the man made no aggressive movement toward the officer.” The police are allowed to use a measured level of force against a person who violently resists, they are not allowed to repeatedly Taser a person who was not resisting.
Tasering a person is a potentially lethal level of force. It is unjustified to use a level of force that is greater than the minimum required. In that case, the man was already handcuffed, in the back of a police car… they could have simply grabbed him and dragged him out of the car. The use of the ECW was not, in that case, a matter of a proportionate level of force, it was simply ‘easier’ for that officer involved to zap him into submission, and arguably a punitive act. The problem here, blatantly, is that you refuse to read the actual report, where specific citations are given to court cases (with quotations) where such issues have been addressed.
If someone asked me my name, I would say “Ray”… that is not my legal name, which is “James Raymond”… though in my case, it so happens that I know for a fact that “Ray” is listed as an alias in my record, due to my giving it as an alias when getting a security clearance. Saying “Mike” instead of “Michael” does not in and of itself imply an intent to mislead the officer about his identity, and it’s highly dubious to take it that way (remember, part of his ‘offense’ was giving his current address instead of the old address that was on his driver’s license). Instead, it exemplifies the desire of the FPD, as well discussed in the report, to generate revenue through filing the maximum number of citations possible. This doesn’t serve any public safety purpose, but is instead simply an attempt to generate revenue from the courts. I’m aware that you stated that you think that policing as a means to generate revenue is acceptable, but it is inherently counterproductive, as it creates an incentive for the witnesses to or victims of crime to not cooperate with the police.
You would realize, if you read the report, that a systemic problem with the FPD and the municipal court was that they regularly failed to notify people who had been cited for code violations of the existence of the ticket. These people then failed to appear for a court date they were unaware of, and had warrants issued that they did not know about. This created an atmosphere of paranoia in the community, where people were regularly being arrested after being stopped without probable cause for warrants they did not know existed, and required to post a bond in excess of the actual fine that was then not applied to the fine itself. As noted in the report, the court would not apply a bond to the outstanding fine if a person failed to appear (and it is noted that people were often given incorrect court dates) based on a claim that they could not do so without the person’s consent under state law (which is a false claim), but when a person appeared in court would require the bond be applied to the fine whether the person consented or not. This was a system where the city used mutually contradictory justifications to support letting the city keep as much money as possible.
That is not the claim made in the report, if you bothered to read it. The claim made in the report is that the FPD consistently violated the constitutional rights of anyone they encountered, white or black, but that due to the economic circumstances of the local black community, and the unfair and illegal procedures followed by the municipal court, it had a disparate effect on the black community. The city was aware of this disparate effect, but employees then justified it on the basis of racial stereotypes (that black people were not ‘normal citizens’ and lack 'personal responsibility), due to an intentional focus on generating revenue through producing the maximum possible amount of fines, instead of having the police force focusing on public safety. This was accompanied by a regular practice of city employees using personal influence to dismiss any tickets issued to themselves or their friends. This created a (IMO justifible) level of paranoia in the local black community that was counterproductive to actual public safety… people feared to approach the police to report or witness to violent crimes because they feared harassment or arrest on the basis of warrants they were unaware of.
As I noted above, it is not that the police force and court were themselves acting in a racist manner (though there are examples of that given), but that they were motivating officers to write the maximum volume of tickets regardless of any actual public safety issue. That they were aware this produced a disparate effect, and failed to act to correct this, is the Fourteenth Amendment issue. There was a blatant lack of any oversight by police supervisors, or effective training, regarding the legality or constitutionality of police actions (the egregious flaws in oversight are well documented in the report). If you read the report itself, there are ample citations given to various court decisions explaining why various actions were violations of either federal law or the constitution.
TL;DR, the FPD was regularly violating the constitutional rights of anyone they encountered. It was that the procedures of the court created a disparate effect, that they were aware of this, and that they failed to correct it on the basis of both a focus on creating revenue through keeping people involved in the court system, and through using racial stereotypes to justify the disparate effect, that created a constitutional issue.
This was in response to “You are claiming, throughout this thread, that is is reasonable for an officer to charge a person with crimes that the officer did not witness the person committing, or stop a person and demand identification without any probable cause that the person committed a crime, merely because the officer ‘guessed’ for no specific reason that he might be able to find some reason to write a citation.”
This is wrong. It would be arguable if the court in question gave the defendants an opportunity to argue their case, but it is made blatantly clear that the court did not do so… the court is documented as hearing complaints at a rate of ~300-500 a hour, and specifically sanctioning any defendant who fired a lawyer and attempted to argue their case.
It’s a known systemic problem in St. Louis County, that there is an incredibly high number of extremely small communities that are unable to support their governments though taxation, so they rely on creating the maximum amount of revenue possible through giving every single ticket they can possibly justify (again, without any actual supervisory review).
It it counter-productive to make people fear to report major crimes out of a fear that they will be jailed for an outstanding warrant they were unaware of for a minor code violation. In the ‘maximum occupancy’ case, it was fairly clear from the report text that the ‘excess person’ had been residing there because he had been using physical violence to intimidate the person who ended up being arrested. Again, if you bothered to read the report, it’s clear that the court systemically failed to notify people of outstanding tickets for code violations, and that people were often arrested and jailed for tickets that they where completely unaware of, where required to post a bond that was in excess of the actual fine to get out of jail, were given an incorrect court date, and then had a warrant issued for ‘failure to appear’ even though they had showed up at the incorrect time and date that they were given.
