Federal cops gets pulled over by TN cops, car illegally searched
newschannel5.com
newschannel5.com
What is interesting here is that person who was searched got to present his story to the news and it was published as is.
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"NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Ronnie, "You are convinced that they cued that dog to hit?"
"Yes, 100 percent," he said. "There is no doubt they cued that dog."
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Usually traditional media takes the side of the cops. At best, they would make the cops' version sound just as plausible as that of victim of the robbery (hrm ... I mean, the person who was detained).
So, of course, what makes this story, is the occupation of one of passengers -- he is both a cop and a veteran. That is front and center in the article. It is emphasized mutiple times, even in the HN title. We don't want the audience to forget that and think he is just a regular janitor or plumber here! I believe that says a lot about the beliefs that go around -- that cops are somehow more honest, and noble (and so are the troops). This aspect, is just as interesting to look at as the story itself. In order to stop this behavior, it is important to change that attitude, first, and then it would be possible to talk about fixing the laws that allow this to happen.
Interesting thought. My reaction to the headline was "good, as a cop people will listen to him and he's in a better position to help change this."
I'm sure plenty of people out there are more likely to believe him and, while I'm not, he could become a useful spark for change. Even if he's lying there are thousands of other people who experience the situation for real.
Yeah I had the same thought. Even if we don't rationally think cops are inherently more noble and honest than the average person, we know that the average person believes it. The news station knows that too.
Football players speaking up about their head injuries? That's a better story than some tenured professor writing from his lab. Employees blowing the whistle on their employer's bad practices, teachers arguing against tenure policies, police calling out police abuse or racism – these are all compelling narratives.
Of course, ideally, we'd look to the quality of the argument and the strength of the evidence, but an insider account gives us the mental shortcut to think "this one knows what they're talking about, and they don't have a clear motivation to disparage their own."
Ya know, after I had written my parallel comment and gave it some thought later, I concluded that it's all just bullshit. The dog didn't alert by sitting, and the officer didn't cue him. They were going to search the car regardless.
You say 'no', but, the puppy says 'yes' and there go your rights. It is pretty magic.
Here's where I disagree with you (but only in the details). The dog didn't say anything. I mean, I've seen dogs sniff for drugs (and find them). I've watched amateur Noseworks competitors (slightly related to the training sniffing dogs). No dog "alerts" by sitting, at least none I've ever seen. Dogs sit all the time, it would be a stupid cue. That dog could have just stood there and ripped the meanest fart you ever smelled, and the thieves (pardon: cops) would have said that the dog "alerted". "Yup, smells like he found something!"
As you point out, the dog is a prop, a talisman. That car was getting searched, full stop. They just needed a "get out of the 4th amendment free" card in the shape of a German Shepherd. They might as well train gerbils for that. They fit in your pocket, cost less to feed, and with a little propaganda we can all be led to believe they work just as well as dogs (and they probably will if you're just looking for false positives).
(And to be clear, I'm not saying you can't train a dog to sniff for drugs or bombs. Obviously they can be trained for this, and to a high degree of reliability. They can, however, also be trained to bark, dig, or whine on command, whether they smell drugs or not.)
Oh I agree, the dog saying 'yes' was meant to be the officer using the dog to note on paper that 'dog said yes'.
As you said, in case of this group, they didn't have to pretend much at all. I imagine others would actually have a functional, probably somewhat non-obvious alerting signal. But this groups was getting good results without trying much.
I think they probably learned their lesson from this -- spend more time training the dog to actually alert and figure out how to make it do it reliably and out of the sight of the camera.
If this couple had any amount of cash on them, it would have been confiscated as "drug money". Good luck getting it back, even in the absence of any evidence. That's why these tactics are tolerated, it's a source of income for the department. Who cares if a few innocent out-of-staters are taken advantage of?
The whole situation just makes me sick, and I'm continually surprised that it hasn't been ruled unconstitutional.
That was sarcasm.
The point was the cops probably didn't get reprimanded, laws probably didn't change. But, they probably got chewed out in Monday morning meeting about taking better care, for example: make sure dog alerts off camera or takes a subtler cue. After precious department funding is at stake here, it is not amateur hour.
Maybe imagine it like a mafia leader instructing his henchmen to properly dispose of bodies, otherwise it leave evidence and makes everything difficult ;-)
Um, actually, that's exactly what every military working drug dog I've seen does. Source: spent a year as the legal officer on my first ship. Had a dog come to the course. Had a dog on the ship. And they definitely have a non-negligible false-positive rate. But, certainly, the video, as described, supports a cue.
