The conflict in Ferguson, MO

[Heracleum Persicum]

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Did Anti-Tobacco Laws Kill Eric Garner?

I can't breath.jpg (158.24 KiB) Viewed 1173 times

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[Apollonius]

How far down do you define deviancy in Ferguson? - David P. Goldman, PJ Media, 26 November 2014
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2014/11/26/ ... epage=true

... Two generations ago the NAACP chose Rosa Parks as the subject of its anti-segregation lawsuit in Montgomery, AL, because she was a woman of unexceptionable character and reputation. Today the NAACP and its allies have chosen Michael Brown as their poster-boy, precisely because he was a violent criminal. The argument of what now might be termed a “criminals’ rights movement” is that the police should not have the right to use force against felons whose crimes do not reach a certain threshold. What that threshold might be seems clear from the repeated characterization of Brown as an “unarmed black teenager.” Unless violent felons use deadly weapons, it appears, the police should not be allowed to use force.

To restate the “civil rights” argument in a clearer way: Young black men are disproportionately imprisoned. One in three black men have gone to prison at some time in their life. According to the ACLU, one in fifteen black men are incarcerated, vs. one in 106 white men. That by itself is proof of racism; the fact that these individuals were individually prosecuted for individual crimes has no bearing on the matter. All that matters is the outcome. Because the behavior of young black men is not likely to change, what must change is the way that society recognizes crime itself. The answer is to remove stigma of crime attached to certain behavior, for example, physical altercations, petty theft, and drug-dealing on a certain scale. The former civil rights movement no longer focuses its attention on supposedly ameliorative social spending, for example, preschool programs for minority children, although these remain somewhere down the list in the litany of demands. What energizes and motivates the movement is the demand that society redefine deviancy to exclude certain classes of violent as well as non-violent felonies.

The logic of the criminals’ rights movement is as clear as it is crazy: Because the outcome of the criminal justice system disproportionately penalizes African-Americans, the solution is to decriminalize behavior that all civilized countries have suppressed and punished since the dawn of history. Because felonious behavior is so widespread and the causes of it so intractable, the criminals’ rights movement insists, society “cannot afford to recognize” criminal behavior below a certain threshold.

If America were to accept this logic, civil society would come to an end. The state would abandon its monopoly of violence to street rule. Large parts of America would come to resemble the gang-ruled, lawless streets of Central America, where violent pathology has overwhelmed the state’s capacity to control it, creating in turn a nightmare for America’s enforcement of its own immigration law. ...

[Apollonius]

Is the criminal justice system racist? - Heather MacDonald, City Journal, Spring 2008
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_c ... ystem.html

... The race industry and its elite enablers take it as self-evident that high black incarceration rates result from discrimination. At a presidential primary debate this Martin Luther King Day, for instance, Senator Barack Obama charged that blacks and whites “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, [and] receive very different sentences . . . for the same crime.” Not to be outdone, Senator Hillary Clinton promptly denounced the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African-Americans proportionately than whites.”

If a listener didn’t know anything about crime, such charges of disparate treatment might seem plausible. After all, in 2006, blacks were 37.5 percent of all state and federal prisoners, though they’re under 13 percent of the national population. About one in 33 black men was in prison in 2006, compared with one in 205 white men and one in 79 Hispanic men. Eleven percent of all black males between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison or jail. The dramatic rise in the prison and jail population over the last three decades—to 2.3 million people at the end of 2007 (see box)—has only amplified the racial accusations against the criminal-justice system.

The favorite culprits for high black prison rates include a biased legal system, draconian drug enforcement, and even prison itself. None of these explanations stands up to scrutiny. The black incarceration rate is overwhelmingly a function of black crime. Insisting otherwise only worsens black alienation and further defers a real solution to the black crime problem.

Racial activists usually remain assiduously silent about that problem. But in 2005, the black homicide rate was over seven times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3 percent of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3 percent of all robbery and 34.5 percent of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4 percent of all property-crime arrests.

[...]

Let’s start with the idea that cops over-arrest blacks and ignore white criminals. In fact, the race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data. As long ago as 1978, a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests—a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes. No one has ever come up with a plausible argument as to why crime victims would be biased in their reports.

Moving up the enforcement chain, the campaign against the criminal-justice system next claims that prosecutors overcharge and judges oversentence blacks. Obama describes this alleged postarrest treatment as “Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others.” Jena, Louisiana, of course, was where a D.A. initially lodged attempted second-degree murder charges against black students who, in December 2006, slammed a white student’s head against a concrete beam, knocking him unconscious, and then stomped and kicked him in the head while he was down. As Charlotte Allen has brilliantly chronicled in The Weekly Standard, a local civil rights activist crafted a narrative linking the attack to an unrelated incident months earlier, in which three white students hung two nooses from a schoolyard tree—a display that may or may not have been intended as a racial provocation. This entrepreneur then embellished the tale with other alleged instances of redneck racism—above all, the initial attempted-murder charges. An enthusiastic national press responded to the bait exactly as intended, transforming the “Jena Six” into victims rather than perpetrators. In the seven months of ensuing headlines and protests, Jena became a symbol of systemic racial unfairness in America’s court system. If blacks were disproportionately in prison, the refrain went, it was because they faced biased prosecutors—like the one in Jena—as well as biased juries and judges.

Backing up this bias claim has been the holy grail of criminology for decades—and the prize remains as elusive as ever. In 1997, criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen reviewed the massive literature on charging and sentencing. They concluded that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms. A 1987 analysis of Georgia felony convictions, for example, found that blacks frequently received disproportionately lenient punishment. A 1990 study of 11,000 California cases found that slight racial disparities in sentence length resulted from blacks’ prior records and other legally relevant variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, however—an outcome that reflected the gravity of their offenses as well as their criminal records.

