DOJ: Ferguson PD descrimination against blacks is routine

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think that is missing the point slightly

No, it doesn't. Not voting is approving the current system. And I've seen nobody put forward voting as the only means of effecting change. It is part of the solution.

 

[jimbob]

RedState: Many Conservatives are Blowing it on the Ferguson DOJ Report

This article mirrors much of the arguments made in this thread (and maybe the other one, in case I'm confusing them again):



The author then breaks the article down into five conclusions:

1. The Ferguson Police Department acts almost exclusively as a revenue generation machine for the city.
2. The Ferguson PD Habitually Uses Excessive Force
3. The Ferguson PD has Utterly Failed to Supervise its Officers’ Use of Force
4. The Ferguson PD Systematically Punishes Residents of Ferguson for ‘Contempt of Cop’
5. The Evidence of Racial Bias in the Administration of Justice in Ferguson is Overwhelming

The author then starts his summary with:


This is as fair as of a summary of the DOJ report as I think there can be.

From that story:

I took the time over the weekend to read the entirety of the 102-page Department of Justice report on the Ferguson PD (“FPD”). I cannot recommend highly enough that you do the same. During the course of this reading, I intentionally read it with as jaundiced of an eye towards the Department of Justice as possible. I intentionally disregarded all commentary regarding what the DOJ investigators reported that they saw, and also all of their reported interviews of the citizens of Ferguson and FPD officers. I decided to say to myself, let’s assume that everything DOJ says is a lie, and also that everyone who was willing to talk to the DOJ during the course of their investigation either lied or shaded the truth. What remained astounded me.

Even if you read only the parts of the Ferguson DOJ report that come directly from the files of the FPD (which is to say, files that would be most favorable to the Department), the report paints an incredibly damning picture of the Ferguson Police Department. No conservative on earth should feel comfortable with the way the Ferguson PD has been operating for years, even according to their own documents.

Indeed, the most parsimonious interpretation is still shocking. I had hoped to get that across in some of my extracts from the report.

I am singularly unimpressed with the argument that the report should be dismissed because it is the product of the Holder DOJ’s dissatisfaction at the resolution of the Michael Brown case. The implicit admission in such an argument is that many police departments are worse; if so, the proper response is not to excuse the Ferguson PD but rather to acknowledge that there are, in fact, systemic problems that exist on a widespread basis that should also be solved.

That argument has been made here, and I was equally unimpressed.

All the things documented are hardly unique to Ferguson, and I'm just not seeing evidence that the policies are aimed at blacks or other minorities. Go to all-white areas in other parts of the country and you'll find the same crap. I've always been concerned with excessive fines, the charging of court fees to contest a case that exceed the fine, civil forfeiture laws, and all the other abuses of power. But fixing this in Ferguson only would be perverse, while other cities from Maine to California are doing the same thing. It reeks of scapegoating and grandstanding for purely political reasons.
It's also the inevitable result of the "war on drugs" which is 100% supported by Holder, Obama, and a good chunk of the people outraged over the practices in Ferguson. If these things really concern them they would be pushing for a major reform of the drug laws, but IMHO this is all just grandstanding political asshattery.

The first highlighted part. Policies don't need to be discriminatory if there are inadequate safeguards and racists are allowed to act against people within their own discretion.

The second highlighted bit. Why would it be perverse to fix something that is clearly wrong? Also what is so wrong with "political motivations". There is nothing wrong with that in the correct place.

I don't agree that this is a consequence of the war on drugs, as contraband was more likely to be found in searched cars driven by whites than by blacks.

Despite being searched at higher rates, African Americans are 26% less likely to have contraband found on them than whites: 24% of searches of African Americans resulted in a contraband finding, whereas 30% of searches of whites resulted in a contraband finding. This disparity exists even after controlling for the type of search conducted, whether a search incident to arrest, a consent search, or a search predicated on reasonable suspicion. The lower rate at which officers find contraband when searching African Americans indicates either that officers’ suspicion of criminal wrongdoing is less likely to be accurate when interacting with African Americans or that officers are more likely to search African Americans without any suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. Either explanation suggests bias, whether explicit or implicit.40 This lower hit rate for African Americans also underscores that this disparate enforcement practice is ineffective.

These disparities in the outcomes that result from traffic stops remain even after regression analysis is used to control for non-race-based variables, including driver age; gender; the assignment of the officer making the stop; disparities in officer behavior; and the stated reason the stop was initiated. Upon accounting for differences in those variables, African Americans remained 2.07 times more likely to be searched; 2.00 times more likely to receive a citation; and 2.37 times more likely to be arrested than other stopped individuals. Each of these disparities is statistically significant and would occur by chance less than one time in 1,000.42 The odds of these disparities occurring by chance together are significantly lower still

Indeed, controlling for other factors, the disparity in speeding tickets between African Americans and non-African Americans is 48% larger when citations are issued not on the basis of radar or laser, but by some other method, such as the officer’s own visual assessment. This difference is statistically significant.