These dogs are trained to alert by sitting down and not to sit down when doing their job. Just look at any video footage from sniffer dogs in training or working.
It's not like K-9s are uniquely to blame: the next generation of 4th-amendment violating technologies are already here, just waiting in the wings for judicial approval, or in some cases, to overturn previous rulings. And once they get even the most limited permission, these things (like infrared) will be used by the police as dousing rods to take them wherever they want to go.
> Harris ... challenge[d] the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong.
> The Court unanimously held that if a bona fide organization has certified a dog after testing his reliability in a controlled setting, or if the dog has recently and successfully completed a training program that evaluated his proficiency, a court can presume (subject to any conflicting evidence offered) that the dog's alert provides probable cause to search, using a "totality-of-the-circumstances" approach.
I think it implies a certain level of assumed corruption instead. It's unusual (as far as the public is concerned) for enforcement agency A to give any trouble to agency B - 'you scratch my back...' kind of thing.
I am not saying this is what happened here, but I'd be careful to trust a dog unless the training was absolutely 100% verified not to have trained anything that could allow the handler to command the dog to "hit".
On a related note, I submit that this is what NSA surveillance is really all about.
"The suspect showed a pattern of activity consistent with [terrorism | child pornography | fraud | narco-trafficking]"
All the sudden, poof, probable cause. I'll know I'm right the minute I see data from these programs admitted as evidence in court.
Which is probably nothing more than a VPN connection...
Strong rule of law is one of the defining hallmarks of a just and fair legal system. If a law is causing injustice, you repeal or rewrite it. You don't simply ignore or downplay it when it "feels" right.
For example the speed limit on a major highway in Ontario is 100km/h however they average speed is probably closer to 120km/h because the police are selective with the speed enforcement. This means they can pull over basically anyone based on arbitrary criteria - what kind of car they drive or what they look like. It also means that the speed limit will never be changed legislatively because most drivers can just go 120km/h and be fine so there's no pushback.
You won't see that. Parallel construction will be used to hide the source of the original tip. Some other explanation will be invented to justify why the case is stolen.
They did, Ronnie. The other two are pirates.
This isn't true and I think you have traditional news media confused with the "info-tainment" world. I can assure you NPR doesn't have a unified agenda that is required to be met or is run by some "cabal" locked away in a secret lair picking sides and passing down marching orders. News media is produced by a wide variety of outlets and sources. Organizations leverage both in-house staff/resources as well as thousands of external sources (AP, Reuters, ITN, et al) for producing content. Not to mention all of the smaller, independent public media stations producing content that NPR picks up. Phrases such as "it's to make their audience feel good or bad about themselves" or "You play your audience or risk losing it" are simply lazy arguments without merit.
NPR, huffpo, WSJ all have their biases and a narrative they want to present for their core audience, otherwise, why would they diverge on how they present the same topic and why do the topics they cover differ?
NPR is always the underdog. They also make good use of techniques to put things in whatever perspective they want. Softball questions to sympathizers, leading questions, etc. If you study propaganda, they use pretty much all the techniques. Obviously this is why they and Glenn beck and co sound the same.
You don't need a cabal, you need a head of news, producers and journalists who share the same interests. Just make it all line up organizationally.
It's interesting to note fox news has more diversity of opinion than does NPR. On NPR all minorities are progressives, yet IRL I know minorities with all points of view, but listening to them you'd think they were all progressives. So, yes, they forward their narrative very adroitly.
This morning they had a piece about WalMart increasing base wages more than originally announced, and the presenter, as an aside mentioned, "I'm sure out of the goodness of their hearts". See how insidious it is? There was no reason for that, it didn't follow from what the reporter was saying. And it's this kind of technique they've mastered.
It's not a misrepresentation to say that, e.g., blacks tend to vote Democratic. That's factual information, and it's not the same as claiming that all minorities are progressive. No one claims this. I don't even know what "narrative" NPR would be forwarding if they claimed this.
This frankly sounds a lot more like a Fox News tactic than NPR. "All minorities vote progressive!" sounds like a rallying cry to get conservatives riled up and active.
NPR does not make that untrue claim. What happens is they predominantly interview progressives when they interview majorities or minorities. In addition most of the staff and volunteers do not lean conservative or libertarian by any measure. As I said, I wager I'd see more political diversity at fox, and that's staggering, knowing about fox.
