I couldn't believe it when I found out that these are a real, actual thing. I don't see how anyone in the US can cast stones at any other nation for corrupt police accepting bribes when you can largely get carte blanche just for being 'in the club' there.
I think the difference is in the incentive to stop someone in the moment.
In places where cash bribes are common, police will pull people over -- even if they've done nothing wrong -- in order to solicit a bribe.
That sort of thing isn't possible with the "courtesy cards", so police stops are more likely to be for legitimate reasons (or at least no more or less legitimate than in an ideal system), but people who shouldn't get away with things often will.
Anyone can buy a FOP decal though, and as far as I'm concerned, an FOP Decal accomplishes the same thing in practice.
I mean, its not the same as bribery. But its the kind of thing that creates the mindset of people like Rittenhouse (Kenosha Shooter).
Showing off a "pro-police" political affiliation (be it a FOP sticker or a PBA card) makes the cops go easy on you for minor infractions.
The problem happens when people who are "pro-police" start showing up at protests, staying past a 8pm curfew, and then shoots three people in self-defense (allegedly).
On the one hand: the Sheriff of Kenosha refused to deputize these people and had the foresight to see what issues the behavior would cause. On the other hand: there's a low-level expectation "friends with benefits" with Police culture. If you're a friend of the police, the police reciprocate that friendship back to you. And one can argue that things are unfair in that regards. (Ex: failure to enforce the curfew on Rittenhouse)
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With that being said: I've been to countries with explicit bribery. The American way is better. Period. There's no comparison between this behavior and bribery.
But there seems to be an unfairness even in the American way, which is discussed in the core article and exemplified in Kenosha (and IMO: the Kenosha shooter is just the highest-profile example of this debate).
>On the one hand: the Sheriff of Kenosha refused to deputize these people
I’m not sure I understand why this is even mentioned - it seems like you’re giving him credit for it, but why on God’s green Earth would he have done that? That would’ve been crazy, right?
>With that being said: I've been to countries with explicit bribery. The American way is better. Period.
I’ve been to (and lived in) countries where there’s pretty much neither - surely that’s where the bar should be?
> I’ve been to (and lived in) countries where there’s pretty much neither - surely that’s where the bar should be?
Well, if the question is "Is this better than bribery", I can say without a doubt that its better than bribery. When EVERY traffic ticket is really a request from the local officer to shake you down for money (you may have not been speeding. Doesn't matter, the local cop wants his breakfast or whatever and knows that bribes are widespread. They stop you for a ticket, which is really a request for a bribe). There's simply no comparison.
> surely that’s where the bar should be?
Well yeah. But the people I was responding to was comparing the behavior to bribery. And bribery is what I have experience with.
You really, really don't want to live with a bribery culture. In this case, you're declaring friendship with the cops (through the use of an FOP sticker or PBA card, or whatever the local police union is). And that's where you get exceptional behavior.
Yeah, the USA has civil asset forfeiture, but given the red tape behind that, its still a step up from bribery.
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> I’m not sure I understand why this is even mentioned - it seems like you’re giving him credit for it, but why on God’s green Earth would he have done that? That would’ve been crazy, right?
Its not crazy in America. These things come down to the local sheriff's decision. I think people underestimate the power of the Sheriff in many cases.
I bring it up because Sheriff of Kenosha seems like a reasonable person, compared to other Sheriffs across the country. On the one hand, the Sheriff of Kenosha is responsible for the actions of his own officers (and in this case: responsible for the failure of his officers to arrest Rittenhouse for violating curfew).
On the other hand, the Sheriff of Kenosha cannot fight the "greater police culture" that's across America. The expectation for pro-police people to be treated with leniency is endemic in virtually every place I've been to in America (again: FOP decals or PBA cards): along with "Police Bill of Rights" (special protections to officers that normal people don't get), and so forth.
I'm not sure that is in the "better" column. At least anyone with access to some cash can pass a bribe. Here we are making it a more exclusive to those who hang in the right circles. That to me is more corrupt.
Even the signal it is sending stinks. The law should apply even to other cops (on and off duty but that is another story) equally as any other citizen. If just being friends with a cop gets you some special entitlement then what does being a cop mean, near total immunity?
> If just being friends with a cop gets you some special entitlement then what does being a cop mean, near total immunity?
That's been more or less the case, yes. That and the systemic racism exhibited while they get this near-total immunity is a large driver behind the recent protests.
Not sure where you're reading that I said it wasn't; I completely agree with you. But if my choices are living in a society where some people evade punishment by being buddies with the cops, or a society where cops routinely stop people for no reason other than a shakedown for a bribe, I'd pick the first option every time.
The original comment bizarrely asserted that bribery is more democratic than the cop-buddy system; that's what I was responding to.
I'd of course prefer a third choice where neither of these things happen.
Anyone can bribe... if they have the money to do so. Which certainly puts many groups at a disadvantage.
Regardless, the police officer doesn't benefit directly from being shown a "courtesy card", so it's not like a cop is going to pull someone over just for the hope of getting shown one of these cards. But in countries where police bribery is prevalent, police will often stop people who are doing nothing wrong, simply because they want a bribe.
So I agree that these two practices aren't the same, but not for the reason you state. Both practices are awful and disadvantage people who are unable to participate (don't have police friends, can't afford a bribe), but the "courtesy card" garbage at least doesn't create a police-citizen extortion situation.
There’s a huge difference between signaling a prior relationship with law enforcement by presenting a PBA card and outright bribing the responding officer.
What's the difference besides how the special permission to break the law is obtained? It's still corruption. The article shows you can buy these cards on eBay for <$100.
> What's the difference besides how the special permission to break the law is obtained?
Outright bribes can be demanded on the spot for infractions that’s don’t exist. They incentivize stopping more people to demand them. They directly benefit the responding officer and can become a core part of their income. Once that happens you’re really screwed as the only people willing to become cops are dirty cops.
> It's still corruption.
I didn’t say it’s a good practice. But just because it’s bad does not mean it’s worse than living with a “police tax” every time you’re stopped.
> The article shows you can buy these cards on eBay for <$100.
That’s be pointless and is for suckers. The cop is supposed to contact the source to verify the relationship.
> Mike works in an industry that regularly puts him into contact with police officers, which gives him the opportunity to form personal, trusting relationships with them. As such, he said, he frequently receives PBA cards as a thank-you for extending cops small business favors and deals; currently, he estimates that he has somewhere between 10 and 12 unexpired courtesy cards in his possession.
The original comment to which I responded was arguing that the concept of PBA cards was as bad as direct bribes as seen in other countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24353240
> And if it was cash exchanged at the time of an officer responding to a crime it’d be even worse.
Would it be? Buying bribe credits ahead of time doesn't seem inherently any better than on-the-spot bribes to me. Arguably worse; if it really is the case that small business owners get these with favours, then unless they're reimbursing the company personally for the bribe purchase, they are purchasing personal items through their business. So add tax evasion to the list of sins.
You wouldn't have to deal with a "police tax" if you didn't do things that made you get stopped. Admittedly that's easier said than done in america where the police are told how to use a gun and let lose on the public, but as a rule of thumb, not breaking the law is an advisable course of action.
I think the argument concerns how commonplace bribery is.
This exists, but is relatively small in scope. And no, I don't agree with the "universal bribery is democratic" argument, because the end goal is to arrive at 0 bribery.
I think the counter argument would be that the issue with police bribery is not so much that some people are able to get out of minor citations (it's not like these cards will get you out of murder charge or anything) but rather the issue of corrupt police shaking people down for bribes.
The equivalent in our industry is when somebody gets locked out of a Google/Apple/etc. multi-service account, has no backup or rescue access, but is put in touch with a friend of a friend who happens to work at the vendor. It's systemic favoritism.
Having friends in an industry is hard work, so it a meritocracy, it is well earned to have made contacts that will help you.
In this article it's perhaps family, but a family that supports their childrens career in a blue collar job like policing, in a meritocracy, also deserve the reward.
In policing perhaps it's illegal or should be illegal. But it's still a meritocracy.
I don't think this is systemic at all. If companies found out that this was going on in their organizations, most of them would shut the practice down pretty quickly and almost certainly fire anyone involved. Otherwise, those companies could face some pretty heavy lawsuits and fines.
But semantics aside, I think this often works without violating company policies. It’s more about having a connection to get the attention of someone who has authority to override or initiate a friendly appeal of some prior judgement call.
I never said that "systemic" means "official". Those are very different things. What I'm saying is that it could be systemic if companies commonly granted certain groups of people special access that others couldn't obtain. This simply isn't the case and is widely condemned.
Why "certain groups"? It's not about groups, it's about personal relationships. If you get dog piled on Twitter and you know somebody on the security team, your problem goes away and the people annoying you get their accounts suspended or banned. If you don't, your problem will most likely remain as it does for most people.
It's not a conspiracy where all members of group x get a direct line to Jack Dorsey to take care of things, it's you knowing somebody who knows somebody and that somebody wants to help an innocent person out.
The problem is that Twitter is a private enterprise, and it's okay if they choose to run their system that way. The police aren't, and they're not supposed to favor anyone, no matter who they are. There's a saying in Germany, Dienst ist Dienst und Schnapps ist Schnapps (literally "Duty is duty and liquor is liquor") that articulates that. You might drink with somebody, but you must not let that influence your judgement while on duty. In a private company, that's somewhat different, you can't damage the company, obviously, but you're not bound by law, and company policies are -at best- rough guidelines.
It isn't corruption, but an example of the systematic advangages some of have because we have connections. People we know from school, university, work, sports clubs, the goddamn Masons. The Chinese call it guānxi and accept it as the way of things. I think it sucks.
The fundamental issue here is that being a normal person puts you on the wrong side of the law and/or the punishments for being on the wrong side of the law are too severe.
That is just a symptom of the problem as the tyrannical administrative bureaucratic police state expands at exponential rates, to cheers and demands for ever more control by mommy and daddy government.
But to your point, you are correct, the only people left on the wrong side of the law are law abiding productive people who do not have personal connections to law enforcement. Ever other group gets treated with a light touch and has excuses made for them and criminals are now getting off the hook left and right, while the anarcho-tyrannical administrative state increases it's abuses of regular productive and peaceful people.
It's either by design, out of desperation, or due to incompetence; but it will not end well for any of us, regardless.
I find it unsurprising but disheartening that this was flagged.
The entire administrative bureaucracy is in on this racket and it's unfair to pick in the police alone for it. In my state it's not just the police that peddle influence like this. Many state agencies have little identifiers that range from IDs to bumper stickers that they give to their employees with the unspoken purpose of signaling "don't screw me, I work for your team". The most coveted are the court system ones because no matter what agency is trying to screw you none of them want to piss off people who work for the courts. My state also has all sorts of ways to wave fines and whatnot for economic hardship reasons (which I fully support). This creates effectively three classes of people, those who are part of the in-group and treated decently by government. Those who have money and are preyed upon by government. And those who don't have money and are ignored by government unless they are committing serious (i.e. violent) crime because the government gains nothing by cracking down on them. Why can't the government just treat everyone like the former or the latter or, even better, repeal all the stupid laws that have wildly low compliance rates?
yep, its a signal to officers that you went out of your way to donate extra money to the police force so that they are more forgiving as they approach your car or just don't pull you over to begin with.
There is a chilling effect in the other direction as well. I'm not too keen on decorating my car to support various things I do support (candidate/BLM/etc) because I know the cops might treat me worse with that on my car... fun times.
I just have two Seattle Mariners bumper stickers on my truck; haven't been pulled over since putting em on, so they must think I have enough misery as it is!
/s I think the real issue is that it has been decided somehow that it is our fault for being policed and experiencing the frequent resulting injustices. A police officer can pull you over, stop you walking down the street, etc. etc. and fine you, jail you, or brutalize you at will, and in all but the most egregious cases (that also must become a cause celebre), they can just do it again tomorrow. There's always some justification, no matter how flimsy! That's not to say this violence is evenly distributed among the population. POC, the poor and working class, those who work odd hours and have to drive at 3 AM etc. certainly have a much, much, much harder time than e.g. the median HN commenter. But the answer to the question "What's stopping a given police officer from e.g. breaking my arm while pulling me out of my vehicle?" is much less "they will suffer consequences if they do" and much more "they haven't decided it's what they want to do today"
> to donate extra money to the police force so that they are more forgiving
So a bribe then. Wow.