There was a link given well earlier in this thread, to a series of articles about another St. Louis County police department, where they installed an ‘override’ switch to turn a flashing yellow light red at a school crossing when children needed to cross, and then abused the switch at other times in order to generate fines for running a red light. These are systemic problems throughout St. Louis County, where there are far too many small ‘cities’ that are unable to support their local government through taxation, and instead resort to generating revenue through ticketing people. It’s not unreasonable that someone be ticketed for something that they deserve punishment for, but is it unreasonable for the police to be actively attempting to ticket people for anything they can even remotely justify just to create revenue.
There seems to be zero question that the police were out of control and doing some really shitty things. And I would not be surprised if some of the cops are, in fact, racist. What I haven’t seen yet is proof that convinces me that the motivation for the incidents was racial and not, as I’ve said, wound up affecting blacks more because when law enforcement affects the poor more, to will disparately affect any group that is disproportionately poor. And I don’t see this as giving the police a defense. Prey on the poor is a disgusting thing to do and I wish the cops involved for most of the specific incidents cited wind themselves in front of a judge and jury themselves.
Maybe time to summarize some of the more illustrious comments … I was going to bold the best parts but, hell, they’re all so great that I can’t single them out …
My work here is done. 
Whoa! Let’s all just pay no attention to Smapti’s posts in this thread, okay? Established posters on this board are well aware that IHNSHO the police can do no wrong (except when they resist an even higher authority, as the NYPD did when they dissed the mayor).
In a display of more reasonable behavior, we now have this report that even Conservatives Start to Take the Ferguson DOJ Report Seriously, Conor Friedersdorf, Atlantic, March 16, 2015. He links, in turn, to op-eds in, of all places, National Review and Red State by conservative commentators who argue from a conservative view that no matter what they may think of Eric Holder, this report has dug up some badd shitt that needs to be taken seriously.
Better idea: Any thread discussing police misbehavior in which Smapti posts a post should be immediately moved to The Pit.
So, anyway, its just about shitting on poor people. Which is not necessarily racist, as such. We used to be racist, but we’ve evolved, and now we just despise poor people without regard to race.
Swell.
To any rational person, yes.
That would mean that every thread discussing police misbehavior would be moved to the pit.
Indeed, disregarding specific examples of discriminatory behavior, the report does not seem to claim that any member of the FPD or the city government was a card carrying member of the KKK. Instead, it seems to state that the culture of the police department and municipal court created an environment that was inherently discriminatory toward the poor, that due to the economics of the local population this had a disproportionate effect on the African-American community, and that by using racial stereotypes such as a ‘lack of personal responsibility’ to explain this disproportionate effect the city as a whole was violating the Fourteenth Amendment.
The culture of the FPD, due to a focus on revenue generation through ticketing instead of on public safety, was inherently broken, and a lack of proper training and oversight by the higher levels of department command created an environment were the police were not only enabled to, but encouraged, to violate the civil rights of all people they encountered.This created an environment where all levels of society, not only blacks, saw the police department as an ‘enemy’ that existed merely to prey upon them for the benefit of the city government, instead of a body that existed to maintain public safety.
What the report seems to state (disregarding the specific examples) is that by being /aware/ that it was creating a disproportionate effect on the black community, and by using racial stereotypes to justify that disproportionate effect, the city government was creating a situation were they were collectively violating the Equal Protection Clause, according to the court rulings on such issues that are cited in the report.
Really, what is simply seems to come down to is that anyone who tries to criticize the report without reading it should IMO be ignored. Even diehard conservatives, when they actually read the report, seem to be appalled.
The National Review… “Having now read the report myself, I think, to the contrary, that anyone who cares about protecting citizens from abusive and arbitrary officialdom should — whatever else he may think of Eric Holder’s tenure as attorney general — be grateful that the report exists.”
Redstate.com… “Conservatives, on the other hand, have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that the Ferguson PD – as with many other municipal police departments in the country – truly is out of control, in that it recklessly violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ferguson and does so in a manner that has a clearly disproportionate impact on minorities.”
The National Review… “It is the story of a small class of the local power brokers creating two sets of rules, one for the connected and another for the mass of people who are forced — often at gunpoint — to pay for the “privilege” of being governed.”
These are not sources that would at all be expected to advocate the position of Obama and Eric Holder, but they are incontrovertibly in support of the conclusions of the DOJ report. Stop listening to people like Rush Limbaugh, that ‘tell you what to think’, and actually read the damn thing.
http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/15/many-conservatives-blowing-it-ferguson-doj-report/ (definitely not a liberal source)
“Charging documents (again provided by the FPD) revealed that in officers’ own words, they arrested and cited citizens in retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights not to be polite to cops, including one woman who was, by admission, arrested for peacefully calling an officer’s supervisor during the course of that officer making an arrest in her presence that she felt involved the excessive use of force.”
I don’t believe you without a cite. You get the facts wrong so often that I don’t believe any assertion you make without a cite.