As for interviewing only progressive minority members, I'm not sure that's true. I feel like you're pushing this as a fact with no data to back it up. I mean, if they're interviewing someone from the black lives matter movement, it's probably going to be a progressive black person. But I also recall them interviewing Latinos in Florida opposed to lifting the Cuban embargoes.
I'm an independent and their con guests are somewhat lacking in style and argument.
It might be a side effect of her location (DC) and clout, but she often has influential policy makers on her show, from both sides of the fence.
You don't have to like or support NPR, but they are absolutely not just pandering and pushing propaganda like Glenn Beck.
If you're interested in the technique follow the Russia/ Ukraine blogs. The Russian blogs are populated by confederates. One takes a somewhat extreme view, ridiculous view --everyone will see thru it, then a second confederate comes in with the more plausible submarine view... But you can flip that. That's how you do it.
65% of likely GOP voters say that they support banning Muslims from entering the country. [1] It's not propagandizing to bring a conservative on to present a position that the majority of their base supports. The proposal is absurd and frightening, but the options are to not report on it all, to not bring a conservative on air to support it, or to bring a conservative on air to support it and let them sound crazy. There is no way to say that we should ban Muslims and not sound crazy to a moderate or liberal.
[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/292796480/Bloomberg-Politics-Purpl...
It's bring guests of comparable quality and abilities to present their ideas and don't prime one side or the other as good or bad.
If you think all the conservatives NPR airs sound incompetent, maybe you should consider that it's the ideas they're espousing that you don't like, rather than the particular people presenting them. If some of the ideas sound stupid when challenged, maybe those ideas are actually stupid.
Now, I do hold npr to higher standard because they market themselves that way. Listen to their money drives and how they sell themselves as impartial, best unbiased news source. If you don't recall, its coming next week I believe. Listen closely to how they sell themselves as bearers of the truth and impartiality.
And, to be clear, you're claiming I'm equating them, I'm not. I said they use similar tactics, which they do.
He is a professional commenting on his own profession. If the topic would be sanitation, Joe Plumbers opinion would hold more weight.
He is speaking against his own colleagues, which might have negative consequences down the line, and has no apparent personal gain in doing so. So he is more likely to be honest than disgruntled joe plumber.
I can't help but think that the root of this phenomenon is the adversarial nature of policing in the U.S. It's assumed that the police are on one side and the people are on the other, and that the two sides are going to be at odds. And like most adversarial relationships, you assume that most critiques of "the other side" are noise.
There's probably some element of "police are honorable", but I think the adversarial setup has more to do with it.
As I've always suspected. I could take just about any random dog from your local animal shelter and train them to do that in about 20 minutes (look up "clicker training Zach" on YouTube, watch what he can teach in half that time). And point at the window is the cue? Amateur hour. Given the amount of time given to train a K-9 unit, I could come up with something much more subtle, and I only train dogs as an amateur volunteer, not a professional K-9 trainer.
Alternatively, many dogs that I've trained long-term will default to "sit" when they can't figure out what you want. Could have been that the dog didn't know what "point at window" means, but the mutt knows it means something. Doggy runs through his mental database, comes with no match for "point at window", defaults to "sit".
TL;DR: the more time I spend training dogs, the more I'm convinced that drug dogs are about as reliable as polygraphs, if not worse because the handler can game it.
I've definitely seen this with my dog. Say her name, and see just looks at you. Say her name and raise your hand up flat, and she'll sit straight away. Say her name, and do some other hand gesture, and she'll pause for a few seconds and usually (90% of the time I'd guess) sits down.
Did these cops know there was a dashcam or were they just that assured nothing could touch them in their county. Thuggery by the police doesn't continue unless they have their District Attorney in the bag
Officer, please understand - after I identify myself with my name and date of birth (and proof of insurance if I am driving a motor vehicle) I am refusing to answer any questions until I have a reasonable opportunity to consult with my attorney. I refuse to take any field sobriety tests including: reciting letters and counting numbers, letting you look into my eyes with or without your flashlight, or any other physical tests performed outside my vehicle until I consult with my attorney. I refuse to get out of my car unless you order me to do so. However, I still refuse all field sobriety tests. I will show you my hands at all times so that your safety will not become an issue.
I refuse to consent to the search of my vehicle, my person, my belongings, or any premises with which I have an expectation of privacy, including my residence, hotel room or any other rented room without the reasonable opportunity to consult my attorney. If you have probable cause to search you do not need my consent anyway.
