No, it’s because in many cases it’s difficult to show intent versus simple incompetence. Also there were a lot of cases of mortgage backed security prospectuses appropriately illustrating the credit profile of the underlying loans, but the logic in rating them still resulted in them being rated AAA. But that was largely a simple result of poor scheme ratings by the ratings agency, and largely not fraud.
It’s a common desire when some crimes have occurred in a big bad situation to assume that those crimes explain the whole situation. In reality they are just a part of the story.
This is so naive. You’ll be telling me Goldman Sachs did the nation a favour in 2009.
It really isn’t. Often, these guys were talking to each other on messaging programs as they fixed markets. They had large meetings on how to defraud their own customers. These are the same guys who openly launder drug money for cartels and dictators.
The intent is clear, evidence is clear. The crime - as currently defined on the statue books - is minor and the only remedies are non personal and corporate fines.
The events were disputed only because of the lack of video evidence. If recent incidents have taught us anything, it’s that cops’ claims very often contradict what is caught on film, especially when they don’t know they are filmed. See Tamir Rice for example.
For those who think Brown and Garner’s case are radically apart: Try this thought experiment. What do you think the cops’ version of events would be if there hadn’t been video evidence?
I’m guessing they’d be selling us a story about a 400-lb belligerent drug dealer who had to be subdued with force because he tried to punch a cop for looking at him the wrong way. Garner would be portrayed as a hardened thug and his prior brushes with the law would be used to support this portrayal. We’d probably be treated to grainy convenience store surveillance videos of him doing suspicious things hours to days prior, and any witnesses who came forward with claims that contradicted the cops would be treated to similar slander too. I’m also confident the cops would not admit that they used any chokeholds, and they wouldn’t admit that Garner cried “I can’t breathe”. Maybe they would even claim they administered CPR according to protocol.
And many people would swallow that story without question. Just like many believe Wilson’s story about Brown fighting and charging him. Gee, would you look at that.
In effect, it is crazy to ignore the power of having video evidence on what we accept as true versus false. In an alternate dimension, Garner’s case could be just as cloudy as Brown’s and Brown’s could be just as mind-blowing as Garner’s.
Precisely. I’ve been truly shocked at just how fully and completely Wilson’s story was taken for gospel. People describe it by saying “we know” that Brown called him a pussy or that Brown had a hold of the gun. Stuff that cops say may or may not be true. There is certainly a lot of motivation for them to shade the story in a particular direction. Video helps to cut down on ambiguities and unknowns.
I don’t think there will be real progress until a critical mass of (white) people stop taking cops at their word and finally start demanding to see some receipts for their claims.
Meh. As in the tale of The Boy Who Cried “Wolf”, responsibility ultimately resides in the people who shitcanned their own credibility (i.e. the police and justice system) and as a result find it difficult to get a hearing even when they have a valid case this time.
The eggshell skull doctrine applies to torts committed by police, and the equivalent criminal law principle – that one must take one’s victims as one finds them – is equally applicable. But the doctrine does not apply when there is no tort to begin with. In other words, “eggshell skull” is not a tort; it’s a description of the principle that when a tortious act results in injury, the tortfeasor is liable for the injury even it were caused by an unknown weakness hidden from an ordinary observer.
I suspect your misunderstanding arises from your lack of understanding of the difference between the general privilege to commit an act that, absent privilege, would be assault, and the legal effect of department regulations on the ways such acts may be applied.
But maybe not.
Regardless of the reasoning, you continue to offer factually incorrect statements and not provide cites when asked.
In New York, a police officer (or any person) charged with assault has defenses available under the law. The police officer has a defense that the ordinary citizen does not: it arises from CPL 35.05(1) relating to the justification of force when used by a public servant in the reasonable exercise of his official powers, duties or functions. There is no law that says that the police regulations are conclusively reasonable, and of course there couldn’t be, as a moment’s thought would make clear: the police cannot, by regulation, make reasonable a tactic which isn’t reasonable. Similarly, while the police regulation forbidding a tactic is certainly persuasive in determining it’s an unreasonable tactic, it’s not conclusive either.
