YTF would anyone plead guilty before the substance was confirmed by the state laboratory? What kind of lousy attorney/public defender did they have? And how did the state ever get the court to accept just the field test without lab verification? I can’t get a DUI conviction just on a PBT test.
I’m guessing those people got fake shit from their dealer and thought they had real drugs. Still stupid on their part.
Fake drugs in Texas are called “Simulated Controlled Substances” 482.001(4)
Actual controlled substances no matter how diluted are still controlled substances as well.
The fact that the drugs weren’t real in the Houston cases doesn’t mean anything all by itself.
These statements of your bother me. Specifically, what you are saying is that many times - some percentage of your 2000 arrests for narcotics - a person who has an illegal substance consented to the search. That ‘it’s ok if you ask’ and “guilty people say yes all the time”.
I just don’t quite…understand…how it could work this way. I mean, I understand, lots of people are really stupid. But seriously. I feel like one of a couple things must be true:
a. A certain class of people who are in fact guilty of possessing narcotics don’t believe they can say no to a search. Possibly they feel threatened by you or actually believe things will go better for them if they “fess up” and let themselves get caught.
b. Unbelievably stupid people are extremely common and pkbites bumps into them all the time. But not so stupid they can’t earn or steal the money to buy drugs and successfully obtain them and would be going somewhere to have a good time if it weren’t for pkbites getting on their case.
I’m sure whatever you do is aboveboard, please don’t think I’m insinuating anything, I just am trying to understand how reality fits with your observations.
I can think of one possibility. The DA could offer an extremely favorable plea - a “blue light special”. And a competent public defender could say,
“Ok, maybe you did it or maybe you didn’t. But in this county, the state wins at trial 95% of the time. Jurors tend to just vote guilty down here in Houston. (this is true). So if you go to that point, you’ll get <2 years in prison>. Or you can wait for the state lab results to come back. DA tends to offer about <2-6 months> for people who plead then. Or you can fess up now and get out <by next weekend>. This is the best deal you can get…”
The problem of course, is that any conviction screws someone out of gainful employment in a job that’s not at the very bottom of the ladder. But it gets someone out of jail right away, and with the kangaroo courts of Houston, since the person was going to be convicted anyway, they might as well take the best deal.
I don’t think there is a lot of distinction between group a and group b. Criminals are stupid.
That’s why it works like it does.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not convinced it works. Not very well anyways.
My trust in the system isn’t blind.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, do you think the justice system in America is a good one and one we should be proud of?
Or are you saying that you believe that due to probably your age, race, and economic status you aren’t concerned you will be a victim of it even though you concede it’s suboptimal? (since you probably dress well, keep your car in good shape and have all the right papers, and can afford an excellent attorney if you need to. Also I think you’re an older white male, one of the least likely subgroups to be harassed by the police. (an older white female is probably the safest))
Also, you probably don’t commit any significant crimes. Probably the worst crime you normally ever commit is you probably fib slightly on your taxes for deductions or you might pirate a book or movie. You probably also speed like nearly every driver. So if the justice system nails you it would be for a crime you did not commit.
If you believe our justice system is excellent, why does America need to lock so many people up for so much longer compared to comparable European countries? Why do we have higher crime rates even though they “coddle” their prisoners with better treatment and rehabilitation?
Yeah, back in the day, my cop buddies said that Barney Miller was about the most realistic police show on TV. :eek:
[Moderating]
That will be an official Warning for personal insults. You should know better than that.
This is the reason that I do not feel threatened by the justice system.
False convictions are rare, and the police are neither lazy nor indifferent. They do not routinely plant evidence, they are not more interested in closing cases than arresting the right person. They do not coerce confessions out of the nearest available suspect.
The reality is that most criminals are stupid, and most police are not.
That is not a bug, it’s a feature.
This is GQ, and the above is going to be a matter of opinion.
Regards,
Shodan
Agree or disagree. An efficient justice system prevents crime while minimizing harm to those who transgress.
After all, take the limit case. Just execute anyone who commits a crime, no matter how minor. Assuming you could accomplish this (North Korea and other despotic states seem to show this is feasible), you’d have almost no crime, right? Since all the people who have criminal tendencies probably slipped up and are now dead.
So if the U.S. one has all these people rotting in cages, and comparable wealthy nations have an order of magnitude less people in cages, doesn’t this mean the U.S. system is factually less efficient?
And doesn’t this make it a poor system from this analysis, without bringing in any subjective opinions?
Got a cite?