If I am not under arrest but you are going to issue a traffic citation please do so immediately so that I may go about my business. If I am not under arrest and no citation is going to be issued please tell me if I am free to leave so that I may go about my business without further interference with my liberty.
If I am under arrest, please tell me immediately so that I can cooperate by submitting to your authority because I do not wish to resist or obstruct your official duties.
If I am under arrest I wish to invoke all my rights under Miranda. I want my attorney. I won't answer any questions, perform any field sobriety tests or consent to any search without a reasonable opportunity to obtain the advice of my attorney.
Then I shut up!
What if the cop feel threat to his life by your long speech and verbal resistance?
I've only used it once and it seem to work. So I guess I can say I have one data point where it was used. My attorney friend has this printed on his business card and this is the advice he gave me - to do the same.
Cops will hate hearing what you've written here, and it'll probably single you out for additional scrutiny and rights-violations.
It's pretty bad that things have come to this.
You assume every time you are pulled over, the officer is salivating at the thought of cuffing you.
As the OP said (45 minutes before you made your comment) [0] this "speech" is printed on a card, which he hands to the officer, while informing the officer that he is exercising his right to remain silent.
Cops in rural areas with very little to do and very little oversight from say fellow state troopers tend to sour and abuse their power in ways the uneducated would have no idea that their rights were being trampled on.
Even when people know, if there's no consequence (e.g. got illegally searched, but nothing was found), people tend to not bother with obtaining justice against these behaviors as the time and money involved to complain, sue, etc brings very little reward for the effort involved. So we have a feedback loop where cops can abuse their power and nothing of consequence ever really comes about.
If the power abuse yields are juicy find such as alcohol, drugs or any illegal product, people will tend to be more preoccupied with getting charged, that they also have little wherewithal to attempt to seek justice for the given officer's actions. Thus we have another feedback loop that positively reinforces abusive behavior. Trample on someone's right and make them a felon, then get a pat on the back for taking said felon off the streets.
A cop doesn't pull you over to tell you your tail light is out. They pull you over because a broken tail-light is sufficient cause to stop you, hoping that the traffic stop leads to something more than a verbal warning.
Bad cops won't let a card stop them from being bad cops. They'll do what they want no matter what the law says; that's what makes them a bad cop.
So the whole "read a card to the cop" thing is pointless.
"Dui person kept mumbling incoherrently about searching his dog and his hotel room, and calling up his lawyer. Talked a hell of a lot, while invoking the right to keep quiet"
Context-relevant example: a person dealing with a DUI stop might spend months of their own time fighting the DUI in court without a lawyer--days wasted just trying to figure out what to do. But with a lawyer, most DUI cases are wrapped up in about a day or two!
If your time is truly worthless, go ahead and try to play at the law yourself. But if your time, and your freedom, has any value, pay the expert to do it for you.
Speaking about your example - somehow, many otherwise civilized countries manage to handle DUI cases without lawyers getting involved.
You're correct, btw. It does definitely result in billable hours if they do anything more than ticket you.
However, more importantly, you are stating to the police officer that even though you aren't able to defend yourself, you have someone on-retainer that will happily make him personally liable for his actions.
No bully will want that, and the good ones will just make sure they do their jobs.
(I personally fight back, but I do not recommend doing the same unless you fully appreciate the risk of having your windows smashed in and being yanked out of your car if you mess up during negotiations)
but that bully is paid for his time regardless of what he does, and you just challenged his authority.
On the other side, it'd be a shame to lose that pension and salary because you chose to be the cause of a counter-suit.
Lawyers usually wear kid gloves with police. they don't want the retaliation. The fact that this lawyer is educating people to properly direct (and restrict the jurisdiction of) the stop should be sufficient notice that a) the driver is loaded, and b) the driver is willing to pay a lot for a lawyer that likes to sue cops.
Occasionally, I'll say "I'm going to decline to answer that question, officer."
And most likely lose your license for a year in many cases and be charged with a civil offense. Maybe the officer can still "smell" it on your or see you drive erratically and so have enough "evidence" to pile on criminal charges as well. In some states they could charge you with the driving under DUI as well.
It think refusal case is called "Implied Consent" -- you consented to it already by getting into the car and driving on public roads.
Not saying I agree with it or endorse that, just presenting it how it may work in some states.
[1] http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/07/court-rules-odor-is-no...
Gah. Time to get an adblocker, I guess.