I suppose blacks might just be more likely to speed in front of a police car without a speedgun?

What would you consider evidence of discrimination?

How about this?

During our investigation, FPD officials told us that their police tactics are responsive to the scenario at hand. But records suggest that, where a suspect or group of suspects is white, FPD applies a different calculus, typically resulting in a more measured law enforcement response. In one 2012 incident, for example, officers reported responding to a fight in progress at a local bar that involved white suspects. Officers reported encountering “40-50 people actively fighting, throwing bottles and glasses, as well as chairs.” The report noted that “one subject had his ear bitten off.” While the responding officers reported using force, they only used “minimal baton and flashlight strikes as well as fists, muscling techniques and knee strikes.” While the report states that “due to the amount of subjects fighting, no physical arrests were possible,” it notes also that four subjects were brought to the station for “safekeeping.” While we have found other evidence that FPD later issued a wanted for two individuals as a result of the incident, FPD’s response stands in stark contrast to the actions officers describe taking in many incidents involving black suspects, some of which we earlier described.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

I don't think anyone is saying that.

Bull-***********-****. That's just about all you've been doing. You've been overtly blaming the situation in Ferguson on the locals' failure to vote the problem out. You're putting nearly the entire responsibility for these illegal actions against the residents of Ferguson on the residents themselves. If that's not a claim of "deserved what they got" and victim-blaming, I don't know what is.

If the words you're posting here don't actually represent the idea that you're attempting to communicate, that may indicate a serious problem on your part that you may wish to correct in the future.

 

[jimbob]

No, it doesn't. Not voting is approving the current system. And I've seen nobody put forward voting as the only means of effecting change. It is part of the solution.

Maybe it wes the other thread, but some peoplehad come pretty close to it.

It is also easier to actually work as an elected councilor if one can fit it round one's dayjob.

$250 a month might be worth more to someone on a low wage, but it also has a lack of security, and there are plenty of low-paid jobs where it could be difficult to attend council meeting.

There are plenty of good reasons why the local population might not have a candidate they'd want in the first place.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Maybe it wes the other thread, but some peoplehad come pretty close to it.

It is also easier to actually work as an elected councilor if one can fit it round one's dayjob.

$250 a month might be worth more to someone on a low wage, but it also has a lack of security, and there are plenty of low-paid jobs where it could be difficult to attend council meeting.

There are plenty of good reasons why the local population might not have a candidate they'd want in the first place.

Lot's of good reasons to not do the right thing, of course.

 

[jimbob]

Lot's of good reasons to not do the right thing, of course.

It's easier to do the right thing if you have a financial cushion, a professional job giving you the flexibility to take on the councilor's role and the confidence and experience to work in committees and a not a hard manual job with long, irregular hours.

If you have spent your life avoiding authority figures because they *were* out to get you, it would also be hard to put your head up above the parapet.

It isn't a stretch to imagine the FPD would have metaphorically (and maybe literally) stamped on someone black who decided to stand against one of the clique running the municipality. I am not saying that would actually happen, but that it would be a reasonable reason for someone to not want to stand.

Local politics can be poisonous.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

More good reasons.

 

[ponderingturtle]

RedState: Many Conservatives are Blowing it on the Ferguson DOJ Report

This article mirrors much of the arguments made in this thread (and maybe the other one, in case I'm confusing them again):



The author then breaks the article down into five conclusions:

1. The Ferguson Police Department acts almost exclusively as a revenue generation machine for the city.
2. The Ferguson PD Habitually Uses Excessive Force
3. The Ferguson PD has Utterly Failed to Supervise its Officers’ Use of Force
4. The Ferguson PD Systematically Punishes Residents of Ferguson for ‘Contempt of Cop’
5. The Evidence of Racial Bias in the Administration of Justice in Ferguson is Overwhelming

The author then starts his summary with:


This is as fair as of a summary of the DOJ report as I think there can be.

All of those are basic behaviors of all police, and as such we clearly shouldn't bother doing anything about them.

 

[ponderingturtle]

How much effort does it take to vote once every few years?

How accessible do they make the poling places and how long to they keep them open?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

How accessible do they make the poling places and how long to they keep them open?

Have you looked at Ferguson on a map?

 

[newyorkguy]

The voting rate in the U.S. is abysmal not just in Ferguson MO. One of the problems is the primary system and the lack of knowledge people have about local candidates. You can't get excited about someone if you know very little about them. I have trouble finding out much of substance about my local candidates and I vote in every election and primary (Democratic) and have for the past forty years! Often I have had to turn to the local League Of Women Voters to get any kind of substantive information about candidates.