As citizens of the country we live in, we should all be subject to the same laws and restrictions. Anything less than that is a form of corruption and undermines the whole concept of democracy and a fair society.
Stack that up with a bunch of bumper stickers and, if you're brave, hang a checkered headband on your rearview mirror and you'll have a cop thinking you're a cousin of someone on his squad. (Just make sure you're white)
> he frequently receives PBA cards as a thank-you for extending cops small business favors and deals
This is corruption. I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?
If this happened in the UK I'm fairly sure it would be raised in the press, then parliament and then the Home Secretary (in charge of policing) would be forced to make a statement and likely do something about it.
1.Plenty of Americans view enforcing traffic laws are nothing more than "a greedy gubbermint cash grab." For those participating, they view it as using corruption to avoid corruption.
2. You can't easily do something about it other than taking away police discretion. Unlike with a traditional bribe, where something is exchanged for something, you can't demonstrate that the person got off for the card compared to the officer just deciding to give them a break.
Mostly they are "secret".
Edit: didn't read the article, but I still think they fly under the radar for the vast majority of people and they should absolutely be a career ender for Police to hand out. Sounds like low fruit for cleaning up America.
But, it's not just the cards. Sherrifs also hand out their business cards to their buddies and tell them to flash that if they get pulled over, or firefighters and EMTs show their public service license cards when they hand over their wallet to an officer to get out of tickets. Same thing with the 11-99 license plate holders- donate to the police retirement union to get out of tickets! http://zo-d.com/stuff/automotive/1199-foundation-license-pla...
If the "cards" are banned, their still would be a system for insiders to show they have access to special benefits and treatment.
I would have thought that they mostly take away the "rough em up" type of discretion. The public is fine with police giving warnings over fines in many cases. They are just upset when it is warning over fine along with the association card.
No. In many situations the officer has discretion to ignore an infraction, write a warning, or give a ticket. Many aspects of interactions between people and police officers are up to an officer’s discretion.
Plenty of Americans that don't run in these corruption circles view traffic laws and other intermittently enforced laws as a tool to hassle "undesirables".
I've always said traffic laws mostly encourage a disregard for the law. I think they should set things like speed limits high enough that there is no reason to break them. They are LIMITS, not normal speed. Maybe post a recommended speed too.
If someone breaks the speed limit it should be 30 day license suspension and impounding their vehicle.
> I think they should set things like speed limits high enough that there is no reason to break them.
I mean... that's not why the limit is there. The limit isn't "how fast can you possibly go without feeling out of control", it's "how fast can you possibly safely go". Are they still operating with 20th century cars in mind? Yeah, but it's hard to argue that a school zone should be 60 MPH.
I've heard that it's not the absolute velocity on a freeway that's the issue, but instead the relative velocity of all drivers. A speed limit that all can comfortably hit keeps that to within a much more narrow band than a speed limit that some wouldn't be able to comfortably hit.
At least in Germany it seems that people routinely drive 100km/h on the same road as people doing 250, and they have fewer fatalities per passenger mile than we do in the US.
I would guess it has something to do with the strict adherence to the keep right/pass left rule.
Safe speed varies with weather, time of day, and even the flow of traffic. There's no one number that's going to apply to a given stretch of road all the time.
Probably not feasible to do this for every speed limit sign in the country, but there are already variable signs on places like mountain passes that change with the weather and traffic.
> Safe speed varies with weather, time of day, and even the flow of traffic
And by car! A truck or an older SUV will have a far worse breaking distance and does not corner well compared to any sports car or sedan. So even assuming you a perfect situational analysis, you still could not post an exact limit.
Some freeways have two limits, one for semi trucks, one for the rest of traffic. Something like that could be extended to lanes, along with prohibitions (which already exist) of towed trailers in faster lanes.
we don't need the limits, just post the recommended speed. then for any extreme case, it's up to the officer to prove reckless endangerment, which is what speed limits were ostensibly designed to prevent (though practically, it's served many interests, including fuel rationing in the 70s).
It's much better to have selective enforcement of a law that says "this is a judgement call" than to have selective enforcement of a law that says "this is a crime".
The latter is literally encouraging the populace to commit crimes. The latter is hard to challenge the selectivity of in court because it is theoretically strict liability. The latter results in the unelected enforcement officials making up the criteria entirely instead of being given criteria by the elected officials.
no, i'm saying reduce instances of selective enforcement by reducing ineffective and needless laws. reckless endangerment is already a crime that's selectively enforced.
In Australia, for example, at least when I got my license, you were explicitly told that you are
"required to drive at the maximum possible speed that is: within the posted limit, appropriate for the weather and road conditions, and within your ability to maintain safe control of the vehicle".
I agree and want to add that bad traffic laws can even cause more injury and death. There's research on speed limits that shows that they don't influence actual speeds all that much, people generally drive at what they think is a reasonable speed[0] regardless. But some people do follow them very strictly.
So on roads with speed limits that are far too low you get people driving together at very different speeds, which results in more accidents.
[0] I can't find the source right now but IIRC in one of the experiments they increased the speed limit by 5 mph on a highway, but the speeds driven only increased by 1 mph.
Most European countries have a general police inspection and the unions are not as strong, and there are no 'federal employee' protections like the USA does.
If you have tenure, and you don't cross the thin blue line, you are untouchable. Your local police union can absolutely ruin a local politician's career[1], and in general, make life hell for your city, so most of the politicians don't try to rock the boat.
When they do, they discover that the police, despite being employees of the city will just refuse to do what they are told. Sheriffs magically turn into constitutional scholars, and start unilaterally choosing what laws to enforce[2], start blatantly violating the city's bylaws, and instructions from the mayor[3], and when pushed in the only way they can be hurt (The budget), engage in malicious compliance.
Picking a fight with the police union is generally speaking, not a politically savvy move.
[1] Mostly by doing a deliberately poor job in the district they represent, and being incredibly vocal that the reason they are doing a poor job, is because the politician is causing them problems.
[2] A number of sheriffs across the country made it clear that they won't issue Covid mask/gathering citations, despite state and local law, because the law is an obvious violation of... Some constitutional amendment that they can't name.
[3] After weeks of violence, Seattle city council banned the use of crowd control weapons. The SPD celebrated the very next day by gassing and blast-balling crowds.
It would also probably be illegal in Seattle, due to the consent decree. [1]
[1] The SPD has been under federal censure by the Department of Justice for the past 8 years, due to fragrant constitutional violations, excessive use of force, racist behaviour, lack of accountability, and a pattern of disciplinary failures. Because of this decree, federal permission is necessary for any large policy changes to be made to the department.
Firing it, and starting from scratch would almost certainly qualify as a 'large policy change'. And, ah, the current administration has made it very clear as to where it stands on these sorts of questions.
Unions don't necessarily exist to protect people. They protect members. Which is an important distinction.
Just in our area there was a case where the longshore union organized slowdowns at the docks that eventually made them lose their contract with the only shipper in the area.
> Unions don't necessarily exist to protect people. They protect members. Which is an important distinction.
This is a point of contention between unions. Some (especially the traditional trade unions like the one you mention) see themselves as exclusively representing their current members. Others (typically the newer service industry unions like SEIU) see themselves as promoting the interests of a particular category of workers, whether currently members or not.
Police unions are fundamentally different from other forms of organized labor. No other union is composed of members who hold the legal monopoly on violence.
This article https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-rev... is a review of the book about corruption "Thieves of State". It's an interesting analysis of corruption in several different countries, and I suppose if you're going to suffer because of it, might as well understand it.
> This is corruption. I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?
Because "police" in the USA can mean a lot of things, from county Sheriff, to city police to state police to FBI or one of the other 2 dozen armed federal agencies. It's a patchwork. There's no central authority to enforce some kind of standard of behavior.
Yet there is a central authority involved in this problem: the Fraternal Order of Police. It is that Fraternity that accepted, and made common, these "courtesy cards" as a way of business. The corruptive rot clearly has centralizing forces. The FOP and the police unions have the ability to combat them centrally and presumably enforce a higher standard of behavior, if they wanted to, just as they had a hand in creating the corruptions in the first place. If they wanted to fight it (they probably don't).
Keep in mind this happens most other places in the world too. The police force is generally a corrupt force. It's just not as obvious and not spoken about as much.
Also keep in mind police force generally targets minorities more. So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption. But it's there.
As a brown person, my worst experiences with cops was in UK and Germany. When I tell people this they're quick to dismiss it by "This shit doesn't happen here"
> So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption.
I don't buy this. There are plenty of ethnically homogeneous countries that also has rampant police corruption (e.g. in Eastern Europe), and there are tons of other parameters that affect police corruption overall. We can't single out presence of minorities as a factor.
I believe the key word there is "see". Without obvious targets, from the outside all you see is everyday activities, even if that includes bribes and preferences, because that is how it's always treated from the inside.
Brown lives does not matter in Eastern Europe. Only thing that saves their lives is that gun ownership is not popular and cops cannot claim that they felt threatened. Beatings though...
> hmm, when I hear "Eastern Europe", I don't think "ethnically homogeneous", I think "substantial Roma minority".
What first comes to our minds doesn't constitute data, and is prone to create availability bias.
Percentage of Roma for several Eastern European countries are; Bosnia And Herzegovina: 0.36% (2013), Serbia 2.1% (2011), Macedonia 2.7% (2002), Albania 0.6% (2011), Croatia 0.4% (2011), Ukraine 0.3% (2001). There is no substantial Roma minority, in fact Roma is usually one of the smallest among other minorities in these countries.
I’ve picked my numbers from each of these countries’ censuses, whereas your source claims an estimate, and I cannot verify their methodology because source of that table takes me to an unrelated telegraph.co.uk article (likely a bug in the wikipedia article).
Either way, if the OPs hypothesis is true, we should see a change in corruption levels with minority percentages. I’m not an expert in Eastern European criminology, but I highly doubt that is the case. There might as well be Eastern European countries with substantial Roma population, for some definition of “substantial”, but that doesn’t change my original point that high cultural homogeniety and high police corruption definiely does co-occur.
In central Europe it works slightly differently. When stopped by police and getting ticket, you can decide not to pay it on the spot and instead send the infraction to administrative proceedings. There you have chance to dispute the ticket at the cost of risking higher ticket (to cover the cost of proceedings) if found that you really committed the infraction. But if you have friends either at police or at the office which handles the proceedings, you can ask them to pull a few strings, and the ticket simply disappears/gets time-barred/... But at least it's not as brazen as these "courtesy cards". Also your "friends" will usually have influence only locally, to cover up something in different city will be much more complicated.
EDIT: Also forgot to mention that cops here know not to bother car with "nice" licence plate numbers, interestingly enough, even though the numbers should be random, there is a class of people who tend to get them disproportionally often...
The US takes localism to extremes in order to preserve historic fiefdoms and injustices.
The stated desire is to prevent government abuse of powers by keeping the governments small and limiting the powers of the larger ones, but if you look at actions rather than words, it's less about restricting government and more about preserving existing power structures.
Reconstruction is one of the most egregious examples.
By comparison: yes, for the most part, the federal government is such an example. It's by no means perfect but, yeah, for the most part it works pretty well and relatively honestly. Always room for improvement--but the critical difference is that, when it is not, there are ways to expose the need for improvement and to push change that will not, full stop, ever even start at local and even state levels.
And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.
The federal government may do its current job well but that doesn't imply it can do a better job at local governance than... local government. I'm thankful that no Kentucky voters are able to make decisions about my city, for example.
There are real benefits to small local government. Yes, there are also problems but that doesn't mean the system is wrong fundamentally. This sword cuts both ways.
Again, this is a canard. Local government in some areas have been shown to make bad decisions that trample on explicit and enumerated rights (rather than the arbitrary or vague "rights" that are conjured to impede reform).