Anyway, SCOTUS hasn't ruled on smelling marijuana and probable cause as far as I can tell. That was, to my knowledge, the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
Having reasons for using an adblocker are entirely orthogonal to what happened when I clicked on a link shared by another HN user—a link I have an inherently higher expectation of trust for because it's from a fellow HN user. The user needed to know the site they shared is a piece of shit source that shouldn't be posted to HN.
The reasons for using an adblocker are entirely orthogonal to what happened when I clicked on a link shared by another HN user—a link I have an inherently higher expectation of trust for because it's from a fellow HN user. The user needed to know the site they shared is a piece of shit source that shouldn't be posted to HN.
> Gah. Time to get an adblocker, I guess.
I'd say it's been time for you to do that.
Getting an adblocker isn't a solution for an HN user ignorantly posting a source that does shitty things to its users. Informing the user about their garbage link is the correct response.
It wasn't worth it to fight small tickets like this for me. I don't know what I'd have done if I was broke and unable to pay...
Few decades ago, shortly after moving from Kansas, I drove home for Thanksgiving. I saw a speedtrap many miles in advance, passed it, and miles later I see, in the rearview mirror, a cop cross the median and he bridged the gap with ungodly speed. At no time was he going my speed. He pulls me over, claims I was going 15 over using the pace method. He comes back with a ticket, but it has radar checked. I pointed out this discrepancy and said I won't sign the ticket. He says to sign it or I'm going to jail. Had it not been for Thanksgiving, I'd have called his bluff.
Thing is, the rot goes to the top. The D.A. was in on it. And the town judge. It was all about making money. Plain, ordinary robbery.
And I know that because I accused them all of it (over the phone). They were way way more pissed than they should have been if they were innocent. The vitriol I heard confirmed my suspicion.
House of rats.
If she hadn't wanted it, why did she wear that in public?
The very notion of 'implied consent' shows how far our legal system has fallen.
That is a bit different than rape as far as I see, but I guess you don't see it that way.
You are also voluntarily giving up freedoms when you sign up for the military or get a security clearance. You can try to claim free speech for divulging state secrets, but you'll still go to jail, because you signed a contract to that effect.
And yet, at least in the more spread out areas of the US, it is far more a necessity than voting. Why is it a privilege while voting is not?
And as for differences, the basics of consent is consistent across where ever that consent is being applied. That the harms of violations of consent may differ does not change that.
> Why is it a privilege while voting is not?
Oh I agree with you. But we'd have to fix that first. It is a privilege because it is not made into law that travel by car on public roads is a universal human right like other rights in the Constitution.
As far as the govt. is concerned citizens have the absolute right to ride their horse on public lands. Just like they did in the 1700s. As soon as anyone steps in a car, airplane, train etc, they lose some right and have to abide by certain rules.
I say this having never been searched nor asked to take a field sobriety test, but I've always found that a modicum of respect and politeness keeps things quite civil and ensures no trouble.
I'm white, and have been pulled over a couple of times, with no real issue. The one time I was riding with a black family member (who had done nothing ticket-able, or suspicious) was one of the longest and most troublesome police incidents I've ever seen. Anecdotal? yes, but it mirrors statistics that I've seen.
My wife is not, though, and her experiences have mirrored mine. But anecdotes, etc.
I'm not saying that it's always going to work out, nor that there's never a time and place that OP's method is appropriate - only that starting a dialog that way is unnecessarily antagonistic.
Every time I've been pulled over, the police office has walked to my passenger side window with their hand on their sidearm. I'd say the subtext starts way before mentioning any actual rights I might have (and that the Supreme Court has stated that must I explicitly use in order to keep)
This is always important. Use your right to remain silent and never talk to police! Anybody that questions this should see this[1] attorney's very good explanation.
> I want my attorney. I won't answer any questions
Note that it's a good idea to explicitly invoke both of these (your right to an attorney and your right to not self incriminate). Law comic has a very rigorous flowchart[2] for handling being questioned by the police (or other government agent).
The follow-up from a police officer was interesting, too - funny how the tricks he mentioned were the same as depicted in "The Wire" (which I watched later). The show got it quite right!
"So, again, the government can't offer negative comments on the choice not to testify and may not offer negative comments on a person's choice to remain silent after an arrest. Salinas brought the question, what about silence before an arrest?"[0]
"Basically, if you're ever in any trouble with police (no, we don't condone breaking laws) and want to keep your mouth shut, you will need to announce that you're invoking your Fifth Amendment right instead of, you know, just keeping your mouth shut." [1]
"if he wanted to rely on his right to remain silent, he had to say something that clearly asserted his right." [2]
[0] http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/supreme-court-silence-can-...
