The Nightly Show on Fox News' Phoney War on Cops

Shit, Balko made it on to the Nightly Show.  Mentioned this nonsense earlier here.  Meanwhile, notice that Fox has apparently modified this particular story...

Police officer reported as killed "execution-style" may have actually staged own suicide: http://t.co/xBJqZIsxWt

— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) September 15, 2015

Ted Rall on his Favourite* Subject

* For obvious reasons, may not actually be his favourite subject.

Keith Knight on NYPD Gun Battle

Had to look up the headline in question: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nypd-84-shots-brooklyn_55ec4b31e4b093be51bbb978

Joe 'Crime Bill' Biden for President ?

So, as individuals close to cuddly Uncle Joe Biden continue to hint at a run for the Democratic nomination, suddenly everyone in the media's dredging up pesky facts from that ole' thing we used to call 'history.'  Here, from Slate:

A large part of running for president is intense scrutiny on personal history and political records. But once you’re in office, that scrutiny subsides. Once you’ve left, it almost disappears. Right now, Biden is beloved, an avuncular and light-hearted figure who contrasts the president’s stoic cool and adds a touch of heart to the seemingly mechanistic Obama White House. Forgotten (at least, outside academia and a few corners of political media) is Biden’s earlier persona: a leader in America’s drug war. For a generation, Biden was at the front of a national push for tough drug laws and police militarization.

If you consider her time in Bill Clinton’s White House, that’s true for Hillary, too. The difference is that she was first lady—an advocate for her husband’s policies, but not a lawmaker. That’s why she’s able to meet face to face with members of the Black Lives Matter movement and not look disingenuous when she says she has changed her mind on the subject. Biden’s Senate career, by contrast, was defined by his aggressive and vocal support for the drug war. Here are the highlights of that history:

In 1984, he worked with Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond and the Reagan administration to craft and pass the Comprehensive Control Act, which enhanced and expanded civil asset forfeiture, and entitled local police departments to a share of captured assets. Critics say this incentivizes abuse, citing countless cases of unfair and unaccountable seizures....

In 1986, Biden co-sponsored the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which created new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including the infamous crack-versus-cocaine sentencing disparity. A crack cocaine user with only five grams would receive five years without parole, while a powder cocaine user had to possess 500 grams before seeing the same punishment. The predictable consequence was a federal drug regime that put its toughest penalties on low-level drug sellers and the most impoverished drug users.

Biden would also play an important role in crafting the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which strengthened mandatory minimums for drug possession, enhanced penalties for people who transport drugs, and established the Office of National Drug Control Policy, whose director was christened “drug czar” by Biden.

His broadest contribution to crime policy was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, commonly called the 1994 Crime Bill. Written by Biden and signed by President Clinton, it increased funds for police and prisons, fueling a huge expansion of the federal prison population. As journalist Radley Balko details in The Rise of The Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, it also contributed to the rapid growth of militarized police forces that used new federal funds to purchase hundreds of thousands of pieces of military equipment, from flak jackets and automatic rifles to armored vehicles and grenade launchers.

The “crime bill” also brought a host of new federal death penalty crimes, which Biden celebrated in his defense of the bill. “Let me define the liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” he said to Sen. Orrin Hatch, “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties … the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 100,000 cops. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 125,000 new state prison cells.”

Senator Joe Biden speaks at the signing of the 1994 Biden Crime Bill.

Say it ain't so, Joe !  Not our lovely fuzzy liberal icon onto whom we can project all our progressive fantasies !

But never mind about all that.  It's not as if the real-life consequences of those policies are being highlighted more than ever as the prison-population continues to soar, largely filling up with the poor and ethnic minorities, and as every day seems to bring new stories of unarmed men, women, and children shot dead in the street by militarised cops who see themselves as occupying forces in American cities.

Let's return instead to our obsession with that presidential candidate who conducted government business over a private e-mail account on a privately-owned server.  And resume our outrage over the presidential candidate who avoided scrutiny of private e-mails used to conduct governmental business by deleting them.  Millions & millions of e-mails deleted !  Simply scandalous !

Ted Rall v. the LAPD/LA Times, Continuing

Slowly, slowly, media-outlets are coming around to covering Rall's apparent vindication in his firing by the LAPDLA Times.  Boing Boing above.

They really shouldn't have fired* Ted without an appropriate investigation in the first place, but...that window's come and gone.  And, I'd guess that any legal advice the LA Times may be getting at this point probably goes basically along the lines of  'Keep your mouth closed and shut the fuck up whatever you do.'  There's a lawsuit coming here, and my guess is we won't hear one word further from the LAT** till that result is concluded.  After which exercise, perhaps a retraction...on page 54 or so.