This seems on both counts a strange kind of argument in the context of this particular thread, and the claims a number of posters have made, or implied, that’s it common for the police to search for no reason, plant evidence, convict innocent people on purpose etc.
Nor though it’s not directly relevant do I see the point, ever, in indirect personal attacks like ‘you probably do X’. For example Shodan either cheats on taxes or doesn’t. It’s not a probability spectrum. You can ask Shodan if you really think it’s relevant to the argument. I personally don’t cheat on my taxes, and AFAIK that’s very common, probably the usual case.
Traffic infractions, like speeding except in certain jurisdictions where it can be crime, aren’t crimes. But the police are incentivized to find people committing actual crimes, and do use enforcement of traffic laws as a tool to find crimes. I again find it hard to see how a logical argument could be constructed why they shouldn’t, if it’s real traffic infractions, or how the ‘every other developed country’ gambit would work in that case. Police in other countries aren’t also using traffic laws as a way to give suspected serious criminals a closer look? I really doubt that.
The US does have a relatively high murder rate among rich countries, but realistic solutions to that if any would have to focus on the plain reality that that’s caused by more people committing murders in the US. Although to some degree it’s probably also from local cultures of non-cooperation with the police so that nobody is convicted for too high a % of murders and that waters down deterrence. Local distrust of the police could be the fault of the police so there it would actually be relevant to police behavior. But local distrust could also stem in part from the same sub-cultural dysfunction that causes a high rate of murders committed, highly demographically skewed (and US demography is pretty different from other rich countries).
For crimes in general it’s yet more obscure because the US does not have a high overall crime rate by developed world standards, mainly a high murder rate.
But that’s the catch, how do we know people being targeted by police are the ones committing crimes? The whole point of this discussion is that police don’t get to bother people just because they think they’re the kind of person who commits crimes. Depending on the exact action they want to undertake police need to have reasonable suspicion based on articulable facts, probable cause, or possibly to have convinced a judge of those things and gotten a warrant.
Yeah,but Loach is still smarter than me. I get sucked into these threads with the idea of giving some insight into the job. But you’ve got the knowitalls, the people with per-determined ideas of law enforcement, the “this is how they do it on Law & Order” types, and the hamburger flippers/lives in parents basement types. And, of course, the legal eagle types.
In other words, after 37+ years on the job (25 years on my first career, including a rank as Detective, and 12 years so far on my second career for another agency after full, honorable retirement from the first) I apparently don’t know what the fuck I am doing, according to many on these boards.
Which may be true as I continually get sucked into these threads.:smack:
sigh. I have tonight off, i’m going back to my drinking. All cops are drunks, dontchaknow? :rolleyes:
Well you’re the mod, so yes sir. Not sure what the insult was though. The implication that he would be bewildered to find himself in a prison cell even though he was innocent? (Bewildered means confused)
SamuelA , I think you may be mixing up pkbites and me. No biggie, I’m just sayin’. Anyway, of the 2000 drug arrests that I was involved in, only a minority were the result of consent searches. For the most part, when I approached you I already had probable cause to arrest or, at least, search. This is because I was in a drug unit that specialized in this stuff. We took our time and made a case. Patrol, on the other hand, has a more difficult time because of the time constraints and, in most cases, the person they are dealing with is a complete unknown.
Second, human nature is funny. People don’t always react the way common sense would lead you to believe they will. The consent searches I was involved in were part of what was known at the time as an Interdiction Program. It worked like this: The largest city in my jurisdiction (I was a county detective) has its own police department and has a bus station that handles a fair amount of direct routes to and from New York City. It was common knowledge that the locals would go to NY, buy their dope and return on the same day. Since the going retail price was twice as high locally as in NY, it was easy to make a fair amount of money.
So, a group of both county and local guys went to specialized training to how to spot possible traffickers (based on behavioral cues) and then interact with them on a consensual basis with the ultimate goal of gaining a consent to search their person/belongings. Sometimes the local officers would recognize a person as a known gang member or drug dealer. To be clear, from a legal standpoint, we didn’t need any type of suspicion at all to initiate a conversation. We didn’t even need RAS to ask for consent to search but we normally tried to get it before asking. We could have just picked people at random and sometimes did. This wasn’t a scientific study but we found that people who behaved in a way that piqued out interest were more likely to be holding.
The rules were pretty simple. Once you picked somebody out, no more than two plainclothes officers would approach them. No badges, weapons or handcuffs were to be visible. Normally, one officer would speak to the person and the second would stand back and observe, sometimes in view of the traveler and sometimes not. The first officer, while walking alongside the person, would identify himself by showing his badge briefly and ask if they minded speaking. The whole approach and interaction was designed to be as low key and non-coercive as possible since coercion would likely be alleged as a defense if an arrest was made.