[1] http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/06/supreme-court-salina...
[2] http://volokh.com/2013/06/17/do-you-have-a-right-to-remain-s...
http://www.bakerlaw.com/alerts/silence-isnt-always-golden-in...
http://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/18.2-268.2/
I realize it says "under arrest", but I think case law has established that also means when detained/pulled over, as well. I really want someone to prove me wrong about that, though. I never know what to say/not say when pulled over.
Edit:
http://boonebeale.com/implied-consent-refusing-a-breath-test...
Some research does say it's okay to refuse preliminary tests if you're not under arrest, but once you're arrested you must consent. I guess the good news is they can't arrest you if they can't provide probable cause, which they might have trouble establishing if you refuse preliminary testing.
Surely that's better phrased as "once you're arrested, they do not require your consent"? Consent isn't consent if you have no option.
- You can be charged with driving while impaired without failing any kind of field sobriety test/breathalyzer (Criminal Code 253.1)
- Refusing a breathalyzer test or field sobriety test is also a criminal offence (254.5)
And I don't have a cite for this off the top of my head, but I recall that there was a Charter challenge for mass road-side check-stops (we frequently have those during holiday weekends), and the Supreme Court used clause 1 (below) to say that while road-side check-stops do in fact violate your Charter rights, they're justifiable in a free and democratic society.
Clause 1: "...guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Edit: at least they do document what the standardized field sobriety test can consist of: http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/regu/sor-2008-196/latest/so...
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/why_you_shoul...
In 2014, Radley Balko blogged about this incident: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/11/12/...
Obviously doesn't change the impact or interest in the story (if anything, goes to show how much interesting news you can forget about or not know about when it was originally published), but the submitted title needs a "(2014)" in it. I was interested if this story went anywhere, but a Google search for Ronnie Hankins name didn't turn up much.
"Probable cause" is not a justification for evading responsibility to their victims.
http://nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-...
But city lawyers are arguing that the police had no legal duty to protect Joseph Lozito, the Long Island dad stabbed seven times trying to subdue madman Maksim Gelman — a courtroom maneuver the subway hero calls “disgraceful.”
http://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-p...
I'd say they're already doing a good job of inaction.
But yes obviously it would be less efficient to fund the true cost of policing, rather than leaving it the reverse lottery we have now. But not doing so is essentially a violation of due process, as the victims are extrajudicially punished based on mere suspicion.
There have been lots of news coverage on illegal search and seizure for last couple of years, but it still happens very frequently.
How can it be solved? May be a new constitutional right should made it to law that guarantees a no fuss recourse path for every law if you believe you have been wronged.
Without people actively participating in democracy, its going to rot.
However, these tools are not necessarily used consistently at any level of government....
Before prohibition, up to 75% of New York's budget was funded by taxing alcohol. Once a national income tax was introduced, the federal and state governments no longer needed the alcohol tax, and in comes The 18th Amendment. After the 11 Billion dollars in lost revenue, know what The 18th Amendment helped create? Organized crime.
The War on Drugs is, effectively, Prohibition, but with the incidental effect that since there has never been taxes on recreational drugs for us to benefit from, we instead learned to profit from what we could - mainly, prisons. The losses include the lives of those in the illegal drug trade (similar to the relentless violence in Chicago in the 20's), the 41 billion we spend on enforcing the drug war, the 46 billion in lost revenue from not taxing drugs, and the many foreign conflicts we've forced ourselves into. Plus, of course, the new-and-improved drug cartels.
Get rid of the war on drugs, and they'll just find another scapegoat to tax to fill their coffers rather than do what they should be doing, which is direct taxes to fund local government, which literally no politician today will support unless they're crazy.
I am genuinely curious as to how they'd tax terror... The "war on terror" seems like the perfect replacement for the one on drugs.
--
The war on drugs was mainly a sort of war to enforce the US's policy of not legitimizing drug use, partly a method to keep the fervor over the crack epidemic and quickly worsening ethnic communities from bringing real social change, and perhaps partly a way to exert some control over the countries that generated the products.
The war on drugs didn't really help anyone, though it made a small industry (prisons) more profitable. I would say it's mainly about pursuing a simplistic political agenda, and less about money or anything else.
-
The war on terror is a product of 9/11, a gigantic behemoth of a money-maker for the military industrial complex, and a way to gain influence over the middle east in order to control/influence the nations which have huge oil revenues - the most widely traded commodity in the world.
