Criminal Justice System reform.

[VolStrom]

I think the cops should be scared to violate your rights.

There is no way that a cop should force a citizen to give up their rights due to the implied threat of extreme inconvenience.

What do you consider "extreme inconvenience"? Generally, cops threaten people with arrest to get them to comply with their wishes.

 

[ClearwaterVol]

What do you consider "extreme inconvenience"? Generally, cops threaten people with arrest to get them to comply with their wishes.

The forcing a citizen to wait for backup or K9 etc. If a cop has no probably cause, he should not even be permitted to ask you to consent to a search. At that point, the cop is no longer there to protect rights he is simply trying to get you to give up your rights. No probable cause = a fishing expedition.

 

[VolStrom]

The forcing a citizen to wait for backup or K9 etc. If a cop has no probably cause, he should not even be permitted to ask you to consent to a search. At that point, the cop is no longer there to protect rights he is simply trying to get you to give up your rights. No probable cause = a fishing expedition.

All he has to do is say "I smell marijuana" whether he does or not. The system is stacked in the favor of the police.

 

[FLVOL_79]

We should be able to sue the government for actions that are in error. We should be able to sue them personally for wrongful acts. Judges should also be held personally accountable for wrongful actions.

Pretty sure you can unless you're in the military.

 

[FLVOL_79]

I think releasing a suspects name/mugshot before a trial is concluded, while fun and hilarious for most of us, often does irreparable harm to them especially if found not guilty.

One of my favorite hobbies is crushing the public union in my agency every chance I get and 99.9% of the time I use their own contract against them. I found one of their current leaders was arrested on pedophilia charges 2 years ago but was released after the trial found him innocent. Now his mugshot has been scrubbed but there are plenty of new stories showing his face and his name and not one showing his exoneration. So this will follow this guy forever.

Oh. Wait. What does him being a union matter? One of the union goons at my facility mentioned him and I was like "oh the guy who got arrested for touching kids 2 years ago?!" "That guy"?. That kicked off a frenzy of fresh infighting between dues paying members and leadership and I just kick back and watch.

tl:dr - Suspects should have some confidentiality until trials have concluded. Unions bad.

 

[McDad]

I think releasing a suspects name/mugshot before a trial is concluded, while fun and hilarious for most of us, often does irreparable harm to them especially if found not guilty.

One of my favorite hobbies is crushing the public union in my agency every chance I get and 99.9% of the time I use their own contract against them. I found one of their current leaders was arrested on pedophilia charges 2 years ago but was released after the trial found him innocent. Now his mugshot has been scrubbed but there are plenty of new stories showing his face and his name and not one showing his exoneration. So this will follow this guy forever.

Oh. Wait. What does him being a union matter? One of the union goons at my facility mentioned him and I was like "oh the guy who got arrested for touching kids 2 years ago?!" "That guy"?. That kicked off a frenzy of fresh infighting between dues paying members and leadership and I just kick back and watch.

tl:dr - Suspects should have some confidentiality until trials have concluded. Unions bad.

Agree with your tl;dr

 

[NurseGoodVol]

I've heard that rumor, too.

Has that been proven afayk?

They can be trained to do anything. False signaling or to bite someone’s crotch during non compliance.
My best friend in Michigans husband was a canine officer and he demonstrated the false alert with a hand signal. Nero promptly sat down. At that point me being the independent I am asked how is it ok to have a dog false alert? I was kinda annoyed he would ask his dog to lie to search a car. It is joked about in police circles as it’s no big deal. I personally thought it was quite shady.

 

[McDad]

They can be trained to do anything. False signaling or to bite someone’s crotch during non compliance.
My best friend in Michigans husband was a canine officer and he demonstrated the false alert with a hand signal. Nero promptly sat down. At that point me being the independent I am asked how is it ok to have a dog false alert? I was kinda annoyed he would ask his dog to lie to search a car. It is joked about in police circles as it’s no big deal. I personally thought it was quite shady.

That's despicable.

@RockyTop85 @ClearwaterVol
Is a dog alerting admissible in court?

 

[RockyTop85]

Ok. So let's tinker with the hypothetical. Since there is no skirting the ambiguous and discretionary phrases in a ruling like this. should the police force be required to compensate someone for their time wasted?

Ex: Let's say my recovered theft vehicle was impounded and searched while I was detained for 8 hours with nothing found. I should expect a check for 8 hours x some rate to compensate me for my time. Yes?

I think we could apply something like a negligence standard for compensatory damages and maybe an intentionality standard for punitive damages. Basically, the best outcome from that is probably to put staffing decisions into the hands of people who are detached from the individual officers and who are ruthlessly self-interested and give them a monetary incentive to cut problematic officers. So basically forcing governments to insure officers against claims and let the insurance companies charge a higher premium for certain officers who are deemed more likely to be cowboys. It’s the same system that somewhat works for truck drivers. It’s not perfect but it’s better than what we have.

In your hypo, I don’t know whether you should be able to recover or not. I think it would depend on additional facts. Fining cops for impounding and searching a car that smells like marijuana isn’t really on my list of reform priorities. If the car doesn’t smell and they’re just punishing you for declining to let them search then yeah that would warrant punitive damages, in my opinion.

