Ferguson and the Justice Department Report

[SteelCurtain]

Only in Florida can the town that isn't really halfway between Orlando and Tampa be called Orlampa.

Good 'ol Florida. I miss it. Sometimes.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I've got a dear friend who lives in Florida -- Deland, up near Daytona -- who says that Florida is two different states -- the ten miles closest to the coast, and then everything inland. The first he calls "a veneer of civilization", and the second, "redneck hell".

[Brakeman]

Further south from Florida? :p

I will never understand the people who say they don't care if the police violate their rights because they're law abiding citizens. What? If you're a law abiding citizen (and even if you're not for that matter), don't you think you deserve to have your rights respected by the people you pay to serve and protect you?

No, no, it's nothing like that. I care very much that the police do their job professionally and correctly.
I am making note that law abiding citizens do not often have their rights violated by police. It does happen and it should be acted on, but it is much more rare than what the non-law abiding crowd sees. Of this I am quite apathetic. If a thug that's attacked a little old lady for her security check gets one or two extra whacks with the billy club than is called for, I recognize it as wrong, but I'm still more apathetic than I should be.

A cop that only makes one citation a year is not necessarily a good cop, and cop that makes 250 citations a year is not necessarily a bad cop. If he is following his training and department rules then the beef is with the department/ local government, not the individual cop.

The link provided does not show any examples of misbehaving cops on the one page I could see without removing the spam/mal-ware filters. I'm interested in seeing the actual claims that are referred to here. Care to paste one or two of the better examples?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I am making note that law abiding citizens do not often have their rights violated by police.

Be it noted: suspects have rights. No one loses rights until they are convicted. Simply because one is a suspect in a crime, it does not follow that your rights are void.

Indeed, rights are in place exactly to ensure that suspects are not railroaded.

[JesusHChrist]

The complete report is here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentclou...report.pdf

Another example; page 17:

Under Missouri law, when making an arrest, “[t]he officer must inform the defendant by what authority he acts, and must also show the warrant if required.” Mo. Rev. Stat. § 544.180.
In reviewing FPD records, we found numerous incidents in which—based on the officer’s own description of the detention—an officer detained an individual without articulable reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or arrested a person without probable cause. In none of these cases did the officer explain or justify his conduct.

For example, in July 2013 police encountered an African-American man in a parking lot while on their way to arrest someone else at an apartment building. Police knew that the encountered man was not the person they had come to arrest. Nonetheless, without even reasonable suspicion, they handcuffed the man, placed him in the back of a patrol car, and ran his record. It turned out he was the intended arrestee’s landlord. The landlord went on to help the police enter the person’s unit to effect the arrest, but he later filed a complaint alleging racial discrimination and unlawful detention. Ignoring the central fact that they had handcuffed a man and put him in a police car despite having no reason to believe he had done anything wrong, a sergeant vigorously defended FPD’s actions, characterizing the detention as “minimal” and pointing out that the car was air conditioned. Even temporary detention, however, constitutes a deprivation of liberty and must be justified under the Fourth Amendment.
Whren v. United
States, 517 U.S. 806, 809-10 (1996).

Many of the unlawful stops we found appear to have been driven, in part, by an officer’s desire to check whether the subject had a municipal arrest warrant pending. Several incidents suggest that officers are more concerned with issuing citations and generating charges than with addressing community needs. In October 2012, police officers pulled over an African-American man who had lived in Ferguson for 16 years, claiming that his passenger-side brake light was broken. The driver happened to have replaced the light recently and knew it to be functioning properly. Nonetheless, according to the man’s written complaint, one officer stated, “let’s see how many tickets you’re going to get,” while a second officer tapped his Electronic Control Weapon (“ECW”) on the roof of the man’s car. The officers wrote the man a citation for “tail light/reflector/license plate light out.” They refused to let the man show them that his car’s equipment was in order, warning him, “don’t you get out of that car until you get to your house.”

The man, who believed he had been racially profiled, was so upset that he went to the police station that night to show a sergeant that his brakes and license plate light worked.

[Losty]

Further south from Florida? :p

I will never understand the people who say they don't care if the police violate their rights because they're law abiding citizens. What? If you're a law abiding citizen (and even if you're not for that matter), don't you think you deserve to have your rights respected by the people you pay to serve and protect you?

No, no, it's nothing like that. I care very much that the police do their job professionally and correctly.
I am making note that law abiding citizens do not often have their rights violated by police.

