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Cop in the Hood
Motivated primarily by a desire for court overtime pay, police officers want arrests on their own terms, ideally without victims, complaints, or unnecessary paperwork. Young officers make more arrests than veteran officers. These officers believe that making arrests is police work. In my squad, the top three officers in arrest totals were three officers with the least experience. An arrest-based culture can exist in a low-drug environment, but without a limitless supply of arrestable criminal offenders, an arrest-based culture cannot make a lot of arrests. Neighborhoods, without public drug dealings will not produce a high number of arrests.
That is from Peter Moskos's truly excellent Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District. This is one of the two or three best conceptual analyses of "cops and robbers" I have read. It is mandatory reading for all fans of The Wire and recommended for everyone else.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 16, 2008 at 01:58 PM in Books, Law | Permalink
Comments
i suspect this book will abundantly confirm one of my biases, which is that the main purpose of the american criminal justice system is to produce criminals.
Posted by: Guest at Mar 16, 2008 3:11:34 PM
Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you liked my book.
To Guest, I would say that producing criminals isn't the main purpose of the criminal justice system. It just happens to work out that way, thanks to the war on drugs.
Posted by: Peter Moskos at Mar 16, 2008 3:51:15 PM
I certainly cannot speak for the entire US justice system, but from the descriptions I've heard from public defenders near my area, the main purpose of the system is to ruin the lives of people who cannot afford lawyers. Like the man says, cops are eager to arrest even for BS charges, and without a good lawyer they may be able to get you on something (my favorite is "resisting arrest" when the initial charges were fabricated).
Posted by: Grant at Mar 16, 2008 3:53:47 PM
Cops always need a "catch all" charge. In Baltimore, it's loitering. In New York, it's disorderly conduct. Something to back up the "...or else" of an order.
The real factor determining if police officers make a lot of arrests (BS or not) is their desire for court overtime pay. And if you want to make a lot of arrests, you've got to work in area with public drug dealing (thanks to drug prohibition). I've written more at www.copinthood.com.
Posted by: Peter Moskos at Mar 16, 2008 4:33:58 PM
Peter,
Right on disorderly conduct in NY. I was
charged with disorderly conduct in 2006 after punching out a jerk (in a Starbucks of all places) who stabbed me with the sharp points of a pair of brass knuckles. This after I saw him with some property
I had left behind while ordering tea.
When I asked him about it, he denied having taken it, at which point he moved his bag and revealed the property.
I then demanded it back; he stabbed me; I decked him and kicked him in the head.
I followed him out after he recovered, not wishing to let him get away, which was a mistake. (I should have barred the door and not let him leave. I was bigger, younger, and in far better physical condition--he mentioned to the cops he had diabetes and high blood pressure.) The cops finally came after 45 minutes and took both of us into custody along with his derelict friend.
The jerk lied to the cops, saying I started it. Evidently that's why they charged me with disorderly conduct.
I asked the cops if they'd go back and question witnesses. They said they would, but they didn't (!), according to the store manager, who I later questioned.
At the station, the cops made me throw away my copy of The Economist that had my blood all over it! My neighbor (a lawyer) told me that was patently illegal, but that they do stuff like that every day.
I had to untie my shoes and surrender my laces, which were later lost. I did get my belt back, amazingly.
I was told by a court administrator that I'd get off with an ADC--ACD--or some such thing, as long as I stayed out of trouble six months. I did, but only after a second court appearance, and spending $2500 for a criminal defense lawyer. (He did an hour or so of work, and spoke the right words in the right tone of voice to the second judge, who did what the 90-year old first judge wrongly refused to do.)
Don't get me started on NYC cops 'n courts.
They are the worst form of monopoly. I loathe them.
Your book sounds terrific and I'm going to liberate a copy.
Posted by: Bill Stepp at Mar 16, 2008 6:34:06 PM
Yeah, this looks like another good one to put on my list.