Speaking broadly, and particularly of the late 20th century, when the federal government has stepped in to unilaterally overrule state and local government, it has been on the right side of history. There are, of course, a number of infamous exceptions, but the fact that I would likely be unable to converse with you w/o the federal gov't's historic interventions speaks loudly to their efficacy in suh matters.
The hierarchy is a confounding factor. I imagine you could cite the opposite situation happening if the hierarchy was flat. However, e.g., no local government stepped in to end US-sanctioned torture chiefly because the hierarchy doesn't allow it, not because local governments were all pro-torture. It seems clear throughout the arc of history that people generally want the right things— when it's important to speak out people have historically done so. Their membership in any particular governmental body isn't the impetus, but rather probably confers a varying degree of disadvantage because of perverse incentives to their continued hold of power.
That local government also tramples rights is more an argument for checks and balances than a reversal of federalism.
Local gov't trades reach and power for proximity and savvy. This manifests as fairly equal amounts of influence from each level of the "hierarchy".
I think it's funny that you would use torture as your example, considering that several municipalities (most infamously Chicago and its PD) have been caught torturing suspects and have been placed under federal watch if not control in order to curb their abuses.
What's important about federal oversight is that it is accountability. The ultimate fact is that few institutions, let alone local ones with limited budgets and moral hazards/incestuous conflicts of interest galore, are capable of effectively policing themselves.
Sure but my point is just that we still need local government and there are real benefits to small government. I agree there are also benefits to federal oversight but I don't believe that more federal power or control would continue to be beneficial. The balance is important and I prefer as much power concentrated as close to me where I have a chance to influence it.
Well, that's a preference, not an argument. I would prefer not to be held captive by the cultural inertia of former slaveholding and/or union-busting local government, and appreciate the assistance of far-flung compatriots in ridding us of their residual insults to individual and collective dignity.
Yeah I disagree that you can effect real change on a national level without first proving the ideas on a smaller scale. Local governments can be progressive as well as oppressive. I don't pretend to know what people halfway across the country know. I don't want specific input into their lives.
It is likely that you can compare the federal government to specific muni/state governments favorably, but against the sum of muni/state governments, it's a wash.
> It's by no means perfect but, yeah, for the most part it works pretty well and relatively honestly.
Its current primary function appears to be taking in tax dollars from regular middle class people and transferring them to corporate campaign donors and special interest groups, or whatever the people in swing districts want to the detriment of everybody else. That this may not legally be corruption doesn't mean that it's doing something good or that we wouldn't be better off on net if it would simply stop doing that.
> Always room for improvement--but the critical difference is that, when it is not, there...
...is nowhere to hide because whatever harm or corruption is implemented at the national level can't be avoided by moving to another neighborhood or another city.
> And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.
When something is wrong and someone proposes as a solution something that not only doesn't remove the problem but actually makes it worse, they're not saying that the problem isn't a problem, they're saying that the "solution" isn't a solution.
If you look at the federal budget, most of it goes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. So by the numbers, the federal government's primary function is to take money from working people, and transfer it to the states and the retired.
Transferring money "to the states" while requiring them to not only spend it in a specific way but add even more money to that pot first if they want to get it at all is in reality transferring money from the states.
And given that Florida is disproportionately retirees and a major swing state, all you're doing is proving the point.
I would argue that whatever the USA is doing is working.
The USA has substantially lower taxes and higher salaries, including for the poorest, than the rest of the Western world.
The USA policeforce seems focused on policing, whereas Police Forces in countries like the UK spend time monitoring online behavior whilst ignoring child grooming gangs.
Its also interesting that in the original article, the examples listed are mundane traffic offenses, and the only serious abuse is entirely fictional - from the Sorpranos.
In my experience, they seem mostly focused on figuring out how much time they can get paid for standing around chatting. Others experiences vary, but I don't know many people who would put "policing" high on the list of things US Police focus on.
The people involved are getting a huge benefit and there is no reason to report it. Others who don't receive the benefit either don't know about it or are shouted down.
There is a culture in the US that the police are pristine warriors of justice and any accusations of wrong-doing are denied and ignored. There are also many laws that specifically protect LEO and government officials in general because there is a natural ethos that everyone working for The Good is always Good and whatever Bad they did must have been in the duty and service to The Good. Immunity is easy to achieve when the entire legal system wants you to be immune as a class and we are currently having a debate about qualified immunity regarding police in the US.
In my view it is the entire system that is corrupt. A fish rots from its head as they say.
I think the bigger problem is that the general population does not want the law enforced.
There is also a sentiment that there are so many laws on the books that there is nothing wrong with breaking them or LEO letting people off the hook.
If the average person is good and still commits "3 felonies a day", then it is easy to believe that LEO is giving people a reprieve from systemic injustice, opposed to carrying out injustice.
Nobody shames an individual who get out of a speeding ticket with a warning, when the individual was randomly selected from 10,000 other speeders the same road that day.
You don't get one without the other. The collection of all laws is such that even, consistent application would be untenable. That which cannot work, doesn't; instead, enforcement becomes selective. At that point, you're doomed; your system only works by being a system "...of people, not laws".
I think this type corruption is inevitable when you have legal system where the police are responsible for arbitrarily enforcing the law on an arbitrary subset of offenders.
If you remove or universally enforce the law, the grey area for this type of corruption will go away.
Sure the system is corrupt, but selective enforcement is how corruption happens. Remove the mechanism and there stops being anything to be corrupt over. If everyone got pulled over and ticketed for speeding, every time, it would be impossible to e.g. pull over black drivers disproportionately, or give a warning in exchange for a PBA card.
> If the average person is good and still commits "3 felonies a day", then it is easy to believe that LEO is giving people a reprieve from systemic injustice, opposed to carrying out injustice.
It’s the same people arguing for maximal support of the police (e.g. to beat the shit out of people for no reason, to confiscate innocent people’s cash and just keep it, to threaten people with made up charges and get them to sign false confessions, to fabricate evidence, to illegally stalk and harass anti-police-brutality activists, etc., and suffer no consequences) and arguing that friends of the police shouldn’t get punished for their infractions if they have the special card. (And also the same people arguing against both things.)
More realistically, the little “courtesy cards” are a result of tribalism and corruption, and have nothing whatsoever to do with “systemic injustice”.
The people promoting these courtesy cards have absolutely no problem with speeding and jaywalking being crimes, and in fact are proponents of police discretion to e.g. constantly pull black people over and give them tickets for made up infractions just for the fun of it. It isn’t the “friends and family” of the police who want to end
stop-and-frisk, decriminalize minor drug offenses, end cash bail, stop funding police departments from speed traps, ....
You have diametrically misunderstood the point of the “3 felonies a day” book/argument, and you are shoehorning it in here to confidently promote your pet theory, without evidence.
>The people promoting these courtesy cards have absolutely no problem with speeding and jaywalking being crimes, and in fact are proponents of police discretion
I agree on both counts. They are proponents of police discretion to let them off for crimes they dont want to be charged for, and have no problem with it.
>to e.g. constantly pull black people over and give them tickets for made up infractions just for the fun of it. It isn’t the “friends and family” of the police who want to end stop-and-frisk, decriminalize minor drug offenses, end cash bail, stop funding police departments from speed traps, ...
I disagree and dont know where you are getting this from. The characters in the article clearly wanted to get off the hook themselves, but that doesnt mean they want to see minorities targeted and abused. I want to get off the hook when stopped for speeding, but that doesnt mean I want police to be shooting and terrorizing minorities.
>You have diametrically misunderstood the point of the “3 felonies a day” book/argument, and you are shoehorning it in here to confidently promote your pet theory, without evidence.
Again, I disagree. The point of the book is that everyone is a criminal and LEO can currently use their discretion to go after anyone they choose to. MY POINT, is that by making 100% of citizens criminals, we have eroded public support for the enforcement of the law. Those who get get caught for everyday crimes are considered unlucky, and those who get off the hook are celebrated. We should enforce the laws we have uniformly, and get rid of the ones we don't want. This is far superior to unwanted laws on the books and rarely enforcing them hoping we wont be affected. Infrequently enforced laws are terrible for a number of reasons, but a big one is that those without power and connections are the ones who are most likely to be affected.
I totally agree, bit it is the kind of corruption that most people are ok with, which makes it particularly insidious.
I'm not saying lawbreakers or corrupt police are freedom fighters, just that the root cause is garbage laws which neither the police or citizens believe in.
The "3 felonies a day" are mostly stuff like copyright infringement, not rapes, murders, etc. Though there are a few obscure laws like those protecting endangered species that might prevent you from, say, picking up a feather you found outside on the ground, this isn't something that's normally going to get a person in trouble, just the kind of thing that makes for shocking headlines.
I don't think anyone is getting out of rape or murder with a courtesy card. The article talks about crimes like driving on the shoulder, expired registration, ect.
I think this is mostly right, but I don't think there are many arguing that police are universally good or perfect as much as (1) they have a hard job and (2) we should be more focused on violent offenders than police corruption.
I'm certainly not advocating for these arguments, but I believe it's important to accurately understand that which you fight against.
I think you're right, but the excuses probably vary by location. In my area (which has very low petty traffic law enforcement), people do argue that cops are all good, usually with appeals to "the rule of law". I often wonder if this is seen as identical to "the rule of law enforcement". Mentioning the compliance rate with the speed limit (or gun control, for that matter) just makes them angry and the discussion ends. Mentioning nonviolent crimes like cannabis possession is usually met with a claim that drugs require violence, followed by the same anger as they shut down. There's a lot of discordant opinions held about police, at least near me.
I suspect a lot of the counterproductive emotional reactions are a result of the fact that so much force is involved, but I'm not sure how to mitigate that.
I don't doubt your experiences at all, but my suspicion is that people are articulating their positions poorly, and their anger and defensiveness is explained by a frustration at their own inability to adequately articulate and defend their position.
Usually when I disarmingly unpack the "rule of law" issue with people, their argument is more akin to "if we crack down on police, then it will empower criminals" which is a different disagreement than whether all cops are good or all cops are bad. Their argument is perhaps more aptly described as "we have to choose between mostly good cops and mostly bad criminals and we'd rather take the former". They would rather police rough up a few protesters if it means dissuading rioters from burning the neighborhood down.
Of course, I firmly believe we can have our cake and eat it too--after all, better policing seems to exist in Europe, but it takes some faith and imagination, especially when I'm honest with myself about the ways in which we differ from Europe (wealth inequality, diversity, corruption, 2A rights, etc). I'm a pretty educated, articulate person who has thought a lot about these issues. I can certainly appreciate how the every-man would see things differently.
I think that means it's incumbent upon us to communicate a vision of things working properly that addresses our unique challenges, and I certainly don't blame people for failing to be persuaded by the riots, protests, and generally demeaning rhetoric.
Yes, corruption where you are denied something that you are entitled to unless you pay a bribe. You are no better off than how you should be at the end and are out some money.
> This is corruption. I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?
I think it shows that a sizable portion of the citizenry considers this acceptable. I.e., they're enamored with the idea of getting preferential treatment for themselves or their friends, with little regard for the implications. It makes me figuratively (and a bit literally) want to vomit.
> I think it shows that a sizable portion of the citizenry considers this acceptable.
That only makes sense if you assume a sizable portion of the citizenry knows about it.
I think people assume that cops are imperfect and let people off if they know them, or feel like it (the average hetero male cop probably lets disproportionately more pretty girls off with a warning), but that as a judgement call it's hard to alter (and there are good reasons to allow judgement calls). That it's often formalized and systematized into cards that are given out is another thing entirely, and I think you need to prove the average person knows it's happening before you can use it as evidence as to how average people feel.
> That only makes sense if you assume a sizable portion of the citizenry knows about it.
Are you kidding? At least growing up in the 90s every teenager knew about PBA cards and any kid with cops in their family would eagerly whip out their collection of PBA cards for bragging rights. There were even different levels of cards, associated with different levels of officer you had connections too.
