Another casualty of the war on (certain) drugs

Incompetent police and war on drugs legal overreach combine to kill a Florida teen.

Can we stop now and actually be a free society, instead of just claiming to be one?

Via the Agitator

Police misbehavior in Rochester

This story about police misbehavior in Rochester, NY nicely illustrates the broader danger associated with having so many laws, many of them mutually inconsistent, that everyone is breaking the law all the time. In that situation, whenever the authorities, at whatever level, decide to misbehave like the police in Rochester do in this story, it is easy for them to punish whomever they want to punish.

In a well-run city, all of the officers involved would already be fired. I am certain they are not.

Dealing with Westboro

I am not at all a fan of the antics of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, but frankly it worries me a lot that many people seem to think it is just fine for local police to beat them up or detain them without cause as a response to their bad behavior.

Rankin county's response is also complete and total lawsuit bait. I hope the local taxpayers are ready for a big bill.

Paramilitary police state on parade

Reason honors the sad occasion of the 40th anniversary of Nixon's declaration of the war on drugs. Can it be over now?

UM trespass policy

Lots of things I did not know about UM's trespass policy, under which police can ban individuals from UM property, in this annarbor.com piece.

Seems odd to me that there is less administrative oversight of the university police when they ban someone from campus than when I spent $50 of my research funds on a journal subscription.

Keystone cops

Competence and professionalism at the FBI.

Even when they should be embarrassed, they still want to flaunt their little bit of power.

Via: The Agitator

The hobbies of others - military dress-up edition

This surprises me as they are pretty tight at the Big House.

The lingering question, of course, is why?

Hat tip: Dann Millimet

More on recording the police

From abc news, a summary of cases and views from around the US.

A snippet:

"Police and governmental recording of citizens is becoming more pervasive and to say that government can record you but you can't record, it speaks volumes about the mentality of people in government," Rocah said. "It's supposed to be the other way around: They work for us; we don't work for them."

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Do police have a "right to privacy" while working?

Radley Balko is doing a great job of keeping track of the ongoing legal and policy battles over civilians making audio or video recordings of police as they do their jobs.

I have to say that I think the idea that police have a "right to privacy" while doing their jobs is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. The development and spread of cheap and reliable recording technologies offers the chance for great improvements in civil liberties via the monitoring, and consequent improved behavior, of those entrusted to enforce the laws (which is to say, of those given a partial monopoly on the use of force). Police organizations should be stepping up in support of citizen recording as a way to improve their level of professionalism and their reputations.

Nude biking not okay?

If you can't ride your bike naked to make a political point in Madison, Wisconsin, where can you?

Well, maybe Berkeley or Amsterdam.

But, seriously, this seems awfully narrow-minded for Mad City; it may just illustrate the large cultural divide that sometimes exist between the police and the people they are supposed to protect.

Via, I think, the Agitator

Addendum: Don in the comments provides an answer, namely Fremont, a neighborhood in Seattle which is also home to a statue of Lenin. As an aside, I spent the first eight years of my life living on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, at the foot of which you will find Fremont.

More on the Columbia, Missouri SWAT team

Another piece from Radley Balko, this one reflecting on the differences between the Columbia, Missouri SWAT team and the US military in Afghanistan.

Police run amok in Missouri

Radley Balko continues his crusade against police using excessive force with this video.

Watch it. Is this really America? These guys are out of control.

And all over some pot.

More prosaically, whatever you think about the wisdom of the drug war, how can this sort of thing possibly pass any sort of cost-benefit test? Several cops spend several hours, all on overtime because it is at night, to execute this raid. Plus they kill the pets and scare the kids, probably making them distrust the police the entire rest of their lives. Worth it? Over some joints? What's the money value of keeping this guy from smoking pot? I don't even think it is positive, but even if you do, can it possibly exceed the costs?

Good job to the Economist's DIA blog to publicizing the video outside of libertarian-land as well.

Addendum: more on the reaction from the Columbia, Missouri - home of the University of Missouri - police to the public consternation about the video. The police chief does not really seem to get the point.