Posted by: B-Rad at Mar 16, 2008 10:09:07 PM
i think the goal of a police force is social order and the goal of courts is justice. you can argue that finding justice in court is at the bottom of an abyss, but you can't argue that police try to keep social order.
Posted by: Mike Fladlien at Mar 17, 2008 7:45:25 AM
I would argue that police do try to keep social order. I am much more skeptical about any claim that the courts are about justice. Any dealing with the courts is bound to make one a cynic. The courts are about plea bargains and processing cases. (for more on courts, I recommend reading Courtroom 302 by Steve Bogira.)
Bill, hard for me to comment on your case. I will say you should be skeptical of anything lawyer friends tell you. They'll always take your side (before taking your money).
As a police officer, I would naturally give any Economist reader the benefit of the doubt. But I would also take away anything bloody from you. I'm pretty sure hazardous material (which blood is) trumps your right to read. You know your intentions were pure, but would you really want other suspects waving around bloody newspapers, perhaps threatening you, perhaps HIV positive? As a cop, you don't take these chances.
Posted by: Peter Moskos at Mar 17, 2008 11:10:31 AM
i can't wait to read your book. you're right about "courtroom 302."
Posted by: Mike Fladlien at Mar 17, 2008 11:43:48 AM
Looking forward to the book. There seems to be a tiny bit of an awakening about the war on drugs in this country at the moment. With the buzz about The Wire, David Simon's views and studies on incarceration rates actually getting some press, and books like yours it seems there's a bit of a groundswell going on. And if the number of popular posts on Digg and Reddit about the War on Drugs (not all of which are Ron Paul related) is any indication, people seem primed to do something about it. Where to start?
Posted by: John I at Mar 17, 2008 11:42:26 PM
There's a lot of dirty cops. They're interested in racking up their arrest totals. Most of them are too stupid to have any clue about the constitution, and if you were to mention it you'd probably get a beat down.
Posted by: matter at Mar 18, 2008 8:05:15 AM
I wonder how things turned out like this. I mean, corrupt police are probably better than no police, as corrupt police still arrest criminals. They also arrest normal people too, though.
From childhood we're raised to believe that cops are the good guys and robbers are the bad. And that's the way it's supposed to be, I think. I know it's not the way it is, but things would be so much nicer if it was.
In a perfect world, that'd work without any problems at all, which of course is impossible. But if preventing crime is a policeman's job, then you'd think they'd be most successful on the days where they report nothing. Already I can see how that would backfire if the system changed to that.
This looks like an interesting book.
Posted by: Anon at Mar 18, 2008 12:23:13 PM
Matter, there are a lot fewer dirty cops than you think. At least from my experience. The problem is that there are too many clean cops interested in racking up their stats (arrest totals).
Anon, corrupt police are not better than no police. Corrupt police create criminals, give the public good reason to hate cops, and make the job of police tougher for everybody else.
Many people, especially where I policed, are not raised to believe that cops are the good guys. Crying kids are told, "you better behave or that man will lock you up!"
And then war on drugs really blurs the good guy/bad guy distinction. Is somebody bad because they smoke weed? Deal crack? When does a person go from good to bad? There isn't a clear line, despite what too many people want to think.
Posted by: Peter Moskos at Mar 18, 2008 1:25:07 PM
This is what happens with DWIs. Cops get paid overtime to come to court and testify. They can perjure themselves because DWI is subjective when there is no blood/breath test. The cop just says he saw the car driving "erratically" and when he pulled the driver over, he "smelled strong odor of alcohol on the driver's breath, and the driver had glassy eyes and slurred speech." Regardless of whether or not the driver consents to doing any Standardized Field Sobriety Tests, and how well the driver does on said tests, there is no way to prove you were not drunk, did not have "glassy eyes" or "slurred speech." So the cops can lie at will.
What's worse is that this gives them an incentive to arrest innocent people, because they are more likely to take the case to trial (and thus require the cop to come to court to testify and get paid overtime). There are a few dozen police officers in the Houston Police Department who make over $150,000 per year in DWI testimony "overtime" fees. Usually all for drivers who looked perfectly sober in the DWI videos. DWI provides the ultimate "limitless supply of arrestable criminal offenders". What the hell are "glassy eyes" anyway?