Another problem is the demographic in Ferguson. And I don't mean black, I mean working class. When you're working crazy hours, exhausted all the time, struggling to pay the bills, figuring out where you're going to find the money to buy the kids' new school clothes, get the wheels realigned on your car, take everybody to a movie once in a while, getting yourself interested in local elections can be tough. Been there done that.

It's easier to decide: All of these politicians are bums and none of them are going to make the slightest bit of difference. Why bother wasting my time voting for one of these clowns.

That's probably exactly what a lot of the people in Ferguson think.

 

[Meed]

I don't think anyone is saying that. What is being said is they must take charge. The way to do that is by voting to fix things. It is well within their power and long overdue.

How do you determine if the person you vote for intends to violate your rights?

There's another thread (titled something like "Money in politics is bad mmk?") showing that the political views of voters have little influence on their district Representatives in Congress. This would suggest that the difficulty of enacting change through voting is a nationwide problem, not unique to Ferguson.

I fully agree that the effort should be made to change things through voting (among other methods), but don't act like it's easy. It takes a lot of research and organization and even if your candidates win there's no guarantee they will proceed to do what you wanted them to do.

 

[pgwenthold]

Keep in mind that the "use fines to generate revenue for the town" is an approach commonly used among all police. And if you think about it, it is basically being used as an alternative to taxes.

That's why police pull-over non-locals more than locals. Because they can use those out of towners to bring in money to their town, and every dollar they can bring in by pulling over a speeder from out of state is a dollar they don't have to raise through taxes on the locals.

What happened in Ferguson is that they use black people to that end. Keep taxes low, but just get the money by arresting the black folks.

 

[Upchurch]

Keep in mind that the "use fines to generate revenue for the town" is an approach commonly used among all police.

It's also only one of the five problems Ferguson is having. I suspect the others are not as uncommon as one might hope.

 

[dudalb]

More good reasons.

In the end voting out the public officials responsible Is the only way to really get change.
I don't get why some people here just don;t get that.
Ferguson is proof of that old statement "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".

 

[SezMe]

"Just vote the bums out" has another problem not yet mentioned. Blacks in the south have every reason to believe that no matter how they vote, their vote may well not be counted. Decades (a century?) of disenfranchisement by the PtB surely is one reason for low black turnout.

I'm not arguing that such an attitude is useful, just that it is real.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Just vote the bums out" has another problem not yet mentioned. Blacks in the south have every reason to believe that no matter how they vote, their vote may well not be counted. Decades (a century?) of disenfranchisement by the PtB surely is one reason for low black turnout.

I'm not arguing that such an attitude is useful, just that it is real.

Very good reason.

 

[Upchurch]

In the end voting out the public officials responsible Is the only way to really get change.
I don't get why some people here just don;t get that.
Ferguson is proof of that old statement "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".

Because I'm not sure that merely swapping out the elected officials will be enough. Do you think it is this specific group of people who are the root of the problem.?

 

[Wolrab]

Bull-***********-****. That's just about all you've been doing. You've been overtly blaming the situation in Ferguson on the locals' failure to vote the problem out. You're putting nearly the entire responsibility for these illegal actions against the residents of Ferguson on the residents themselves. If that's not a claim of "deserved what they got" and victim-blaming, I don't know what is.

If the words you're posting here don't actually represent the idea that you're attempting to communicate, that may indicate a serious problem on your part that you may wish to correct in the future.

Just letting the status quo continue while your rights are being violated is the way to go? Okay then.

The DOJ claims all these violations yet just writes a report? Why the hell aren't they prosecuting? I whole heatedly support going after racist cops.

Some are claiming the laws are already on the books to deal with these violations. Vote the people in that will deal with it.

THis thread has blamed blacks are too cowed to vote or that black votes won't get counted, even that blacks can't handle change. That is BS as cities across the country have changed from the old white corrupt machines to new non-white corrupt machines ...cough chicago cough...

Cripes it is a town of 20000. Enough excuses.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Just letting the status quo continue while your rights are being violated is the way to go? Okay then.

The DOJ claims all these violations yet just writes a report? Why the hell aren't they prosecuting? I whole heatedly support going after racist cops.

Some are claiming the laws are already on the books to deal with these violations. Vote the people in that will deal with it.

THis thread has blamed blacks are too cowed to vote or that black votes won't get counted, even that blacks can't handle change. That is BS as cities across the country have changed from the old white corrupt machines to new non-white corrupt machines ...cough chicago cough...

Cripes it is a town of 20000. Enough excuses.

Enough excuses.