Here's hoping Ted's got some damn good lawyers lined up.

And as for apologies from the various right-wing outlets that convicted Ted online immediately, well we may be waiting a while there also.

Meanwhile, Ted has this, er, on-topic piece on his site from South African cartoonist John Curtis, who does a pretty decent imitation of Ted's style at that:

Damn.  I'd go for a legal disclaimer there myself, but then, I ain't Ted...by a long shot.


* IANAL, but I suspect the definitions/rules regarding termination of employment may vary with freelance-work.

** Whose last word on the subject currently remains this note from 28 July: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-oe-rall-20150728-story.html

*** Multiple things I'd change about my own previous coverage of this subject (including the damned title), but for honesty's sake, here it is: http://nofarhorizons.blogspot.com/2015/07/welcome-to-modern-day-fascist-reality.html

Speaking of Corruption

This Country Just Made It Legal for Cops to Keep 70% of All the Traffic Fines They Collect

Officials do not foresee a rash of spurious fines being handed out as a consequence

Drivers in Cambodia have a lot to contend with: cavernous potholes, weaving motorcycles kicking up clouds of choking dust and noodle hawkers trundling down the “fast” lane. Now motorists may find their pockets as ravaged as their nerves, after officials announced a fivefold bump in traffic fines and gave permission for issuing officers to keep 70% of all cash collected.

The new rules, coming into force in January, are an attempt to curb corruption, reports the Phnom Penh Post. Currently, traffic cops keep half of much smaller penalties, meaning that many supplement their meager salaries by soliciting bribes.

The current $1.25 official penalty for not wearing a car seat belt, for example, will rise to $6.25, with the officer allowed to keep $4.38. Of the remaining 30%, some 25% will go to the station where the officer is based, with the final 5% sent to the Ministry of Finance.

I guess I understand the motivation behind this: Cops are taking bribes from drivers, who may or may not have committed an offence, which may or may not be of a significant nature, so they don't get ticketed.  There's a culture of corruption there, with both the officers, and members of the public.  And the government wants to discourage that.

Currently, he said, traffic cops are already given 50 per cent of the much smaller penalties they collect, meaning the change effectively represents a seven-fold increase in the revenue they can legitimately earn from dishing out fines.

Wait, so the government, which apparently knows its cops are underpaid, already have a system in place that encourages spurious stops...and they wonder why drivers are offering, and no doubt some officers, soliciting bribes ?

And rather than top up the base-pay of the police**, to make them less tempted by bribes, they now want to give cops, any way you cut it, an even greater motivation to stop drivers, in which they get a much bigger payout than before, whether the driver attempts to bribe them or not, though they now stand a chance at getting exponentially bigger bribes from those who can afford it ?

What could possibly go wrong ?


h/t Boing Boing

---

Back in the West, of course, we may have somewhat less corruption, but there's still far too much motivation for spurious traffic-stops (So, Officer Doe, I see you seem to be having trouble meeting our monthly departmental quota lately ?  Maybe we should have a chat in my office...), and the consequences can be far higher in the case of the gun-loving US -- sadly as we see over and over in the headlines, even fatal.

What we could really do with is some way to disincentivise over-policing of minor violations generally (but without necessarily encouraging cops to not enforce given laws across the board) combined with greater accountability for the cops.  Which yes, includes technologies like body-cameras, which we can fairly easily afford, even if Cambodia could not.

And what we could also do with is to remove entirely the financial incentives for traffic-stops & tickets.***  The motivation for stopping a driver, or a citizen generally, should have precisely zero to do with departmental budgets, zero to do with quotas, zero to do with anxieties about career-advancement, and everything to do with the nature of the offence, the severity or lack thereof of any threat to public wellbeing, and the benefits of a stop versus the risks to everyone, police-officer & civilian alike, involved.


* Apologies for the likely sloppy flow of this post.  It flipped about quite a bit, then bifurcated altogether.

** Yes, I'm aware that Cambodia's not the richest country in the world.  But there have to be better, less abuse-prone if not abuse-rife ways of funding the police than this.

*** And if a municipality in the US is unable to independently afford its own police-force, then maybe it shouldn't exist as a separate municipality at all.  Thinking of  the case of St. Louis/Ferguson et al. here, with the phenomenon of  so-called 'white flight', though there are no doubt similar examples across the US.

Welcome to Modern-Day Fascist Reality

In which Ted Rall is apparently fired by the LA Times over a question with the LAPD of jaywalking, a decade and a half ago.

