Agreed they're in a world of hurt. But isn't it SOP?

Post #439,674 by Another Scott 8/19/21 10:20:25 AM 8/19/21 10:20:25 AM Reply	Agreed they're in a world of hurt. But isn't it SOP? E.g. "Johns lists" of arrests in prostitution sweeps. And that's before the civil forfeiture stuff happens. Cops have too much power to ruin innocent people's lives. (And those guys are innocent until proven guilty, of course.) :-/ Cheers, Scott.
Post #439,676 by drook 8/19/21 4:30:10 PM 8/19/21 4:30:10 PM Reply	"Florida Man" proves that The reason for the cliche isn't just that weird shit happens in Florida - though it does. It's that Florida releases much more information about arrests, so we hear about all of it. A study a few years ago showed that most of what's reported nationally about Florida crime is what they called "crimes of homelessness". Public nudity, sex, drug use ... all things that if you have a house to do them in nobody knows or (mostly) cares. -- Drew
Post #439,682 by Another Scott 8/19/21 11:59:23 PM 8/19/21 11:59:23 PM Reply	Yup. :-( I recently saw a bit of a UK miniseries on murder mysteries and murder investigations or something and part of one episode was on the history of the London metropolitan police force. It was only created in 1829. NYC's was later. Police are a very modern construct, and no doubt we should be doing more to modernize their duties, responsibilities, and regulations as society has changed and we've learned much more about how humans actually tick. Cheers, Scott.
Post #439,683 by drook 8/20/21 9:38:57 AM 8/20/21 9:38:57 AM Reply	It's (always) worse than it appears The first organized police forces in the U.S. were runaway slave posses. I don't think that's sufficient to taint the entirety of current law enforcement, but when you look at what counts as "tough on crime" it's hard not to see that "crime" seems to exclusively mean things that poor (and usually minority) people do. Wage theft is more than 3 times the size of robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts combined. How many officers are hassling CEOs for underpaying employees? There are more than 126,000 sites where industrial waste is known to have contaminated groundwater. If each of those is responsible for one early death per year that's 6 times the murder rate of < 20k/yr. When is the last time you saw a chemical company CEO perp walked on the evening news? When the rich and powerful are allowed to define what even counts as "crime" is it any wonder we have police forces that are de facto segregation enforcers? -- Drew

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