 

[RockyTop85]

That's despicable.

@RockyTop85 @ClearwaterVol
Is a dog alerting admissible in court?

Yeah. I think I’ve posted a rant on K9’s before. I’ll try to find it.

 

[RockyTop85]

I think the cops should be scared to violate your rights.

There is no way that a cop should force a citizen to give up their rights due to the implied threat of extreme inconvenience.

I agree, but I also see the rationale of QI and think it’s a meritorious concept that has just been taken to ridiculous extremes. Everybody has a line at which we want there to be police who aren’t afraid to act and the law needs to be structured in such a way that when we arrive at that line the police aren’t thinking about the possibility of being sued.

 

[RockyTop85]

That's despicable.

@RockyTop85 @ClearwaterVol
Is a dog alerting admissible in court?

I cleaned this up a bit from a prior post:
FWIW I’ve heard a K9 officer testify that an “alert” for his dog was basically anything you can imagine a dog doing. Eating, drinking, *****ing, and peeing were the only things I saw asked about that he didn’t say couldn’t be alerts. Sitting, jumping, licking, scratching, going rigid, going slack, wagging his tail, stopping whatever he was doing, looking back at the officer, pulling on the leash, letting the leash go slack, and the best one: doing nothing were all among things that were, according to this K9 officer’s sworn testimony, possible “alerts” to the presence of contraband.

This particular German shepherd came bounding out of the car like my dumbassed dog does when he knows we’re about to throw the ball. He went dancing around the car like he’d been couped up in a hot police car all day and wanted to have some fun. Three minutes of exuberant puppy behavior and somewhere in there he alerted. It was complete ********.

If these officers went through the trouble of teaching their dogs to do a false alert, they wasted a lot of time. All they have to do is say the dog alerted and testify that alerts aren’t the same for all dogs. The Judge usually doesn’t know what an alert is.

 

[Rasputin_Vol]

What about crappy DA's that file bogus charges? One of my kids got charged with a drug felony for being in the car with someone that had been buying sudafed to resell at a handsome profit. No evidence against my kid, just in the wrong car at the wrong time. Several thousand dollars and several months later the charges were dropped. As the lawyer said, they hope that everyone asks for judicial diversion so the DA gets a conviction and they never have to go to court.

Well, DA's run on rates of convictions. So the incentive drives their actions. Until conviction rates are not used as a metric, the steeple are going to hold that "L".

 

[MercyPercy]

How can anyone trust law enforcement when they are not only allowed, but trained to lie to you and manipulate you into incriminating yourself, even if you have done nothing wrong.

 

[Wireless1]

What about crappy DA's that file bogus charges? One of my kids got charged with a drug felony for being in the car with someone that had been buying sudafed to resell at a handsome profit. No evidence against my kid, just in the wrong car at the wrong time. Several thousand dollars and several months later the charges were dropped. As the lawyer said, they hope that everyone asks for judicial diversion so the DA gets a conviction and they never have to go to court.

Unfortunately our current legal system is not based on justice or deterrence. It’s about winning convictions and social balance.

 

[Wireless1]

All he has to do is say "I smell marijuana" whether he does or not. The system is stacked in the favor of the police.

Several years ago my son was on the strip with a buddy in a turbo charged VW equipped with a blow off valve. As they went to leave the shell station the turbo blew off and while still in the parking lot a cop stopped them for “shooting” cop has them set on the pavement while he starts the search and calls backup. Finds nothing except 2 Red Bulls in the passenger compartment they get into the hatchback where they find a canvas bag and inside a hard case with a paintball gun without the CO2 cartridge. Aha! To which the buddy replied, “how did we get it back in the case and the bag while you searched the car?” As a Hail Mary the cop smells “weed” call the K9, after two trips around the car with no hits, the buddy tells the cop would never be any drugs in the car because his job required monthly drug tests with the potential for every week. Nearly 2 hours later they are released….all this while 6 block away a homeless druggy was breaking into my daughter’s BFs house. The BF and roommates catch the guy, call the cops, who seem to know the guy and they let him go because he didn’t take anything

 

[Rasputin_Vol]

Several years ago my son was on the strip with a buddy in a turbo charged VW equipped with a blow off valve. As they went to leave the shell station the turbo blew off and while still in the parking lot a cop stopped them for “shooting” cop has them set on the pavement while he starts the search and calls backup. Finds nothing except 2 Red Bulls in the passenger compartment they get into the hatchback where they find a canvas bag and inside a hard case with a paintball gun without the CO2 cartridge. Aha! To which the buddy replied, “how did we get it back in the case and the bag while you searched the car?” As a Hail Mary the cop smells “weed” call the K9, after two trips around the car with no hits, the buddy tells the cop would never be any drugs in the car because his job required monthly drug tests with the potential for every week. Nearly 2 hours later they are released….all this while 6 block away a homeless druggy was breaking into my daughter’s BFs house. The BF and roommates catch the guy, call the cops, who seem to know the guy and they let him go because he didn’t take anything

KPD only arrests UT athletes.

 

[WoodsmanVol]

Yet another example of what type of criminal justice reforming we desperately need, but rightists repeatedly deny.
Prosecutor to release video of death of man in custody