Another criminologist—easily as liberal as Sampson—reached the same conclusion in 1995: “Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned,” Michael Tonry wrote in Malign Neglect. (Tonry did go on to impute malign racial motives to drug enforcement, however.) The media’s favorite criminologist, Alfred Blumstein, found in 1993 that blacks were significantly underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their presence in arrest. ...

[Doc]

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Did Anti-Tobacco Laws Kill Eric Garner?

I can't breath.jpg

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Decriminalize the Average Man

October 12, 2011•Wendy McElroy

Tags Legal System,Interventionism

"Outright innocence is not sufficient to escape the brutality of detention."

If you reside in America and it is dinnertime, you have almost certainly broken the law. In his book Three Felonies a Day, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day. This toll does not count an avalanche of other laws — for example misdemeanors or civil violations such as disobeying a civil contempt order — all of which confront average people at every turn.

An article in the Economist (July 22, 2010) entitled "Too many laws, too many prisoners" states,


Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under "correctional" supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan.

By contrast, in 1970, less than one in 400 Americans was incarcerated. Why has the prison population more than quadrupled over a few decades? Why are you, as an average person and daily felon, more vulnerable to arrest than at any other time?

There is a simple answer but no single explanation as to how the situation arose or why it continues to accelerate out of control. The answer: a constant flood of new and broadly interpreted laws are criminalizing entire categories of daily life while, at the same time, the standards required for arrest and conviction have been severely diluted. The result is that far too many people are arrested and imprisoned for acts that should not be viewed as criminal at all or should receive minimal punishment.

In some cases, the violated laws are so obscure, vague, or complicated in language that even the police are ignorant of them. In other cases, outright innocence is not sufficient to escape the brutality of detention.

Some Sample Cases

(Note: the following examples are selected to illustrate the wide range of criminalization that is occurring and so their circumstances differ significantly from each other. Nevertheless, they share certain factors: the criminalization of harmless, trivial acts; the enforcement of unreasonable rules; the severity with which any noncompliance is punished; the indifference to the human devastation wrought by law.)

In 2005, while a passenger in his family car, Anthony W. Florence was mistakenly arrested for a bench warrant on traffic tickets he had already satisfied; the proof of payment he carried was to no avail. During seven days in jail, Florence was strip-searched twice, even though the guards admitted they had no reasonable suspicion of contraband. He was otherwise deprived of rights; for example, guards watched him shower and forced him to undergo a routine delousing.[1]

Eventually released, the attempt to get justice has taken Florence years. On October 12, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Florence v. Burlington, et al., in which the question is "whether the Fourth Amendment permits a jail to conduct a suspicionless strip search of every individual arrested for any minor offense no matter what the circumstances."[2]

According to his lawsuit, Florence is joined by people who were similarly treated after being arrested and jailed for such crimes as "driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal, and riding a bicycle without an audible bell."Download PDF

In 2003, "three pickup trucks" with "six armed police in flak jackets" pulled up to 66-year-old George Norris's house in Texas.

Norris was detained for four hours while they ransacked his home and confiscated 37 boxes of possessions without offering a warrant or an explanation. In March 2004, Norris was indicted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species for "smuggling" the orchids he had ordered and paid for to run a side business. Norris was thrown into the same cell as a suspected murder and two suspected drug dealers.[3]

The Economist reports,


Prosecutors described Mr. Norris as the "kingpin" of an international smuggling ring. He was dumbfounded: his annual profits were never more than about $20,000. When prosecutors suggested that he should inform on other smugglers in return for a lighter sentence, he refused, insisting he knew nothing beyond hearsay. He pleaded innocent. But an undercover federal agent had ordered some orchids from him, a few of which arrived without the correct papers. For this, he was charged with making a false statement to a government official, a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Since he had communicated with his suppliers, he was charged with conspiracy, which also carries a potential five-year term.

Unable to pay legal bills, Norris pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 17 months. For bringing prescription pills into prison, he was thrown into solitary confinement for 71 days. But "[t]he prison was so crowded … that even in solitary he had two room-mates."

In 2000, a poor kid from foster care named T.J. Hill thought he had found a path to success when he received a wrestling scholarship to Cal State Fullerton. School did not work out, and he was arrested in 2006 for possession of psilocybin (mushrooms).


He was put on five years' probation with a suspended imposition of sentence. In other words, if he completed his probation successfully, he would not have a criminal record.[4]

In November 2008, he left the state and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Although the original charge was minor and no further illegal activity occurred, T.J. was jailed on $100,000 bail to prevent flight risk. His family has spent thousands on legal fees. Now well known for his volunteer work with children, even police officers are hoping T.J. escapes more jail time. As one of them said, "He's a good guy. He's changed lives." Whether he will be allowed to continue doing so or will become dehumanized through a senseless, brutal imprisonment waits to be seen.

Such stories abound. Most share characteristics with the foregoing three. For example, the criminal activity being punished is trivial and violates no one's rights. The crimes are mala prohibita rather than mala en se. The first refers to crimes that exist only because rules were passed to control people's nonviolent behavior, like the buying of orchids; the second refers to crimes that exist because the acts are intrinsically wrong, like rape. Another characteristic shared: the punishments are extreme and any attempt to correct them is often ruinously expensive in terms of time and money. But the ultimate punishment is usually the police record that follows these "criminals" for life, shutting off worlds of opportunities.

Ask yourself, How different am I from Florence, with his paid-up-but-still-punished traffic tickets? Or from Norris, who accidentally purchased a harmless but illegal flower? Or from T.J. who made a mistake by breaking a malum prohibitum law against drugs?

If something similar happens to you or your children, do you want the lives of those you love to be destroyed by clerical error, understandable ignorance, or a youthful mistake? With every passing law, that prospect becomes more probable.

What Path to Justice?

