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Tag: politics

  • Crime is/isn’t up!

    Jarret Murphy over at City Limitspoints out that crime has increased plenty of times in NYC in the past 15 years. And nobody really raised an alarm. This year it’s not even clear that crime is up, despite news accounts saying so. So there’s this a narrative of crime being out of control: Murders are up 5 percent!!! (Maybe a bit more after a bloody weekend.) But 5 percent is pretty statistically minor. And we are coming off a record low year.

    Do you remember the bloody year of 1999? I don’t. But the FBI says the number of murders in New York City rose 6 percent that year. How about scary 2006, when the number of killings jumped 10.6 percent? Do you recall the fear with which we all tiptoed through 2008, when the city saw a 5 percent rise in slayings? Don’t get that mixed up with 2010, when the city reported a 14 percent increase in murders.

    Somehow, “Bloody Ninety-Nine” didn’t smudge Rudy Giuliani’s reputation as America’s greatest crimefighter. Nor did the four increases in the annual murder count during Michael Bloomberg’s 12 years in office dent his image as a cool and competent manager. In fact, none of these significant spikes in bloodshed triggered the kind of public concern about crime now gripping columnists and some elected officials.

    …

    Indeed, if de Blasio is guilty of politicizing the actual crime statistics, it’s mainly because his opponents are guilty of politicizing the imaginary crime stats they derive from news headlines, gut instinct and their pre-written narrative that de Blasio is really just John Lindsay standing on his tip-toes.

    Maybe it’s good we’ve become less tolerant of crime increases. And maybe the sky will start to fall. But it’s not falling yet.

  • As Reagan said…

    I’m going to attribute this to Ronald Reagan so cops will agree with it. Reagan invented compassionate conservatives, right? (Even if he didn’t coin the phrase.) Unlike Obama, Reagan was willing to speak the truth. Liberals just blame everybody else. But Reagan would blame bad parents for messing up their kids. Reagan would call out absent fathers. Reagan knew too many people were dealing drugs. It takes somebody who supports police to say you shouldn’t blame police officers when we send them in to do society’s dirty work of containing these people. And only a great leader would say we need to pay attention to these problems not just when fools burn a drug store or police kill somebody. That’s how I remember him. It went something like this:

    If you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty; they’ve got parents — often because of substance-abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves — can’t do right by their kids; if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead, than they go to college. In communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community, and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks — in those environments, if we think that we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem. And we’ll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets, and everybody will feign concern until it goes away, and then we go about our business as usual.

    …

    But if we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could. It’s just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant — and that we don’t just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don’t just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped. We’re paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids, and we think they’re important. And they shouldn’t be living in poverty and violence.

    It takes that Morning-in-America-Again vision. If only liberals like Obama could understand stuff like this, things cops have always known.

  • “At Supreme Court, Eric Holder’s Justice Dept. Routinely Backs Officers’ Use of Force”

    This New York Times story is interesting. And these facts (which were new to me) are unknown or ignored by conservative police officers, who have somehow decided that the DOJ hates cops.

    [hat tip to a reader]

  • It’s a Dirty Job…

    I’ve always been a big fan of Mike Rowe and his TV show, “Dirty Jobs” (now on a different channel and called, “Somebody’s Gotta Do It”).

    Here Rowe talks about recent police events. As always, he approaches issues with a certain degree of kindness and empathy. Also, he’s nobody’s fool. (I suspect he would make a very good police officer.) Read the full version. But here’s a part:

    Within moments, everyone was talking about Garner and Brown, and the conversation got very political very quickly. A liberal guest said, ‘Look, I wasn’t there, but it seems pretty clear that both men would still be alive had they been white.’ A conservative guest replied, ‘I wasn’t there either, but it seems pretty clear that both men would still be alive if they hadn’t resisted arrest.’

