Other people's constitutional rights will likely be violated, but hey, "these things work themselves out" right?
/end sarcasm
How do people live with themselves when they knowingly implement shoddy products and processes like these that literally ruin peoples' lives? It's crazy.
Easy. The reasoning goes: Since people are convicted, those people must be guilty. Therefore, anything which is done in order to get people convicted is good and acceptable. They then sleep soundly at night knowing that they convict only guilty people.
The remarkable truth is that most regular people in the US don't actually care about wrongly ruining people's lives. Most people are primarily concerned with living their own life, and avoiding winning the shit lottery, and when they find out someone else won, they count their lucky stars it wasn't them and move on.
It would be far better if people invested time, effort, and money into dismantling the shit lottery itself. But most people don't have the resources. And, dismantling the shit lottery is a good way to increase your odds of 'winning' it. (Speaking truth to power most often doesn't end well for the speaker.)
If the tests are so inconclusive wouldn't that mean police officers are depriving people of their constitutional rights to freedom of movement? There have to be counter suits and either this company or the police force are liable for false imprisonment.
Cops are, with rare exception, ever held liable for their abuses of power. Lawsuits are payed by the taxpayers, so they have zero incentive to behave legally.
"We recognize that the allegation of any theft by police officers - most certainly the theft of over $225,000 - is deeply disturbing. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, would not "be 'clear to a reasonable officer.'""
Note: Theft! Not asset forfeiture, but actual theft!
> "We recognize that the allegation of any theft by police officers - most certainly the theft of over $225,000 - is deeply disturbing. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, would not "be 'clear to a reasonable officer.'""
"authorities have not identified a suspect or determined a motive."
Internal affairs clearly isn't a thing in the US. Or, if it is, it's a thing that doesn't work, coz when the witness of somebody getting murdered by a cop gets murdered in suspicious circumstances then it's not all that hard to identify a motive.
Let me rephrase that: Cops _in the USA_ are almost never held liable for abuses of power including outright murders.
This is unheard of in other first world countries, especially in Europe. I'm American but I've lived in England, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland where the cops are really polite civil servants. In the UK, cops don't even carry guns.
The current state of affairs in the US, including rapid militarization of police, is a harbinger of things to come.
Cops _in the USA_ are almost always held liable for abuses of power including outright murders.
We can’t disarm our police because you will always be able to buy assault rifles in sane states like Texas. Do you want your police to be outgunned by the bad guys? I would like for my police officers to be more well armed than the criminals, maybe that’s just me. I would like to see you try to do their job without any weapons. Fool.
Law enforcement has incentives to arrest as they are then seen to be doing their job. There are incentives for false positives and no penalties for wrongful imprisonment. Also related:
There should be penalties for false arrests; mandatory payouts to victims for starters. If the state suddenly has to start paying out $150,000 a pop every time someone is falsely arrested, then they will fix these tests.
In America, there really isn't a concept of false arrests. There is a "not guilty" verdict but not an "innocent" verdict. If you're forcing states to pay out in the case of not guilty verdicts, then you're introducing a whole new host of bizarre incentives.
That is akin to not being able to accept the null hypothesis in statistics, as we assume innocence ant try to prove guilt (with the p-value of "a reasonable doubt"). While we should not explicitly disincentivize negative results, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't penalise p-hacking.
It doesn't even need to be a punitive like $150k. An equitable $5k to compensate for time wasted, legal fees, and emotional stress from being kidnapped would suffice to realign incentives.
How this doesn't get these cops fired for trying to falsely arrest someone using a test they likely know is flawed is insane (who would ever look at a white spot on the top of a car and think "yep that's cocaine"??). If there was any sense and lack of lobbying by police unions in the US it would be an easy priority to draft better laws on actions of cops.
In this instance, it's hard not to question the intelligence of a police officer thinking a white spot on the outside of a car might be drugs.
But overall, in the War on Some Substances, anything goes. Blame needs to start at the top. It's not like the cop purchased these widely-discredited field tests on their own.
"They’re often not admissible in court, which is why police have to order follow-up testing from a lab." - whoa so you can be arrested based on evidence that is known to be inadmissible in the first place.