I was honestly surprise to see this as 'news' since at least where I grew up this was widely known.
> Are you kidding? At least growing up in the 90s every teenager knew about PBA cards and any kid with cops in their family would eagerly whip out their collection of PBA cards for bragging rights.
Have you considered that it might be affected by locale, and be more prevalent in some areas than others? I grew up in the 80's and 90's, and I never heard of this and have never seen a card.
What makes you think your experiences with this when you were a teenager scale to everyone in the United States?
And growing up in the 90's, this just entirely wasn't a thing in my area. Instead of a codified system of cards, our local PD just had a car sticker they gave out to families of officers.
Well, the Home Secretary would probably be forced to announce an inquiry, which might report over a decade later, long after said Home Secretary's political career was over.
« In 2012 Theresa May had commissioned Mark Ellison QC to review allegations of corruption »
« The Undercover Policing Inquiry or Pitchford Inquiry … is due to report back in 2023 »
It happens because the general public, as well as LEO, don't believe that many of the laws on the book should be enforced.
As far as I am aware, nobody thinks LEO is letting murders go as a favor.
For example, 90% of Americans ignore posted speed limits, as do LEO. When someone gets a speeding ticket, it seems bad luck and unfair. This makes it seem more acceptable for LEO to let someone off the hook.
In the US, the police are essentially an occupying force with their own agenda that they pursue. At times it aligns with the agenda of broader society, but at times not. Because the police know not to mess with the "wrong" people, and because they're generally very well regarded by society, the police unions have considerable power, such that elected officials are often terrified to reign them in. A good example of this is NYC where hundreds of cops turned their backs on the mayor and basically accused him of stoking violence against the police after he was mildly critical of them. This was a huge news story[1], and the mayor has refrained from criticism since then.
I think it's corruption too, but I have to roll my eyes at "If this happened in the UK..."
The police, and city councils, in the UK have tacitly permitted, for decades, systematic child rape as seen in the Rotterham grooming scandal [1] and numerous others throughout the country. How can you suggest that cops wouldn't look the other way for minor infractions when there are countless examples of them ignoring obscene and severe crimes of the worst sort against the most vulnerable?
I don't want this to come off as a "my country is better than yours" but at the same time, I don't think using the UK police as an example of anything to aspire to is a good idea.
Cherry picked? The "see also" section lists another 6 "grooming gang" scandals across the country and I have no reason to think that's comprehensive. UK police permitting the organized rape of children seems the norm rather than the exception from what I can tell.
The fact that there is an investigation decades after the fact doesn't really negate what I've written.
My point isn't really about the grooming gang scandals though. My point is: UK police look the other way for the crime of child rape, why should I believe they don't look the other way for minor infractions?
> "The failure to address the abuse was attributed to ... fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations"
Defund the police for being too worried about racism to do their job. Wait ... what?
Are you saying these acts were encouraged by police unions and widely supported by police and their families nationwide and that it was widely reported about, known about and continued to take place?
When it was widely reported in the press, the public were disgusted and the government took action.
I’m not saying that the UK police are perfect, or the UK is better than the US. Just that this kind of systematic, widespread behaviour that many/most people find unacceptable would be stopped.
Your outrage reminds me of the "bribery scandal" of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Somebody "exposed" an extensive system of bribes made to officials who would vote on the host city for the Olympics. Every night more allegations of the scandal were reported with proper shock and outrage.
It was a bit of a head scratcher for me. I remember, for example, when it was uncovered that one official had been gifted a very expensive custom-made shotgun. The news anchor was very solemn in reporting this outrageous misdeed. Rewind 9 or 11 months earlier and the exact same anchor was cheerfully reporting a public ceremony in which a visiting Olympic dignitary was presented with a gift from the organizing committee formed to win the bid. It was a happy day filled with optimism and hope for what might soon be. Lots of flash bulbs. That publicly-presented token of good will was the custom-made shotgun.
The issue there is that the custom-made shotgun should be considered a gift to the Olympic organization as an organization, not to the official personally. The official could even display the shotgun in their office. Then, when they left that office, the shotgun stays behind, and doesn't become part of their personal collection.
My point was that we all observe blatant corruption all the time. Very often, we don't even think about it until somebody calls it out.
Here's another example: When was the last time you saw a big shiny 4-door 4x4 with a company placard hauling a boat on a weekend? The company placard is for a construction company or something that is unrelated to towing boats on non-business days. Does it even register with you that this is probably committing some kind of tax or business impropriety? The truck is written off as a business expense, but its main purpose is personal. Do you even care? Does anybody care? Probably not too many who pass the boat doing 10 miles over the speed limit. Probably not the LEO who passes the people passing the boat. Probably not the guy at the marina who notices that the registration on the boat is expired, but sells beer to the 20ish-year-old kid driving the truck without ID.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
Letting some people get away with speeding and other minor crimes isn't seen as an corruption, or something that needs to be stopped. It is also still up to the police to make the decision either way, they can still give you a ticket, flashing a PBA card could make some situations worse.
The closest thing to it in the UK is that traffic police would put "Black Rat" stickers on their personal cars. Of course, it didn't take very long for members of the public to find out what the stickers meant and for people who had nothing to do with the police to start making and selling them- by all accounts they don't really work any more, and haven't for years.
From an outside-the-US perspective, the stack of “Things I’d never believe about the USA, please, Alex” is just getting higher and higher.
How is it legal to have preferential treatment, no matter under what circumstances, for ‘friends of the police’? Is Lady Liberty not famously blind while balancing the scales of justice ? Does the maxim “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done” somehow not apply in the USA ?
Over the last few years, it seems to me the rock that used to be the USA has been overturned, and all the slimy creepy little nasties are being exposed to the harsh light of day. What happens in a few months is going to be critical to the soul of your nation. Get it right, I doubt you’ll recover if you don’t.
I assure you, “friend of the police” cards have been going on for more than a few years. And from what my military friends tell me, handing a cop your military ID tends to work just as well.
In some communities other memberships can also hold sway. I remember one person mentioning some sort of scouting membership getting him out of a traffic stop.
The officer puts you in a category within seconds of meeting you - citizen, perp or 'blue line'. Their response depends upon this judgement call.
My son the disable vet could not seem to get a ticket. He occasionally speeds, not egregiously, but the Fort Benning parking sticker on his truck window and the military ID in his wallet made a difference in the attitude of the officer.
In my city, you'll sometimes see people riding around with the official cap or bumper sticker of the police union on the back of their car. It's no mystery why.
Is it really that surprising that ingratiating yourself to someone who has power or resources on average makes you better off? Nothing about this has anything to do with police.
You get a "baker's dozen" because the baker likes you.
No, you get it because the baker doesn't want to risk getting caught for selling short weight, if the individual items happen to be slightly undersized.
Neat! I never knew the actual origin. But since we don’t flog bakers anymore I think my point stands in modern times — I know it’s only time I’ve ever gotten a baker’s dozen.
But we’re not talking about bright line corruption here. We’re talking about police being nicer and more lenient to their in-groups: veterans, other cops, emts, firefighters, personal friends, family, politicians they like, police union reps, the clerk at the Dunkin’ Donuts that always adds a shot of espresso on the house.
The cards are literally corruption and bleh, but being friendly with the cops (or anyone) getting you special treatment sometimes is a human thing.
> But we’re not talking about bright line corruption here.
Yes, we are. A public official doing a law-related favor for someone based on their group affiliation is exactly what corruption is.
> being friendly with the cops (or anyone) getting you special treatment sometimes is a human thing.
That is not a universe anyone should have to live in. If you miss out on an extra baked good because you're not buddies with the baker, it's no big deal. If a cop treats you more harshly because you're not a friend of the police, that is a big deal.
Bakers can't deprive you of your life and freedom. Cops can.
Again, cops are capable of depriving you of life and liberty. There is a big difference between getting favorable treatment by your baker, and by the armed representative of the state.
A relative started getting pulled over a lot for speeding right after he bought a red car. Solution: he’s an ex-Marine so he bought a USMC number plate surround (not even one of the custom plates that require proof that you’re a veteran!). Problem stops just as quickly as it started.
> Is Lady Liberty not famously blind while balancing the scales of justice ?
No, in two ways
First, that lass with the scales is Justice not Liberty.
Second she doesn't always wear a blindfold, the depictions of her vary considerably in that regard, and there's a good chance there's a depiction of Justice near near you where she can see perfectly well.
And Justice is holding something important in her other hand, which artists (and perhaps other people symbolically) sometimes forget.
I think the legal theory is that for many minor crimes, the individual officer has personal discretion to decide if they give a fine or just a warning.
You don't want every jaywalker dragged into jail "on principle".
It's probably true in most countries that if the cop likes you, you can get away with much more than if they don't. But this brazen selling of "freebies" does seem uniquely american.
Because the police force would spend approximately 100% of its time writing jaywalking citations and courts would spend approximately 100% of its time dealing with the administration of jaywalking offenses.
I think a charitable way to think about it is that jaywalking can sometime be a serious threat to public safety but most of the time its harmless. So we have a law against jaywalking in general but in practice its more like a law against jaywalking that causes a breach of public safety. But the latter condition is hard/impossible to really codify so in practice the best way to deal with it is just make a law against jaywalking and then make the second condition discretionary on the part of law enforcement. It is of course abused frequently (police may be much more likely to hassle minorities or people who "look suspect") but I'm not sure the alternatives would be better on net
My opinion is that a law that should not be enforced uniformly should then not be a law at all.
Agree that jaywalking can be a threat to public safety. The law, as written, should account for that. "A pedestrian shall not cross a public road outside of a crosswalk intended for pedestrians, unless it is safe to do so." Yes, there's then a bit of wiggle room where a cop and jaywalker can disagree on what is and is not safe. But at least that's something you can argue in court, and the cop needs to argue why it wasn't safe, while the pedestrian needs to argue why it was.
As it is now, if you get a jaywalking ticket, you probably got one not because you were doing something unsafe, but because a cop didn't like how you looked; no cop is going to waste their time on a jaywalking ticket unless they have an axe to grind. But what is this pedestrian to do? Go in front of a judge and say, "Your honor, I know jaywalking is illegal, but everyone does it, I was doing it completely safely, and I think this cop has it in for me"? Right, like that'd work.
I jaywalk all the time and think it's mad that we have laws written strictly against it, even though I know those laws are rarely enforced. For me it doesn't matter; I'm financially comfortable enough that if, against all odds, I got a jaywalking ticket, I'd just pay it and move on. There are many people, some who might be more likely to be targeted by police, for whom that kind of fine would be a financial burden. Not to mention that taking time off work to go to court for it would be impossible.
Imagine you are a legislator. If know that laws will not be completely enforced then it gives you the freedom to create laws that are bad or overly harsh because that harshness is rarely seen. Whereas if you know the police will enforce these laws against you and your family you will be much less likely to support them.
To be fair no law is completely enforced. Even if there is no discretion on the part of law enforcement, they still have limited resources and have to prioritize enforcement in certain areas.
I do take your point though. It is easy for legislators to pass laws against all manner of things because they know that the police won't be patrolling their neighborhoods enforcing them.
Excellent point. Let's look at how "police discretion" works for what's basically a non-crime like jaywalking. In 2019, the NYPD issued 397 tickets for illegal or unsafe road crossing. 354 (90%) were issued to black or hispanic walkers. Black and hispanics are about 55% of the population.
But the story doesn't end there. The police in NYC are divided into 77 "precincts." Just 3 of those 77 divisions issued 40% of the tickets. Those precincts are predominant black and hispanic areas (Claremont Village, South Bronx, High Bridge). Meanwhile, 37 precincts didn't issue even a single jaywalking ticket all year.
If police officers used their personal discretion in some sort of consistent or even completely random way, it'd be fine, but clearly it is enforced in a terribly uneven way, even consciously or unconsciously.
I highly recommend reading Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States". I assure you that things like this -- and things much much worse -- have been going on in the US since before the US was the US, without much of a break through present times. I dare say that things are actually better now than they used to be[0].