    This annoyed the liberal, who asked the conservative why Republicans wanted a ‘police state.’ This annoyed the conservative, who asked the liberal why Democrats wanted ‘total anarchy.’ Things continued to escalate, and within moments, fingers were pointing, veins were bulging, and logical fallacies were filling the air. Ho! ho! ho!

    For once, I kept my mouth shut and listened as a roomful of decent people tore each others throats out. It was remarkable, because no one disagreed on the big points. No one disagreed that black lives mattered just as much as white lives. No one disputed that racial bias in law enforcement should be exposed and eliminated. In fact, no one disagreed about the basic facts surrounding each case. The breakdown happened over relevance and context.

    The one thing I’ll add is that I do think there’s great disagreement about the basic facts. Either Michael Brown was fighting to get Officer Wilson’s gun and then charged the cop or Brown had his hands up in surrender and was executed in cold blood. Either Eric Garner was murdered by a cop using a chokehold while Garner was trying to surrender or Garner resisting arrest and died after after physical struggle.

    And the other one thing I’ll add is that I’m often in situations where everybody wants to talk to me about recent events. I’ve been forced to say, “Can we please talk about something else?” Maybe I can just hand out Rowe’s article and get another drink.

    And the final one thing I have to say is that it’s actually not often that I or you will be in room with divergent views. Holiday parties are one of the few events that bring together people of different political persuasions.

    Happy New Year!

  • Blue Flu (II): Arrest “only when you need to”

    Conor Friedersdorf has a excellent piece in The Atlantic, “The NYPD’s Insubordination—and Why the Right Should Oppose It.” [And just for the record I did scoop the New York Post, albeit only be a few hours.] There’s lot here that doesn’t fit in our normal political divide. And I love that cognitive dissonance!

    You’ve got union blue-collar workers, and the left that hate them. You’ve got union blue-collar workers, and the right says that says they can do no wrong. You’ve got an elected mayor cops (many non-residents) are saying doesn’t represent the people of New York City (De-legitimize the mayor — even though De Blasio got more votes than Bloomberg ever did). And you’ve a police union that other unions (mine included) do not like and insist is not a real union (de-legitimize the workers’ voice). You’ve got some cops who would love to see crime go up, just to prove their anti-liberal political point. And these same cops aren’t working too hard in the name of safety. Even though the worst thing for cop safety would be an increase in crime.

    I love it when my head hurts!

    And then you’ve got the Zero Tolerance vs. Broken Windows angle. This is important and will probably get lost in the shuffle. But right now the police are doing exactly what opponents of police (though they would prefer to be known as supporters of police reform…) have been advocating for years: having police do less. Because if you see police as overly aggressive tools (or, more extremely, state-sponsored tools of oppression) who do more harm than good, you welcome a police slowdown. If you think police have little or nothing to do with crime — and many academics, generally those who hate Broken Windows, still believe this (it all goes back to root causes and society) — there’s no downside to fewer arrests and tickets. (Though I don’t want to be too dismissive about fewer arrests and tickets. I’m all for police discretion and more informal enforcement of public order.)

    A lot of what the NYPD has been doing the past decade or so is Zero Tolerance: write tickets, stop people, arrest people, no discretion. A lot of what police need to do is Broken Windows: problem solve, identify quality of life issues, reduce public fear, maintain public order, cite and arrest as a last resort.

    If you, like me, think police matter, then you want the good without the bad. It’s not easy, but it’s certainly possible. You want police maintaining public order without stopping people without good causes. You want police discretion without police quotas (also known as “productivity goals”). You actually don’t care so much about response time and are more interested in anything that gets police out of cars and dealing with the public — good people and criminals alike.

    So if cops stop making arrests that aren’t absolutely necessary. That’s fine with me. Arrests should never be a measure of police productivity! But if police stop policing…. well, that would be bad.