Posted by: bruce at Mar 18, 2008 10:48:56 PM
i was wondering if the capture theory of regulation is relevant. in this theory, the regulators become so intimate with the captives that the roles reverse. so no matter what the motive for regulating crime, eventually the police will be captured or controlled by special interests of the controlled group. For example, the drug task force works closely with the GDs and eventually becomes controlled by the game. this can happen if they can see their side of story and thus be inclined to agree with them.
Posted by: Mike Fladlien at Mar 18, 2008 10:56:08 PM
Mike, I would say that's a very small (but not necessarily bad) risk. In the war on drugs, maybe it would be good if more cops saw that drug users weren't evil people. A greater risk is that cops dehumanize the "controlled group."
Bruce, I can't really talk about the specifics of the Houston police. But can people really be convicted for DWI based on nothing more than the word of a police officer? Not where I policed.
But if what you're saying is true, that would be a good example of the "limitless supply of arrestable offenders." Still, I'm skeptical. Why arrest innocent people when there are so many guilty people out there waiting to be arrested? It's not like cops in Houston have run out of criminals, have they?
Posted by: Peter Moskos at Mar 19, 2008 1:56:03 AM
Peter: If a jury believes beyond a reasonable doubt based on the officer's testimony (and usually the scene video and/or the station video of the suspect either doing the standardized field sobriety tests or refusing to do so, and refusing to give a breath or blood sample) that the defendant was operating a motor vehicle in a public place while not having the normal use of his/her mental or physical faculties, then absolutely. Otherwise the state could never prosecute DWI if the suspects refused to give a breath/blood sample. Where you policed, how did your jurisdiction prosecute DWI suspects who refused to give a breath/bood sample so that intoxication could not be proven by showing they were driving "over the limit"? In every jurisdiction I know of, their refusal to give a sample is held against them at trial due to "implied consent" laws and then the cop takes the stand and testifies as to how the defendant showed signs of being drunk. If the defendant refused to do the SFSTs, that would be held against him too, and it would come down to the cop's testimony of smelling alcohol, slurred speech, glassy eyes, and the alleged bad driving that provided reasonable suspicion for the initial stop.
Why arrest innocent people when there are so many guilty ones out there? Easy. The innocent ones will more likely take their case to trial rather than cop a plea, so the cop makes overtime money testifying (no testifying if they plead guilty and avoid trial). Second, finding all those guilty people takes time, energy, and investigation skills. If they're really guilty, 97% of the time they will plead guilty and no trial means no overtime money for the cop, no matter what they're charged with. The cop has nothing to gain from arresting a truly guilty person other than a marginal notch on his belt which is greatly outweighed by the risk of getting harmed or having to deal with a violent confrontation not present with an innocent, law abiding arrestee.
What's even worse, and a travesty of justice, is that as a defense lawyer, at trial I'm not allowed to ask the police officer who arrested my client anything about his financial motives, how much overtime money he's made testifying, and whether innocent people are more likely to go to trial than guilty people (they are). The (prosecution-friendly) Houston Court of Appeals has actually held that this issue, while conceding it's relevant, would confuse a jury because cops just wouldn't lie about probable cause for an arrest to make money and could get in big trouble if they did. I'm still in awe of the gall it took to hand down such a ruling.
Cops not only know they can't get in trouble for lying about smell of alcohol, glassy eyes, slurred speech because their perjury can't be proven (the only other witness is the DRUNK defendant plus the scene videotape with crappy audio), and even if somehow it could be proved that the cop was making it up to earn overtime money testifying in trial, the Harris County District Attorney's Office is not going to prosecute a police officer for perjury or writing a false police report. And the cops all know it. The prosecutors are their buddies. They're on the same team. They tell the cops what testimony they "need" in court in order to convict the scumbag defendant and the cops happily comply. Of course it's all to protect the children and keep the criminal scumbags off the street (even the innocent ones). Better that a few innocent people get convicted than a few guilty people go free - your precious children have nothing to worry about if a few innocent people are locked up in prison, but they're in grave danger if a few guilty people are set free. The local news - 28 minutes of crime reporting, 1 minute of sports and 1 minute of weather, reminds Houston citizens of this fact every night (and 6 other times during the day).