The stuff Americans learn about in primary school about US history, respect for the constitution, blind justice, etc. is a very very "polished" version of what actually happened. It's a shame to hear that even people from outside the US get this whitewashed history.
[0] As a simple example, it was common until the early 20th century for police and state militias to be brought in to break up what are now legally-protected workers' strikes, often with fatal results for workers, where no one was held accountable for those deaths. Police were a tool of the elite, land- and business-owning classes. And to some extent they still are.
You seem to be suggesting that if the correct candidate is elected in November these problems will be fixed, that couldn't be further from reality. These problems have been here for decades. In fact, if we put forth that the candidate that has been voting on bills and by extension existing laws for the longest period of time is more to blame for the current state of affairs then you have no choice but to conclude that voting for that candidate will not change much.
We have tons of preferential treatment in our justice system, it's not really a secret. For example, economic preferential treatment. If you have lots of money, you can get out on bail easily. If you're poor, you may lose your job, maybe your kid (social services), etc, if you can't afford bail. If you get arrested on some minor charge and you have $80 cash in your wallet, you can be released immediately rather than wait overnight for a judge to arraign you in the morning. Did you know foreign nationals can buy residency in U.S.? Not citizenship, but residency; I think it's ~$300,000.
Unlike Lady Justice, cops are not blind at all - they can pick and choose when to enforce the law. I forget what it's called, but the police are literally given the option for some laws to just not enforce the law if they don't want to. If the cop is in a good mood, they can decide to just let it slide. If they're in a bad mood (or they don't like the color of your skin) they might prefer to enforce it.
A friend of mine who used to get into trouble all the time when he was a teenager got away with a ton of stuff. His father was a chief or something, so every local cop just knew who he was.
Heck, if you're wealthy enough, and get pulled over drunk, tell then you're friends with someone at the department. The cop will make a few phone calls, and boom, you get chauffeured home by the cops for free.
Yeah, these cards are basically a way of extending behavior that has always occurred in small departments to a larger force where the police can't possibly know everyone they are "supposed" to give favors to.
The first step to being an authoritarian is separating the in-group from the out-group so you can deal out harsh punishment to one and be forgiving to the other.
Hate the game, not the player. This is definitely corruption. BUT, at least, it is supposed to be for minor infractions.
Unlike meter maids, police officers should be given leeway to let people go. It’s the mandatory minimums and fines you should worry about... cops doing revenue generation for the city. And when their department doesn’t get enough from taxes and tickets, police departments across the country turn to civil forfeiture.
Ideally, the officers should act as if everyone has these cards.
> Ideally, the officers should act as if everyone has these cards.
Totally agree with this. I think part of the reason they are in issue is it reduces the political pressure on this happening if some people can get this treatment anyway.
I find unequal enforcement of the law to be one is it’s worst aspects. There is not only officer discretion, but there is also discretion several places in the judicial system and privilege in being able to hire better legal council. Some neighborhoods are policed more heavily than others. Some groups of people are targeted more heavily than others. Some city police departments enforce state/federal laws unevenly.
There should be one law for everyone, and if two random people with similar criminal histories break the same law in different places we should expect their outcomes and sentencing to be very similar. Right now this is far from the case.
I agree, but at the same time the alternative is zero tolerance.
Maybe the big problem is not the discretion, but that it isn't recorded? For example, i think it is complete corruption that LEOs and their families generally get "professional courtesy". I've heard the argument that it is a perk of the job. I disagree, but if you accept that argument, I would say: let the judge and courts handle the forgiveness of the offense and have it recorded in documents. Make it an official procedure and it will not look like corruption.
> I agree, but at the same time the alternative is zero tolerance.
I think it’s unfair to use term zero tolerance to describe equal enforcement. Zero tolerance is a specific sentencing pattern which uses harsh punishments for crimes. Equal enforcement is about making sure all groups have the same relationship with the law. If the laws on the books are overly harsh once enforced than we should change those laws.
The public would be better served by reducing the number of things that are illegal to only those things that deserve to be enforced with 'zero tolerance'.
This is real at least in the NY area. NY law gives officers "discretion" in issuing violations (not crimes). That doesn't have a limit. So being friends with a fellow PO is technically not an illegal reason to not issue a violation. I agree that it is not fair. Generally though if you do something like drive 30 over the limit, they aren't going to let you off with a card.
But a non connected person can get pulled over for something minor and get every ticket they can. This snowballs for poor people that then have more fines on top of fines.
There used to be something similar in the UK IIRC - the traffic police nicknamed themselves "black rats". If you had a sticker of the black rat mascot/logo on the back of your car then you were either a traffic officer, or someone close to them (wife/husband/etc) and a wink and a nod an you were on your way. I don't think it was a deliberate "get out of jail" move - just more of a "Oh you have a sticker for my unit's mascot on your car!" recognition type thing.
I think it kinda stopped when they started giving away the stickers on "enthusiast" car/motorbike magazines etc
The mere appearance of corruption in police is enough of a problem. Even in minor cases.
Debating whether this is bribery or nepotism is pointless, because the appearance this gives should be plenty to fire officers who hand out such cards.
Conveniently, they supposedly write their name on the cards they hand out :)
I once got pulled over for speeding in the middle of Kansas. The cop who was giving me my ticket told me that they had a program for avoiding having the ticket reported so your insurance rates won't rise. So I went along with it, and mailed the cost of the ticket plus a hundred dollars to that city's police department, care of the "sheriff's benevolent association" (or similar -- it's been a decade, the name is fuzzy to me).
...it remains one of the more blatantly shady-feeling things I remember encountering in the US.
Doesn't that work the other way around as well, as in LAWs come to life or stay in place because of LAWyers? Both due to the rather large percentage of lawyers who end up in politics as well as due to lawyers using their powers of persuasion - monetary or otherwise - to influence law makers?
The prevalence and prestige of the law profession only started (in the US) in the late 1800s because of the rise of complicated, business-friendly contract law that made highly-trained lawyers a necessity for getting things done. The laws were used primarily to enforce burdensome contracts against workers and individuals, and protect businesses from holding up their end of the bargain.
I'd say that period was likely the birth of the American tendency toward litigiousness. The legal profession exists and is so lucrative specifically because of the shape of government and the law.
I've used a random traffic lawyer a couple times for stupid speed trap tickets. The process was really fast and they got the fine knocked down quite a bit. I'd much rather pay $100 each to a lawyer and the city, than pay the city $250.
The only reason cities and towns abuse speed traps is that it's profitable. If the costs exceed the money they bring in they might shift those resources to real crimes and fix the artificially low speed limits.
I think this sort of "we'll give you a pass on this one if you just pay the ticket" is a super gross practice.
I recently got a camera citation for not stopping completely behind the line before turning right on red. Fine was $125. If I paid the fine, it would be treated as a parking ticket. If not, it would be a moving violation and points would hit my license, if I lost the case.
I feel like, if a cop thinks I broke the law, they should stand behind that. If $125 convinces the cop that I didn't really break the law, that sounds like corruption to me.
If you're paying a ticket, you're not paying the cop though, that's not corruption. They're saying "we've got you, but here's an offer because we don't think we can convict you of the big thing, or because you've been doing this for the first time". You can take it and pay your dues, or you can fight. But then they might fight as well.
There's no reason why the state should go to court over every infraction. You hopefully learned a lesson about stopping the car, why should the state spend thousands of dollars on a court case and make you spend a lot as well?
That would be very different if they said "you can get a ticket or you can donate the money to my wife's charity."
I'm not handing the cop the money, sure; but I'm handing his employer the money (the city, the county, whatever).
They're essentially saying "you can get a ticket or you can donate money to the city".
The way this applies to someone who can't afford the ticket is a bigger problem, similar to cash bail. If you can't throw them some money, you get shafted 10x worse.
This was codified in my state's public transport fines. Pay on-the-spot (assuming you have a CC and funds) and it's $75, wait or contest it an it's $223.
It was a system blatantly established to prevent people exercising their right to contest a fine. New government abolished this arrangement as it was blatantly unfair and illogical, and also reduced compliance.
They also removed on-the-spot warnings and fines, having all interactions reported and justified-to and reviewed by a separate governing body before an infringement or warning is issued. Taking a great deal of power away from the transport officers.
These all seem like pretty straightforward measures to avoid corrupt or even just unfair practices.
In the same category of the "Unhooking fee" a tow truck will charge--you can pick up your car from impound for $200, or you can pay the tow driver $200 on the spot and save the hassle.
Though obviously lesser significance than the same behaviors from your police force.
To be honest, it seems like if a tow truck had to be called out to tow you, the tow company has earned something even if they didn’t tow you to impound.
Depends, there's plenty of cases in some cities where the tow trucks aren't called, they just prowl around for any minor infraction. I remember Columbus OH being particularly bad about this--things that in a normal world might warrant a parking ticket, you're towed in minutes.
The racial connection here is quite a stretch and sounds like more race baiting. It has nothing to do with that. Knicks players have them. Yankees have them.
My neighbor in Austin is a lawyer for the police union. He would hand these cards out to everyone in the cul-de-sac along with some booze for Christmas presents. There's a little "CLEAT" sticker that you can put in your back window too.
I put the sticker in the window of one car but not the other.
In the car without the sticker... I got pulled over in West Texas visiting relatives, and the cop literally had his gun drawn as he came to my window. Alone on a dark and empty road, guy with a gun on you -- probably the scariest moment of my life.
In the car with the sticker, in a similar small town in West Texas (lots of speed traps between Austin and Midland)... as the officer was walking to my car he saw the sticker and his whole body language instantly shifted. He got to my window, "Hope I didn't scare you with the lights, you don't seem like you're from around here. Are you lost? Just trying to be neighborly."
I was going 20-ish miles over the speed limit both times.
I looked into getting another sticker and it literally only cost me $25. Significantly better treatment from police doesn't cost very much. Anyway, yup corrupt as fuck... but as long as these exist, for a simple $25 donation, might as well have a CLEAT sticker in your window.
Also, what really bugs me... Police in Texas are allowed to unionize, but Teachers are not. Oof. Been here almost 20 years now, I love a lot of things about Texas, but some of the politics still suck.
PS: Also I keep a Book of the Mormon in my glove compartment, that way if I ever do get pulled over I just casually grab the book when looking for insurance papers. For some reason seems like a lot of cops in Texas are Mormons...
Pretty confused why this post got flagged, but I did put together a (strong) personal opinion a while back[^0] that touches on these topics. I didn't publish it because a friend gave me a counter opinion I couldn't find a time to respond to, but I suppose it might as well be public now.
The cards represent corruption, self-interest, and selective enforcement of the law. I think a lot of problems would be solved or help accountable for if those issues were resolved.
I think it's a pretty reasonable claim. The cards illustrate the idea that the law is applied unequally, and at the whim of the police officer... which I believe is the root of much of the problems with US policing.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 358 ms ] threadOh, come on! I stopped reading here because I have zero sympathy for someone who does something as stupid as that.
In places where cash bribes are common, police will pull people over -- even if they've done nothing wrong -- in order to solicit a bribe.
That sort of thing isn't possible with the "courtesy cards", so police stops are more likely to be for legitimate reasons (or at least no more or less legitimate than in an ideal system), but people who shouldn't get away with things often will.
I mean, its not the same as bribery. But its the kind of thing that creates the mindset of people like Rittenhouse (Kenosha Shooter).
Showing off a "pro-police" political affiliation (be it a FOP sticker or a PBA card) makes the cops go easy on you for minor infractions.
The problem happens when people who are "pro-police" start showing up at protests, staying past a 8pm curfew, and then shoots three people in self-defense (allegedly).
On the one hand: the Sheriff of Kenosha refused to deputize these people and had the foresight to see what issues the behavior would cause. On the other hand: there's a low-level expectation "friends with benefits" with Police culture. If you're a friend of the police, the police reciprocate that friendship back to you. And one can argue that things are unfair in that regards. (Ex: failure to enforce the curfew on Rittenhouse)
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With that being said: I've been to countries with explicit bribery. The American way is better. Period. There's no comparison between this behavior and bribery.