    From Friedersdorf’s piece, here’s Scott Shackford from Reason.com:

    Well, we can only hope the NYPD unions and de Blasio settle their differences soon so that the police can go back to arresting people for reasons other than “when they have to.” The NYPD’s failure to arrest and cite people will also end up costing the city huge amounts of money that it won’t be able to seize from its citizens, which is likely the real point. That’s the “punishment” for the de Blasio administration for not supporting them. One has to wonder if they even understand, or care, that their “work stoppage” is giving police state critics exactly what they want– less harsh enforcement of the city’s laws.

    And here is Friedersdorf’s take on that:

    That’s how some policing reformers see it. Others, like me, don’t object to strictly enforcing laws against, say, public urination, traffic violations, or illegal parking, but would love it if the NYPD stopped frisking innocents without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, needlessly escalating encounters with civilians, and (especially) killing unarmed people, goals that are perfectly compatible with data-driven policing that targets actual disorder. Keep squeegee men at bay–and leave innocent black and Hispanic men alone.

    That last sentence there is good. And Friedersdorf concludes (read the whole thing):

    The right should greet [pro-police rallies] with the skepticism they’d typically summon for a rally on behalf of government workers as they seek higher pay, new work rules, and more generous benefits. What’s unfolding in New York City is, at its core, a public-employee union using overheated rhetoric and emotional appeals to rile public employees into insubordination. The implied threat to the city’s elected leadership and electorate is clear: cede leverage to the police in the course of negotiating labor agreements or risk an armed, organized army rebelling against civilian control. Such tactics would infuriate the right if deployed by any bureaucracy save law enforcement opposing a left-of-center mayor.

    It ought to infuriate them now. Instead, too many are permitting themselves to be baited into viewing discord in New York City through the distorting lens of the culture war, so much so that Al Sharpton’s name keeps coming up as if he’s at the center of all this. Poppycock. Credit savvy police union misdirection. They’re turning conservatives into their useful idiots. If the NYPD succeeds in bullying De Blasio into submission, the most likely consequence will be a labor contract that cedes too much to union negotiators, whether unsustainable pensions of the sort that plague local finances all over the U.S., work rules that prevent police commanders from running the department efficiently, or arbitration rules that prevent the worst cops from being fired. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton will be fine no matter what happens. Will the law-and-order right remain blinded by tribalism or grasp the real stakes before it’s too late? Look to National Review and City Journal before laying odds.

  • Police Shooting Kids

    Here I am on NPR’s “Morning Edition” flapping my mouth about the shooting of Tamir Rice (Cleveland kid killed by police while holding a realistic-looking BB gun):

    [Moskos] says mayors everywhere walk a tightrope between police and citizen outrage. He says the public needs to get more realistic about how the police work. And police need to be less tone deaf to how their actions can inflame the public. The fundamental challenge for mayors, Moskos says, is a willingness to make big changes when police shootings aren’t warranted.

    This also applies to NYC, by the way. But I really don’t like hearing myself speak (seriously, I think my voice is kind of high and nasal). The voice I liked hearing came from the Cleveland mayor:

    I do not want children to die at the hand of police officers. But at the same time, I don’t want a policeman killed on the street because he was hesitating because he didn’t know if he was going to be sued or fired. So I don’t want that either.

    Who’s got a problem with that? [And yet I bet you — and I really have no idea about him or Cleveland — but I bet you that most Cleveland cops hate their mayor. Why? Because he’s a liberal black mayor of Cleveland. But I really have no idea if he’s hated, liberal, or even black. I can’t even guarantee he’s he mayor.] Now I was pretty clear about what I thought about the shooting of Tamir Rice (good shooting in the legal sense; horrible and shameful shooting in the I-live-in-America sense).

    So if I had one word for police officers, who, for good reason, feel they need to defend officers in these situations (hell, I do), at least be enough of a human being to admit the obvious: “You know what, it’s really horrible that a 12-year-old kid holding a non-lethal gun got shot and killed in America.”

    Just say what you’re feeling. It would go a long way. And it’s not anti-police to feel a bit for a 12-year-old shot dead by police.