A lot of folk in the US don't like Ted Rall.  The man's earned himself a lot of enemies by daring to question the establishment...on every level.  I don't agree with any of such assholes, whilst questioning the wisdom in such fascistic times as we find ourselves, of openly and repeatedly calling as a public figure, as Rall has done, for revolution again the capitalistic order of the day.

Ted knows the odds, knows the consequences, knows that he could be setting himself up here as a future martyr.  He's far braver than I would be in his shoes.

Politics aside, as if that were ever possible, the man is one of the sharpest minds of his generation, and, crude drawing-style aside, would probably be one of the pre-eminent (and perhaps even, most profitable) cartoonists of this age, were it not for the enemies he earned during the Afghan & Iraq Wars.  Think now, when it comes to voting for Auntie Hillary, Jeb, Uncle Marco, or Leader Walker, what kind of future you want for the US, and how such a leader, more democratic, or utterly un-democratic would treat such a voice as Ted's.

Ted doesn't ask for any particular action here, that I can see, and I have my own suspicions about where he's likely to end up.  I'd guess, that he'd want you to just act on your own conscience.  We're all, as we ever were, on our own in this shitty modern world.


Update:

Here's the LA Times' official statement: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-oe-rall-20150728-story.html
And Ted's full statement on the matter: http://anewdomain.net/2015/07/27/ted-rall-lapd-convinced-la-times-fire-criticized-cops-exclusive/

The more I review this, I have to say, while the evidence provided, which is entirely under the control of the LAPD, doesn't prove anything, it doesn't really look good for Ted either.  Although he mentions, and then rejects, the idea of conflating different events, I do have to wonder about that, given than this incident took place a full fourteen years ago.

Not that he wouldn't likely still be canned, were that the case, given the treatment of Brian Williams, who was the news-anchor of a prominent national network, never mind a freelance cartoonist commenting on local stories.

I do also wonder about the timing, given that Ted has mentioned this story several times previously over the years.  Is it the fact that he wrote about it in the Times that finally got the LAPD's attention, or the detail of his accusations, or something else entirely ?

All this over a charge on the victimless crime of jaywalking, almost fifteen years ago...


Update (2nd):

Guess Ted was right to push for people to listen to the audio.  An 'enhanced' version he received, and posted online, seems to strengthen his version of events, with the woman in the background appearing to be protesting his treatment over jaywalking, though I still can't quite tell myself if that's the word 'handcuff' she says.  And it does sound like the cop's whistling may have been intended to obscure those sections of the recording.

Plus that sound at 5'42...And the bizarre statement at the end about not knowing any local eateries, suddenly sounding less like a question to the cop, and maybe an answer...to a question from one of the onlookers, wanting to discuss the case ?

Next step, Ted takes legal action ?  And if he wins ?  Maybe a settlement by the LA Times and/or the LAPD ?  A slap on the wrist perhaps for a certain one-time 'officer of the year' ?  And Ted's career, his reputation meanwhile ?...

Newsflash: US Cops Kill...a Lot

I highly doubt this is a new statistic, but it bears repeating.

U.S. Cops Kill more People on an Average Day than U.K. Police do in a Year

The difference between law enforcement in the United States and in Britain is startling when it comes to the number of fatal police shootings.

A recent investigation by The Washington Post found that American police shot and killed an average of more than two people a day so far in 2015. The average was based on 385 fatal shootings by cops in the first five months of this year.

By contrast, British police fatally shot less than one person a year. In fact, British police have used firearms to kill only two people in the past three years.

Police officers in the United Kingdom, known as bobbies, operate in a much different climate and culture than do police in America, the Post’s Griffe Witte noted. Britain has banned handguns and assault rifles among its populace, whereas U.S. citizens are generally able to purchase a wide variety of pistols and rifles legally.

Unlike American cops, most British police officers patrol their streets armed with no more than batons and pepper spray. The elite police who do carry guns, as the study shows, almost never use them.

“But there are also enough similarities that the British model carries special relevance,” Witte wrote. “Like the United States, Britain is large, urbanized, democratic and diverse. Police have to reckon with gang violence, organized crime and Islamist extremists, all amid persistent allegations that they unfairly target minority communities.”

And while “few here would argue that the United States should adopt Britain’s nearly firearms-free approach,” Witte added, British officers and commanders “say they hope that some of their strategies and practices can be translated across the Atlantic” to the U.S.

One example: Bobbies are trained “to back away from any situation that might otherwise escalate and to not feel that they have to ‘win’ every confrontation with suspects.”

'Bobbies', huh ?  Yeah, that's what they're called these days.


