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Post by Gingerbread Man on Dec 10, 2014 1:46:58 GMT
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Post by Browning35 on Dec 14, 2014 16:07:18 GMT
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Post by LowKey on Dec 14, 2014 20:52:58 GMT
As productive as the use of undercover and plainclothes LE may be, I occasionally wonder if we as a society wouldn't be better off forbidding the practice and only allowing uniformed LE. The use on non-uniformed LE sometimes (i.e. when they've been involved in something questionable) reminds me of E. Germany where the population never knew if the person they were talking with was Stazi or a Stazi informant.
I'm not bashing them, just pondering if we wouldn't be better off requiring LE to be uniformed.
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Post by Browning35 on Dec 14, 2014 21:07:07 GMT
Interesting question.
Personally if that happened I think there would just be a rise in the number of informants being employed giving questionable and possibly completely fabricated information to fill the perceived gap for malum prohibitum stings.
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Post by LowKey on Dec 15, 2014 5:35:05 GMT
Interesting question. Personally if that happened I think there would just be a rise in the number of informants being employed giving questionable and possibly completely fabricated information to fill the perceived gap for malum prohibitum stings. As opposed to what in those cases....fabricated evidence or (im-)probable cause? Any LEO that would accept information from an informant that he/she knew to be false or untrustworthy is already shady. I can't see that individual LEO magically being more ethical while undercover. |
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Post by Browning35 on Dec 15, 2014 11:45:41 GMT
I might have been unclear in what I was saying.
I believe that . . .
1) Limiting police to being in uniform only is unlikely to happen since some depts are receiving both Military-style training/equipment and because if anything their powers (at least on a federal level) are being expanded in some ways.
2) I wasn't saying that police would necessarily fabricate evidence, just that if the police were limited to uniform only that informants (who are sometimes unreliable) would almost certainly fill the gap.
Informants (especially in the drug war and who are many times dope fiends and convicted felons themselves working off a charge) sometimes supply information currently that is false or misleading. This leads to the occasional SWAT team busting in on a sleeping family who have done nothing wrong simply because an informant has some axe to grind against those people, taken down the wrong address or greatly exaggerated the criminal activity going on and the officers involved in that investigation didn't properly vet the information.
So if that kind of thing happens occasionally now, imagine what it would be like if they were limited to uniform only.
Plus I don't think that most cops are interested in fabricating evidence, most of the ones I've known seemed interested in locating, arresting, and imprisoning felons and not being given a rash of shit over how they had to do it.
I mean yeah, there are some cops that are power tripping assholes, but you're going to get that in any job and from what I've seen it's a minority.
The belt fed and armored car 'need' is more than likely just a case of it being kind of cool and just wanting it to play with. Cops watch all the same movies as the rest of us and can easily imagine some 'End of Watch' shootout even if they're mostly passing out speeding tickets in suburbia.
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Post by LowKey on Dec 15, 2014 12:33:34 GMT
I might have been unclear in what I was saying. I believe that . . . 1) Limiting police to being in uniform only is unlikely to happen since some depts are receiving both Military-style training/equipment and because if anything their powers (at least on a federal level) are being expanded in some ways. 2) I wasn't saying that police would necessarily fabricate evidence, just that if the police were limited to uniform only that informants (who are sometimes unreliable) would almost certainly fill the gap. Informants (especially in the drug war and who are many times dope fiends and convicted felons themselves working off a charge) sometimes supply information currently that is false or misleading. This leads to the occasional SWAT team busting in on a sleeping family who have done nothing wrong simply because an informant has some axe to grind against those people, taken down the wrong address or greatly exaggerated the criminal activity going on and the officers involved in that investigation didn't properly vet the information. So if that kind of thing happens occasionally now, imagine what it would be like if they were limited to uniform only. Plus I don't think that most cops are interested in fabricating evidence, most of the ones I've known seemed interested in locating, arresting, and imprisoning felons and not being given a rash of shit over how they had to do it. I mean yeah, there are some cops that are power tripping assholes, but you're going to get that in any job and from what I've seen it's a minority. The belt fed and armored car ' need' is more than likely just a case of it being kind of cool and just wanting it to play with. Cops watch all the same movies as the rest of us and can easily imagine some ' End of Watch' shootout even if they're mostly passing out speeding tickets in suburbia. Crap. The internet ate my post. Yes. I misread your intent. I agree that the lion's share of LEOs are on the right side of the ethics line. I think the problem is that we expect police to prevent crime rather than expect them to catch and prosecute criminals after the fact. Also that we have a slew of laws on the books that are malum en se, where the only "victim" is the <ahem> dignity of the state because someone didn't accept "because I said so" as sufficient justification to refrain from one or another action. It seems that most undercover cops are involved in narcotics operations. Not saying that there aren't undercover cops working human trafficking, ect, but it would seem that most are involved in vice. |
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Post by Browning35 on Dec 15, 2014 13:56:41 GMT
Yeah, just think it unlikely and I believe a whole new set of issues would crop up unless the NFA were suddenly abolished and all drugs and prostitution were legalized. That's really unlikely.
Most undercover operations do seem to revolve around vice.
If anyone has to go undercover though I'd rather it be a sworn officer with a bunch of training and some ethics on board rather than some meth-head looking to avoid his/her 3rd strike.