Even thinking about how to shift a government system toward freedom or justice can be exhausting. The penal system is particularly daunting because its raw brutality seems to leave no room for reason. Fortunately, the best approach may be to address the penal system's precursors: the legislatures that create laws, the law enforcement and judiciaries that impose them. Without fundamental change at the early stages, effective change at the final stage of imprisonment is unlikely.

"The penal system is particularly daunting because its raw brutality seems to leave no room for reason."

Libertarianism has evolved sophisticated theories of what constitutes a proper justice system and how to implement it. One of the most popular theories is based on restitution, rather than retribution or punishment. Restitution is the legal system in which a person "makes good" on a harm or wrong done to another individual and does so directly; if you steal $100, then you pay back $100 and reasonable damages directly to the victim of your theft. You do not pay a debt to society or to the state by going to prison. You do not undergo "punishment" other than the damages assessed. You make your victim "whole" — and, perhaps, a bit more for his trouble.

Restitution is inherently self-limiting in how much the perpetrator is processed by the system. Beyond what is necessary to guarantee that the harm or wrong is repaired, there is no need for a perpetrator to relinquish any of his rights. A thief need not be caged to pay back $100 plus damages; all he needs to do is pay it back. There is no need for the currently huge prison industry nor the degradation of society that accompanies it.

To accomplish this, legal scholar Randy Barnett advocates sweeping away the entire criminal justice system. In its place, he proposes to establish a broadened civil-court system that adjudicates civil liabilities and damages. Many critics object to the pure restitution model; for example, they claim restitution cannot adequately redress crimes like murder. Whatever the merits of such objections, it is clear that restitution can address the great majority of harms and wrongs. Moreover, if an action required the presence of an actual victim whose person or property had been injured, then most current laws would fall off the books. Prisons would be spacious.[5]

Small Steps toward Justice

Fortunately, smaller steps than outright revolution can offer relief to many people suffering from the injustice of our legal and penal systems. These steps include

•A sunset provision attached to all new or amended laws. This is a clause that provides an expiration date for a law unless action is taken to renew it. Today most laws are in effect indefinitely.


•The elimination of civil-contempt imprisonments, which most commonly occur in family courts; men who are unable to pay court ordered spousal or child support are imprisoned for "contempt" without a trial or appeal process, and for whatever term is set by a judge. This converts the penal system into a debtor's prison. The America legal system is distinguished from most other Western ones in permitting such imprisonment.


•The elimination of a double standard under the law for those involved in law enforcement. For example, the elimination of personal immunity for the willful wrongdoing of police officers on duty and for district attorneys who pursue blatantly flimsy cases. Such immunity skews incentives toward brutality and overprosecution.


•Reinstatement of the mens rea safeguard. Mens rea means there was no "guilty mind" when an act occurred and, so, there was no crime although civil liability may well exist. For example, if a man bumps into another car without noticing it, he should not be charged with leaving the scene of an accident. He is civilly liable but not criminal so. Currently, there is a concerted attack on mens rea so that people are deemed criminally "guilty" despite their intent.[6]


•Establishment of an "ignorance-of-the-law" defense. This differs from mens rea. For example, if a man knows he hits a car and leaves the scene, an "ignorance" defense would be "I didn't know doing so was illegal." It would be an invalid defense because everyone in our society is reasonably deemed to know that the destruction of property is wrong. But it is currently impossible for anyone — including the police — to know the content of every law. The principle that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" comes from 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes who addressed willful ignorance of laws that were well-known or a matter of common sense. Thus the claim "I didn't know rape was wrong" is an invalid defense while "I didn't know buying an orchid was wrong" would probably be valid even to Hobbes.


•The elimination of criminal charges for all nonviolent "wrongdoing" toward law-enforcement agents. Such charges include obstruction of justice, lying to the police, and peacefully resisting arrest.


•The decriminalization of all drugs


•A return to the traditional rules of statutory interpretation by which criminal statutes are narrowly construed. Today, not merely criminal laws but seemingly unrelated ones, such as the Commerce Act, are being stretched to include a wide range of so-called violators as criminals.


The list could be much longer. But the implementation of any one of the foregoing and simple protections of justice could save misery or ruination for many thousands of innocent people.

Conclusions

Why are such reforms unlikely to occur?

[product:0]

Legislators have a strong incentive to call constantly for more laws and stricter enforcement. Until a large enough voter or protest base has been victimized by the law and demands change, politicians are rewarded for continuing that call. Being "hard" on crime is not merely a vote winner but also gives the state apparatus, on which the hands of legislators rest, much greater social control. Meanwhile, the asset forfeiture that often accompanies arrests can turn a tidy profit, not merely for the state but especially for the police departments that absorb the assets.

Moreover, hordes of unionized people now have well-paying, plush-benefited jobs in the legal and penal systems. If 90 percent of arrests and imprisonments were eliminated then 90 percent of those jobs might disappear.

And so you and your children are likely to continue living under the constant threat of arrest by an arbitrary power against whom you either have no defense or a defense that could be ruinous. You will continue to live in a police state.


[bio] See [AuthorName]'s [AuthorArchive].

You can subscribe to future articles by [AuthorName] via this [RSSfeed].


Notes

[1] Robert Barnes, "Supreme Court is asked about jails' blanket strip-search policies," Washington Post, September 12, 2011.

[2] "Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Burlington," SCOTUS blog.

[3] "Too many laws, too many prisoners," The Economist, July 22, 2010.

[4] Bill McClellan, "Wrestler is still grappling with an old arrest," StLtoday.com, September 18, 2011.

[5] Randy E. Barnett, "Restitution: A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice," Ethics volume 87, number 4 (1977)

[6] Gary Fields and John R. Emshwiller, "As Federal Crime List Grows, Threshold of Guilt Declines," WSJ.com, September 27, 2011.


Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

As was pointed out elsewhere Eric Garner was previously arrested 31 times for selling single cigarettes. Apparently that now carries the death penalty as punishment.

Here is another. Death penalty for carrying a toy rifle that is presumably being purchased

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I would hope the 911 caller is charged in this but I doubt he will be at this point. The cops have already been faced a grand jury that declined to indict. But this is also yet another death due to Gun Control nuts creating hysteria to try to get more anti guns laws passed.

[Simple Minded]

Thanks Apollonius.

[Nonc Hilaire]

The basis of police work is that we hire a gang to beat up other people's gangs. All this talk about justice and whatnot is just window dressing.

[Simple Minded]

I would hope the 911 caller is charged in this but I doubt he will be at this point. The cops have already been faced a grand jury that declined to indict. But this is also yet another death due to Gun Control nuts creating hysteria to try to get more anti guns laws passed.

wow! That is a take I never considered.

So much of this is seems to be generational or the result of poor parenting.

Four or five decades ago, you expected boys to play with guns, or a boy with a BB or pellet gun might be warned by an adult "if I find you misusing that BB gun, I'm going to take it away from you and paddle your little ass with it!" Not call 911. Then the adult might have said "If you need anything to shoot at, I can give you a few old tin cans or cardboard boxes." It never would have occurred to the adult that Mom or Dad would get bent out of shape over another adult reinforcing a little "common sense" behavior to their child. Most parents would have been glad to learn there were another pair of adults eyes looking out for their children.

Or a cop, or a neighbor might run into your father somewhere and say "I caught one of your boys this morning throwing snowballs at a school bus. When I told him to knock it off, he got wise with me. So I smacked him across his butt a couple times (or if it was a woman, your face got slapped). I think he got the point." Of course, your father would reply "I appreciate you doing that. I'll ask him about it tonight. If he denies he did anything wrong, he will be very sorry that he lied!"

Oddly enough, the expectations of society were usually much lower than the expectations of all the parents I knew in my youth.

When Travon Martin was killed, and again when Michael Brown was killed I thought about myself and my JD brothers during our teen years. I have little doubt that the many warnings issued during our pre-teen years by my Dad saved our asses from jail or worse many times before our frontal lobes developed. It seems Dad thought his teenage sons just might be barbarians at times. He was often right.

I often wondered how often either Travon Martin or Michael Brown ever heard the same warnings from their fathers. I know more than a few teens in recent years who haven't.

I was raised on another planet.

[Heracleum Persicum]

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[Simple Minded]

from a conversation with my neighbor, who is black, raised in the south, blue collar, and ten years my senior:

"What really pisses me off about what happened in Ferguson, is why have Michael Brown's parents not gotten in front of a TV camera and apologized to the police officer he assaulted, the police department, the people of Ferguson, and the rest of the country for all the trouble their son has caused? Where is their sense of parental responsibility?"

good question.

[Endovelico]

from a conversation with my neighbor, who is black, raised in the south, blue collar, and ten years my senior:

"What really pisses me off about what happened in Ferguson, is why have Michael Brown's parents not gotten in front of a TV camera and apologized to the police officer he assaulted, the police department, the people of Ferguson, and the rest of the country for all the trouble their son has caused? Where is their sense of parental responsibility?"

good question.

I guess this is the kind of black who, once every two hundred years or so, is elected President of the US...

[Simple Minded]

from a conversation with my neighbor, who is black, raised in the south, blue collar, and ten years my senior:

"What really pisses me off about what happened in Ferguson, is why have Michael Brown's parents not gotten in front of a TV camera and apologized to the police officer he assaulted, the police department, the people of Ferguson, and the rest of the country for all the trouble their son has caused? Where is their sense of parental responsibility?"

good question.

I guess this is the kind of black who, once every two hundred years or so, is elected President of the US...

Whoa!!! Hold the phone. There's more than one kind of black? Since when?

No wonder they can't get along with other black people... any better than white people can get along with each other.

This changes everything! We need some sorta re-set button of some kind....

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The last time we used a reset button, we were sent back to the cold war. So be careful with that button, SM.

[Doc]

from a conversation with my neighbor, who is black, raised in the south, blue collar, and ten years my senior:

"What really pisses me off about what happened in Ferguson, is why have Michael Brown's parents not gotten in front of a TV camera and apologized to the police officer he assaulted, the police department, the people of Ferguson, and the rest of the country for all the trouble their son has caused? Where is their sense of parental responsibility?"

good question.

I guess this is the kind of black who, once every two hundred years or so, is elected President of the US...

Whoa!!! Hold the phone. There's more than one kind of black? Since when?

No wonder they can't get along with other black people... any better than white people can get along with each other.

This changes everything! We need some sorta re-set button of some kind....

Well there is blue blacks. I noticed that the Eric Garner video had two may be three black policemen there during the video of Garner's death. Meaning more of a Blue problem than a black problem. Or more to the point what happens when monetary pressure is applied to law enforcement. Be it bribes or taxes. It all boils down to the same thing.

Here is what this guy named Frank has to say about it

The Police Are Still Out of Control

I should know.[/size][/b]

By FRANK SERPICO
October 23, 2014

In the opening scene of the 1973 movie “Serpico,” I am shot in the face—or to be more accurate, the character of Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino, is shot in the face. Even today it’s very difficult for me to watch those scenes, which depict in a very realistic and terrifying way what actually happened to me on Feb. 3, 1971. I had recently been transferred to the Narcotics division of the New York City Police Department, and we were moving in on a drug dealer on the fourth floor of a walk-up tenement in a Hispanic section of Brooklyn. The police officer backing me up instructed me (since I spoke Spanish) to just get the apartment door open “and leave the rest to us.”