If they refused to talk to talk with us we would just let them keep on going. If they agreed to talk to us, we would explain who we were and what we were doing. We’d then ask if they minded answering a few questions. If they agreed to do so, we would ask things like “Where are you travelling from?” (We already knew they just stepped off the NY bus. if they lied about that, our suspicions would be heightened), “What was the purpose of your trip?”, “How long were you there?”, “Who did you visit?”, “Name?”, “ “Last name?” “Address?” This was done in a conversational manner, not like an interrogation and no notes were being taken. If someone was telling the truth, they would have answers for these questions without having to think about it. If they were lying, the hesitations would be obvious and they often couldn’t give answers. The might claim to have been visiting a friend but couldn’t supply a last name or what street he lived on. Their luggage or packages might be inconsistent with their story. They may claim to have spent a few days in the city but have only a box of sneakers in a bag.
We would ask if they were carrying anything for anyone or if there was any chance someone slipped something into their bag while they were sleeping. Was everything in their possession theirs? This was an attempt to provide them an out and sometimes they took it. “Well, my cousin asked me to bring this package to his mother who lives in town. I have no idea what’s in it.” “Well, somebody COULD have put something in my bag when I went to the bathroom”.
If the person answered the questions in a forthright manner and everything made sense we would just say, “Thanks for your cooperation and have a nice night”. If we thought their story had too many holes in it or they were otherwise acting nervous (visibly shaking, looking around, dry mouth, visible pulse in their neck etc.), we would ask them for their consent to search. We actually had a form for them to sign that advised them of their right to refuse or stop us at any time. If they agreed, would do the search right where we were standing. To take them to a room or separate area could be construed as coercion.
Its been a long time but my best guess is that 75% or more of the people who consented had drugs or guns on them. “Why in the world would they consent?” you may ask. I don’t know but my best guess is they thought if they said, “No” that would make them look guilty and if they said “Yes” maybe we would think they weren’t holding and just leave them alone.
We were trained that if the person was loud and defiant, they were almost certainly not holding. People who are dirty don’t usually want to aggravate the police or draw attention to themselves. When we encountered such a person we usually just thanked them for their cooperation and sent them on their merry way. Sometimes, we’d try to reason with them and explain what we were trying to do but that almost never worked. For whatever reason, the word never made it out on the street that all you had to do was refuse to talk to us and we would let you go.
The whole thing was a cat and mouse game with the bad guys changing tactics and us changing to catch up with them. We would average a couple of arrests a night, mostly for drugs and guns but some warrant arrests. Once, a couple a females drew our attention and ultimately consented to a search of their overnight bags. In the bags were hundreds of condoms and not much else. They were in town to sell something other than drugs. Off they went to set up shop. On another occasion a guy had all the indicators - he was meeting someone but didn’t know the guy’s name, had never been to town before and was clearly nervous about something. He consented and in his backpack he had these bricks tightly taped up with packing tape. He said he didn’t know what was in them. We opened the bricks. It turned out to be coffee. You have never seen such a relieved person in your life. Our best guess is that someone was doing a dry run and testing either us, the carrier or both.
The whole thing came to an end when the lawyer for a guy carrying a kilo of cocaine taped to his torso alleged racial profiling. The guy’s mother was a big shot attorney in D.C. He ended up pleading guilty for a pretty light sentence. For whatever reason, our local D.A. decided to end the program rather than fight the racism charges. This really pissed us off as we viewed this as an admission to the accusation. But, since no one would believe that people moving drugs knowingly consent to searches, something nefarious had to be going on. Only there wasn’t and we couldn’t help it that the town was nearly 80% minority and the bus ridership an even higher percentage than that.
Thank you MikeF and pkbites for sharing your law enforcement perspectives.
MikeF, your description of consensual encounters is excellent. I don’t doubt for one minute that the overwhelming majority of people you asked consent to a search. Your agency’s policies appear reasonable and I don’t think they were intended to have any discriminatory effects. I don’t think they are really race-neutral though.
Your screening mechanism involved asking for consensual encounters of people coming off buses. You admit that the people on the buses are disproportionately minorities so it seems we’ve already started with a biased screening mechanism.
What makes you believe that these behavioral cues were more likely to catch drug traffickers than other people? Did you systematically test people who weren’t displaying those cues to see if their rates of carrying drugs were higher or lower than the people displaying those cues?