Posted by: bruce at Mar 19, 2008 2:49:41 AM
Bruce, that's an interesting post...I thought the crime was on trial and not the man...Here's a random thought...In the movie "Catch Me If You Can" a check forger is always on the run...If was wondering if they were really playing a child's game of hide and seek? so in the DUI's in Houston, were the police and those accused on driving under the influence really just playing a child's game?
Posted by: Mike Fladlien at Mar 19, 2008 7:33:49 AM
Moskos,
I live in New Orleans, LA. Dirty Copy Capital of the world. Perhaps I should have mentioned that in the first comment. LOTS of dirty fucking cops. Plenty of straight up thugs.
Posted by: matter at Mar 19, 2008 9:05:14 AM
Mike: i'm not sure I get what you're talking about. A large portion of the people accused of DWI are innocent because they are not legally intoxicated when operating their motor vehicle. Intoxication is a necessary element of the crime that must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Since people believe cops are inherently trustworthy, and as a defense lawyer I'm limited in how I can impeach that trustworthiness (though the prosecutors can impeach the defendant however they see fit, including using his own statements and actions - refusal to do field sobriety tests and refusal to give breath/blood sample - against him despite the 5th Amendment's non-incrimination clause).
If you're talking about the subset of DWI arrestees who actually are intoxicated and thus guilty, well, nobody wants to get caught, but if a cop tries to pull them over and they flee, it's a felony to evade arrest in a motor vehicle, and have you ever heard of a car chase in real life where the suspect (especially a drunk one) actually gets away from the police? There are no serial DWI drivers out there tuanting police with their drunk-drivingness. Cops just like to arrest people for DWI because no matter what the evidence actually is, the cop can always make out a case. The mere refusal of the suspect to provide evidence is used at trial as highly-incriminating evidence of guilt. If you were on a jury and you were told (or saw on a video) that the suspect refused to do any field sobriety tests (walk in a straight line, follow the flashlight, etc) and refused to give a breath or blood sample when it was requested to determine their blood-alcohol content, you'd think they were guilty, after all "if he was sober he wouldn't have a problem giving them a breath/blood sample."
Posted by: bruce at Mar 19, 2008 12:24:13 PM
Matter, I know full well that NOLA police have a hard earned and well deserved reputation for everything bad. But I also know there are lots of dedicated and good (even heroic) police officers down there. So I don’t want to disparage everyone in the group. But suffice it to say I was hoping, perhaps a little naively, that all the bad NOLA cops were the bastards who ran away before and during Katrina.
Bruce, there are lots of cars that get away from police. I would guess than many of them are drunk. Cops have to be careful chasing (or following) cars, especially in cities with very strict pursuit policies.
You are indeed right about the link between overtime pay and arrests. I talk about this a lot in Cop in the Hood. This is a strange open secret. Everybody involved in the game knows this, and yet the public is oblivious to its existence and its implication. Overtime pay is why cops make discretionary arrests. And of course, in the police world, arrests are good. So there's no problem with this.
Where I policed, it was hard to prosecute DWI. The only guy I convicted of drunk driving crashed his car into a house and later submitted to blood test in the hospital. He tried to get away after his crash and was about to get his ass whooped by a mob when I showed up. One of the nicer guys in the mob later handed me the drunk guy’s car keys.
The driver went to the hospital. He said he wasn’t even driving. He was. I had to be very clever to get the drunk redneck SOB to agree to blood test ("you know, since you weren't even driving the car, I'm sure you would mind signing this so they test you. It’s just a formality and you can’t get in trouble for being a drunk passenger.”). He signed and was convicted.