* Link via Skippy

The Armoured Might of a Whack-a-loon

So, there was a shootout with police in Dallas, Texas.  Ho-hum, right ?

Dallas police have disabled the armored van used in the shooting and pipe bomb incident at the Dallas Police Headquarters early Saturday morning. What is believed to be the vehicle used in this assault was described as a “Zombie Apocalypse Assault Vehicle and Troop Transport.” Police disabled the vehicle with a .50 caliber rifle shot to the engine block.

Wait, what ?

The vehicle was sold by Jenco Sales, Inc. in Newman, Georgia, according to a Dallas Morning News report. The company described the vehicle on their Facebook page as follows:

Zombie Apocalypse Assault Vehicle and Troop Transport. This full armored zombie busting vehicle features convenient gun ports so no zombie juice touches you during a mass zombie take down. It also has benches in the back so you can take turns resting during long Zombie sieges. The tactical step boards are installed for when you only need swords and axes for drive by mow downs. The bumpers are made of reinforced steel tubing, so no dents from smashing zombie heads! It’s full armor plated and has bullet proof windows just in case you run into other zombie hunting hordes who might try to take this bad boy from you. Like anything, there is a price attached to this fine piece of zombie fighting machinery.

Just how is there a market for this ?  I mean, presumably it wasn't used in an actual zombie-apocalypse, so I suppose someone built this with the idea of selling it...to whom ?

Are zombie-geeks buying these things for kicks, or is the whole zombie-thing just code for right-wing survivalist types who don't want to advertise the fact that they are buying...on the civilian market...a vehicle specifically designed for hunting human beings in an urban setting...

A police robot checks James Boulware’s armored van for explosives, as well as to confirm the alleged gunman’s death, in Hutchins, Texas. Photograph: Rex Curry/Reuters

On Police Shootings

US police kill more than two people a day, report suggests

Data collected by the Washington Post newspaper suggests that the number of people shot by US police is twice as high as official figures claim.
The paper said that during the first five months of this year, 385 people - more than two a day - were killed.
The number of black people was disproportionately high among the victims, especially unarmed ones.

Well, that's not really surprising.  Probably even more than that.

A national debate is raging about police use of deadly force, especially against minorities. To understand why and how often these shootings occur, The Washington Post is compiling a database of every fatal shooting by police in 2015, as well as of every officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty.

Do we have to pretend there's some mysterious secret here ?  The cops are trained to behave in a certain way, are encouraged to see every civilian on the street as a potential threat, especially since the era of the 'War on Drugs' and then the 'War on Terror.'  They are heavily armed, and have access to military-grade firearms.  They often wear body-armour.  Their departments obtain armoured vehicles scarcely distinguishable from tanks, along with all kinds of ex-military equipment via generous federal programmes.  The cops themselves are sometimes scarcely distinguishable from soldiers, even wearing camouflage uniforms.  And they are trained to value their own safety over that of those they supposedly serve.  And they are human.

Fear is the strongest emotion in the human brain.  And humans are hard-wired to distinguish between in-groups and out-groups, to see out-groups as a potential threat.  Our fears are of course often deeply irrational, and rooted in internal prejudices, often including, partly as a result of our inherent wiring, racism.  But generally, we are given to fear The Other.  (A fear frequently manipulated by the political classes, but that's another subject).  The Other may have a different skin-colour, may be of a different class, may wear different clothing, may suffer from a mental illness, may speak with a different accent, may have a slightly different form of worship.  In a way, it doesn't matter.  They are Other, and we fear them, even when we know our fears are irrational.

Just about everyone knows this experience, and probably from both sides.  That homeless guy mumbling to himself looks a little suspect.  Better step over to the other side of the street.  Every person of colour in America has been on the receiving end, probably for most of their lives.  Everyone who in any way looks or sounds a little different from their peers has experienced it.  Teenagers experience it from their elders.  Every man at some point has probably experienced it, from women understandably wary of physical assault or rape at the hands of men, not knowing who that guy on the subway or walking in the park is, what kind of person he might be.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, the imagined threat is non-existent.  But it could be so very real.

Of course, the majority of cops aren't women.  And the majority aren't from minority racial groups.  They're mostly white men, often policing communities in which they don't themselves live.  On foreign turf.  On what, with their increasingly military-style training they eventually come to see as a battlefield.  And the primary tool with which they are equipped as they do their rounds is a gun.  Not on a rack back at the precinct.  Not a gun securely stowed away in the patrol-car.  A gun strapped to their hip.  Ready at hand for all eventualities.