As the Supreme Court explained:
Again: do you have any cites supporting any of the factual claims you have offered here?
Again, I have the feeling you fundamentally do not understand what the argument even is.
This is the sort of reasoning I hate. ‘Who cares about the facts - it raised awareness’. Well, no, it was a festering boil of an issue that was bound to arise eventually into punblic prominence - there is no particular ‘magic’ to this one case; the reason this is an issue, is not because of this particular case, but because there are many, many similar cases. If it was “all about” this particular case, or even this particular police department, the issue would be easy to solve!
The whole argument - to repeat - is not about some fictitious “lack of sympathy”. It is about acknowledging that this is a wider problem, and about stating that, for purposes of raising awareness, it is unfortunate that when the boil burst, it was this particular case - one far more ambiguous on the facts than many, many others - that was the “trigger”.
You are reading the stats wrong.
They state as follows:
Both Justified - 15%
Both Unjustified - 38%
Brown Justified, Rice Unjustified - 45%
Brown unjustified, Rice Justified - 1%
So in total, 39% feel that Brown was unjustified, versus 60% who feel Brown was justified (15% who feel both were justified, PLUS 45% who feel Brown was justified but Rice was unjustified). There is rounding error, so let’s call it 40-60.
Contrast this with the “Rice unjustified” position - that has the support of 83%! (both unjustified - 38% plus Brown justified, Rice unjustified - 45%)
So compare Brown with Rice:
Brown, total who think it justified: 60% Unjustified: 40%
Rice, total who think it justified: 16% Unjustified: 83%
This, a survey of the very obviously left-leaning members of the Dope, quite clearly demonstrates MY point: that the Rice case has considerably more “sympathy” than the Brown case, as evidenced by the quite one-sided stats. Rice is FAR more “sympathetic” than Brown.
Yes. You clearly do not know what an “ad hom” IS. It isn’t an accusation of an insult - it is an argument aimed “at the man” rather than at his facts and arguments.
Saying ‘I hear your arguments but I discount them, because you, the person making them, are an outsider’ is an absolutely classic ad hom. It is a “statement of fact” that is about the person arguing, not about his or her argument.
Now, not all ad homs are fallacious. If someone was claiming some sort of authority for their arguments based on who they are, it is a non-fallacious adhom to point out that they lack that authority. However, in this context, it clearly was an ad hom and a fallacious one.
That is certainly possible (see my subsequent posts). To clarify, I was initially responding to the point that informing the person they were under arrest and the reason for the arrest was not legally necessary. In NY, it is.
Certainly, it may well be the case that the cops did this, only not on the tape we can see. We can’t know, unless the case is heard in court and the evidence sifted.
I’m interested. It seems bizzare to me that one would not have a legal right to resist an illegal arrest.
If the cops are performing an “illegal arrest”, it strikes me that they are not operating within the laws. What is to differentiate that from plain old kidnapping?
If someone dressed up like a cop comes and kidnaps you, you have no legal right to resist them? Or you have a legal right, but not if it turns out that they are really cops after all? WTF?
I don’t doubt such a law exists, but it strikes me as a very strange one. I would be interested in seeing how it is worded.
No need to compare Brown with Rice, because that’s not the point. The point is that you have no rational basis for saying it’s unfortunate that so much attention has been given to Brown, when the Ferguson protests have catalyzed the existence of this very thread and every other active SDMB thread about police brutality.
To say in one breath that it’s the “accretion” of cases that is having an effect, while ignoring the role that the Ferguson publicity has played in making the mainstream even aware of this “accretion” (which, as already been pointed out, has been accreting forever, by the way), is laughable.
