Oh. Joy! Just What You Need! Another Katrina Outrage!

The BBQ Pit
61

I think you should go back and read the thread. The thread was discussing a number of people who were harrassed by the Gretna police, forced to remain in the city of New Orleans at gunpoint, and driven from their temporary shelters by the Gretna police entring New Orleans in order to steal their food. You kept interrupting the discussion to wave your arms and shout “looters!” and “arsonists!” Since we were not discussing the separate group of actual looters and arsonists, you were clearly conflating the issues of two separate groups.

I do not owe you an apology. I might owe you a lesson in how to conduct a discussion without deliberately confusing issues or inserting red herrings and strawmen. Unfortunately, I suspect that the lesson would be a waste of time for both of us, so I will simply reiterate that your conflation is inappropriate.

62

No mention of anybody “fucking” helping themselves, my ass. How about the fact that they all pooled their money to hire buses to take them out of the city, which were then comandeered by the military? How about the fact that they then tried to walk out of the city on their own instead of staying at one of the “shelters/prisons/hellholes” waiting for a government handout?

Disingenuous much, Updike? It’s either that or illiterate, take your pick.

63

Oh sweet Jesus.

So because of their clothing they couldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt and maybe gotten help getting away from the same people this police dept was so afraid of? It’s ok to let babies die because their parents don’t quite look right?

Earlier today I saw a video on CNN of a woman and some children and I think an old man being rescued from New Orleans. They were a group that had thought the water might go down but were eventually persuaded to leave. This woman had one white trash bag with stuff in it. Her clothes were not baggy. She wasn’t acting in a threatening manner at all.

She was still frisked like a common criminal before she could get on the helicopter.

Doesn’t anybody else think that’s shameful? Have vicims of any other earthquake, tornado or hurricane been frisked before getting help? I understood why they would want to search the people coming out of the superdome - although I haven’t heard of anyone trying to find the people that raped and murdered those poor children. But this is just ridiculous.

64

I would think that in in city or town in this country, regardless of culture or clothing style, law enforcement is required to assume that a person is innocent and has the right to safe and protected passage.

Please post signs when America is not that country anymore.

65

Do you have any evidence that they weren’t innocent?

66

Does Louisiana still follow Napoleonic law in which one is considered guilty until proven innocent or was that just some more BS the nuns taught me?

67

This American Life this weekend included an interview with an eyewitness (or maybe two) of the Gretna police preventing people from crossing the bridge at gunpoint, including firing shots in the general direction of the people trying to leave New Orleans. I was only able to hear part of the interview, so I can’t provide any more detail, unfortunately. The program will be available via streaming audio later this week on thislife.org

The two “socialists” and the Charmaine Neville party are not the only witnesses to this behavior.

68

My apologies.

When I first bookmarked the page with the news video of the NOP police personally looting the WalMart (not making needed supplies accessible – just plain old personally looting), the sponsor links on that page were work safe. Being on dial-up, I did not check to see if the sponsor links changed when a few days later I posted the link on this thread. My apologies for not doing so, for that page is certainly no longer work safe, for I certainly did not want to cause anyone any difficulties at work. :o

That having been said, is that updike on the third pic on the top?

69

You have had BS shat upon you.

Lousiana follows a civil code system rather than a common law system that is followed in other US states. This has nothing to do with the burden of proof. In both systems of law in the USA a person is usually assumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

70

Here’s a very simplified way of thinking about the main differences between civil and common law. It really comes down to where you find the law.

Under civil law, politicians can make law via statutes. Judges find the law in those statutes. Decisions by other judges, and common practices by people, may affect how judges interpret the law they find in the statutes, but ultimately the law is only found in those statutes.

Under common law, judges can find law in statutes, but they can also find law sitting under trees, in in the back of old cupboards, or in their washtubs.

Under common law, a judge might find that there is a law simply by virtue of people always having done something a certain way. (A really good example is to compare the American constitution to the English constitution – the American one is pretty much written down; whereas only parts of the English constitution are written down in a great many different documents that have traditionally come to be considered of constitutional importance, or are not written down anywhere but are simply understood to be of constitutional importance by tradition/convention.)

Also under the common law, when interpreting laws, decisions by judges higher up the ladder are usually supposed to be binding (have the force of law) on lower courts.

As far as judge made law goes, under the common law system, judges that don’t want to be bound by a higher judge’s decision simply distinguish that higher decision by pointing out how the circumstances are sufficiently different to the degree that the higher judge’s decision should not be followed; and in the civil law system, although a higher judge’s decision does not usually have to be strictly followed, a lower judge will seriously consider a higher judge’s decision, particularly with a view to how an appeal court might decide the matter.

Despite the fundamental difference between the two systems of law in theory, there is very little difference between them in in practice. Governments create more and more laws, and often these laws start off by making a clean slate of old common laws. This makes the common law system more and more like the civil system.

Thus there is not a whole heck of a lot of difference between the systems down where the rubber meets the road.

71

You beat me to it!

I recommend EVERYONE listen to this show. It just aired but I know at least here in south Florida, it is reaired at 6:00 tonight.

Watch it, you doubting Thomases!

72

Or listen to it, anyway – the video portion isn’t that interesting.

73

Hehe, I’m such a big-ass dummy sometimes!

74

Re: the law. I was reading an alternative newspaper in New Orleans in the mid-1990s. It warned visitors that you can be arrested for resisting arrest, even if there was no cause to arrest you in the first place.

75

That’s probably pretty much true everywhere, Johhny. The presumption is that no punishment will be meted out before a court trial, so resisting an arrest by a duly commissioned law officer is interference with the performance of his duties.

Of course, The Gretna police were not actually attempting to arrest anyone; they were simply wandering in to New Orleans to harrass victims so that no victim would enter Gretna.