The war on terror has had a similar effect to Prohibition in that it reduced revenues to the country when it was in a depression. But it actually has been much worse than that: the deficit has increased dramatically in the intervening years, in part due to borrowing to pay for the war on terror, in combination with tax cuts at the same time, which is basically criminally stupid economics. But any tax cut feels good to the people being taxed.
Realistically, the war on terror should be making people way more pissed off than it is, but there's an ace up the sleeve in the vein of fear and patriotism. Both of those, when amped up to hyper-realistic levels, result in immense support by the population. All we would need is a new depression for people to start lynching Muslims - the way the English lynched innocent people living in the UK during WWII just because they were German, or the way we imprisoned civilian asian-americans after Pearl Harbor.
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At this point, the only way to make people happy and tax ourselves back to profitability is to take either the extreme-left or extreme-right options.
Extreme left: Heavily tax the wealthy, close loopholes for corporations to hide their taxable revenue, heavily reduce spending on the miltary and intelligence community, and further economic and foreign policy reforms.
Extreme right: Remove most "entitlement" spending, reduce regulations on companies to allow more exploitation of natural resources, continue to try to influence oil-rich nations in order to eventually control the cost of oil, give tax cuts to corporations and the rich, offload the rest of the tax onto the general population.
The problem with either of these scenarios, though, is in either one there will be a very loud group pissed off at either having less money or having less social services/environmental protection. Until you can find one solution that makes everyone happy, none of this shit will work.
The Constitution enumerates only specific rights to the federal government. All other rights are retained by the states and by the people (10th Amendment). Not to mention that the 4th Amendment most specifically addresses the issue of unlawful search, and which the courts -- as an apparatus of the state -- have mutilated beyond recognition to the benefit of the state.
Most citizens are completely unaware of the multitude of rights possessed by the people and assume that the government has to tell them what rights they have. That way is serfdom.
Then again, with one semester of government class in 12 years of compulsory state-controlled education -- and that taught by a coach half the time -- it's no wonder that we allow the state and its officers to walk all over us.
I know this is frowned upon, but +1 anyways.
> Then again, with one semester of government class in 12 years of compulsory state-controlled education -- and that taught by a coach half the time -- it's no wonder that we allow the state and its officers to walk all over us.
Yeah well my government teacher threw a book at me, literally. Question authority at your own peril.
My main problem with your statement is that if a student is "susceptible" to state-controlled education, they are also susceptible to really any ideology. It is the people who think differently who are most likely to be persecuted, and also need protection from it the most.
The U.S. constitution[1] must be amended to enumerate and accord the states a limited specific set of rights, and all other rights must be reserved for the people.
[1] Alternatively, individual state constitutions could be amended to have an enumerate powers clause added to them -- but I doubt those deep red Republican "conservative" and "small government" states would want to limit the power of the state to abuse marginalized groups. Conservative hypocrisy is unnerving.
Even though they are not big supporters of limited small government (which I favor), at least they are not actively trying to suppress black people and other non-white minorities -- instead they're fighting for their rights.
To me, justice is more important than small government.
Police only have an incentive to seize things illegally because their departments receive the money.
I would love the visit the US sometimes, but stories like this just make me feel like the US is just a very dangerous place to be. Not because of the people with guns, but because of the police that is as corrupt as any 3rd world country's police.
The first one is the Norman Rockwell vision of plenty and freedom. It really is like that - for some people, mostly white (or at least not black), in some places. Given how big America is, that means there are tens of millions of people who never see the bad side. Or when they do, assume that those involved deserved it.
The other side of the coin is for the people who end up on the wrong side of the internal colonialism. There's a lot of brutality there, but (like with many 3rd world or marginal countries) it's avoidable as a tourist.
The one thing you do have to make sure as a tourist is not to get in trouble with the border check agents.
> He's a federal police officer at the Marine Corps Air Station-Miramar in San Diego.
Ronnie, the male passenger is employed as a Federal police officer, but his wife (driving) does not have her employment specified, nor are they driving an official vehicle or on Federal business. He also sounds more worried about losing his job than having his employer go to bat for him:
> "It makes me angry that someone would attack my character because not only do they attack my character, but that could cost me my job," Ronnie said.
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/11/26/fhp-trooper-donna-watts...
even on duty officers doing their jobs aren't immune... if you don't follow the blue code of silence, the blue code will stalk you.
It's completely tangential but I have taken great delight in the reaction of people to Making a Murderer.