This study (pdf) suggests that factors like paying in cash and using broken luggage when traveling indicates a person is a drug courier. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a620185.pdf Do you suspect that poor people are more likely to use broken luggage and lack credit cards to buy tickets with? Do you know that, in America, black and brown people are more likely to be poor? In light of those facts, do you think these screening criteria are racially neutral?
That list is so long that it describes nearly everyone. So, using a list of those “behavioral cues” gives plausible justification for police to stop anyone. These behavioral factors lists are just the training that racist officers need to rationalize discriminatory stops if they so choose.
Would you please describe how you randomized your selection process? Or by “random” do you mean that you just picked the people you wanted to talk to even though you had no reasonable articulable suspicion? That’s not random.
Presumably, you were interested in people who traveled back and forth to New York as potential drug couriers. How did the racial makeup of the population you picked “randomly” compare to the racial makeup of all people who traveled between this city and New York in the same day? (Hint: The racial makeup of the people on the bus doesn’t match the racial makeup of all the relevant travelers once you add in people in cars.)
Was nervousness one of the factors that piqued your interest? Do you believe that minorities are more likely to be nervous when “voluntarily” encountering police officers?
Why do you believe that plainclothes officers are less coercive than uniformed officers? Trust me, the badge is enough to tell them that you have guns and handcuffs. If a uniformed officer approached me, I might think that he is patrolling the station and just happened to take an interest in me for whatever stupid reason. A person approached by plain clothes officers might more likely conclude that the officers have been observing him or her for some time and that they won’t let the person go easily.
I’ll admit, two officers is less coercive than 20 and no guns visible is much less coercive than guns drawn.
Did you expect them all to answer “New York?” Anyone traveling long distances on a bus might have to make a connection in New York. Ask someone connecting in New York from Montpelier where they were coming from and they might truthfully answer “Vermont.” Is that a lie? Do you know who makes multiple connections on buses? Poor people. Do you know that poor people are more likely to be minorities?
Every person with any self awareness should know that they don’t watch their bags 100% of the time. Everyone should answer “yes” to whether someone could have slipped something into their bag. If people watched their stuff as closely as this question implies, pickpocketing would be impossible.
Did you know that unarmed black men are more likely to be shot by police than unarmed white men? Could that be a non-nefarious reason that unarmed black men are more nervous when talking to even very professional police officers?
Parents of black children give them “the talk” which basically trains their children to be fearful of and to defer to the police. Many black people consent because they have been trained that when the police want something, they should do it.
I’ll bet white people in America feel a lot more free to yell at police officers than black people. That yelling at police makes them less likely to be arrested is a form of white privilege. I say this as a white guy that has yelled at cops more than once.
I totally believe that almost everyone consented to the search. I also believe that none of you ever lied about whether someone consented. I still think your method of identifying drug couriers racially discriminated even if the method wasn’t designed or employed with that goal in mind. Heavier policing of minorities using inherently biased methods is one reason why minorities get arrested for drug crimes at much higher rates than white people even when other evidence indicates they do drugs at the same rates. Black people in NYC are 8x more likely to be arrested for marijuana - Vox
I would recommend that you never consent. There is a chance that they will go away if you don’t consent to a search or back off or whatever, but when I lived in Texas (North of Dallas) I got stopped on the side of the road on my way to work (for a government job) and this cop looked like he was ripped on meth or something. He was all over the place, never really said why he pulled me over in the first place, and demanded to search my pickup. I figured since I had nothing illegal, it would be faster just to let him poke around and let me go so I wouldn’t be any more late to work than I already was.
BIG DAMN MISTAKE.
He dug through my very empty truck for 45 minutes. This jackass got so mad that he didn’t find drugs/stolen diamonds/headless hookers/whatever he was looking for that he ripped the hatch off of the center console, breaking the hinges that were on it clean off, broke the bezel that surrounded the dash around the radio, and broke off a coin tray trying to pull it out. This was a pretty new truck at the time, so to get the parts to everything Tweeky Barney Fife broke in my truck cost me over $600 dollars at Friendly Chevrolet. I was able to fix them on my own, but it would have been over $2,000 to have the dealer do it I’m sure.
I tried to put a claim in to my insurance but they won’t pay it out on it since the police did it. They let me turn in my receipt from the Chevy house and apply it to my deductible for the year.
If they want to search your car they will whether you consent to it or not, but if they don’t really want to and are fishing, they might just give up and let you go.
Oh ETA: I never got a ticket or warning for anything. Cop just said “You’re free to go.” After 45 damn minutes.