Emmet Till suddenly comes to mind. He was a young black guy who was lynched for the “crime” of whistling at a white woman. I could very easily imagine someone saying a person like him should not have been treated as cause celebre for the Civil Rights movement, because after all, what he did could be construed as street harassment, no?* Certainly the activists could find a better example to rally around. A victim whose morality and goodness was more clear-cut, less ambiguous. Someone completely non-threatening like Rosa Parks. And yet the history books show that Till’s murder was privotal in changing the public’s awareness of racism. Without the press given to him and his murderers’ trial, things might be different in this country.
50 years from now, I will not be surprised if we look back at Brown and see him as the Emmet Till of 2014. Mark my words.
*(Years ago I remember thinking something like this myself, actually. Now I see how stupid I was.)
I should have been more clear…was it a “chokehold” in the sense that it was a maneuver that NYC cops aren’t supposed to use anymore or was it a “chokehold” in the sense that the word can be used over and over in a “by any means necessary” sense?
All things being equal, I think that’s true. All things aren’t equal.
For one, I think Americans of all races have a stronger anti-authoritarian streak than most people. For another (actually related to the first), we’re way more heavily armed – which then influences the mindset and procedure the police do their jobs under.
For good or ill, neither of those things are going to change. Policymakers need to take them into account before making laws they expect the police to enforce.
I am 100% in Wilson’s camp but this case gives me pause.
A police officer is allowed to use reasonable force to effectuate an arrest. In this situation, Garner was resisting allowing himself to be arrested. He was a huge guy and the cop in front of him was a skinny little guy. Force was appropriate in this situation.
But what kind of force? You have about 10 officers surrounding him and he is being arrested for a petty offense. Now maybe a chokehold/other neck hold was appropriate to get him to the ground. But once he is taken down, you have a man on the ground, with 10 officers at the ready, and as one officer chokes him out, he is clearly asserting he is unable to breathe.
I’m not saying let him stand or use his arms, but it is entirely appropriate to release the grip on his throat so that the man can breathe. Letting a man die lying face down on a sidewalk while claiming that the chokehold was reasonable and necessary when 10 other officers are there to back you up smacks me as probable cause of criminal negligence.
Now I didn’t hear what the GJ did, but the video itself seems that there is PC for charges to go forward. Maybe there is not evidence to convict him, but from the video alone, I think there is enough to charge him with criminally negligent homicide.
[QUOTE=NY Penal Code]
Justification; use of physical force in resisting arrest prohibited.
A person may not use physical force to resist an arrest, whether authorized or unauthorized, which is being effected or attempted by a police officer or peace officer when it would reasonably appear that the latter is a police officer or peace officer.
[/QUOTE]
To your knowledge, have these laws ever been challenged on due process grounds, or 4th or 5th amendment grounds? Imagine a rogue police officer who stops me on the street with no articulate suspicion and tells me I’m under arrest. He proceeds to pummel me into the dirt and kick me in the kidneys.
I am mindful of the law, so I use no force in return until I finally can’t take it anymore and I grab his arm to block another blow.
The court then finds my arrest unlawful, but upholds my battery conviction because I have no privilege to resist an unlawful arrest. Can this possibly stand in a free country?
If I’m walking down the street and a cop suddenly comes over and puts me a in bear hug so another cop can cuff me, why should I assume I’m under arrest if they don’t tell me I am? Isn’t it perfectly reasonable for me to think these cops mean me harm, regardless of whether they are wearing a uniform? Why do I not have the right to self-defense in this situation?
To make it unlawful for a person to do anything in this scenario except submit to a possible kidnapping like a quiet little lamb should bother everyone, whether they be on the left or right. It also makes me question the point of the 2nd amendment. If all an Oppressive Government needs to do to subjugate the people is tell cops to arrest any gun owner and confiscate their weapons, then it’s a right with no teeth and we might as well chuck it out the window.
But my informed guess would be “no,” because the prosecutor wouldn’t ever file those charges, and so as a practical matter no one has standing to challenge the law.
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