Personally I don't agree with Malum Prohibitum/'Cause I said so' type laws, but no one's ever asked my opinion in the matter.
One thing I've noticed with cops and some low level drug crimes on calls I've been on is that they'll sometimes give the person a pass if it isn't surrounded with other criminal activity like theft, burglary, identity theft, DUI's, or what have you. The piddly drug possession just seems like it's sometimes used to search and to make sure that individual isn't into some real heinous shit or has a record (in which case they're almost always definitely getting hooked up).
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Post by dannusmaximus on Dec 15, 2014 16:53:18 GMT
One thing I've noticed with cops and some low level drug crimes on calls I've been on is that they'll sometimes give the person a pass if it isn't surrounded with other criminal activity like theft, burglary, identity theft, DUI's, or what have you. The piddly drug possession just seems like it's sometimes used to search and to make sure that individual isn't into some real heinous shit or has a record (in which case they're almost always definitely getting hooked up). The italicized portion is true, but is rapidly ending due to body cams. You can't be seen on camera giving a person a pass on anything. Piddly drug posession is ABSOLUTELY used as a reason to find out if a person is actually a bad guy versus just a knucklehead. Car stops for piddly things are as well. It is truly amazing how quickly a cop develops the sense that "Dude, let's find a reason to pull this sucker over. That car is pure dirtbag..." and will be right almost 100% of a time. Of course, that's profiling, and inherently wrong... Except human beings do it all the time, and in fact it is ENCOURAGED by people who lecture on self-defense... SO, if people don't want cops dealing with 'piddly crimes', they had better try and get the laws change, because the days of officer discretion are on the wane. |
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Post by dannusmaximus on Dec 15, 2014 17:01:34 GMT
I'm not bashing them, just pondering if we wouldn't be better off requiring LE to be uniformed. Depends on your definition of 'better off', perhaps. My understanding is that boots on the ground HUMINT is the gold standard of LE intel, for both foreign and domestic use. Domestic LE uses undercover officers to try and infiltrate terror cells, international crime groups, etc. Bad stuff. A uniformed officer walking into a skinhead meeting, introducing himself, and asking about any upcoming attacks on local mosques would probably not go over too well... So, 'better off'? Dunno. It's always a fine line between liberty and security. Handcuffing the cops too much (or not enough) sways the balance too much one way or another. |
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Post by Browning35 on Dec 15, 2014 20:17:21 GMT
That's the thing, I don't think that the laws will be changed regardless. So I imagine that there will just be more arrests over things where the officer might have used their discretion.
We're in the midst of a culture war and police are being asked to choose sides. There seems like there's a pretty large divide between rural sheriffs/suburban cops and some of the big city departments on some issues.
(I could have used 'minor' rather than 'piddly' and that might have been more appropriate. Minor doesn't necessarily mean I don't think it should be enforced, kinda depends I guess.
A lot of times I agreed with the breaks they gave and a few times I didn't. You know what I mean.)
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Post by Browning35 on Dec 18, 2014 3:45:13 GMT
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Post by Browning35 on Dec 19, 2014 12:28:52 GMT
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Post by dannusmaximus on Dec 19, 2014 13:37:44 GMT
I liked the question "Why do you believe the people who say his hands were up instead of the people who say his hands were not up?" That's a fair question.
I've got no problem admitting that my inherent bias towards law enforcement and my experience in public safety skews me towards being predisposed to believe the witnesses who corroborate Officer Wilson's story. I do like to think that if a majority of witnesses as well as forensic evidence showed that the police officer's story was NOT true I would accept that as actual fact, and it seems like that is the main problem the protestors have. There is nothing, literally nothing that would make them believe that Michael Brown was anything except an innnocent, unarmed kid shot down by a police officer who is part of a racially biased LE system in the U.S.
That's problematic, but not atypical. It's actually pretty common in our society. Do you know anybody who thinks owning 'assault rifles' simply should not be allowed by private citizens? I do, and NOTHING would convince them othewise. Do you know a person who believes in / does not believe in global climate change? Would ANYTHING convince them otherwise? Probably not. What about people who don't believe in evolution, believe that vaccinations cause autism, truly believe that 'white privelage' is the primary cause of problems in the black community, yadda yadda?
On the good side, the constant news coverage of Ferguson, et al is finally waning big-time. Thank god.
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Post by Gingerbread Man on Dec 19, 2014 13:44:09 GMT
Oh, that's simply rich, now they care what's unconstitutional. Hen pickin' rights, what could ever go wrong.
I'm biased toward LE not because I'm rah-rah Police. It's because the people that sit on grand juries are doctors, lawyers and other promient people in the community choosen for their ability to look at things based on facts. I do believe in law and order however I read the grand jury reports too. Once you read the facts, it becomes clear. The media 99% of the time gets it wrong.
I get why these people don't like the police, it's because they're up to no good or breaking the law. I've hung around with some of the loudest protestors against the police, as have loads of others folks, and I've not seen one that wasn't breaking the law when the police caught them and commit loads of other crimes that they were never caught for. As for the liberalish folks who are generally on the side of the argument that there is racism have alterior motives or 100% commited to naive hope.
If there weren't any black success then I'd have to agree with them, there is institutional racism however, I see a ton of successful black people. I think part of it is that people what to relive some of the days of their youth when they were sticking it to the man. Which is absurd.
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