I think you could get your license suspended for refusing a test, but not a conviction.
We patrol officers didn't even have the tools for traffic enforcement. No radar guns (though occasionally we would hold out our night sticks and watch the cars slow down). No breath tests. All we could do was the occasional roadside drunk test. If you couldn't say the alphabet, or walk a line (or stand up), these could be grounds for conviction. Officer testimony could add to this (I *do* know what are glassy eyes, slurred speech, and reeking of booze. I know a drunk person when I see one.).
Still, and we'll probably just disagree, or maybe there's a big difference between Houston and Baltimore, but I don't think cops are locking up innocent people and committing perjury. It's not worth the risk of losing your career and pension.
I generally tried to avoid traffic court because they did a lot in the afternoon (the middle of my night). But even there, you tickets get grouped. If 9 people don't show up, all that matter is that 1 person does. You don't get paid by the number of suspects. You get paid by appearance.
Where I worked, the best overtime pay came from arresting guilty people and having cases not prosecuted. Punch in at 9am, punch out by 9:01. Two hours guaranteed pay just for showing up. Multiple postponements also helped. The last thing you wanted for your overtime was actually having to stick around court for hour after tedious hour.
Posted by: Peter Moskos at Mar 19, 2008 1:40:30 PM
How could you ever be conviced of perjury for lying about your subjective observations about signs of intoxication? Deep down you know the only thing stopping you from lying about a person's "glassy eys" (eyes are wet all the time, thus shiny - how are some eyes 'glassy'?) slurred speech, unsteadiness, and a smell of alcohol on them is your own sense of morality. If you wanted to lie about it, you could and you'd get away with it every time. You know there is absolutely no risk of losing your job and pension. That argument is a red herring. I'm only talking about lying about signs of intoxication here, not facts of other crimes. Regardless, the only time a cop ever gets in trouble for perjury is when there is a conspiracy amongst severa police officers to lie and frame a suspect (usually a racial/political motivation) and one of the cops comes forward.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all HPD officers are liars. But a large portion are willing to lie just a bit to get a conviction when they know there is nothing but the defendant's own testimony that can controver them. DWI (and the "HPD DWI Task Force") is where officers take the most liberty in perjuring themselves in police reports and on the stand at trial.
Yes, you can get your license suspended for refusing a breath/blood test, but your refusal can be used against you. The reasoning is that since driving is a "privilege" by applying for and using a drivers license, you implicitly consent to giving a breath/blood test when asked by a cop. If you refuse your license is automatically suspended for 6 months and your refusal can be used as incriminating evidence against you at trial.
The big gray area is when a driver had 1 beer or glass of wine with dinner, maybe an hour or two ago. Maybe alcohol can still be smelled, maybe the driver will volunteer the fact when asked, but once that fact is conceded by the driver, he is going to be arrested 100% of the time (at least in houston). You'll ask him to do SFSTs (even if you pulled him over for some reason other than suspicion of drunk driving) and like everyone he won't do them perfectly. Of course if he refuses to do SFSTs you'll automatically arrest him. If he then refuses to give a breath/blood sample back at the station, you'll book him for DWI. What evidence do you have against him? Your observations, his admission of 1 drink (or he said he had nothing to drink, either way). One drink will not cause intoxication. A good prosecutor against a crappy public defender will be able to convict someone who refused SFSTS and/or blood/breath tests 100% of the time, regardless of how sober the suspect appears in the DWI video (if one exists).
In Houston (Harris county) if someone is going to plead guilty, 99% of the time they will do it pre-trial. It's very rare for someone to plead guilty once trial has started. Cases do get reset a lot, so cops will show up to court and then leave a few minutes later once the trial has a new date. Multiple postponements of trials are a given. But the point is, cops like to make arrests that will go to trial. Arresting someone with a long criminal history of selling/possessing drugs for selling/possessing drugs in the open at a street corner will pretty much always result in a guilty plea. You have nothing to gain financially. Though you do have to deal with an annoying, whiny, smelly street drug dealer who may have a gun or needles in his pockets.