One officer was standing to my left on the landing no more than eight feet away, with his gun drawn; the other officer was to my right rear on the stairwell, also with his gun drawn. When the door opened, I pushed my way in and snapped the chain. The suspect slammed the door closed on me, wedging in my head and right shoulder and arm. I couldn’t move, but I aimed my snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver at the perp (the movie version unfortunately goes a little Hollywood here, and has Pacino struggling and failing to raise a much-larger 9-millimeter automatic). From behind me no help came. At that moment my anger got the better of me. I made the almost fatal mistake of taking my eye off the perp and screaming to the officer on my left: “What the hell you waiting for? Give me a hand!” I turned back to face a gun blast in my face. I had cocked my weapon and fired back at him almost in the same instant, probably as reflex action, striking him. (He was later captured.)

When I regained consciousness, I was on my back in a pool of blood trying to assess the damage from the gunshot wound in my cheek. Was this a case of small entry, big exit, as often happens with bullets? Was the back of my head missing? I heard a voice saying, “Don’ worry, you be all right, you be all right,” and when I opened my eyes I saw an old Hispanic man looking down at me like Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan. My “backup” was nowhere in sight. They hadn’t even called for assistance—I never heard the famed “Code 1013,” meaning “Officer Down.” They didn’t call an ambulance either, I later learned; the old man did. One patrol car responded to investigate, and realizing I was a narcotics officer rushed me to a nearby hospital (one of the officers who drove me that night said, “If I knew it was him, I would have left him there to bleed to death,” I learned later).

The next time I saw my “back-up” officers was when one of them came to the hospital to bring me my watch. I said, “What the hell am I going to do with a watch? What I needed was a back-up. Where were you?” He said, “genuflect you,” and left. Both my “back-ups” were later awarded medals for saving my life.

I still don’t know exactly what happened on that day. There was never any real investigation. But years later, Patrick Murphy, who was police commissioner at the time, was giving a speech at one of my alma maters, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and I confronted him. I said, “My name is Frank Serpico, and I’ve been carrying a bullet in my head for over 35 years, and you, Mr. Murphy, are the man I hold responsible. You were the man who was brought as commissioner to take up the cause that I began — rooting out corruption. You could have protected me; instead you put me in harm’s way. What have you got to say?” He hung his head, and had no answer.

Even now, I do not know for certain why I was left trapped in that door by my fellow police officers. But the Narcotics division was rotten to the core, with many guys taking money from the very drug dealers they were supposed to bust. I had refused to take bribes and had testified against my fellow officers. Police make up a peculiar subculture in society. More often than not they have their own moral code of behavior, an “us against them” attitude, enforced by a Blue Wall of Silence. It’s their version of the Mafia’s omerta. Speak out, and you’re no longer “one of us.” You’re one of “them.” And as James Fyfe, a nationally recognized expert on the use of force, wrote in his 1993 book about this issue, Above The Law, officers who break the code sometimes won’t be helped in emergency situations, as I wasn’t.

On the left, Al Pacino plays Serpico in the 1973 movie. On the right, Frank Serpico leaves the Bronx County Courthouse after testifying on police corruption in 1973. | Getty Images

Forty-odd years on, my story probably seems like ancient history to most people, layered over with Hollywood legend. For me it’s not, since at the age of 78 I’m still deaf in one ear and I walk with a limp and I carry fragments of the bullet near my brain. I am also, all these years later, still persona non grata in the NYPD. Never mind that, thanks to Sidney Lumet’s direction and Al Pacino’s brilliant acting, “Serpico” ranks No. 40 on the American Film Institute’s list of all-time movie heroes, or that as I travel around the country and the world, police officers often tell me they were inspired to join the force after seeing the movie at an early age.

In the NYPD that means little next to my 40-year-old heresy, as they see it. I still get hate mail from active and retired police officers. A couple of years ago after the death of David Durk — the police officer who was one of my few allies inside the department in my efforts to expose graft — the Internet message board “NYPD Rant” featured some choice messages directed at me. “Join your mentor, Rat scum!” said one. An ex-con recently related to me that a precinct captain had once said to him, “If it wasn’t for that fuckin’ Serpico, I coulda been a millionaire today.” My informer went on to say, “Frank, you don’t seem to understand, they had a well-oiled money making machine going and you came along and threw a handful of sand in the gears.”

In 1971 I was awarded the Medal of Honor, the NYPD’s highest award for bravery in action, but it wasn’t for taking on an army of corrupt cops. It was most likely due to the insistence of Police Chief Sid Cooper, a rare good guy who was well aware of the murky side of the NYPD that I’d try to expose. But they handed the medal to me like an afterthought, like tossing me a pack of cigarettes. After all this time, I’ve never been given a proper certificate with my medal. And although living Medal of Honor winners are typically invited to yearly award ceremonies, I’ve only been invited once — and it was by Bernard Kerick, who ironically was the only NYPD commissioner to later serve time in prison. A few years ago, after the New York Police Museum refused my guns and other memorabilia, I loaned them to the Italian-American museum right down street from police headquarters, and they invited me to their annual dinner. I didn’t know it was planned, but the chief of police from Rome, Italy, was there, and he gave me a plaque. The New York City police officers who were there wouldn’t even look at me.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... 12160.html

[Simple Minded]

In the case of Eric Garner, it would be interesting to know his history. I heard 31 arrests, 9 of which were for selling loose cigarettes.

How about the 22 arrests? Could this have been a settling of old scores? It will be interesting to see what aspects of this case are investigated and publicized.

High taxes on cigarettes has the same effect as prohibition of alcohol and drugs. Lots of laws creates lots of criminals. An aspect of reality that most don't want to deal with, all laws have costs, hidden costs, perverse incentives, and unintended consequences. The Eric Garner case painfully illustrates the aspects of perverse incentives, and unintended consequences.

This guy died for the equivalent of spitting on a sidewalk. Easy to understand why it is illegal to spit on sidewalks in huge cities, but with limited resources, it that something the city wants to pay to enforce?

