Comments on: Police and community roundup

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 19:18:12 +0000

Radley Balko offers the San Diego PD’s handling of the 1992 Rodney King crisis as a model for Ferguson and St. Louis police to follow. The San Diego police were able to steer protests in a peaceful direction by joining them: “Yes, those Los Angeles police are real swine (but we don’t behave like them anymore).” The metro St. Louis police might have more trouble getting contol of events by saying, “Yes, we are real swine.”

When possible, however, cooptation has advantages. The Occupy summer went peacefully in Boston Massachusetts: City Hall echoed much of their political message, and police quickly developed contacts with encampment leaders, even hooking them up with utilities and electricity. when it was finally time to fold things up, only some gentle nudging (eg cutting off the electricity) was needed.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 21:04:57 +0000

It seems to me that threatening violence if a Grand Jury makes a particular decision should be against the law. No juror should feel threatened when making a determination.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 19:05:28 +0000

RE: Peel Principles. The issue with that notion is that "discretion" usually ends up being "racism". Or, at least, racism is claimed, and there is no positive defense against racism other than "I was following the rules to the letter". You can talk until you are, as it were, blue in the face about community outreach and proportionate response and officer-level empowerment to deescalate situations, and there's always going to be someone who says "yeah, but you wouldn't have arrested a white dude, you wouldn't have hassled a white dude."

By: Alan Gunn

Alan Gunn — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 13:03:45 +0000

While most of these complaints seem valid, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to object to the practice of hearing cases in which the defendant has a lawyer first (Balko). Many courts do this, because it saves defendants from having to pay their lawyers for waiting around for hours. If you wanted to reduce the number of defendants who are represented, it would be hard to find a better way than to make court appearances even more expensive for those defendants.