    And to those who can’t fathom how police could shoot and kill a 12-year-kid, consider that this kid was holding a fucking gun! (Or at least something that no reasonable person could distinguish from a real bullet-firing gun.) And then consider of the words of the honorable mayor of Cleveland: “I don’t want a policeman killed on the street because he was hesitating because he didn’t know if he was going to be sued or fired.”

  • NYPD vs. DeBlasio

    Cops turning their back on Mayor DeBlasio.

  • “Bill slanders his cops”

    Heather Mac Donald writing in the Daily News makes some sense.

  • Who do you believe?

    Let me start by saying we’ll never know for certain what happened when Officer Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown.

    [Update: but we not do have a much better idea based on a DOJ report.]

    No. Seriously. Think about it. You don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened. So whatever you think, whatever I think… the only thing I can guarantee is that it’s probably not true.

    And this is the problem I have with these situations. Nobody knows what happened, but everybody fills in their ideological world view. “Racist cop shot a black kid down for no reason” vs. “cop attacked by vicious criminal defends himself.”

    Now there are other issues, very real and serious issues related to injustice in America in general. I’m talking about 2.3 million prisoners. And in suburban St. Louis in particular I’m talking about towns that seem to exist largely for the feudal financial purpose of exploiting the residents who live there. I’m talking about towns — majority black, mostly — that bring in 30, 50, 70 percent of their budged on municipal and police issued fines. This is wrong. But those issues don’t actually directly concern the reality of what happened with Police Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael “Big Mike” Brown.

    [But boy would it be nice if we could seriously address and rectify the problems in America without some violent spark? But we as a country don’t seem capable of that.]

    Back to the shooting. Now that we’ve admitted that we don’t know exactly what happened and we never will, let’s stop being so righteous, smug, or disparaging of those who don’t have your same world-view.

    So now let’s get to what we do know.

    When the shooting first happened, I was presented a liberal narrative by a TV producer who stated that an “another innocent black kid, college bound, was walking down the street when he was stopped by police and shot while he was surrendering while his hands were in the air.”

    I responded, “I don’t believe that, but go on.”

    Today we know that narrative I was first presented with wasn’t true. Some say that doesn’t matter. I think it does. If you want a martyred victim, pick a better martyr (and I hate to say it, but there are plenty: Ayers and Diallo jump to mind.)

    Dorian Johnson wasn’t the only witness, but he was there. And since Michael Brown is dead, he’s the only one with a front row seat other than the cop who killed Brown. So Johnson is a pretty good source to have. But Dorian’s version of what happened has changed. I think that matters. If you don’t tell the truth the first time, I’m much less willing to believe you the second time.

    When I was a cop and would ask somebody’s name and date of birth after I pulled them over for some traffic violation, often they would have no ID. Maybe, just maybe, they actually did just forget their valid license. Maybe. Once in a blue moon it happened. I wouldn’t have a problem with that. So I would call in their name and date of birth. And wait. And then nothing would come back. They were not in Maryland’s DMV system. So then they would try again and tell me a second name and/or date of birth. Like I was supposed to believe them the second time? Moskos don’t play that game.

    Anyway, they would get locked up for a violation and failure to have ID. But they were really locked up because they committed a traffic violation, and I couldn’t write them a ticket because I had no idea who they were. And they lied to me about that. CBIF (jail) could sort out their ID. Not my problem. I had other calls to answer.

    Anyway, when Brown was killed many people bought the only narrative then at first presented: college-bound angel shot by racist cop for no reason. Many still do. And it might be true… but it probably isn’t. There actually is evidence that shows this narrative isn’t true. And then of course the narrative changes to match the new evidence. But, like I said, Moskos don’t play that game.

    So we have two narratives. And for the record I have not yet read all the testimony, but I have read all the testimony of Officer Darren Wilson and Dorian Johnson. Have you?

    So here is what they agree on.