It would be interesting to see the cost/benefit analysis of NYC enforcing the laws against selling cigarettes illegally. I'll bet that is one analysis no one on the NYC city council wants to do. Especially after the millions that are spent settling this case.

[Simple Minded]

Well there is blue blacks. I noticed that the Eric Garner video had two may be three black policemen there during the video of Garner's death. Meaning more of a Blue problem than a black problem.

No doubt. I saw an interview with Eric Garner's daughter (he had six kids) she stated that she did not believe that race played any part, that it was just cops being macho while taking down a big guy.

This guy was just earning a little money under the table.

I would like to see some interviews with rank & file NYPD street police officers. I'll bet a lot of them would say "This stuff wouldn't happen if we weren't told we have to make these busts. Every day we say, Really Sarge, bust people selling loose cigarettes? Do you know how many dirt bags are out there? And you want us to bust people selling cigarettes?"

[Doc]

Well there is blue blacks. I noticed that the Eric Garner video had two may be three black policemen there during the video of Garner's death. Meaning more of a Blue problem than a black problem.

No doubt. I saw an interview with Eric Garner's daughter (he had six kids) she stated that she did not believe that race played any part, that it was just cops being macho while taking down a big guy.

This guy was just earning a little money under the table.

I would like to see some interviews with rank & file NYPD street police officers. I'll bet a lot of them would say "This stuff wouldn't happen if we weren't told we have to make these busts. Every day we say, Really Sarge, bust people selling loose cigarettes? Do you know how many dirt bags are out there? And you want us to bust people selling cigarettes?"

I have heard of police in Maryland being given quotas of the required number juvenile delinquent busts to make in a given month. How does "I was busted and thrown in jail for a quota" sound?

[Doc]

In the case of Eric Garner, it would be interesting to know his history. I heard 31 arrests, 9 of which were for selling loose cigarettes.

How about the 22 arrests? Could this have been a settling of old scores? It will be interesting to see what aspects of this case are investigated and publicized.

High taxes on cigarettes has the same effect as prohibition of alcohol and drugs. Lots of laws creates lots of criminals. An aspect of reality that most don't want to deal with, all laws have costs, hidden costs, perverse incentives, and unintended consequences. The Eric Garner case painfully illustrates the aspects of perverse incentives, and unintended consequences.

This guy died for the equivalent of spitting on a sidewalk. Easy to understand why it is illegal to spit on sidewalks in huge cities, but with limited resources, it that something the city wants to pay to enforce?

It would be interesting to see the cost/benefit analysis of NYC enforcing the laws against selling cigarettes illegally. I'll bet that is one analysis no one on the NYC city council wants to do. Especially after the millions that are spent settling this case..

My thoughts exactly. This is more about controlling people and abuse of power at the top than anything else.

[Heracleum Persicum]

.

" This is something that's deeply rooted in our society, it's deeply rooted in our history " Obama told BET News in the interview. "But the two things that are going to allow us to solve it: No. 1 is the understanding that we have made progress. And so it's important to recognize — as painful as these incidents are — we can't equate what's happening now to what was happening 50 years ago.

"If you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they'll tell you that things are better — not good, in some cases, but better," he continued. "And the reason it's important for us to understand progress has been made is that then gives us hope that we can make even more progress."

The president also encouraged young Americans not to give up the fight for equal rights.

"The second thing is ... we have to be persistent, because typically progress is in steps," Obama said. "It's in increments. When you're dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society, you've got to have vigilance, but you have to recognize that it is going to take some time and you just have to be steady, so that you don't give up when we don't get all the way there."

Well, Doc, relax, Barack Hussein sayin you not as bad as you were 50 yrs ago

.

[Doc]

.

" This is something that's deeply rooted in our society, it's deeply rooted in our history " Obama told BET News in the interview. "But the two things that are going to allow us to solve it: No. 1 is the understanding that we have made progress. And so it's important to recognize — as painful as these incidents are — we can't equate what's happening now to what was happening 50 years ago.

"If you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they'll tell you that things are better — not good, in some cases, but better," he continued. "And the reason it's important for us to understand progress has been made is that then gives us hope that we can make even more progress."

The president also encouraged young Americans not to give up the fight for equal rights.

"The second thing is ... we have to be persistent, because typically progress is in steps," Obama said. "It's in increments. When you're dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society, you've got to have vigilance, but you have to recognize that it is going to take some time and you just have to be steady, so that you don't give up when we don't get all the way there."

Well, Doc, relax, Barack Hussein sayin you not as bad as you were 50 yrs ago

.

I made up my mind as a child almost 50 years ago how I felt about the matter. I have seen nothing to change my mind since then.

[Doc]

A frank discussion between two black college professors about Ferguson

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... on/383448/

A Conversation About Ferguson

Glenn Loury and John McWhorter ponder policing in the aftermath of Mike Brown's death and the failure to indict his killer.

Conor Friedersdorf


Dec 5 2014, 8:00 AM ET

Jim Young/Reuters

Longtime readers will recall my esteem for the periodic conversations between by Glenn Loury of Brown University and John McWhorter of Columbia University. Their latest subject is policing in the wake of events and protests in Ferguson, Missouri. As usual, their civil exchange is characterized by a searching frankness that I find rare, whether I agree or disagree with a given argument or characterization.

[manolo]

.

" This is something that's deeply rooted in our society, it's deeply rooted in our history " Obama told BET News in the interview. "But the two things that are going to allow us to solve it: No. 1 is the understanding that we have made progress. And so it's important to recognize — as painful as these incidents are — we can't equate what's happening now to what was happening 50 years ago.

"If you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they'll tell you that things are better — not good, in some cases, but better," he continued. "And the reason it's important for us to understand progress has been made is that then gives us hope that we can make even more progress."

