
Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting - jseliger
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/07/28/34-cases-dropped-police-body-cams/
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unabst
There is an important distinction between someone who doesn't misbehave for
fear of being watched, and someone who wishes to be watched in fear of the
perception of misbehavior.

There is no substitute for someone who's intent is to try and get away with
things, and someone who's intent is to serve a cause, be of service, and not
get away with anything.

So really, we should build a system where the intent of transparency is
paramount, not just transparency itself.

Two things immediately come to mind.

1\. Super-incentivize snitching. Reward whistle-blowers to the point where it
becomes an easy decision. Not only monetary, but with honor and with medals.
Make it the new "right thing to do" in public service. Fight corruption. Easy
sell.

2\. Super-disincentivize ulterior motives and their actions. Treat crimes by
officers as far more severe and malicious than of non-officers. And they are.
So if a police officer murders a civilian, punishment should be 10x or 100x.
Same with stealing a slice of pizza or ignoring a stop sign.

The point isn't that we should punish officers more. The point is we should
all raise them to higher standards, and the officers themselves should
willingly accept that higher burden of responsibility.

It should be their responsibility to not profile or discriminate based on
appearances of anyone or their car. It should be their responsibility to
preserve life at all costs, even at a higher risk to themselves.

And this will deter crookedness and incompetence. If an officer cannot do
their job, they shouldn't. And if an officer thinks they can get away with
anything, they shouldn't. Being a cop or even buying a cop like in the movies
should not pose any criminal opportunities.

~~~
pp19dd
On books, everything you say makes sense in the ideal world. But in
practicable reality, things are a bit more complicated.

Re: item 1, Baltimore is the birthplace of the "Stop Snitchin'" movement, a
heavily distributed and well marketed street campaign defining a dynamic that
a wiki entry can't possibly describe accurately. The bigger point is that it
had a counter-campaign on the police side which retaliated against it, and
that thinking got ingrained in the troops. In other words, officers stick
together and no policy change will realistically affect that.

After the Baltimore riots, there was a change on the police side - cultural
change, not policy or regulation based one. As a result, homicide rate shot up
through the roof and appears to be rising year after year. This behavior is a
defensive mechanism and so incredibly tribal - not something you can set
through policy, short of replacing 3,000 cops.

To that point, most of Baltimore PD cops DO NOT live in Baltimore. They travel
to work from outside. In other words, despite having 3,000 job positions in
the city, they couldn't fill them locally so they expanded outward, allowing
officers to take cruisers home as a commuting incentive. Think about
evaluating that factor - would you want to employ cops who live in your
neighborhood, or ones from a neighboring town? Would there be a difference?
Then think what would happen if you didn't have a choice.

Re: item 2, you're describing lex talionis, which we as a society abandoned
centuries ago. You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the
person is, even if they're cops.

In Baltimore, there are 3,000 cops for 600,000 citizens. Median cop salary is
$50k and it's a dangerous and difficult job. Tons of them turn to overtime
work to make ends meet and are drained of energy (look up Baltimore Sun
overtime database if curious). Meanwhile, the vast poor citizens there have a
median income of $30k. That's an indicator of why people turn to crime and its
volume. Living in the city is prohibitively expensive (sweet mercy, the
property taxes are terrifying - it's no incentive to buy a house there.)

It's really messy.

~~~
joatmon-snoo
> You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is,
> even if they're cops.

As much as I want to agree with this statement, I can't help but feel that
it's highly problematic in some sense.

When it comes to court cases (IANAL, but this is my understanding), law
enforcement officials' testimony is treated with a certain measure of elevated
credibility (there's SCOTUS precedent for this, but I can't seem to find the
cases). Violation of that trust - as in this case - should be penalized, but I
don't know what kind of remedy would be appropriate.

~~~
wholinator
Preface: i am not a lawyer either and i welcome criticism as this is just an
idea.

I think the solution wouldn't be to charge robbery twice as hard for cops, but
to have an additional charge. Something like 'abuse of federal trusted power'
or something like that which would carry its own penalties. This, i think,
wouldn't cause the strict separation of penalties that could be problematic,
but it would address the problem of people entrusted with federal power
abusing it.