Looknig for budget cutting opportunities?

Marijuana-related arrests reached an all time high (pun intended) last year in the US at a bit over 829,000 and this despite the fact that a lot of regular users in California and other states get their pot quasi-legally via the medical marijuana system.

I do not have a good number for the expected costs in terms of police time, court time, jail time, and all the rest of a marijuana arrest, not to mention the lost earnings and reduced future earnings of people who become harder to hire due to a criminal record, but it is not small.

A lot of police are wasting time on this when they could be going after actual crimes - the sort that damage people and property - or when they could be laid off and their costs returned to the longsuffering taxpayer.

Hard to imagine how we survived in the good old days if the 1800s when pot, heroin, cocaine and all the rest were completely legal. How come conservatives don't pine for that part of the past? Where is the left on this idiocy, whose burden disproportionately falls on African-American men?

Police gone wild at Western Ontario

Big city police pick on undergraduates

Pittsburgh police get out of control at the G-20 meetings.

Not cool.

The meaning of the Gates arrest

Radley Balko has an excellent piece on the deeper meaning of this still somewhat confused affair. Key bit:

In the wake of both Gates and Obama escalating the arrest into a national debate about race, too many conservatives took the instinctively authoritarian tack represented here by Washington Post staff writer Neely Tucker:

One of the common-sense rules of life can be summed up this way: Don't Mess With Cops.

It doesn't matter if you are right, wrong, at home or on the street, or if you are white, black, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim or whatever. When an armed law enforcement officer tells you to cease and desist, the wise person (a) ceases and (b) desists.

The End.

Perhaps on an individual level, this is sound advice. As a general rule, you ought not provoke someone carrying a gun, whether your criticism is justified or not. As a broader sentiment, however, it shows a dangerous level of deference to the government agents in whom we entrust a massive amount of power. And it comes awfully close to writing a blank check for police misconduct.

Speaking truth to power. Amen.

The Gates Affair

The battle continues for control of the narrative surrounding the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

A rightish commentator asks to see all the evidence. This seems reasonable enough to me.

A leftish commentator suggests that the real issue is more one of class than of race, though the interaction term is lurking around too.

Many police officers likely do not assign college professors the same exalted status that professors tend to assign themselves. This is presumably why a lot of universities run their own police departments, which can then be focused on the goals of the university and whose officers can be tutored in the academic hierarchy.

I recall when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago that the undergraduates organized something called "Nancy Reagan Smoke Dope on Campus Day" on the central quadrangle. The university police duly surrounded the central quadrangle and did a fine job of ensuring that no one from "outside of the area" (as the U of C liked to say) wandered into the student protest, which was otherwise undisturbed by them. Class, indeed.

Police

1. A sad tale of a police team in a soccer league in LA.

2. New uses for patrol car cameras in Florida.

I am always puzzled that many conservatives seem to idolize the police. It seems to me that they are necessary, to be sure, and often brave and helpful, to be sure, but always to be watched.

Hat tips: theagitator.com

Avoid jail in Arizona

PHOENIX - An Arizona inmate who died after spending nearly four hours in the desert heat was left in an outdoor holding cell for twice as long as she should have been, the state prisons director said Wednesday.

Three corrections officers have been put on paid leave while the state investigates Wednesday's heat-related death of Marcia Powell, who was left in her unshaded cell in 103-degree heat at a prison in Goodyear.

"The death of Marcia Powell is a tragedy and a failure," prisons director Charles Ryan said. "The investigation will determine whether there was negligence and will tell us how to remedy our failures."

Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, was placed alone in the cell while being moved to an onsite detention unit. Ryan said officers placed Powell in the cell after a disturbance at the detention unit, but he would not elaborate on the nature of the disturbance.

This story seems to me to miss two larger points: first, why do they have outdoor holding cells in Arizona? That seems nuts on the face of it. And why would anyone be serving 27 months for prostitution? Sad and preventable and unlikely to have any real effects given the nature of the victim.

Hat tip: theagitator.com

Dog bites man

It turns out that police in Mississippi are not so good at the whole "rights" thing.

Who knew?