For the past 4 years I've worked as a defense lawyer here in Houston (not a public defender). I have amassed a lot of knowledge of police pratice in DWI cases, because they're so damn common, though most people don't even believe what I have to say because it sounds so cynical and cops are just such wonderful people. The only positive thing is that since Harris County is so large, all the cops here have videocameras in their vehicles so I've never had to deal with a case that had no scene video.
I'll have to check out your book, I didn't snap to the fact that you are the author of the book in discussion.
Posted by: bruce at Mar 19, 2008 3:39:34 PM
conviced = convicted (typo)
Posted by: bruce at Mar 19, 2008 3:40:39 PM
bruce, will you add me to your RSS feed?
Posted by: Mike Fladlien at Mar 19, 2008 5:48:43 PM
Mike how do I do that?
Posted by: bruce at Mar 19, 2008 6:16:44 PM
Errrm... Do I even have an RSS feed? Sorry I'm kinda dumb when it comes to stuff like that. I know RSS has something to do with blogs.
Posted by: bruce at Mar 19, 2008 6:21:49 PM
Peter: in my zeal describing the abuse in DWI enforcement here in Houston, I forgot to say that you are 100% correct about the evils of the drug war, how it is a complete failure and designed that way. It's always refreshing to hear from a cop/ex-cop who finds the drug war disgusting and a travesty to justice. Unfortunately, even people who realize the drug war is a mistake usually can't recognize that there is no middle ground between prohibition and full legalization. It's east to advocate legalizing marijuana, it's harder to advocate legalizing cocaine and heroin. But until such day as I can walk into Wal-mart (right across the street from a school full of impressionable little children) and buy a pound of 100% pure, USDA-approved heroin for $9.95 plus tax, the problems associated with the drug war will not subside. With drugs perfectly legal and widely available, America won its independence from the British, pioneered the industrial revolution, expanded to the west coast per its manifest destiny, and became a world superpower. Then we started to ban drugs (due to racist fears and not public health or safety) and things quickly went downhill. We The People have now abandoned our Constitution and Bill of Rights (as a lawyer I find it sad that most people are unaware of the judicially-created "drug exception" to the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Bill of Rights) and have imprisoned more of ourselves than any other country in the history of planet Earth. All due to irrational fears about drugs. Drugs are good. Drugs are safe. Children should be encouraged to use drugs and educated about how to use them properly (like driving a car - though never while driving a car). Parents and children should use drugs together - Cocaine Friday's.
That's how it's been for 99.999% of human history. Out of the several hundred thousand years (or 6,000 if you're a wacky religious nut) of organized homo sapiens civilization, we have used drugs, from smoking various leaves to milking the lovely poppy plant of its opium to fermenting sugars to make and drink alcohol to eating magic mushrooms to chewing on coca leaves. Sure, we have more drugs now, but they are all fundamentally the same. And alcohol is by far the most intoxicating and dangerous of all the drugs our species has yet to discover. The short, 80 year experiment (only half of that with any real zeal) in criminalizing and prohibiting the use, sale, and possession of drugs has proven to be a total, complete, and utter failure any way it's looked at. We've given up our precious rights and liberties, become a prison nation, and created more crime, nationalized more property (asset forfeiture), ruined more lives, and put more people in danger than at any other time in human history. But we've made prohibition so profitable for all levels of government and the "drug treatment/rehab industry" that the influx of drug prohibition money has become the biggest addiction of all. Legalizing drugs would put so many people out of jobs (though it would create new jobs) and cost so many people power and money that it simply will never happen. That's why our country is ultimately ruined and destined to fail.