~~~
unabst
Yes this. Hate crime is a crime that adds penalties to what otherwise would be
the same act. The problem with hate crime is it assumes we can know someone's
thoughts, but with a "violation of trust" crime, being in a superior position
of elevated responsibility would be enough.

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myrandomcomment
We need to live in a country where the law enforcement agencies are above
reproach. There are 3 things we can do for this.

1\. Pay for officers should be high without overtime.

2\. Stop militarizing everyday law enforcement.

3\. Body cams on at all times. Cameras on police cars should be on at all
times.

~~~
na85
Frankly I think that anyone who applies to be a cop should be automatically
blacklisted, and that police should be essentially conscripted for, say,
$total_training_time + 2 years after education, the way some countries do with
their military.

To me, the mere act of wanting the authority to arrest and shoot your peers
means you are the last person I want to have that power.

~~~
doug1001
during my four-year hitch in the Corps, a quick poll of the first-term
enlisted jarheads in a USMC infantry battalion, asking "what are you going to
do when you're hitch is up?" the most frequent answer would have been "become
a cop"

and these were guys who, when off-duty, wore t-shirts with aphorisms like

"kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out"

and

"join the Marines, travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, and kill
them"

\----

i have a (completely untested) hypothesis, that police forces which require
officers to be trained as EMTs _and_ police officers (San Jose?) have far
lower incidence of claims and proven instances of incidence of excessive
force, abuse of authority, etc.

~~~
gleenn
Very anecdotal but after 5 years of living in San Jose, I was very scared of
police. I've never had a problem with police, but the times I did there were
terrible. I was pretty appalled at their behavior and I wasn't doing anything
serious at all. I also heard of people throwing parties, getting in trouble,
and being beaten. That was a second hand story though. One of the big reasons
I left was fear of the police there.

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Yhippa
What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some
kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they
apprehend?

~~~
devinhelton
Peter Moskos, a criminologist who spent a year on the Baltimore police force
while doing his PhD, has a good post up about what happened --
[http://www.copinthehood.com/2017/07/thats-quite-days-
work.ht...](http://www.copinthehood.com/2017/07/thats-quite-days-work.html) It
seems like the officer forgot to turn on his body camera while originally
finding the drugs, and so rather than get reprimanded for forgetting to turn
on the camera, he decided to recreate the crime scene and pretend he had that
he had the camera on the whole time.

~~~
rgbrenner
he has a theory about what he thinks happened.

But these cameras have a 30 second buffer, and are always recording to that
buffer. The buffer is stored when the start button is pressed. That is how he
got caught.

So if your camera is off, and you found a stash of drugs. Just press the start
button. It'll record you finding the stash 30 seconds earlier.

That's actually why that button exists. So officers have a recording when it's
needed unexpectedly.

~~~
jschwartzi
More to the point, why was the officer's camera off in the first place?

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SideburnsOfDoom
Previous discussion 10 days ago: A Baltimore police officer accidentally
recorded himself planting drugs (vox.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811601)

My comment at the time:

> What sometime happens in cases like that is that the officer's previous
> arrests are gone through, and many of them thrown out as unsafe

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14811986)

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caseysoftware
Weren't the people arrested (with the planted evidence) likely named in media
coverage and the local blotter, etc long before conviction?

If so, why not name the cops involved here?

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snarfy
Were any charges filed for planting evidence during their investigation?
Probably not. Probably 'administrative leave' or 'reassignment'.

------
moretai
what's the argument against not having body cameras on at all times?

~~~
rhizome
Privacy. That sometimes they go to the bathroom, or talk on the phone to their
families.

~~~
ceejayoz
The privacy of victims they're interacting with is a valid concern, as well. A
rape victim may be reluctant to give details on-camera.

~~~
rhizome
I'm just relaying the arguments I've read.

