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Post by lighthorseman on Nov 2, 2011 1:04:55 GMT -5
After a woman was hit with a stray bullet (but apparently not seriously hurt), the police decided that she was lying and that she had really been shot by a male friend of hers. So they arrested her and handcuffed her to a bench at the precinct for five days until she gave up the person they thought, for some reason, had really shot her, then release her with no charges. Takesha Griffin, 35, said she was handcuffed to a bench in the squad room or locked in a filthy holding cell at the 73rd Precinct stationhouse during a spirit-shattering stretch last month. Cops asked her repeatedly if she was ready to cough up the real story. “They wanted me to lie,” said Griffin, whose lawyer filed a notice of claim on Tuesday. “It was like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ” During her lengthy confinement, Griffin said she urinated on herself when no one was available to escort her to the bathroom. She was also denied a sanitary napkin. The single mother of a 9-year-old boy said she was given a McDonald’s hamburger each day and ridiculed when she complained about the food. One cop sarcastically pointed out that she could order salmon or lasagna from a menu posted on the squad room wall. The cops wanted Griffin to say a male friend with her that night shot her. The were apparently able to detain her because her name popped up on a failure to appear warrant related to a disorderly conduct summons in 2009. Even if they were right about everything, they were prepared to punish a crime victim on an unrelated matter until she changed her story about how she’d been shot. That’s fairly terrifying. As it turns out, their justification for holding Griffin was baseless, too. Griffin actually appeared for the 2009 summons. The warrant was issued due to a “clerical error.” www.theagitator.com/2011/10/28/serves-her-right-for-accidentally-getting-hit-by-a-stray-bullett/ |
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Nov 2, 2011 1:22:17 GMT -5
Disturbing.
While I'm not gonna jump on AA's bandwagon, the fact that this is happening is very much not a good sign.
I'm beginning to see your point in all of these matters.
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Post by sylvana on Nov 2, 2011 1:51:44 GMT -5
We see similar stories here in South Africa a lot, it is scary seeing them crop up in America as well.
Aren't there rules about how to treat people in police custody? This seriously does not sound right. Surely she should have been able to contact someone to come and bail her out? This is pretty shocking.
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Post by Meshakhad on Nov 2, 2011 3:01:08 GMT -5
This where I believe it should be possible to fire some people retroactively: "Oh, and all the money we ever paid you? Yeah, we want it back. Now."
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D Laurier
Full Member
Paying for cable (or satalite) TV, is like hiring sombody to projectile poop all over your brain
Posts: 196
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Post by D Laurier on Nov 2, 2011 9:37:51 GMT -5
After a woman was hit with a stray bullet (but apparently not seriously hurt), the police decided that she was lying and that she had really been shot by a male friend of hers. So they arrested her and handcuffed her to a bench at the precinct for five days until she gave up the person they thought, for some reason, had really shot her, then release her with no charges. Takesha Griffin, 35, said she was handcuffed to a bench in the squad room or locked in a filthy holding cell at the 73rd Precinct stationhouse during a spirit-shattering stretch last month. Cops asked her repeatedly if she was ready to cough up the real story. “They wanted me to lie,” said Griffin, whose lawyer filed a notice of claim on Tuesday. “It was like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ” During her lengthy confinement, Griffin said she urinated on herself when no one was available to escort her to the bathroom. She was also denied a sanitary napkin. The single mother of a 9-year-old boy said she was given a McDonald’s hamburger each day and ridiculed when she complained about the food. One cop sarcastically pointed out that she could order salmon or lasagna from a menu posted on the squad room wall. The cops wanted Griffin to say a male friend with her that night shot her. The were apparently able to detain her because her name popped up on a failure to appear warrant related to a disorderly conduct summons in 2009. Even if they were right about everything, they were prepared to punish a crime victim on an unrelated matter until she changed her story about how she’d been shot. That’s fairly terrifying. As it turns out, their justification for holding Griffin was baseless, too. Griffin actually appeared for the 2009 summons. The warrant was issued due to a “clerical error.” www.theagitator.com/2011/10/28/serves-her-right-for-accidentally-getting-hit-by-a-stray-bullett/Nothing surprising about these tactics... just typical sadism of a powerfull gang of thugs |
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Post by ironbite on Nov 2, 2011 11:02:50 GMT -5
....alright I'll bite. Ball's in your court boys. Fix the police. Since you guys seem convinced that this is a wide-spread problem and no matter what anyone says you'll never say otherwise, I'm gonna go ahead and ask the question I should've asked a long time ago.
Ironbite-how do we fix this problem?
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Post by happycheeze on Nov 2, 2011 11:21:36 GMT -5
Make it a law that personal cameras are required on law enforcement people on duty?
Basically if you're going into a job that has a lot of abuse potential, than you have to have a close survalence on you..