I have talked to people who are in absolute disbelief that police officer can and do act that way. I tell them that they're only surprised because they haven't been paying attention.
Earlier she had pulled into a parking garage that was mislabeled and scrapped the roof of the truck. The attendant called their boss who called their insurance, who said to get a police report and they would cover it. She got a ticket for reckless driving. Thankfully the attendant stayed on the scene the whole time, because my wife got the sense that the cop was alluding to her negotiating her way out of such a hefty ticket.
Fortunately my wife's friend (who we where visiting) is very good friends with the chief of the Hollywood PD and made a call, who then made a call to Miami PD, long story short a supervisor came out, ripped up the ticket apologized to my wife, wrote the police report about the garage and left, but before he did he told her it would be best if this where the end of the incident. Nothing was ever said or done about the other officer.
Redundancy aside, this seems like a pointless thing to include in the article if you don't even name the field in which he is an expert.
I mean, if you don't concede to a search and they don't have probably cause, how can they have a dog then search your car?
It seems like having a dog search and smell around your car would constitute a search by every legal definition?
And this would be a breach of your rights against illegal search?
What am I missing?
Most people don't have the time and inclination to do so, and the ones that do are often incoherent or do things that shoot themselves in the foot, like the people who blocked the SF bay bridge on MLK day.
It could be simple but tied up in patents I suppose. I have a feeling if it was even remotely simple it would be prevalent in airports though.
Electronic noses in specialized niche use cases is past startup phase and well into industrial implementation.
However, the nose of a trained dog exceeds electronic capabilities.
In fact, an electronic nose that good might be equivalent to a Star Trek tricorder.
They are incentivized to have false positives.
If police departments believe that they get the resources they want based on the Clever Hans Effect, what would be their incentive to use a more accurate mechanism for sniffing out drugs?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-06/news/ct-met-ca...
http://www.nap.edu/read/11431/chapter/6#27 https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/184450.pdf http://www.armedforces.co.uk/releases/raq433946e83fcdd#.VqBM...
I was "digitally sniffed" for explosives once at an airport in Florida about 3 years ago.
They took a piece of what looked like tissue (probably an odorless control) and rubbed it inside my backpack.
They then placed that "tissue" into a very large machine (half the size of the man performing the procedure) which I assume smelled it for explosives.
After standing there for about 30 seconds staring at the machine, I was told I was free to proceed into the secure waiting area.
There's this video by Ex narcotic police officer Barry Cooper that features a segment on k9 false alerts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-mU77Pie44&t=23m30s
As much as it galls me, my understanding is that this kind of thing is procedurally legal. Drug dogs can "alert" based on nonsense, and that forms the pretense for a legal search. The Supreme Court seems willing to say "you can't be held waiting for a drug dog" (Rodriguez v. U.S.), but doesn't seem to be willing to adjudicate the accuracy of those dogs.
My personal belief is that they should be banned, unless we're willing to hold them to a very high accuracy rate. Like, if consequences of a false alert are "career-ending", and not just "Tuesday afternoon".
But as much as I hate this, describing it as "illegal" seems inaccurate.
This is how the article frames the situation, somehow insinuating that the default is to let the cops violate your privacy.
However, the law is very clear on this aspect. The default is No. The cops have to find a valid reason to be able to search. There is absolutely no reason why a citizen should allow for a search, and doing so can only hurt, not help, them.
>Posted: 12:20 AM, Jan 18, 2016
>Updated: 4 hours ago
Does anybody know what the update was?
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
"Under the old regime the offense was punished with the torture of the wheel"
[0]: https://books.google.com/books?id=QWNhCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT...
A phenomenon that coincided with a sudden drought of UFO and Bigfoot sightings, coincidentally.
> "Yeah, I felt violated. He didn't want to hear it."
Objection your honour, leading the witness.
How do they explain how the dog was 'inadvertently trained'?
One thing I will note is that I won't allow someone to tell me they think I am lying, if I'm not lying. I don't have to rationalize with someone who blames and speak for others. The best possible thing to do is get of of the car and lock it behind you and stuff your keys in your pants the absolute second you are stopped. When they start blaming and speaking for you, tell them they are doing so and you won't allow it. You can then keep your mouth shut until the officer makes a choice between hauling you in and towing the car, or letting you go.
Nobody has to make things "right" when there's nothing wrong to begin with.
By keeping the amount of stuff you say to one of these jackasses, and what they have access to, greatly limits their ability to fuck with you.
"He was reaching for a gun!"