But there seems to be an unfairness even in the American way, which is discussed in the core article and exemplified in Kenosha (and IMO: the Kenosha shooter is just the highest-profile example of this debate).
I’m not sure I understand why this is even mentioned - it seems like you’re giving him credit for it, but why on God’s green Earth would he have done that? That would’ve been crazy, right?
>With that being said: I've been to countries with explicit bribery. The American way is better. Period.
I’ve been to (and lived in) countries where there’s pretty much neither - surely that’s where the bar should be?
Well, if the question is "Is this better than bribery", I can say without a doubt that its better than bribery. When EVERY traffic ticket is really a request from the local officer to shake you down for money (you may have not been speeding. Doesn't matter, the local cop wants his breakfast or whatever and knows that bribes are widespread. They stop you for a ticket, which is really a request for a bribe). There's simply no comparison.
> surely that’s where the bar should be?
Well yeah. But the people I was responding to was comparing the behavior to bribery. And bribery is what I have experience with.
You really, really don't want to live with a bribery culture. In this case, you're declaring friendship with the cops (through the use of an FOP sticker or PBA card, or whatever the local police union is). And that's where you get exceptional behavior.
Yeah, the USA has civil asset forfeiture, but given the red tape behind that, its still a step up from bribery.
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> I’m not sure I understand why this is even mentioned - it seems like you’re giving him credit for it, but why on God’s green Earth would he have done that? That would’ve been crazy, right?
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2020/07/01/cla...
Its not crazy in America. These things come down to the local sheriff's decision. I think people underestimate the power of the Sheriff in many cases.
I bring it up because Sheriff of Kenosha seems like a reasonable person, compared to other Sheriffs across the country. On the one hand, the Sheriff of Kenosha is responsible for the actions of his own officers (and in this case: responsible for the failure of his officers to arrest Rittenhouse for violating curfew).
On the other hand, the Sheriff of Kenosha cannot fight the "greater police culture" that's across America. The expectation for pro-police people to be treated with leniency is endemic in virtually every place I've been to in America (again: FOP decals or PBA cards): along with "Police Bill of Rights" (special protections to officers that normal people don't get), and so forth.
Even the signal it is sending stinks. The law should apply even to other cops (on and off duty but that is another story) equally as any other citizen. If just being friends with a cop gets you some special entitlement then what does being a cop mean, near total immunity?
That's been more or less the case, yes. That and the systemic racism exhibited while they get this near-total immunity is a large driver behind the recent protests.
The original comment bizarrely asserted that bribery is more democratic than the cop-buddy system; that's what I was responding to.
I'd of course prefer a third choice where neither of these things happen.
Regardless, the police officer doesn't benefit directly from being shown a "courtesy card", so it's not like a cop is going to pull someone over just for the hope of getting shown one of these cards. But in countries where police bribery is prevalent, police will often stop people who are doing nothing wrong, simply because they want a bribe.
So I agree that these two practices aren't the same, but not for the reason you state. Both practices are awful and disadvantage people who are unable to participate (don't have police friends, can't afford a bribe), but the "courtesy card" garbage at least doesn't create a police-citizen extortion situation.
Outright bribes can be demanded on the spot for infractions that’s don’t exist. They incentivize stopping more people to demand them. They directly benefit the responding officer and can become a core part of their income. Once that happens you’re really screwed as the only people willing to become cops are dirty cops.
> It's still corruption.
I didn’t say it’s a good practice. But just because it’s bad does not mean it’s worse than living with a “police tax” every time you’re stopped.
> The article shows you can buy these cards on eBay for <$100.
That’s be pointless and is for suckers. The cop is supposed to contact the source to verify the relationship.
> Mike works in an industry that regularly puts him into contact with police officers, which gives him the opportunity to form personal, trusting relationships with them. As such, he said, he frequently receives PBA cards as a thank-you for extending cops small business favors and deals; currently, he estimates that he has somewhere between 10 and 12 unexpired courtesy cards in his possession.
That is literally a bribe.
Is it not possible for both things to be true?
Would it be? Buying bribe credits ahead of time doesn't seem inherently any better than on-the-spot bribes to me. Arguably worse; if it really is the case that small business owners get these with favours, then unless they're reimbursing the company personally for the bribe purchase, they are purchasing personal items through their business. So add tax evasion to the list of sins.
This exists, but is relatively small in scope. And no, I don't agree with the "universal bribery is democratic" argument, because the end goal is to arrive at 0 bribery.
Society is made up of humans and humans do unfair things. That doesn’t mean that tech companies aren’t generally meritocracies.
Having friends in an industry is hard work, so it a meritocracy, it is well earned to have made contacts that will help you.
In this article it's perhaps family, but a family that supports their childrens career in a blue collar job like policing, in a meritocracy, also deserve the reward.
In policing perhaps it's illegal or should be illegal. But it's still a meritocracy.
But semantics aside, I think this often works without violating company policies. It’s more about having a connection to get the attention of someone who has authority to override or initiate a friendly appeal of some prior judgement call.
It's not a conspiracy where all members of group x get a direct line to Jack Dorsey to take care of things, it's you knowing somebody who knows somebody and that somebody wants to help an innocent person out.
The problem is that Twitter is a private enterprise, and it's okay if they choose to run their system that way. The police aren't, and they're not supposed to favor anyone, no matter who they are. There's a saying in Germany, Dienst ist Dienst und Schnapps ist Schnapps (literally "Duty is duty and liquor is liquor") that articulates that. You might drink with somebody, but you must not let that influence your judgement while on duty. In a private company, that's somewhat different, you can't damage the company, obviously, but you're not bound by law, and company policies are -at best- rough guidelines.
Knowing someone at Google/Apple who can help you out with a totally legal tech support issue is nothing at all like police corruption.
But to your point, you are correct, the only people left on the wrong side of the law are law abiding productive people who do not have personal connections to law enforcement. Ever other group gets treated with a light touch and has excuses made for them and criminals are now getting off the hook left and right, while the anarcho-tyrannical administrative state increases it's abuses of regular productive and peaceful people.
It's either by design, out of desperation, or due to incompetence; but it will not end well for any of us, regardless.
The entire administrative bureaucracy is in on this racket and it's unfair to pick in the police alone for it. In my state it's not just the police that peddle influence like this. Many state agencies have little identifiers that range from IDs to bumper stickers that they give to their employees with the unspoken purpose of signaling "don't screw me, I work for your team". The most coveted are the court system ones because no matter what agency is trying to screw you none of them want to piss off people who work for the courts. My state also has all sorts of ways to wave fines and whatnot for economic hardship reasons (which I fully support). This creates effectively three classes of people, those who are part of the in-group and treated decently by government. Those who have money and are preyed upon by government. And those who don't have money and are ignored by government unless they are committing serious (i.e. violent) crime because the government gains nothing by cracking down on them. Why can't the government just treat everyone like the former or the latter or, even better, repeal all the stupid laws that have wildly low compliance rates?
I suspect its for a similar reason, that either if you get your plate's picture taken or local police can see that right away.
https://www.amazon.com/Matter-Sticker-Support-Enforcement-Of...
/s I think the real issue is that it has been decided somehow that it is our fault for being policed and experiencing the frequent resulting injustices. A police officer can pull you over, stop you walking down the street, etc. etc. and fine you, jail you, or brutalize you at will, and in all but the most egregious cases (that also must become a cause celebre), they can just do it again tomorrow. There's always some justification, no matter how flimsy! That's not to say this violence is evenly distributed among the population. POC, the poor and working class, those who work odd hours and have to drive at 3 AM etc. certainly have a much, much, much harder time than e.g. the median HN commenter. But the answer to the question "What's stopping a given police officer from e.g. breaking my arm while pulling me out of my vehicle?" is much less "they will suffer consequences if they do" and much more "they haven't decided it's what they want to do today"
So a bribe then. Wow.
As citizens of the country we live in, we should all be subject to the same laws and restrictions. Anything less than that is a form of corruption and undermines the whole concept of democracy and a fair society.
https://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/vehicles/lice...
https://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/vehicles/lice...
Stack that up with a bunch of bumper stickers and, if you're brave, hang a checkered headband on your rearview mirror and you'll have a cop thinking you're a cousin of someone on his squad. (Just make sure you're white)
This is corruption. I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?
If this happened in the UK I'm fairly sure it would be raised in the press, then parliament and then the Home Secretary (in charge of policing) would be forced to make a statement and likely do something about it.
2. You can't easily do something about it other than taking away police discretion. Unlike with a traditional bribe, where something is exchanged for something, you can't demonstrate that the person got off for the card compared to the officer just deciding to give them a break.
If the "cards" are banned, their still would be a system for insiders to show they have access to special benefits and treatment.
If someone breaks the speed limit it should be 30 day license suspension and impounding their vehicle.
I mean... that's not why the limit is there. The limit isn't "how fast can you possibly go without feeling out of control", it's "how fast can you possibly safely go". Are they still operating with 20th century cars in mind? Yeah, but it's hard to argue that a school zone should be 60 MPH.
Most people who complain about speed limits are complaining about freeways, not surface streets.
I would guess it has something to do with the strict adherence to the keep right/pass left rule.
And by car! A truck or an older SUV will have a far worse breaking distance and does not corner well compared to any sports car or sedan. So even assuming you a perfect situational analysis, you still could not post an exact limit.
The latter is literally encouraging the populace to commit crimes. The latter is hard to challenge the selectivity of in court because it is theoretically strict liability. The latter results in the unelected enforcement officials making up the criteria entirely instead of being given criteria by the elected officials.
In the UK, many drivers view them as targets. Driving under the limit will often lead to tailgating. Especially in overtaking lanes.
In Australia, for example, at least when I got my license, you were explicitly told that you are
"required to drive at the maximum possible speed that is: within the posted limit, appropriate for the weather and road conditions, and within your ability to maintain safe control of the vehicle".
So on roads with speed limits that are far too low you get people driving together at very different speeds, which results in more accidents.
[0] I can't find the source right now but IIRC in one of the experiments they increased the speed limit by 5 mph on a highway, but the speeds driven only increased by 1 mph.
Police unions and a strong pro-police "thin blue line" culture.
When they do, they discover that the police, despite being employees of the city will just refuse to do what they are told. Sheriffs magically turn into constitutional scholars, and start unilaterally choosing what laws to enforce[2], start blatantly violating the city's bylaws, and instructions from the mayor[3], and when pushed in the only way they can be hurt (The budget), engage in malicious compliance.
Picking a fight with the police union is generally speaking, not a politically savvy move.
[1] Mostly by doing a deliberately poor job in the district they represent, and being incredibly vocal that the reason they are doing a poor job, is because the politician is causing them problems.
[2] A number of sheriffs across the country made it clear that they won't issue Covid mask/gathering citations, despite state and local law, because the law is an obvious violation of... Some constitutional amendment that they can't name.
[3] After weeks of violence, Seattle city council banned the use of crowd control weapons. The SPD celebrated the very next day by gassing and blast-balling crowds.
[1] The SPD has been under federal censure by the Department of Justice for the past 8 years, due to fragrant constitutional violations, excessive use of force, racist behaviour, lack of accountability, and a pattern of disciplinary failures. Because of this decree, federal permission is necessary for any large policy changes to be made to the department.
Firing it, and starting from scratch would almost certainly qualify as a 'large policy change'. And, ah, the current administration has made it very clear as to where it stands on these sorts of questions.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-06/lapd-laf...
http://lacity.payroll.finance.socrata.com/#!/year/2018
"... the agendas of police unions mostly reflect the interests of the institution (the police department) rather than those of the working class."
"Labor unions exist to protect people; police exist to protect property."
[1]: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-know-police-unions-l...
Just in our area there was a case where the longshore union organized slowdowns at the docks that eventually made them lose their contract with the only shipper in the area.
What they were fighting for? Stealing two jobs from another union: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/11/29/longshore-union-faces-...
This is a point of contention between unions. Some (especially the traditional trade unions like the one you mention) see themselves as exclusively representing their current members. Others (typically the newer service industry unions like SEIU) see themselves as promoting the interests of a particular category of workers, whether currently members or not.