Posted by: bruce at Mar 19, 2008 6:52:14 PM
bruce, i'll just add your site to my blog and check it...flad
Posted by: Mike Fladlien at Mar 20, 2008 10:45:36 AM
Bruce, many of your points are good ones, but you're preaching to the choir. The real challenge in all this is making the average lay person understand that this affects them and overcoming the Law & Order/MADD propaganda that's instilled from a young age. Nothing will change until we start winning the information war.
Posted by: Anon at Mar 20, 2008 2:22:50 PM
Mike: cool, I need to update it more frequently. FWIW some of the things I say on there are meant to be tongue in cheek and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Anon: I guess the choir here is a smart, well-informed one. Most "choirs" I "preach" to about this stuff are full of misinformed idiots who spend their days watching TV shows like Law and Order and "The Closer" (yay for the lady who coerces suspects into giving confessions), where everyone is guilty and the cops can do no wrong.
I agree that until we modify the First Amendment to ban local news or somehow restrict the amount of "crime" reporting, nothing will ever change. There's really no way to win an information war so long as criminals are bad and crimefighters are good, and everything is about "protecting the children".
Posted by: bruce at Mar 20, 2008 5:37:57 PM
The information war is key. That's one of the reasons I wrote Cop in the Hood. Restricting press freedom (or any freedom) is no way to get the truth out there. But call me old fashioned, because I think that most crimefighters are good and many criminals are bad.
I agree that "protecting the children" is way overused and a ruse.
Posted by: Peter Moskos at Mar 21, 2008 2:30:09 PM
I'd say about 20% of criminals are bad. All criminals who are guilty of the old common law crimes against people or property (murder, assault, battery, rape, burglary, theft, embezzlement, etc.) are "bad" and to the extent crimefighters stop those crimes, prevent them from being completed, and catch the people guilty of committing them, those crimefighters are good. Crimes used to be divided between malum in se and malum prohibitum. All the malum in se crimes are the really bad ones, the ones that are immoral and against the very nature of civilized society. We've lost that distinction now, all crimes are "serious" (since no crimes have been eradicated over the years, they keep getting more serious year by year on the theory that since people still commit those crimes the punishment is not severe enough... eventually all crimes will be punishable by death or life w/out parole).
Drug crimes (which shouldn't be crimes in the first place), regulatory crimes line failing to file currency transaction reports, money laundering, DWI, mere possession of kiddie porn, prostitution, most conspiracies, the people who commit those "crimes" are not bad. Many of the cops who arrest people for such crimes are bad. The severity of the crime is inversely proportional to the immorality of the crimefighter putting a stop to it. In other words, the more severe the crime (homicide) the less immoral the cop is who investigates and arrests the person who committed the homicide. The less severe the crime (possession of marijuana) the more immoral and corrupt the cop is who arrests the person with the pot.
I'm glad you agree that "protecting the children" is bullshit. Ever notice how every law passed by Congress has a silly acronym and practically all of them have the letter "C" in it, with that "C" always standing for "Child" or "Children's" (COPA - Childrens Online Protection Act, etc.).
Freedom means it is unavoidable that some children will be severely harmed and killed each year. And - the more freedom we have, the more children will be brutally harmed and killed. I love freedom, thus, every time a child gets hurt or dies, I smile because it is a reminder that we live in a free society. Many of our forefathers risked and lost their lives so that our children could not be "protected" from harm ("protection" = giving up our freedoms). And before you call me a sicko, I would point out that we could save the lives of thousands of children each year by lowering the speed limit to 10 miles per hour everywhere. That's not even giving up a right, it's modifying a privilege. Nobody would support mandatory 10mph speed limits on all roads and freeways in America. So, don't call me a sicko just because I realize freedom means children have to die.
Posted by: bruce at Mar 21, 2008 10:20:50 PM
i dont know about everybody guilty of assault or battery being "evil". what happened to the good old days of men fighting it out like men?
Posted by: klinnth at Apr 6, 2008 12:34:38 AM
my bad the "evil" should read "bad". you can see my own personal prejudices seeping into it there. the sentiment still stands though
Posted by: klinnth at Apr 6, 2008 12:37:24 AM