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It does happen and it should be acted on, but it is much more rare than what the non-law abiding crowd sees. Of this I am quite apathetic. If a thug that's attacked a little old lady for her security check gets one or two extra whacks with the billy club than is called for, I recognize it as wrong, but I'm still more apathetic than I should be.

A cop that only makes one citation a year is not necessarily a good cop, and cop that makes 250 citations a year is not necessarily a bad cop. If he is following his training and department rules then the beef is with the department/ local government, not the individual cop.

The link provided does not show any examples of misbehaving cops on the one page I could see without removing the spam/mal-ware filters. I'm interested in seeing the actual claims that are referred to here. Care to paste one or two of the better examples?

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I will have to disagree. I think most law abiding citizens don't know what their rights are and probably have them violated a lot more often than they realize. Did you know that a police officer cannot make you strip down to your boxer shorts while he searches your car? My friend in high school didn't. He also didn't know he was allowed to refuse to allow his car to be searched in the first place. He was an advance placement honor student just like me. From a decently well off family. His parents did not file a complaint because they're black and it was South Georgia.

As far as the hide tag stuff, what are you asking me for an example of again? I don't know what you're talking about.

[SteelCurtain]

No, no, it's nothing like that. I care very much that the police do their job professionally and correctly.
I am making note that law abiding citizens do not often have their rights violated by police. It does happen and it should be acted on, but it is much more rare than what the non-law abiding crowd sees. Of this I am quite apathetic. If a thug that's attacked a little old lady for her security check gets one or two extra whacks with the billy club than is called for, I recognize it as wrong, but I'm still more apathetic than I should be.

A cop that only makes one citation a year is not necessarily a good cop, and cop that makes 250 citations a year is not necessarily a bad cop. If he is following his training and department rules then the beef is with the department/ local government, not the individual cop.

The link provided does not show any examples of misbehaving cops on the one page I could see without removing the spam/mal-ware filters. I'm interested in seeing the actual claims that are referred to here. Care to paste one or two of the better examples?

My post here has excerpts taken directly from the Department of Justice's report on the matter which show police malfeasance.

This is the Newsweek Article that shows the 15 Most Outrageous Examples of police misconduct from that DoJ report.

And this is the actual DoJ report. From the Attorney General Eric Holder.

I am not sure how much more information I can provide. You seem to be ignoring the excerpts that I have posted. You also seem to be extrapolating and maybe you are thinking that I am talking about all police everywhere? I am specifically talking about the Ferguson police department and the county court system.

I agree, in most places, law abiding citizens do not have much to fear from the police. But in Ferguson, if you are a black person, it seems whether you were a law abiding citizen or not, you had every reason to fear the police.

[JesusHChrist]

Another example, page 25:

For example, in July 2012, a police officer arrested a business owner on charges of
Interfering in Police Business and Misuse of 911 because she objected to the officer’s detention
of her employee. The officer had stopped the employee for “walking unsafely in the street” as he
returned to work from the bank. According to FPD records, the owner “became verbally
involved,” came out of her shop three times after being asked to stay inside, and called 911 to
complain to the Police Chief. The officer characterized her protestations as interference and
arrested her inside her shop.

The arrest violated the First Amendment, which “does not allow
such speech to be made a crime.” Hill, 482 U.S. at 462. Indeed, the officer’s decision to arrest
the woman after she tried to contact the Police Chief suggests that he may have been retaliating
against her for reporting his conduct.

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And three sacrificial lambs are offered up to appease the angry gods....

But the core rot (the City Manager, Mayor, Police Chief, Muni court judge) remain. At least for now.

http://news.yahoo.com/three-ferguson-mis...11867.html

[JesusHChrist]

City Manager has now resigned. One piece of the rot is gone.

Next, the police chief, the mayor and one or more muni judges.

http://news.yahoo.com/theres-more-fallou...30727.html

John Shaw, the city manager of Ferguson, Missouri, has abruptly resigned. His resignation comes less than a week after the U.S. Justice Department released a bristling investigative report that found systemic racial bias in the Ferguson Police Department.

The PD will probably be disbanded. They won't be able to afford to make the changes required by the report and can't afford to fight it.

[JesusHChrist]

Another rat is leaving the ship...

http://news.yahoo.com/ferguson-police-ch...56115.html

Thomas Jackson, the embattled police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, resigned Wednesday from the beleaguered department.
“It is with profound sadness that I am announcing I am stepping down from my position as chief,” he wrote in a letter to city leaders.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch initially reported that city officials wanted Jackson's departure effective immediately, but the chief said both sides later settled on March 19 so Jackson could assist with a transition team.