Criminal Justice Reform

[Brooklyn]

Cities That Reduced Arrests For Minor Offenses Also Saw Fewer Police Shootings
And crime in those cities wasn’t worse.


https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/po ... ry-twitter


In response to nationwide protests last summer over the murder of George Floyd by police, many cities and states have tried to change their approach to policing. One such strategy is to make fewer arrests for low-level offenses in an effort to reduce the number of potentially violent encounters between the police and the public. Virginia, for instance, banned police from pulling people over for exclusively minor traffic violations earlier this year. Meanwhile, Oregon decriminalized drug possession. Louisiana restricted police from making arrests for certain misdemeanors, asking police to instead issue summons. And cities like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, began sending clinicians instead of police to help people suffering from a mental health crisis.

These efforts are all part of a shift that has been underway in America’s largest cities for a number of years now.



It all adds up: don't arrest people for insignificant matters and the crime rate drops.

Now let's add more reforms. Decriminalize drugs and impose government regulation in this matter. Soon the drug gangs will go bankrupt and they will disappear along with the crimes they commit. Further, those crooked cops who run drug groups in the cities will also lose their income from this wicked activity. Lastly, impose police reforms of the type we have previously discussed and arrest criminal cops along with corrupt prosecutors and judges. All this would greatly reduce urban crime.

[MDlaxfan76]

Cities That Reduced Arrests For Minor Offenses Also Saw Fewer Police Shootings
And crime in those cities wasn’t worse.


https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/po ... ry-twitter


In response to nationwide protests last summer over the murder of George Floyd by police, many cities and states have tried to change their approach to policing. One such strategy is to make fewer arrests for low-level offenses in an effort to reduce the number of potentially violent encounters between the police and the public. Virginia, for instance, banned police from pulling people over for exclusively minor traffic violations earlier this year. Meanwhile, Oregon decriminalized drug possession. Louisiana restricted police from making arrests for certain misdemeanors, asking police to instead issue summons. And cities like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, began sending clinicians instead of police to help people suffering from a mental health crisis.

These efforts are all part of a shift that has been underway in America’s largest cities for a number of years now.



It all adds up: don't arrest people for insignificant matters and the crime rate drops.

Now let's add more reforms. Decriminalize drugs and impose government regulation in this matter. Soon the drug gangs will go bankrupt and they will disappear along with the crimes they commit. Further, those crooked cops who run drug groups in the cities will also lose their income from this wicked activity. Lastly, impose police reforms of the type we have previously discussed and arrest criminal cops along with corrupt prosecutors and judges. All this would greatly reduce urban crime.

I'm on board...heavy political lift, but if we ever want to make serious progress, rather than 'serious' lip service, your policy prescriptions are on track.

Need to do some additional social policy heavy lifting, though, on education, healthcare, housing etc to more evenly distribute families currently 'in poverty' more broadly rather than concentrated in urban or rural de facto ghettos.

All works together, along with emphasis on opportunity society for all.

[Farfromgeneva]

Had to drop this video of my old hood PD

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VhjwD1Ud6 ... AozHTbiWMs

[Brooklyn]

INSIDE INTERNAL AFFAIRS
Secret file reveals ‘cover-up of a cover-up’ in unjustified police shooting, arrest of innocent man
Suffolk police brass pressed internal affairs to delete evidence that would support misconduct charges in arrest of cab driver shot by off-duty Nassau officer during Huntington Station road-rage incident.


https://projects.newsday.com/long-islan ... -cover-up/


The shooting of a Huntington Station cabdriver by an off-duty Nassau County police officer in a fit of alcohol-fueled road rage has been dogged for more than a decade by evidence of cover-ups and the wrongful arrest of an innocent man.

Former Nassau Officer Anthony DiLeonardo opened fire on cabbie Thomas Moroughan after a night of dinner and drinking in 2011. He wounded Moroughan twice, pummeled him with a pistol, breaking his nose, and faced possible arrest on a first-degree assault charge.

Instead, Suffolk County Police Department investigators initially accepted DiLeonardo’s account that he had shot Moroughan in self-defense. They charged Moroughan with assault after detectives took a hospital-bed statement in which Moroughan purportedly exonerated DiLeonardo and incriminated himself. At the time, doctors had administered narcotic medications to dull Moroughan’s pain.

The shooting entangled the internal affairs bureaus of Long Island’s neighboring county forces in separate investigations. After more than three years, the Nassau department dismissed DiLeonardo. Separately, it punished fellow Officer Edward Bienz, who was at the scene of the shooting after drinking with DiLeonardo, with the loss of 20 days’ pay.