The president also encouraged young Americans not to give up the fight for equal rights.

"The second thing is ... we have to be persistent, because typically progress is in steps," Obama said. "It's in increments. When you're dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society, you've got to have vigilance, but you have to recognize that it is going to take some time and you just have to be steady, so that you don't give up when we don't get all the way there."

Well, Doc, relax, Barack Hussein sayin you not as bad as you were 50 yrs ago

.

Folks,

It's good to hear President Obama on this issue. He's right to say that there has been progress, but when racism does arise I believe it to be the same old ugly racism that it always was.

Also, focussing on these high profile incidents is not always helpful, as the mass of racist action is subtle and carefully disguised. Arguing whether a particular high profile incident is or isn't racist may not help with the underlying problem.

Alex.

[Doc]

Garner’s widow: Husband targeted for illegally selling cigarettes, not his race

By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Sunday, December 7, 2014

The role of New York's high cigarette taxes in the death of Eric Garner drew more scrutiny Sunday as his widow said that he was targeted not because of his race, but because he continued to defy local ordinances by selling loose cigarettes.

Esaw Garner said police in Staten Island knew her husband sold individual cigarettes and would harass him, calling him "cigarette man" and her "cigarette man wife."

"I feel that he was murdered unjustly. I don't even feel like it's a black-and-white thing, honestly, in my opinion," Ms. Garner said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I feel like it's just something that he continued to do. And the police knew."

New York has the highest state taxes on cigarettes in the nation at $4.35 per pack, while New York City tacks on an additional $1.50 in taxes, bringing the total tax rate to $5.85 per pack. The taxes bring in an estimated $1.8 billion per year.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Sunday that police targeted the 43-year-old Garner "because they're so eager for tax collection."

"What was Eric Garner doing? He was selling cigarettes, loose cigarettes," Mr. Limbaugh told "Fox News Sunday." "And the police in New York, because they're so eager for tax collection — what is being done here [pertains] to taxes and the state's desire to collect them no matter what."

Critics say New York's high cigarette taxes have created an underground market and incentives for people to sell loose cigarettes.

"I think the real outrage here is that an American died while the state is enforcing tax collection on cigarettes. This is just absurd," Mr. Limbaugh said. "And … you know, people talk about the left [wanting] a big state. They want a powerful state. Well, here it is. You've got to take all of it."

A grand jury's decision Wednesday not to indict the officer who choked to death Mr. Garner during the arrest touched off three straight nights of protests nationwide, including rioting Saturday in Berkeley, California, in which protesters hurled rocks at police and smashed storefront windows.

The Garner decision inflamed tensions already high over the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, who was unarmed but shot during a scuffle with an officer. In both instances, the officers were white and the shooting victims were black.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was accused of fanning unrest after the grand jury's decision in the Garner case by saying that he has had to train his mixed-race son about the "dangers" he faces when encountering police.

Ms. Garner said Sunday that police "knew him by name and harassed us" for his illegal cigarette selling.

"We would go shopping. They [would say] 'Hi, cigarette man. Hey, cigarette man wife.' You know, stuff like that," Ms. Garner said. "And I would just say, 'Eric, just keep walking. Don't say anything; don't respond. Don't give them a reason to do anything to you.' And he just felt like, 'But babe, they keep harassing me.'"

Although Mr. Garner was 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 350 pounds, his wife said he had asthma and often was sick, which made it difficult for him to hold a job. He had previously worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

"He had issues. Heavy guy. And he was very lazy," Ms. Garner said. "He didn't like to do anything. He wasn't used to it."

Mr. Limbaugh asked, "How many people smoking marijuana did the cops pass by and ignore on the way to Eric Garner?"

"You've got $13 a carton, $13 a pack in New York City. Over $6 of that is taxes," Mr. Limbaugh said. "And the authorities are telling the cops, 'You go out and you stop that' because they're so intent on collecting tax revenue."

Even though Ms. Garner downplayed the racial issue, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who also appeared on "Meet the Press," said questions need to be asked as to whether Mr. Garner's race contributed to his death.

"When you bring up race — and she has tried to say, 'I don't want to deal with race as the issue,' but could he have been treated differently?" Mr. Sharpton said. "If he was of a different race with the same background, and no one's trying to sugarcoat anyone's background here, would he have been treated the same way? And that's what we're talking about."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... llegally-/

[Simple Minded]

I'm amazed how many commentators are getting bent out of shape over athletes, and protestors performing the "Hands up! Don't shoot!" posture. That is just good common sense advice.

People learn from repetitive messaging. The high crime localities should start broadcasting "Hands up saves lives!" PSAs, similar to the "Don't drink and drive." and the "Stop the text. Stop the wrecks." PSAs they currently broadcast.

Even if the performer has the wrong interpretation, it is still a good message.

"Don't be an ideeot." is timeless wisdom.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

The American policy since the 1960s has been to drive all racial speech underground in an attempt to smother it. It is okay at the dinner table, but cannot be mentioned in public spaces or most especially by public figures. Christopher Edley, who was a Harvard Law Professor, Dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, President and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, Program Officer in charge of the Government and Law Program at the Ford Foundation, and supporter of black nationalism (for a time at least) was key in shaping this policy:

