Sorry for joining the thread late. If what I write next is already covered, please disregard.
This is in regard to the initial criticisms toward Devildoc for not helping the police. I've given this some thought across time, and have decided:
I won't be helping the police with anything I don't personally witness, or have sufficient personal knowledge about.
Basically, if a cop asks me if I know someone one my block, or if I've seen some stranger, I have no way to know that the cops are targeting the correct person. Or, that that person actually did what the cops suspect. Just because a cop tells me this or that does not make the policing decisions underlying their interest in the person just.
Oh, ho! You would let a crook run free, you might ask. My point is that I don't know the person sought is actually a crook. I don't know the charges aren't trumped up. I don't know the police aren't about to violate somebody's rights. I don't know they are not after the wrong guy. Or, after him for wrong reasons.
Sorry, fellas. I've seen too much. Read too much. Experienced too much firsthand.
Policing is out-of-hand in this country. There is too little accountability within the profession. There is almost none from the outside, and where there is, it can be an uphill fight and expensive to obtain.
In no particular order, below are some things that helped me decide to be unhelpful unless I have personal certainty in the matter:
In my region, police refuse some FOIA requests without legal authority to do so. This is known as attempted cover-up. Police in my county shot and killed an unarmed man last year. That department has refused media FOIA requests to find out which officer pulled the trigger. The man had no family, so there is no family effort to verify what happened. We're stuck with taking the police dept's word for it.
A few years back an optometrist was shot and killed by police in my county. A SWAT team was used to arrest an optometrist with no known weapons or history of violence. The undercover cops lured the man onto his front porch. When the SWATies were piling out of their vehicle(s), a SWAT .45 ACP discharged, the bullet crossing the lawn and hitting the optometrist in the heart. An Officer Bullock reported the vehicle door bounced back and jostled his hand, discharging the weapon. The Chief "investigated" and called it a tragic accident. The Chief "made some changes" in the department about use of SWAT or lethal force, I forget the particulars. The prosecutor declined to take it to a grand jury. The family's suit recently came up on the docket after all this time. Yet, somehow, through all this, the carefully avoided question seems to be, "What was a SWAT cop's finger doing inside the trigger guard?"
The Innocence Project has gotten over 200 people freed on DNA evidence. There were 63 false confessions--wonder what police pressure it took to get those? And, what were the police using to conclude the confessor was actually guilty before they used pressure to get a confessing?
The governor of a midwest state suspended executions because an alarming number of death row prisoners had serious questions raised about their convictions. There is very strong evidence that Texas executed an innocent man a few years ago for murder/arson. The same discredited and disproved psuedo-scientific theory on accelerants and flame patterns has another man awaiting execution in another state.
Two years ago, I was involuntarily seized in a roadblock in order for the police to ask my voluntary cooperation in an investigation about a days old crime nearby. Excuse me!?! What (expletive) idiot thought up that one? The Fourth Amendment apparently means so little to these annointed people that it never occured to them that seizing people is a big deal. And complete lunacy to do it solely to ask their voluntary cooperation about something. Before anybody defends the police, remember that in days gone by the police would canvass the neighborhood, door-to-door, asking if anybody had seen or heard anything. But, oh, no. Too much foot work. Lets just seize every car going by. Lots easier.
I was recently treated badly (verbal and facial glares only) by my county police for politely refusing to cooperate with their policy on getting the identity particulars of people who request service. I wasn't even a criminal suspect and one of the goddamed cops lectured me, and glared open hostility at me--not annoyance, hot hostility. His partner 1) lied about whether dispatch provided info to the patrol officers, and 2) did nothing to shut up Mr. Hostility. The main point here is that I was not even a criminal suspect, and I had a cop in my face for exercising a right.
The long list of cops violating OCers 4A rights does nothing to help. Explanations about how cops need to be educated on the legalities are red herrings in this context. If the cop did not know to a cold dead certainty OC was illegal because he'd read and remembered the statute, he had no business seizing the OCer. The error was taking enforcement action when the cop did not know with total certainty OC was illegal. In this context it is not a question of educating cops that OC is legal; it is a question of educating cops that they had better not be seizing citizens without knowing for goddam sure it is illegal--a 4A matter, not 2A. So, the question is, "who did those cops think they were that it was OK to seize people without first verifying OC was actually illegal?" And, the broader question is, "How many people besides OCers have had their 4A rights trod upon by police." It is a very good bet that the illegal OCer detentions were not those cops' first violations of peoples' rights.
I can go on. The longer I think about it, the more that comes back to mind; but, I'll stop listing here.
In short, cops need, and know they need, our confidence and support to do their jobs.
By not cleaning up their profession. By actively skirting responsibility. By______, they have all but completely lost my confidence.
I recently read of some rioting out west over a police action. A boss cop sort of person is on video calling for calm. I wanted to reach through the screen and choke him while shouting in his face, "You a$$, you brought this on yourself with all the previous cover up, and tolerance for minor (and big) rights violations. The only reason you are in the position you are in is because the people lost confidence in your department before this happened."
There is no way I am going to help police in the their pursuit of a fellow citizen by answering their questions unless I know to high degree of certainty they are after the right guy and that the guy I would be pointing to actually done it.
So, before this ends up being accused as a cop-bashing post, let me say, I'll be taking Devildoc's tack and politely exercising my right to silence. The foregoing policing criticism was given to explain why I will be exercising my right to silence. An effort to explain what might be a very unpopular decision. Read in context of the entire post, the policing criticism is clearly not gratuitous.