Because Suffolk was the site of the shooting, Suffolk police were responsible first for determining whether a crime had been committed and, if so, by whom. After the district attorney’s office dropped all charges against Moroughan, Suffolk internal affairs examined the circumstances surrounding the cabdriver’s arrest.

Newsday’s look into how Long Island’s two county police forces have policed themselves uncovered the outcome of Suffolk’s internal investigation, including how ranking members of the department brought the case to a close under the near total secrecy that was imposed by law on police discipline.

Newsday found that:

The Suffolk County Police Department ruled there was no misconduct by any member of the force and ordered no discipline.
In finding no fault, then-Commissioner Edward Webber overruled the department’s internal affairs chief, who had called for filing misconduct charges against a sergeant and a detective sergeant.
Former Chief of Detectives William Madigan pressed internal affairs commanding officer Michael Caldarelli to delete evidence from a report that Caldarelli considered crucial to supporting the charges, including accounts that DiLeonardo smelled of alcohol and that Moroughan had been given morphine, according to notes handwritten by Madigan.
Madigan pushed Caldarelli to change his report at a meeting also attended by police Capt. Alexander Crawford, an attorney who is the department’s chief legal officer, who also had served as a trustee of the Superior Officers Association, the union representing the sergeant and detective sergeant.
Caldarelli rebuffed Madigan and Crawford, notifying Webber in a memo that he refused to make the deletions they requested.
The department permitted a second trustee of the Superior Officers Association, a sergeant, to play a key role in recommending whether or not to file charges against any officers involved in investigating the shooting at a time when the sergeant was both a union member and a union trustee.



more ...


Police corruption at its worse. Innocent lives destroyed, police laughing it all away just like they did with Kitty Genovese, Mark Fuhrman's many crimes, and with Serpico. Anyone who denies that we need police reform has got their brains stuck up their stink holes.

[kramerica.inc]

Video of Woman’s Arrest By Atlanta Police Sparks Uproar On Social Media, Department Defends Officer

https://breaking911.com/video-of-womans ... s-officer/

[Farfromgeneva]

Video of Woman’s Arrest By Atlanta Police Sparks Uproar On Social Media, Department Defends Officer

https://breaking911.com/video-of-womans ... s-officer/

I haven’t heard much about it here in Atlanta. A non story. No idea the background on the source of the story though.

[PizzaSnake]

Here's a reform: don't hire criminally stupid individuals for law enforcement. I thought this was the Onion, only they have better taste in satire than this fiasco.

Sweet Fncking Jeebus these clowns are idiots! Oh, and make them pay for the LE vehicle as well, out of their prison canteen money...

"A 20-year-old woman inside a police car parked on railroad tracks north of Platteville was injured when a train struck the vehicle, Colorado officials reported. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation news release said a Platteville police officer investigating a road rage incident stopped the woman at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, near U.S. 85 and Weld County Road 38. The woman stopped “just past the railroad tracks” and the officer stopped behind her “on the tracks,” the release said.

Two Fort Lupton police officers arrived and they detained the woman, a Greeley resident, who was suspected of having a firearm, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation reported. Officers placed the woman in the back of the Platteville officer’s patrol car and went to search her vehicle, the release said. A train traveling northbound then hit the police car, the agency said. The woman was hospitalized with a “significant brain injury” the Colorado State Patrol told KMGH. No officers were hurt in the crash. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Colorado State Patrol and Fort Lupton police are investigating.

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-worl ... rylink=cpy

[Typical Lax Dad]

Here's a reform: don't hire criminally stupid individuals for law enforcement. I thought this was the Onion, only they have better taste in satire than this fiasco.

Sweet Fncking Jeebus these clowns are idiots! Oh, and make them pay for the LE vehicle as well, out of their prison canteen money...

"A 20-year-old woman inside a police car parked on railroad tracks north of Platteville was injured when a train struck the vehicle, Colorado officials reported. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation news release said a Platteville police officer investigating a road rage incident stopped the woman at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, near U.S. 85 and Weld County Road 38. The woman stopped “just past the railroad tracks” and the officer stopped behind her “on the tracks,” the release said.

Two Fort Lupton police officers arrived and they detained the woman, a Greeley resident, who was suspected of having a firearm, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation reported. Officers placed the woman in the back of the Platteville officer’s patrol car and went to search her vehicle, the release said. A train traveling northbound then hit the police car, the agency said. The woman was hospitalized with a “significant brain injury” the Colorado State Patrol told KMGH. No officers were hurt in the crash. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Colorado State Patrol and Fort Lupton police are investigating.