    [Before I get into all of this let me say that we also know that the Ferguson Police Department handled this and pretty much everything after this just about as horribly as as police department could. Why didn’t they say anything? Why didn’t they make any attempt to control the narrative? Even if they don’t have a PR person, don’t they at least have friggin’ lawyer?! Why couldn’t they get a crime lab there faster? Why didn’t they handle the valid feelings of outrage more responsibly? Why didn’t they do anything right?! But that is all for another post.]

    1) Johnson and Michael Brown go to a corner store and Brown steals a bunch of 79-cent Cigarillos. These are “blunts” used to smoke marijuana in. This is an unarmed robbery. A yoking, as they say in Baltimore. Now Brown is dead so we don’t actually know this, but Johnson claims he wasn’t expecting this. Maybe he wasn’t. But he doesn’t seem to think it’s a huge deal. He stays with Brown as they walk away.

    2) Walking in the middle of the street, they get stopped by Officer Wilson. By all accounts he curses at the two of them. (Though Johnson says Wilson starts with saying “fuck” and Wilson says he doesn’t till “fuck” till a bit later. Whatever. I’ve seen a lot of cops yell at people in the ghetto walking in the street, and it often involves the police cursing.)

    Officer Wilson tells them to get on the sidewalk. They don’t. For some weird reason they ignore the police officer’s request to not walk in the middle of the street.

    3) Wilson backs up his police vehicle to block/confront them. This quickly escalates into a struggle between Wilson and Brown. But the nature of this struggle is in dispute. Johnson says Brown is trying to get away and being held by Wilson. Wilson says Brown is attacking him in his police car.

    4) Brown, for some reason, is still holding the stolen Cigarillos in his hand and passes them to Johnson.

    5) Brown gets shot at by Wilson while Brown is still at the car.

    6) Brown and Johnson run away, Wilson pursues. Brown gets shot at again.

    7) Brown is shot many times and dies. His body lays in the street far too long.

    Those facts are not in dispute. Much of the rest is. Johnson says Wilson treated them disrespectfully by almost backing into them with Wilson’s marked police vehicle after Johnson and Brown disobeyed Wilson’s order to get on the sidewalk. (Though like Rashomon, much of their seemingly contradictory views can actually be mutually possible… but now I’m getting too deep).

    So now it comes down to who you believe. Yes, I tend to believe police officers because I worked with police officers who told the truth (“within the bounds of reason,” as H.L. Mencken said). This is hard for many people to believe. It’s like people project their own shadiness on police. Lying gets you fired (if you get caught). But the average cop is more honest than the average student or professor.

    So I basically believe Officer Wilson because based on my experience, my training, and my having been a police officer, what he says basically rings true. Now you may think he’s a lying bastard — and you may be right — but, well, I doubt it.

    I’m going to tell you why you should believe Officer Wilson over Dorian Johnson. And yes, this involves relativism, character judgment, moral subjectivity, and all that. But seriously, we’re talking about trust and honesty.

    Here’s what we know about Dorian Johnson, based on his own testimony.

    Dorian grew up around violence and has been shot. I don’t know why. That’s neither here nor there. I’m just putting it out there because that’s a major life event.

    Now he’s got a serious girlfriend and a kid and shares a two bedroom apartment. He wakes up around 7 – 7:30am (much earlier than I do, I should add).

    This is his typical morning:

    I start my morning, I wake up, I take a shower, and ask my girl does she like breakfast, what would she like for breakfast. I head out to go get it. Upon getting breakfast I get me some Cigarillos. I smoke marijuana in my morning when I start my day off, so I was going headed to the store.

    Dorian, to put it mildly, is “not real pressed on time.” “Because like I said, I was still on the verge of looking for new work.”

    So he’s like a Shaggywho can’t cook. I’m not judging. I have no problem with that lifestyle. Seriously. Honestly I’m kind of jealous. To each his own.

    So he goes out in his pajama shorts to buy his girl breakfast and meets up with Big Mike. They decide to “match” (“it is just smoking together basically”). OK.