And then they come into contact with The Other.  Maybe they were called to the scene.  Maybe they were on patrol.  But there he or she is.  The possibly dangerous drug-addict or homeless person.  The woman with the scary tattoos.  The possibly Middle-Eastern-looking (quick, they do wear turbans over there right ?) guy speaking in a foreign language.  The sixteen-year-old black kid who somehow becomes magnified in the cop's imagination into a hulking monster.  Senses on high-alert, pulse racing, hand on hip...  Wait, is he reaching for ?...<BAM>  He was just reaching for his driver's licence ?  Too late.  He's dead.  Shit.  Better get the story straight.  Call it in.  'Shots fired.'  What will you tell the interviewing panel ?

Police are authorized to use deadly force only when they fear for their lives or the lives of others. So far, just three of the 385 fatal shootings have resulted in an officer being charged with a crime — less than 1 percent.

Well, it doesn't really matter.  You're not going to be charged.  Your fellow officers may even help cover up evidence if it keeps you out of trouble.  And why not ?  You were just doing your job.  Following training.  What if he had a knife ?  He could have been on me in an instant.  Twenty-one foot rule, remember.  Got to get home safe at the end of the day.  And you were afraid.

From Point A...to...Point B...Eventually...

Haven't had anything to say on the death in police-custody of Freddie Gray, or the subsequent protests/riots/uprising (take your pick), but this thing with the timeline and the multiple stops is fascinating to me.

So, if I understand it correctly, Gray was taken into custody in the 1700 block of Presbury Street, just across from N Mount Street, and on the way to the police-station at 1034 N Mount Street, which is directly to the south, rather than head straight down N Mount Street or down N Fulton Avenue, the cops instead detoured southeast to the OK Groceries (or vicinity thereof) at 714 W Mosher Street, for unknown or undisclosed reasons, then stopped at Druid Hill Avenue & Dolphin Street, which is to the east, to check on Gray, before being directed to pick up another prisoner at 1600 W North Avenue, over to the northwest, and not far from where Gray first ran from the police (intersection of W North Avenue & N Mount Street), before finally returning to the police-station.  Shortly after which at some point, paramedics were called to transport 'an unconscious male' to the hospital.

This, without the stops, Google Maps has (although obviously dependent on traffic and time of day) as a sixteen to eighteen minute drive, versus a three or four minute drive straight to the station.  Keeping in mind that the police were transporting an individual clearly in need of medical attention.

Wonder what the cops' explanation will be.  If any.


*Note, address on Presbury Street is just an approximation of location based on images released.  Address of store on W Mosher Street is based on stated intersection and seeming correspondence between records of holder of liquor-licence at said location and individual quoted in the media.  Address on Druid Hill Ave. is also an approximation based on intersection.

**Also, obviously, this is speculation based on what has been released to date by the authorities, and Google Maps' recommendations as to routing may bear little resemblance to the actual route taken by police.

***Sample sources for timeline:
http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/freddie-gray/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/events-leading-freddie-gray-death-police-custody-article-1.2205414

Another Unarmed Man Murdered by the Cops

Happens every day in America, seems like.  Only difference these days is the ubiquity of cellphone-cameras.  Hence the cops get recorded as they gun down unarmed, mostly black men.  And just sometimes...charged.

And 'Hands behind your back now !  Put your hands behind your back !'  How many shots was that you just fired at the guy ?  Eight ?

The Murder of Farkhunda

This is some pretty fucked-up shit right here.

Farkhunda, who was beaten to death by a Kabul mob last week, had been arguing with a mullah about his practice of selling charms to women at a shrine.

In the course of the argument she was accused of burning the Koran and a crowd overheard and beat her to death.

Farkhunda, 28, was beaten, hit by bats, stamped on, driven over, and her body dragged by a car before being set on fire.

A policeman who witnessed the incident on Thursday told AP news agency that Farkhunda was arguing with a local mullah. Her father said she had complained about women being encouraged to waste money on the amulets peddled by the mullahs at the shrine.

"Based on their lies, people decided Farkhunda was not a Muslim and beat her to death," Mohammed Nadir told AP.

The policeman who saw the incident, Sayed Habid Shah, said Farkhunda had denied setting the Koran on fire.

"She said I am a Muslim and Muslims do not burn the Koran," he said. "As more people gathered, the police were trying to push them away, but it got out of control," he added.

Wait, 'The policeman who saw the incident'...

Police say they have detained 18 people over the incident, with more arrests expected. In addition, 13 policemen have been suspended for having failed to do enough to stop the attack.

And her father says 'they just stood around while she was killed.'

...I got nothin.