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-worl ... rylink=cpy

https://twitter.com/dailyloud/status/15 ... 99104?s=21

Cop pulls out with no lights to stop a guy on a moped. He was successful. My guess is another lawsuit is coming.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... -interview

[DMac]

You park your car on the railroad tracks in a cartoon, not so sure even Mr. Magoo would though.
W*tf.

[Typical Lax Dad]

You park your car on the railroad tracks in a cartoon, not so sure even Mr. Magoo would though.
W*tf.

Just a bad decision. We can do a better job training people.

[CU88]

Such BS, police are mobsters.


Opinion Police thought his cash was suspicious. So they took it. And won’t give it back.

By George F. Will
December 2, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EST

Rebuilding his post-prison life — drug offenses derailed the young Jerry Johnson — he attempted a 50 percent increase of his North Carolina trucking firm, from two semi-trucks, nine and 16 years old, to three. Learning of a used-truck auction in Arizona, he assembled from his savings and from relatives $39,500 in cash, and flew there in August 2020.

At a luggage carousel in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, he was involuntarily enrolled in a Kafkaesque tutorial now in its third year. He now understands the perverse consequences of giving government a pecuniary incentive, through civil forfeiture, to shift onto accused persons the burden of proving their innocence.

Civil forfeiture is the power to seize property suspected of being produced by, or involved in, crime. The property owners must prove that they and their property are innocent of such involvement. Proving this can be, and government has a motive to make it be, a protracted, costly ordeal against a government that has unlimited resources. The government entity that seizes the property often is allowed to keep or sell it. Lucrative law enforcement involves blatant moral hazard — an incentive for perverse behavior.

Flying with lots of cash is legal. Unlike, say, a 4-ounce tube of toothpaste, a stash of cash poses no threat to airline security. But large amounts of currency arouse police suspicions because drug dealers sometimes travel with them. Drug traffickers often do something else Johnson did: They book flights with quick turnarounds. According to the state, a “confidential informant” alerted Arizona law enforcement to Johnson based on the way he was traveling, meaning his quick turnaround.

Three detectives confronted him at the carousel. One asked Johnson whether he had “any large amounts” of cash. When he showed him the money, the detective said it smelled like marijuana, which Johnson says he does not use. Finding no contraband in Johnson’s possession, Johnson says in a court filing, the detective pressured him, by threatening to charge him with money laundering, into signing a “disclaimer of ownership” form for the currency. The next day, Johnson returned to North Carolina with neither his money nor a truck.

Under Arizona law, the state bore the burden of proving by “clear and convincing evidence” that Johnson’s money was connected to criminal activity. A court agreed — briefly — that the money was his. The next day, however, the court treated Johnson’s behavioral conformity with a drug courier’s profile (never mind the absence of drugs or any other evidence of criminality) as nullifying his ownership claim.

The court found that the detectives had “probable cause” to seize the cash, and the court, in a patent legal mistake, treated this “probable cause” as a substitute for “clear and convincing evidence” of the money’s involvement in criminality. The seizure supposedly vitiated his argument for ownership, which was: If the cash is not my money, whose is it? I possessed it, no one else has claimed it, and the state has not offered any evidence suggesting anyone else’s ownership.

This should have obliterated Arizona’s entirely circumstantial case. Instead, the state clung to his cash by substituting mere “probable cause” for the more rigorous requirement of assembling “clear and convincing” evidence against his ownership claim.

Arizona’s complaint for forfeiture contains only one factual assertion: He “had” the cash when it was seized. The rest is a tissue of bald assertions about “indicia of criminal activity” suggesting that the cash had been, or was intended to be, used in criminality.

As a young man, Johnson, now 46, paid the price of breaking the law. Today, Arizona hopes to profit from breaking with the presumption of innocence, shrugging off government’s burden of proof, and instead requiring Johnson to prove his innocent ownership of his property.

Thanks to a successful appeal in May from the Institute for Justice, the state will have to do more than just infer that Johnson might have been involved in drug smuggling. Almost everyone ever incarcerated returns to society and remains, like Johnson, susceptible to extrajudicial punishment: An ineradicable stigma that can trigger the sort of treatment Johnson is experiencing in his ongoing quest to regain possession of his property, and to get on with his admirably reconstructed life.

One of his trucks has been driven more than a million miles. Because the nation has a stake in his struggle for the rule of law against lawless civil forfeiture, it should rejoice that he, like the truck, is in this for the long haul.