    They got to a store and Big Mike, to Dorian’s surprise, robs the store. By now it’s close to noon and, can I just mention it’s five hours later and while he says he’s still not stoned he still hasn’t gotten his girlfriend’s breakfast!

    Here’s an interesting exchange with the grand jury:

    Q: Again, I’m not judging you, but somebody just stole something?

    A: Right.

    Q: On the video that we watched, he grabbed ahold of the man?

    A: Right.

    Q: He said something to him and he lunged at him, OK, you are walking down the street?

    A: Yes, Ma’am.

    Q: The police tell you to “get the fuck on the sidewalk”?

    A: Correct.

    Q: And you say “I’m almost home.” You are thinking to yourself we are not doing anything wrong, didn’t you? Somebody did just do something wrong, so that still begs the question why you did not listen to the police?

    Dorian doesn’t really answer that one, but goes on to say they weren’t stressed because he didn’t think they were being stopped for the robbery. See in the criminal’s mind, you’re only dirty while committing the criminal act. In the cop’s mind, the criminal is always dirty.

    So on one hand we have a police officer with a good record and a believable story. He also has evidence of being attacked that fully supports his version of the story .

    On the other hand we have a stoned if charming unemployed slacker who willingly hangs out with a guy who just robbed a store and then ignore a reasonably lawful order from a police officer. Also, he told his girl he’s getting breakfast but failed at this rather simple goal. Also, he seems to see nothing particularly odd with his life style choices.

    Look there is a chance that Johnson’s version of events is true. But really? Odds are slim. There is contradictory evidence. There is strong evidence that Michael Brown did punch Officer Wilson. There is strong evidence that Michael Brown was partially in the police car when Wilson shot him. There is strong evidence that Brown’s hands were not hands-up in surrender when he was shot. Now you can believe what you want. But the factual evidence we have really is, as they say, “consistent with” Wilson’s testimony.

    So no, I don’t believe Johnson’s version that Officer Wilson — unthreatened except for his ego — fought to hold Brown close to himself, and then shot Brown for no reason, and then chased Brown down and killed him.

    Why would you think that is true unless your world view that says society is unjust and all cops are cold-blooded racists?

    I think it’s much more likely that, as Wilson testified, Wilson realized he was dealing with a guy who just robbed a store, Wilson was attacked by said robber, Wilson fought for his life, and Wilson won. It’s happened before.

    So what I’m saying is I don’t know what happened, but it is totally possible that Officer Wilson is a good police officer who, while doing his job, was threatened by a man who did indeed attack him, and reacted accordingly. Why is it so inconceivable that a criminal who just committed a crime would attack a police officer? Is that less likely that a cop killing a black man for no reason? If so, the world really has gone mad.

    Who do you believe?

    I remember late one night I pulled over a respectable middle-aged black woman over because her head lights were not on. She called me racist and then called 911 saying she was being harassed and threatened by a cop: me. She was convinced her head lights were on (her parking lights were on). But they weren’t. Had they been, I wouldn’t have pulled her over. I wasn’t even planning on giving her a ticket (but I had to once she complained, which is a whole other story). Anyway, the call comes out for a cop harassing a driver on Broadway. My sergeant comes over to figure things out. He deals with the situation.

    So it goes to traffic court. I’m there. She’s there. And she’s looking as middle-class church-going 50-year-old hat-wearing respectable as any woman can. I give the boilerplate summary of a traffic stop. She calmly tells a story about how her lights were on and she knew it and she has no idea why she was pulled over by a racist cop. The judge wakes up, because this isn’t normal for traffic court. He asks if I have anything to add. I do. I tell him this was the oddest traffic stop I even had. I go on a bit more, but it comes down to this: I say her headlights were not on; she says they were. I’m sure as snow that that woman believed she was right (after all, she could see the lights on her dashboard). But her headlights were not on.

    It was literally he-said she-said. Now the judge wasn’t there when I stopped her. He couldn’t know for sure. But he believed me. He paused for a moment and actually banged his gavel (not well used in traffic court) and said, “guilty.” I thanked him. She huffed off.

