The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight. Please stop by for some political discourse over a drink.
We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the back room of the pub. We start at about 8pm.
Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out one of the 265 chapters of Living Liberally, including 22 in Washington state, seven in Oregon and three in Idaho. Find a chapter near you. Or start a new chapter for your community!
A San Diego militia, upset that a female recruit had decided not to continue on the resistance shot her and a rival lover before disbanding via self inflicted gunshot.
The female recruit’s six day old child is next to her in a stroller as she lies bleeding. She is currently still alive.
File under good guy with gun:
Young is the Executive Director of the Louisiana State Troopers Association and a Retired Officer who presumably knows about unlawful detention, attempted murder, unlawful discharge of a firearm…
I plan to meet with my buddy Xi at the G20 Summit. It’s going to be spectacular. It will be the best meeting ever, just completely spectacularly awesome. After the best meeting I’ll have that Chink right were I need him and this economy will be humming, just like those vaginas that hum for me
Whenever a police officer makes an arrest she or he must file what is called an affidavit of probable cause. It’s a sworn statement that serves in place of a judicial warrant under our 4th amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. It’s one of the special magical powers that the state bestows upon a sworn police officer. Gomer Pyle notwithstanding, you and I can’t do this.
These are important documents for a couple of reasons. Of course the first is that it’s the fundamental legal justification for the arrest and everything that flows from it. But, along with the officer’s report of the arrest, it also serves as the foundational piece of information that the prosecutor begins working with. And often it plays a big role in any charging decisions and plea agreements. Cops have to be trained in how to write these because they have to cite specific relevant statutes. And cops fuck them up a lot. They cite the wrong statute, or the information in the affidavit is the wrong information relevant to the appropriate statute. Low level prosecutors spend a lot of time cleaning that shit up in preparation for higher ups making a charging and plea decision. It’s the scut work. You aren’t supposed to complain. And you aren’t supposed to look into it more deeply. To get ahead you are supposed to grind it out, keep a smile on your face, and make your boss’ job easier by doing more than your share of the shit work. You should not “raise concerns”.
A mid-career govt. attorney, new to the State Attorney’s Office in Jackson County, Florida did that. She noticed a pattern, a disproportionality, and a lot of discrepancies in one officer’s affidavits relating to drug arrests. After watching hundreds of hours of body cam video and including relevant information about the discrepancies in the charging files she was preparing, she expressed her concerns to her supervisors. When those concerns were corroborated by the lead public defender she was invited to share her concerns with the Sheriff’s internal affairs investigators.
What followed was the dismissal of over 120 felony charges dating back two years and discovery of a massive pattern of planting of evidence during traffic stops. After being severely reprimanded by the State Attorney, the ASA was forced to quit her job and file a whistleblower suit. The local presiding criminal court judge will no longer accept pleas at arraignment forcing prolonged discovery. The cop was fired, but retains his certification and is seeking employment elsewhere as a cop.
Take no comfort in the presumption that lawyers, prosecutors or judges in the criminal judicial system will prevent this kind of stuff. The system is just not designed to work that way. It is a well oiled machine designed to quickly and efficiently move
cases from arrest to plea with the least amount of intervention. This ASA stepped out of line in order to do what she did. And it cost her her job and her state pension. She had almost 19 years with the state before she was pushed out. Every other low ranking ASA in the state knows about her and understands the message.
The quick fix is fewer cops. Yes, you could hire about twice as many state’s attorneys and twice as many public defenders. But long before you ever got there we’d tire of all that expense just to help “dirtbags” go free. Never mind that innocent people with planted drugs aren’t “dirtbags”. That’s where the media would go. So it makes lots more sense to just reduce the ranks of cops out there. It saves all kinds of money, it frees up resources that state’s attorneys can use to focus on arrest reports, affidavits, and video evidence. It frees up courts to examine plea agreements. Fewer cops is hard to argue with if we are in any way sincere about reducing the appalling abuses in our criminal justice system.
@3 Well, anyway, the stock market thinks so. I didn’t even bother to count how much my stocks are up today; Boeing alone is up almost $15 a share. Personally, I don’t think much will come of it, but the market can think whatever it likes. Whatever the market does is fine with me. The main thing is, I haven’t had to work in years. I quit working at least 10 years before Doctor Dumbfuck did, and that idiot brags about being richer than me?
@4 Getting rid of bad cops seems a logical place to start. Of course, that by itself would result in fewer cops.
But Y’all, She’ll still be able to talk to Jesus in prison. Alleluia and Amen.
Friend charged with murder of ex-state senator who was found slain outside her home https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/friend-charged-murder-ex-arkansas-state-senator-found-slain-outside-n1018606
6,
If more than 90% of felony drug arrests are pleaded at arraignment, and any lowly ASA who dares to peak under the hood is ruined, how the fuck do we discover who the “bad cops” are?
It leaves us with few good options.
I’m merely suggesting that if we are choosing among those few good options the one that makes the most practical sense is to reduce the number of cops irrespective of their “goodness” or “badness”. I’m not arguing that all cops are bastards. I’m arguing that too many are. And given the overall numbers in society that presents an unacceptable risk and real harms. Of course if you don’t happen to be among the people being systematically selected for the harms and risks you might not give a shit.
@8 Well, the case you describe @4 and outcomes like this …
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jonathan-aledda-acquitted-attempted-manslaughter_n_5d08d609e4b0ea7c4a4fb119
… don’t exactly inspire confidence in the system, do they?