Doctor/surgeon? I think most of their patients are unarmed, hehe :)
Joke aside, police outside the US generally can't do that either.
If they kill someone they shouldn’t, then they get in trouble (yes, I know not always).
This article https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-rev... is a review of the book about corruption "Thieves of State". It's an interesting analysis of corruption in several different countries, and I suppose if you're going to suffer because of it, might as well understand it.
Because "police" in the USA can mean a lot of things, from county Sheriff, to city police to state police to FBI or one of the other 2 dozen armed federal agencies. It's a patchwork. There's no central authority to enforce some kind of standard of behavior.
Also keep in mind police force generally targets minorities more. So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption. But it's there.
As a brown person, my worst experiences with cops was in UK and Germany. When I tell people this they're quick to dismiss it by "This shit doesn't happen here"
I don't buy this. There are plenty of ethnically homogeneous countries that also has rampant police corruption (e.g. in Eastern Europe), and there are tons of other parameters that affect police corruption overall. We can't single out presence of minorities as a factor.
On the other hand, you can always find a disliked minority somewhere. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-e...
I'm quite confident the police don't treat them particularly well, either.
Brown lives does not matter in Eastern Europe. Only thing that saves their lives is that gun ownership is not popular and cops cannot claim that they felt threatened. Beatings though...
What first comes to our minds doesn't constitute data, and is prone to create availability bias.
Percentage of Roma for several Eastern European countries are; Bosnia And Herzegovina: 0.36% (2013), Serbia 2.1% (2011), Macedonia 2.7% (2002), Albania 0.6% (2011), Croatia 0.4% (2011), Ukraine 0.3% (2001). There is no substantial Roma minority, in fact Roma is usually one of the smallest among other minorities in these countries.
Bulgaria: 10.3%, Romania: 8.3%, Slovakia, 9.2%.
This same source has Serbia's percentage as 8.2%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Contemporary_iss...
I would call these numbers substantial. Your mileage may vary.
Either way, if the OPs hypothesis is true, we should see a change in corruption levels with minority percentages. I’m not an expert in Eastern European criminology, but I highly doubt that is the case. There might as well be Eastern European countries with substantial Roma population, for some definition of “substantial”, but that doesn’t change my original point that high cultural homogeniety and high police corruption definiely does co-occur.
Citation needed.
EDIT: Also forgot to mention that cops here know not to bother car with "nice" licence plate numbers, interestingly enough, even though the numbers should be random, there is a class of people who tend to get them disproportionally often...
The stated desire is to prevent government abuse of powers by keeping the governments small and limiting the powers of the larger ones, but if you look at actions rather than words, it's less about restricting government and more about preserving existing power structures.
Reconstruction is one of the most egregious examples.
And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.
There are real benefits to small local government. Yes, there are also problems but that doesn't mean the system is wrong fundamentally. This sword cuts both ways.
Speaking broadly, and particularly of the late 20th century, when the federal government has stepped in to unilaterally overrule state and local government, it has been on the right side of history. There are, of course, a number of infamous exceptions, but the fact that I would likely be unable to converse with you w/o the federal gov't's historic interventions speaks loudly to their efficacy in suh matters.
That local government also tramples rights is more an argument for checks and balances than a reversal of federalism.
I think it's funny that you would use torture as your example, considering that several municipalities (most infamously Chicago and its PD) have been caught torturing suspects and have been placed under federal watch if not control in order to curb their abuses.
What's important about federal oversight is that it is accountability. The ultimate fact is that few institutions, let alone local ones with limited budgets and moral hazards/incestuous conflicts of interest galore, are capable of effectively policing themselves.
Its current primary function appears to be taking in tax dollars from regular middle class people and transferring them to corporate campaign donors and special interest groups, or whatever the people in swing districts want to the detriment of everybody else. That this may not legally be corruption doesn't mean that it's doing something good or that we wouldn't be better off on net if it would simply stop doing that.
> Always room for improvement--but the critical difference is that, when it is not, there...
...is nowhere to hide because whatever harm or corruption is implemented at the national level can't be avoided by moving to another neighborhood or another city.
> And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.
When something is wrong and someone proposes as a solution something that not only doesn't remove the problem but actually makes it worse, they're not saying that the problem isn't a problem, they're saying that the "solution" isn't a solution.
And given that Florida is disproportionately retirees and a major swing state, all you're doing is proving the point.
The USA has substantially lower taxes and higher salaries, including for the poorest, than the rest of the Western world.
The USA policeforce seems focused on policing, whereas Police Forces in countries like the UK spend time monitoring online behavior whilst ignoring child grooming gangs.
Its also interesting that in the original article, the examples listed are mundane traffic offenses, and the only serious abuse is entirely fictional - from the Sorpranos.
In my experience, they seem mostly focused on figuring out how much time they can get paid for standing around chatting. Others experiences vary, but I don't know many people who would put "policing" high on the list of things US Police focus on.
There is a culture in the US that the police are pristine warriors of justice and any accusations of wrong-doing are denied and ignored. There are also many laws that specifically protect LEO and government officials in general because there is a natural ethos that everyone working for The Good is always Good and whatever Bad they did must have been in the duty and service to The Good. Immunity is easy to achieve when the entire legal system wants you to be immune as a class and we are currently having a debate about qualified immunity regarding police in the US.
In my view it is the entire system that is corrupt. A fish rots from its head as they say.
There is also a sentiment that there are so many laws on the books that there is nothing wrong with breaking them or LEO letting people off the hook.
If the average person is good and still commits "3 felonies a day", then it is easy to believe that LEO is giving people a reprieve from systemic injustice, opposed to carrying out injustice.
Nobody shames an individual who get out of a speeding ticket with a warning, when the individual was randomly selected from 10,000 other speeders the same road that day.
I think this type corruption is inevitable when you have legal system where the police are responsible for arbitrarily enforcing the law on an arbitrary subset of offenders.
If you remove or universally enforce the law, the grey area for this type of corruption will go away.
It’s the same people arguing for maximal support of the police (e.g. to beat the shit out of people for no reason, to confiscate innocent people’s cash and just keep it, to threaten people with made up charges and get them to sign false confessions, to fabricate evidence, to illegally stalk and harass anti-police-brutality activists, etc., and suffer no consequences) and arguing that friends of the police shouldn’t get punished for their infractions if they have the special card. (And also the same people arguing against both things.)
More realistically, the little “courtesy cards” are a result of tribalism and corruption, and have nothing whatsoever to do with “systemic injustice”.
I am saying that the general public is not very offended by "courtesy cards" because they think the law is bad to begin with.
If I don't think speeding and jaywalking should be a crime, I certainly don't care about people using cards to get off the hook for these crimes.
I see this as a separate issue from police brutality, confiscation, ect.
You have diametrically misunderstood the point of the “3 felonies a day” book/argument, and you are shoehorning it in here to confidently promote your pet theory, without evidence.
I agree on both counts. They are proponents of police discretion to let them off for crimes they dont want to be charged for, and have no problem with it.
>to e.g. constantly pull black people over and give them tickets for made up infractions just for the fun of it. It isn’t the “friends and family” of the police who want to end stop-and-frisk, decriminalize minor drug offenses, end cash bail, stop funding police departments from speed traps, ...
I disagree and dont know where you are getting this from. The characters in the article clearly wanted to get off the hook themselves, but that doesnt mean they want to see minorities targeted and abused. I want to get off the hook when stopped for speeding, but that doesnt mean I want police to be shooting and terrorizing minorities.
>You have diametrically misunderstood the point of the “3 felonies a day” book/argument, and you are shoehorning it in here to confidently promote your pet theory, without evidence.
Again, I disagree. The point of the book is that everyone is a criminal and LEO can currently use their discretion to go after anyone they choose to. MY POINT, is that by making 100% of citizens criminals, we have eroded public support for the enforcement of the law. Those who get get caught for everyday crimes are considered unlucky, and those who get off the hook are celebrated. We should enforce the laws we have uniformly, and get rid of the ones we don't want. This is far superior to unwanted laws on the books and rarely enforcing them hoping we wont be affected. Infrequently enforced laws are terrible for a number of reasons, but a big one is that those without power and connections are the ones who are most likely to be affected.
I'm not saying lawbreakers or corrupt police are freedom fighters, just that the root cause is garbage laws which neither the police or citizens believe in.
They want the law enforced against people who don’t look like them.
See the “War on Drugs” vs. “Drug Abuse is a Disease” when it hit “rural America”.
I'm certainly not advocating for these arguments, but I believe it's important to accurately understand that which you fight against.
I suspect a lot of the counterproductive emotional reactions are a result of the fact that so much force is involved, but I'm not sure how to mitigate that.
Usually when I disarmingly unpack the "rule of law" issue with people, their argument is more akin to "if we crack down on police, then it will empower criminals" which is a different disagreement than whether all cops are good or all cops are bad. Their argument is perhaps more aptly described as "we have to choose between mostly good cops and mostly bad criminals and we'd rather take the former". They would rather police rough up a few protesters if it means dissuading rioters from burning the neighborhood down.
Of course, I firmly believe we can have our cake and eat it too--after all, better policing seems to exist in Europe, but it takes some faith and imagination, especially when I'm honest with myself about the ways in which we differ from Europe (wealth inequality, diversity, corruption, 2A rights, etc). I'm a pretty educated, articulate person who has thought a lot about these issues. I can certainly appreciate how the every-man would see things differently.
I think that means it's incumbent upon us to communicate a vision of things working properly that addresses our unique challenges, and I certainly don't blame people for failing to be persuaded by the riots, protests, and generally demeaning rhetoric.
Cynically, the answer is "what are you going to do about it, punk?"
I mean, I would think they'd be forced to resign, in practice.
https://theconversation.com/northern-irelands-police-transfo...
I think it shows that a sizable portion of the citizenry considers this acceptable. I.e., they're enamored with the idea of getting preferential treatment for themselves or their friends, with little regard for the implications. It makes me figuratively (and a bit literally) want to vomit.
That only makes sense if you assume a sizable portion of the citizenry knows about it.
I think people assume that cops are imperfect and let people off if they know them, or feel like it (the average hetero male cop probably lets disproportionately more pretty girls off with a warning), but that as a judgement call it's hard to alter (and there are good reasons to allow judgement calls). That it's often formalized and systematized into cards that are given out is another thing entirely, and I think you need to prove the average person knows it's happening before you can use it as evidence as to how average people feel.
Are you kidding? At least growing up in the 90s every teenager knew about PBA cards and any kid with cops in their family would eagerly whip out their collection of PBA cards for bragging rights. There were even different levels of cards, associated with different levels of officer you had connections too.
I was honestly surprise to see this as 'news' since at least where I grew up this was widely known.
Have you considered that it might be affected by locale, and be more prevalent in some areas than others? I grew up in the 80's and 90's, and I never heard of this and have never seen a card.
What makes you think your experiences with this when you were a teenager scale to everyone in the United States?
Consider for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry
« In 2012 Theresa May had commissioned Mark Ellison QC to review allegations of corruption » « The Undercover Policing Inquiry or Pitchford Inquiry … is due to report back in 2023 »
Whether ‘get out of jail free’ cards are acceptable is a yes/no question.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/police
This year seems to have had less focus on Britain, and more on problems abroad.
As far as I am aware, nobody thinks LEO is letting murders go as a favor. For example, 90% of Americans ignore posted speed limits, as do LEO. When someone gets a speeding ticket, it seems bad luck and unfair. This makes it seem more acceptable for LEO to let someone off the hook.
1: https://time.com/3644168/new-york-police-de-blasio-wenjian-l...
The police, and city councils, in the UK have tacitly permitted, for decades, systematic child rape as seen in the Rotterham grooming scandal [1] and numerous others throughout the country. How can you suggest that cops wouldn't look the other way for minor infractions when there are countless examples of them ignoring obscene and severe crimes of the worst sort against the most vulnerable?
I don't want this to come off as a "my country is better than yours" but at the same time, I don't think using the UK police as an example of anything to aspire to is a good idea.