Or cat litter, or detergent or any other pretext, but wouldn’t my experience bias me?
If a society is to accept false positives then it follows that the arrest process would be less difficult and stigmatizing than it is in most places. Unfortunately, “the law is an ass” as they say.
Most forensic tests are quite broad including GSR and blood residue.
It’s not about what else they trigger on but how likely that this would be the case in a set of controlled circumstances.
A cocaine test that triggers on bird poop is still completely acceptable unless carrying bags of powdered guano is the new rage these days.
Same thing with a GSR test that may be triggered with certain other chemicals, you only get reasonable doubt when there is a good explanation why would you’ve been exposed to those chemicals nominally.
BTW medical tests aren’t that different, it’s up to the doctors to make sure they exclude all other possible explanations besides what they are testing for and we don’t really complain.
43 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 61.2 ms ] threadSo, I mean, in they're view, they probably figure that they, well,
"Fixed the Glitch":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUE0PPQI3is
Other people's constitutional rights will likely be violated, but hey, "these things work themselves out" right?
/end sarcasm
How do people live with themselves when they knowingly implement shoddy products and processes like these that literally ruin peoples' lives? It's crazy.
Easy. The reasoning goes: Since people are convicted, those people must be guilty. Therefore, anything which is done in order to get people convicted is good and acceptable. They then sleep soundly at night knowing that they convict only guilty people.
(Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18450620#18453319)
The remarkable truth is that most regular people in the US don't actually care about wrongly ruining people's lives. Most people are primarily concerned with living their own life, and avoiding winning the shit lottery, and when they find out someone else won, they count their lucky stars it wasn't them and move on.
It would be far better if people invested time, effort, and money into dismantling the shit lottery itself. But most people don't have the resources. And, dismantling the shit lottery is a good way to increase your odds of 'winning' it. (Speaking truth to power most often doesn't end well for the speaker.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190909/12232742945/ninth...
The Ninth Circuit:
"We recognize that the allegation of any theft by police officers - most certainly the theft of over $225,000 - is deeply disturbing. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, would not "be 'clear to a reasonable officer.'""
Note: Theft! Not asset forfeiture, but actual theft!
> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190909/12232742945/ninth....
> The Ninth Circuit:
> "We recognize that the allegation of any theft by police officers - most certainly the theft of over $225,000 - is deeply disturbing. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, would not "be 'clear to a reasonable officer.'""
Ignorance of the law is no defense...oh wait.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/06/witness-in-a...
"authorities have not identified a suspect or determined a motive."
Internal affairs clearly isn't a thing in the US. Or, if it is, it's a thing that doesn't work, coz when the witness of somebody getting murdered by a cop gets murdered in suspicious circumstances then it's not all that hard to identify a motive.
This is unheard of in other first world countries, especially in Europe. I'm American but I've lived in England, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland where the cops are really polite civil servants. In the UK, cops don't even carry guns.
The current state of affairs in the US, including rapid militarization of police, is a harbinger of things to come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
I don't know why...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/09/young-bla...
But overall, in the War on Some Substances, anything goes. Blame needs to start at the top. It's not like the cop purchased these widely-discredited field tests on their own.
Tests can rarely be both sensitive and specific. This test might have more Type I errors so it doesn’t commit Type II.
Likewise, a police officer is in the same dilemma. Are you really not going to arrest even though the test you were told to use came up positive?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
If a society is to accept false positives then it follows that the arrest process would be less difficult and stigmatizing than it is in most places. Unfortunately, “the law is an ass” as they say.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_law_is_an_ass
It’s not about what else they trigger on but how likely that this would be the case in a set of controlled circumstances.
A cocaine test that triggers on bird poop is still completely acceptable unless carrying bags of powdered guano is the new rage these days.
Same thing with a GSR test that may be triggered with certain other chemicals, you only get reasonable doubt when there is a good explanation why would you’ve been exposed to those chemicals nominally.
BTW medical tests aren’t that different, it’s up to the doctors to make sure they exclude all other possible explanations besides what they are testing for and we don’t really complain.