    This is the way our justice system works. We need to believe the word of police officers over the word of criminals. (Or else we need to get rid of police). My word as a police officer was trusted over an honest woman because I was a paid civil servant sworn under oath to uphold the law and constitution. Now you may not believe me. But the judge did. As he should.

    So in the Darren Wilson case the grand jury did not believe there was probably cause to indict the officer. And they were right. Or at least read more testimony than I did before you disagree.

    [Admittedly, the questioning in the testimony wasn’t very aggressive. But then while it may be rare a grand jury doesn’t indict, it’s also even rarer that a grand jury deals with an innocent person! So despite the softball nature of the grand jury, evidence was presented. And, unlike at a trial, and you only needed 9 of 12 to bring charges. They didn’t get that. Why? Because and — do consider at least this possibility that this may be true — Darren Wilson might, just might be a police officer who was doing his job and had to protect his own life.]

    This is where cops and conservatives think Ferguson protesters are crazy. Now *I* don’t think that. Because I think there are lots things worth protesting about in this country. It’s how we make a better country. And there is injustice in America! I even wrote a book about racial injustice and incarceration (no, not Cop in the Hood. In Defense of Flogging is the one you didn’t buy)!

    But none of that means Darren Wilson is guilty of anything. As I said, we don’t know for sure what happened and we probably never will. But do we as society — or do you, individually — really believe Dorian Johnson’s version more than Police Officer Darren Wilson’s?

  • “Why we need to fix St. Louis County”

    Well said by Radley Balko in the Washington Post:

    When a local government’s very existence depends on its citizens breaking the law — when fines from ordinance violations are written into city budgets for the upcoming year as a primary or even the main expected source of revenue — the relationship between the government and the governed is not one of public officials serving their constituents, but of preying off of them.

    When the primary mission of a police department isn’t to protect citizens but to extract money from them, and when the cops themselves don’t look like, live near or have much in common with the people from whom they’re extracting that money, you get cops who start to see the people they’re supposed to be serving not as citizens with rights, but as potential sources of revenue, as lawbreakers to be caught. The residents of these towns then see cops not as public servants drawn from their own community to enforce the laws and keep the peace, but as outsiders brought in to harass them, whose salaries are drawn from that harassment. The same goes for the judges and prosecutors, who also rarely live in the towns that employ them.

    …

    This isn’t as much about a police shooting as it is about the release of residual anger over an antagonistic system of governing that virtually requires its poorest citizens to live in misery and despair.

    …

    If Bel-Ridge wasn’t collecting the equivalent of $450 in fines each year for each of the town’s residents, the town of Bel-Ridge probably wouldn’t exist.

    …

    This is what St. Louis County government is built upon. And this is what needs to be changed.

    When I was a cop, I knew my ticket money went to the city. Hell, I was happy to help Baltimore. But I never felt that my job depended on me fining residents.

    New York City gets about $500 million annually from parking tickets, which is the biggest chunk of about $820 million overall in fines. New York’s overall budget is about $70 billion. So we’re talking one to two percent of the city’s budget coming from fines. I don’t know about court fees, but I doubt they’re a money maker for the city.

    I don’t think a big-city perspective really gets at what is going on in these small towns where government seems to exist for the sole purpose of taking money from residents: “Pine Lawn, with an embattled mayor facing federal charges of steering towing jobs to a particular company, brought in close to 70 percent through its courts last year. At least four other St. Louis County municipalities — Beverly Hills, Bella Villa, Calverton Park and Cool Valley — all took in more than half their general revenue that way, according to reports submitted to the state.” And “It’s illegal: “The city of Bourbon was breaking state law. Under Missouri law, a city is only supposed to make 30 percent of its revenue off tickets.”

    Thirty, 40, 70 percent of budgets comes from fines and court fees? Mandatory private garbage collection? Per person occupancy permits? It sounds like a straight-up criminal racket, and one enforced by police and the courts.