I certainly understand your argument. When we see that our most vulnerable citizens — the profoundly disabled — are at great risk of being killed by out-of-control police, for whom there are no repercussions, then it’s awfully tempting to want to get rid of the police before they get rid of us.
The thing is, though, if we don’t have police, who will protect us from criminals? The streets would become a free-for-all. It still seems to me the best approach is better cops, not no cops.
A rightwing talk show host has an alibi for Trump’s groping behavior. He says Trump “was a Democrat then.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sebastian-gorka-trump-access-hollywood-groping-democrat_n_5d08f69fe4b0f7b74427206a
Yes, yes, he’s a much better person now as a Republican. All he does now is throw babies into rape cages.
The NRA claims, “An armed society is a polite society.”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/06/13/he-wanted-apologize-cutting-another-driver-it-ended-deadly-shootout.html?ESRC=army_190618.nl
Nope. An armed society is a hair-trigger society.
That is logic of a Facebook trunper , any Republican who is convinced, he says was secretly a Democrat.
It was to be expected that Trump would purge the National Security Council’s career experts and replace them with Bolton clones eager to wag the dog.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/fiona-hill-leaves-trump-administration-national-security-council/index.html
I don’t understand why the acting SecDef is being replaced, though. It seems to me a father who claimed his son was acting in “self defense” when he attacked his mother with a baseball bat has exactly the temperament Trump wants for that job.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/shanahan-out-defense-secretary/index.html
Economic pressures continue to degrade traditional family-wage jobs and benefits.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-postal-service-wants-to-make-deep-cuts-to-worker-benefits-internal-plan-shows_n_5d092020e4b0e560b70a12d4
Roger Rabbit Commentary: You can’t build a thriving middle class on a weak foundation of temporary jobs, part-time jobs, low-wage jobs, and gigs with no pensions or health insurance. Such an economy inevitably is as ephemeral as those jobs.
“President Donald Trump continued his refusal to apologize for his 1989 call to execute five teenagers who were falsely accused of rape in the notorious Central Park Five case. ‘You have people on both sides of that,’ Trump told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday when asked if he would apologize. ‘They admitted their guilt.'”
https://tinyurl.com/yxasc6ju
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Five young blacks were wrongly convicted, sent to prison, and eventually exonerated and awarded $41 million in settlements. And once again President Pornhub is insisting there were [fine] people on both sides.
This is where the Trump-Hitler comparison breaks down. Hitler thought there were “fine people” on only one side — his side. Still …
Good thing she isn’t black or Doctor Dumbfuck would be here celebrating, telling us how the cops were justified in riddling her with bullets, firing 55 shots at her in a matter of seconds.
“Republican gun activist arrested for felony after flashing gun at cop while driving 90 mph through construction zone”
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/republican-gun-activist-arrested-for-felony-after-flashing-gun-at-cop-while-driving-90-mph-through-construction-zone/
“A federal court has quashed the Trump administration’s effort to relax a health and safety rule for mine workers, arguing that the changes would put miners at risk.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-administration-cannot-weaken-obama-era-safety-rule-miners-court-n1019101
If Trump likes miners so much, why is he trying to get them killed?
@18: it’s a minor spelling error. He’s figured out it’s really minors that his party favors. Miner/minor, Wales/whales, ….
Bad things happen to good families…..yeah unless your black, then only bad things happen to all the bad people.
So the Administration is TOTALLY transparent. Happening today on the Hill a preliminary meeting on Hope Hick’s testimony. Here’s how it’s going.
Q: will you state for the record the spelling of your first and last name.
JD Attorney, “Objection Executive Privilege!”
Q: we have these dates as the time you worked at the White aHouse is that correct?
JD Attorney, “Objection Executive Privilege!”
Q: is this your correct Date of Birth?
JD Attorney, “Objection Executive Privilege!”
@ 4
But long before you ever got there we’d tire of
all that expense just to help “dirtbags” go freethe permanent jump in the crime rate.ftfy
9,
“…if we don’t have police, who will protect us from criminals?”
Shame on you for that. It’s disrespectful. I know you can do better than a straw man/argumentum ad consequentiam.
I don’t make any such argument to eliminate law enforcement. And it does not follow from a systematic effort to reduce the numbers of police in our communities that law enforcement would cease to exist, or that “(t)he streets would become a free-for-all”.
Because of the excessive numbers of police, their excessive armament, and their excessive aggression and hostility, for many of our neighbors in many American communities, the streets already are a free-for-all.
22,
the statistical evidence from the rare instances when US taxpayers devote adequate resources to the judicial system to both adequately investigate arrests and adequately defend criminal defendants is no change/small reduction in the rates of reported crimes, but statistically significant reductions in the rates of both crimes charged and convictions obtained. For example, Gideon and the reversal of Betts, did not produce an explosion of reported street crime*. But it did produce a measurable reduction in both cases brought, the severity of charges sought, and convictions obtained, once prosecutors were faced with even barely adequate defense counsel.
The fact is, without bothering to think much at all about it, Teh Dumbfuck is making an argument in favor of false convictions. And the evidence indicates that false convictions increase the crime rate, for what I hope would be obvious reasons.
*How’s this supposed to work exactly? Upon learning that police may be prevented from beating confessions, planting evidence, and falsifying arrest affidavits, and that criminal defendants may obtain adequate due process from the criminal justice system, criminals at large respond by going on a crime spree?