"I’m convinced that the way you eliminate prejudice and racism in America is not by talking and education and explanation. I think you have to start with a simple cliché‚ like God, motherhood, or country. You have to have something that has a noble ring. And it seems to me that what this country needs is a movement, and I don’t know that this is the appropriate group to sponsor it. This country needs a movement. The way to eliminate prejudice is to smother it. If we could bring about a climate in this country where no one could express a prejuducial viewpoint without being challenged, we would begin to drive prejudice underground. And I submit to you that prejudice unexpressed and unacted upon dies–it doesn’t fester and grow–it dies. Now this is high sounding, and I don’t expect people to agree with such a simplistic solution. But I really believe that you can stamp it out. And if you look at our national figures today, there are certain people who cannot make a prejudicial remark. Many of our Governors, the President, many responsible Senators are precluded in their public lives from ever making a prejudiced public statement, and if they make a statement that sounds like it’s prejudicial, they’re called on it and the next day, as General de Gaulle found, it was necessary to recant. So we don’t allow them to get away with anything....At the citizen level, we say it’s perfectly all right for a bigot to express his bigoted thoughts. If you’re anti-Negro you can speak out against the Negro at supper. The simplicity of the idea I submit to you is the thing that gives it some national potential for changing the climate." From a small conference “to explore the role of education in combating racial discrimination,” Martha’s Vineyard, July 1968, published as Racism and American Education: A Dialogue and Agenda for Action, Foreward by Averell Harriman, Harper and Row, 1970

That Martha's Vineyard conference was called to address the political strategy after the MLK assassination riots.

It is a huge misconception of the situation to confuse American's unwillingness to publicly talk about racial relations as willful ignorance.

That being said, the quality of our ignorance, if given the chance to speak candidly, is an entirely different matter.

Nap,

I don't ever recall this being a national policy, but it does work well in lots of locations, businesses, churches, sports teams, neighborhoods, common projects, occupation, etc. all over this country or the world. has for centuries. Perhaps it could summed up as a common culture?

Seems easy enough to chose to either get along with people or to get pissed off. Focus on either the common ground or on differences. Choices made by people who actually interact face to face.

I know, I'm a dinosaur. I've known it for decades.

The more interesting question in my simple mind, is why is the phenomena (both good and bad) so localized? Black Fred & White Joe get along just fine in these locations, but not in other locations. Might it have something to do with Joe and Fred's attitudes towards themselves and other people?

Politics and culture seem local to me. Attitude even more localized.

Of course it was national policy. The leading advocates of civil rights, entering the 1960s, were various American classical liberals, socialists and communists, the religious or religious institutions. By the end of the decade and into the following one, you have black nationalists and other identitarian-groups taking over. From replacing dissenting individuals with "individuality" and "cultural expression" to dusting off W.E.B DuBois's racialist socialism to the birth and flourishing of privilege theory, critical race theory and intersectionality in our top universities to a transition to the New Left. So how does one go in a few short years from one to the other if it wasn't a policy change? You don't have to believe in conspiracies or even clever long-term thinking their part to figure out that the money went to funding those they thought would quell the social unrest, keep the status quo pretty much intact while discouraging any real or imagined internal communist threat.

[Simple Minded]

Of course it was national policy. The leading advocates of civil rights, entering the 1960s, were various American classical liberals, socialists and communists, the religious or religious institutions. By the end of the decade and into the following one, you have black nationalists and other identitarian-groups taking over. From replacing dissenting individuals with "individuality" and "cultural expression" to dusting off W.E.B DuBois's racialist socialism to the birth and flourishing of privilege theory, critical race theory and intersectionality in our top universities to a transition to the New Left. So how does one go in a few short years from one to the other if it wasn't a policy change? You don't have to believe in conspiracies or even clever long-term thinking their part to figure out that the money went to funding those they thought would quell the social unrest, keep the status quo pretty much intact while discouraging any real or imagined internal communist threat.

Nap,

Thanks for the reply. I still can’t buy into the label of “national policy.” Might be semantics. But hey, I’m no anti-semantic.

If it is a policy, who wrote it and who distributed it?

Denial is often the first reaction of the masses or leaders, since it requires minimum effort. Give the kid who is crying a lolly pop and it will pacify him. It won’t solve any long term problems, but politicians are not famous for long term thinking. Kicking the can down the road.

IMSMO, it seems more akin to a change in zeitgeist, fashion, or what the herd thinks is chic. Maybe on a national level, more so in localized regions, but maybe just on the level of what the cool kids (college professors, elitists, media stars) agree to buy into in order to convince themselves that they are the cool kids.

It does not take a centrally planned conspiracy for high school seniors (a very typical herd) to achieve a very high level of consensus as to what vocabulary, what clothing, what hobbies, what attitude, etc.are cool or no longer cool in few short weeks.

The same holds true for many aspects of society. Fashions, entertainment, which actors-entertainers-celebrities-politicians are rising stars or falling stars, which perfume bottle colour sells best, what standards are accepted or abandoned, the concept of personal responsibility vs. group identity, etc.

The high school herd like behaviour of the intelligentsia-experts-“leaders, is probably more evident in the ever changing chic versions of Doomer Porn than in most areas of society.

Remember when “the experts said” and “everyone knew” that the biggest threat facing mankind was the coming ice age, population time bomb, acid rain, rain forest destruction, DDT, Y2K, communists, Zionists, Bilderbergers, male chauvinism, lack of health care, AGW, etc. Was expert opinion the egg, or what everyone knew to be true the egg?

Of course massive sales campaigns are a continual process. The publicizing and hype of all of the above listed examples of Doomer Porn were well financed. But the interesting aspect IMSMO, was how quickly the herd stopped believing “the facts that everyone knew were true,” and how quickly people dumped last month’s cool expert for this month’s cool expert.

“Every religion starts as a heresy and ends as a superstition.”

Hype has a definite roll in establishing what sells, but the masses ultimately determine popularity/acceptance/longevity.


Humanity used to be four blind men describing the part of the elephant they actually touched. Due to modern tech, humanity in many cases, is now dozens, hundreds, thousands, and millions describing things they may have never experienced, but merely wish to believe are true. Vanity.

Emotions allow the herd to form, panic, and stampede much faster than a well distributed policy. Modern tech enhances the human traits or flaws.

Fred determines whether he embraces the emotion of the herd or his own thinking.

Maybe it was a national policy.... and I was not on distribution?