1 -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_explo...
The fact that there is an investigation decades after the fact doesn't really negate what I've written.
My point isn't really about the grooming gang scandals though. My point is: UK police look the other way for the crime of child rape, why should I believe they don't look the other way for minor infractions?
Defund the police for being too worried about racism to do their job. Wait ... what?
When it was widely reported in the press, the public were disgusted and the government took action.
I’m not saying that the UK police are perfect, or the UK is better than the US. Just that this kind of systematic, widespread behaviour that many/most people find unacceptable would be stopped.
It was a bit of a head scratcher for me. I remember, for example, when it was uncovered that one official had been gifted a very expensive custom-made shotgun. The news anchor was very solemn in reporting this outrageous misdeed. Rewind 9 or 11 months earlier and the exact same anchor was cheerfully reporting a public ceremony in which a visiting Olympic dignitary was presented with a gift from the organizing committee formed to win the bid. It was a happy day filled with optimism and hope for what might soon be. Lots of flash bulbs. That publicly-presented token of good will was the custom-made shotgun.
Here's another example: When was the last time you saw a big shiny 4-door 4x4 with a company placard hauling a boat on a weekend? The company placard is for a construction company or something that is unrelated to towing boats on non-business days. Does it even register with you that this is probably committing some kind of tax or business impropriety? The truck is written off as a business expense, but its main purpose is personal. Do you even care? Does anybody care? Probably not too many who pass the boat doing 10 miles over the speed limit. Probably not the LEO who passes the people passing the boat. Probably not the guy at the marina who notices that the registration on the boat is expired, but sells beer to the 20ish-year-old kid driving the truck without ID.
Letting some people get away with speeding and other minor crimes isn't seen as an corruption, or something that needs to be stopped. It is also still up to the police to make the decision either way, they can still give you a ticket, flashing a PBA card could make some situations worse.
From an outside-the-US perspective, the stack of “Things I’d never believe about the USA, please, Alex” is just getting higher and higher.
How is it legal to have preferential treatment, no matter under what circumstances, for ‘friends of the police’? Is Lady Liberty not famously blind while balancing the scales of justice ? Does the maxim “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done” somehow not apply in the USA ?
Over the last few years, it seems to me the rock that used to be the USA has been overturned, and all the slimy creepy little nasties are being exposed to the harsh light of day. What happens in a few months is going to be critical to the soul of your nation. Get it right, I doubt you’ll recover if you don’t.
My son the disable vet could not seem to get a ticket. He occasionally speeds, not egregiously, but the Fort Benning parking sticker on his truck window and the military ID in his wallet made a difference in the attitude of the officer.
You get a "baker's dozen" because the baker likes you.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/Bakers-dozen.html
There is a big, bright line between “favors for valued customers” and “corruption”.
The cards are literally corruption and bleh, but being friendly with the cops (or anyone) getting you special treatment sometimes is a human thing.
Yes, we are. A public official doing a law-related favor for someone based on their group affiliation is exactly what corruption is.
> being friendly with the cops (or anyone) getting you special treatment sometimes is a human thing.
That is not a universe anyone should have to live in. If you miss out on an extra baked good because you're not buddies with the baker, it's no big deal. If a cop treats you more harshly because you're not a friend of the police, that is a big deal.
Bakers can't deprive you of your life and freedom. Cops can.
Not literally handing it over, but I've seen this work a few times growing up.
No, in two ways
First, that lass with the scales is Justice not Liberty.
Second she doesn't always wear a blindfold, the depictions of her vary considerably in that regard, and there's a good chance there's a depiction of Justice near near you where she can see perfectly well.
And Justice is holding something important in her other hand, which artists (and perhaps other people symbolically) sometimes forget.
Liberty is the one with the book and the torch.
See also the CHP 11-99 Foundation license plate frame which djmobley posted about in this thread.
You don't want every jaywalker dragged into jail "on principle".
It's probably true in most countries that if the cop likes you, you can get away with much more than if they don't. But this brazen selling of "freebies" does seem uniquely american.
Why not?
I think a charitable way to think about it is that jaywalking can sometime be a serious threat to public safety but most of the time its harmless. So we have a law against jaywalking in general but in practice its more like a law against jaywalking that causes a breach of public safety. But the latter condition is hard/impossible to really codify so in practice the best way to deal with it is just make a law against jaywalking and then make the second condition discretionary on the part of law enforcement. It is of course abused frequently (police may be much more likely to hassle minorities or people who "look suspect") but I'm not sure the alternatives would be better on net
Agree that jaywalking can be a threat to public safety. The law, as written, should account for that. "A pedestrian shall not cross a public road outside of a crosswalk intended for pedestrians, unless it is safe to do so." Yes, there's then a bit of wiggle room where a cop and jaywalker can disagree on what is and is not safe. But at least that's something you can argue in court, and the cop needs to argue why it wasn't safe, while the pedestrian needs to argue why it was.
As it is now, if you get a jaywalking ticket, you probably got one not because you were doing something unsafe, but because a cop didn't like how you looked; no cop is going to waste their time on a jaywalking ticket unless they have an axe to grind. But what is this pedestrian to do? Go in front of a judge and say, "Your honor, I know jaywalking is illegal, but everyone does it, I was doing it completely safely, and I think this cop has it in for me"? Right, like that'd work.
I jaywalk all the time and think it's mad that we have laws written strictly against it, even though I know those laws are rarely enforced. For me it doesn't matter; I'm financially comfortable enough that if, against all odds, I got a jaywalking ticket, I'd just pay it and move on. There are many people, some who might be more likely to be targeted by police, for whom that kind of fine would be a financial burden. Not to mention that taking time off work to go to court for it would be impossible.
I do take your point though. It is easy for legislators to pass laws against all manner of things because they know that the police won't be patrolling their neighborhoods enforcing them.
But the story doesn't end there. The police in NYC are divided into 77 "precincts." Just 3 of those 77 divisions issued 40% of the tickets. Those precincts are predominant black and hispanic areas (Claremont Village, South Bronx, High Bridge). Meanwhile, 37 precincts didn't issue even a single jaywalking ticket all year.
If police officers used their personal discretion in some sort of consistent or even completely random way, it'd be fine, but clearly it is enforced in a terribly uneven way, even consciously or unconsciously.
The stuff Americans learn about in primary school about US history, respect for the constitution, blind justice, etc. is a very very "polished" version of what actually happened. It's a shame to hear that even people from outside the US get this whitewashed history.
[0] As a simple example, it was common until the early 20th century for police and state militias to be brought in to break up what are now legally-protected workers' strikes, often with fatal results for workers, where no one was held accountable for those deaths. Police were a tool of the elite, land- and business-owning classes. And to some extent they still are.
Unlike Lady Justice, cops are not blind at all - they can pick and choose when to enforce the law. I forget what it's called, but the police are literally given the option for some laws to just not enforce the law if they don't want to. If the cop is in a good mood, they can decide to just let it slide. If they're in a bad mood (or they don't like the color of your skin) they might prefer to enforce it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16207890
A friend of mine who used to get into trouble all the time when he was a teenager got away with a ton of stuff. His father was a chief or something, so every local cop just knew who he was.
You don't want to arrest your boss's son.
Unlike meter maids, police officers should be given leeway to let people go. It’s the mandatory minimums and fines you should worry about... cops doing revenue generation for the city. And when their department doesn’t get enough from taxes and tickets, police departments across the country turn to civil forfeiture.
Ideally, the officers should act as if everyone has these cards.
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/local/20100607_Police_s...
Totally agree with this. I think part of the reason they are in issue is it reduces the political pressure on this happening if some people can get this treatment anyway.
There should be one law for everyone, and if two random people with similar criminal histories break the same law in different places we should expect their outcomes and sentencing to be very similar. Right now this is far from the case.
Maybe the big problem is not the discretion, but that it isn't recorded? For example, i think it is complete corruption that LEOs and their families generally get "professional courtesy". I've heard the argument that it is a perk of the job. I disagree, but if you accept that argument, I would say: let the judge and courts handle the forgiveness of the offense and have it recorded in documents. Make it an official procedure and it will not look like corruption.
I think it’s unfair to use term zero tolerance to describe equal enforcement. Zero tolerance is a specific sentencing pattern which uses harsh punishments for crimes. Equal enforcement is about making sure all groups have the same relationship with the law. If the laws on the books are overly harsh once enforced than we should change those laws.
But a non connected person can get pulled over for something minor and get every ticket they can. This snowballs for poor people that then have more fines on top of fines.
I think it kinda stopped when they started giving away the stickers on "enthusiast" car/motorbike magazines etc
That said, being stopped by cop who notices that it's fake probably isn't a good idea :)
https://www.straightdope.com/21341883/in-los-angeles-why-do-...
Debating whether this is bribery or nepotism is pointless, because the appearance this gives should be plenty to fire officers who hand out such cards.
Conveniently, they supposedly write their name on the cards they hand out :)
...it remains one of the more blatantly shady-feeling things I remember encountering in the US.
I'd say that period was likely the birth of the American tendency toward litigiousness. The legal profession exists and is so lucrative specifically because of the shape of government and the law.
The only reason cities and towns abuse speed traps is that it's profitable. If the costs exceed the money they bring in they might shift those resources to real crimes and fix the artificially low speed limits.
I recently got a camera citation for not stopping completely behind the line before turning right on red. Fine was $125. If I paid the fine, it would be treated as a parking ticket. If not, it would be a moving violation and points would hit my license, if I lost the case.
I feel like, if a cop thinks I broke the law, they should stand behind that. If $125 convinces the cop that I didn't really break the law, that sounds like corruption to me.
There's no reason why the state should go to court over every infraction. You hopefully learned a lesson about stopping the car, why should the state spend thousands of dollars on a court case and make you spend a lot as well?
That would be very different if they said "you can get a ticket or you can donate the money to my wife's charity."
They're essentially saying "you can get a ticket or you can donate money to the city".
The way this applies to someone who can't afford the ticket is a bigger problem, similar to cash bail. If you can't throw them some money, you get shafted 10x worse.
It was a system blatantly established to prevent people exercising their right to contest a fine. New government abolished this arrangement as it was blatantly unfair and illogical, and also reduced compliance.
They also removed on-the-spot warnings and fines, having all interactions reported and justified-to and reviewed by a separate governing body before an infringement or warning is issued. Taking a great deal of power away from the transport officers.
These all seem like pretty straightforward measures to avoid corrupt or even just unfair practices.
Though obviously lesser significance than the same behaviors from your police force.
I put the sticker in the window of one car but not the other.
In the car without the sticker... I got pulled over in West Texas visiting relatives, and the cop literally had his gun drawn as he came to my window. Alone on a dark and empty road, guy with a gun on you -- probably the scariest moment of my life.
In the car with the sticker, in a similar small town in West Texas (lots of speed traps between Austin and Midland)... as the officer was walking to my car he saw the sticker and his whole body language instantly shifted. He got to my window, "Hope I didn't scare you with the lights, you don't seem like you're from around here. Are you lost? Just trying to be neighborly."
I was going 20-ish miles over the speed limit both times.
I looked into getting another sticker and it literally only cost me $25. Significantly better treatment from police doesn't cost very much. Anyway, yup corrupt as fuck... but as long as these exist, for a simple $25 donation, might as well have a CLEAT sticker in your window.
Also, what really bugs me... Police in Texas are allowed to unionize, but Teachers are not. Oof. Been here almost 20 years now, I love a lot of things about Texas, but some of the politics still suck.
PS: Also I keep a Book of the Mormon in my glove compartment, that way if I ever do get pulled over I just casually grab the book when looking for insurance papers. For some reason seems like a lot of cops in Texas are Mormons...
When you find a flaw, do you fix the system or game the system?
[^0]: https://smaslennikov.com/posts/enforcement/
A literal get-out-of-jail-free card!
That's a pretty broad claim. The cards aren't even big enough to LIST everything wrong with modern policing.
The cards "are an expression of" everything wrong with modern policing. Not sure if you are just being pedantic, but this seems to fit.