I just kinda thought this like 2 mins ago
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Nov 2, 2011 11:33:53 GMT -5
....alright I'll bite. Ball's in your court boys. Fix the police. Since you guys seem convinced that this is a wide-spread problem and no matter what anyone says you'll never say otherwise, I'm gonna go ahead and ask the question I should've asked a long time ago. Ironbite-how do we fix this problem? We fix this problem by actually punishing corruption. ...The fact that it seems to go without punishment is disconcerting. Neither LHM nor I am saying that all cops are corrupt thugs. Just D Laurier. The problem is, of course, that the corruption is, at the very least, starting to come into view more, and that we shouldn't just ignore it because "Oh, not all cops are bad." Which is practically a non-sequiter. |
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Post by booley on Nov 2, 2011 11:52:27 GMT -5
Make it a law that personal cameras are required on law enforcement people on duty? Basically if you're going into a job that has a lot of abuse potential, than you have to have a close survalence on you.. I just kinda thought this like 2 mins ago Lots of cops do keep cameras on them. I believe it's standard issues on police cars. And indeed quite a bit of police wrong doing has been uncovered by police videos. BUT (you'd knew there would be a but..) the problem is that the video is still within the control of the people it's supposed to be holding accountable. Which means lots of times video footage gets "lost" or edited. This happened during protests in New York (the footage was edited to make the person arrested seem guilty) and the only reason it was caught was because there had also been civilians recording that showed the discrepancy. Which is where the solution is. We need to get rid of the policies and even laws that allow cops to arrest someone for filming an arrest. In fact we need to make it illegal to arrest someone who is filming the cops. Interfering is one thing but any good cop watcher knows to record a safe distance. There's a very good reason why corrupt cops grab video cameras. They know their greatest weapon is the fact that all things being equal, people are more apt to take a cop at his word then someone is accused of a crime. (after all criminals do lie and this guy is accused of being a criminal so he's probably lying.) But video tape doesn't have a bias. And while video can omit the whole truth, the more a situation is recorded by different people the harder it is to lie about it. Which makes it harder for cities to cover up corruption, which many are prone to do. Whether from wishing to avoid embraresment or it's politically inconvenient to alienate the city cops or because the PTB agree with the actions, there are many factors that can keep corruption covered up even if the people doing the covering aren't part fo the original corruption. To combat corruption there has to be outrage. and to get outrage you can't just tell someone about corruption. You have to show it in a visceral way that they cant' rationalize away. The way the NRA is about guns, I am about recorders. The more more we the citizenry have the safer and more free we are. |
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Post by Paradox on Nov 2, 2011 18:09:08 GMT -5
....alright I'll bite. Ball's in your court boys. Fix the police. Since you guys seem convinced that this is a wide-spread problem and no matter what anyone says you'll never say otherwise, I'm gonna go ahead and ask the question I should've asked a long time ago. Ironbite-how do we fix this problem? The first step is independent review boards. In many places the police department is the one to handle accusations of misconduct leveled against its own members. This creates a rather obvious conflict of interests. Have an independent, non-partisan group investigate accusations of police misconduct. Don't let the police do it. That's step one. |
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Post by ltfred on Nov 2, 2011 19:04:05 GMT -5
....alright I'll bite. Ball's in your court boys. Fix the police. Since you guys seem convinced that this is a wide-spread problem and no matter what anyone says you'll never say otherwise, I'm gonna go ahead and ask the question I should've asked a long time ago. Ironbite-how do we fix this problem? The first step is independent review boards. In many places the police department is the one to handle accusations of misconduct leveled against its own members. This creates a rather obvious conflict of interests. Have an independent, non-partisan group investigate accusations of police misconduct. Don't let the police do it. That's step one. Double the sentence if the police abuse their power to commit a crime. |
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Post by lighthorseman on Nov 2, 2011 19:40:11 GMT -5
In Australia, pretty much every interaction between police and a suspect or witness are video and audio recorded, with copies of the tapes made and kept by both the police and the interviewee. There are probably ways to get around this and still beat a confession out of a suspect, but my guess its its much less likely to occur. I'm quite frankly amazed that people in the US seem to regularly get arrested and even brutalised for videoing cops do their thing.
Police are pretty much the only case where I think the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from surveilance" cannard actually works.
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Post by sylvana on Nov 3, 2011 2:27:35 GMT -5
The problem with large scale systemic corruption is that for example, the police officer does something wrong, someone films it, but then the police just take that camera or arrest the person doing the filming. The persons involved have trouble even reporting this because the police will then stick up for their buddies and ignore the complaints.
I would agree that step one is a completely independent board that deals with issues of police corruption. It is a small step and would work better, provided you don't get into the levels of corruption where everything is affected.
One of the biggest problems though is that police officers have a power advantage over their victims. They are armed, and trained for combat. They all carry restraints and tools to disable a person. Once a person has been caught and placed in custody, the police can just drive out to the middle of nowhere and do whatever the hell they want. It would be almost impossible for the victim to resist the attack, and similarly it would be impossible to gather any evidence. This can be used by the police to downright commit crime or to intimidate witnesses / suspects. Add to this corruption and covering for each other and the victim cant even lay a complaint, if the victim is left in any kind of condition to do so.
I cant think of anything that would really fix the problem, not even a full scale city wide big brother would work because there are still ways to hide the corruption. Cameras on Police are too easily tampered with by the police to be reliable, and similarly cameras on victims and witnesses can be taken by police through the abuse of their power.
Thankfully, the police in America are not that far gone yet, and an independent complaints commission would probably weed out a lot of the corruption.
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Post by DarkfireTaimatsu on Nov 3, 2011 2:46:11 GMT -5
I would agree that step one is a completely independent board that deals with issues of police corruption. I cant think of anything that would really fix the problem  |
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Post by scienceisgreen on Nov 3, 2011 6:49:19 GMT -5
I would agree that step one is a completely independent board that deals with issues of police corruption. I cant think of anything that would really fix the problem -snip- In the Gotham justice system, the people are represented by three separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders; and the God Damn Batman. These are their stories. |
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