I cannot say I care for this one:
Several Durham police officers lied about non-existent 911 calls to try to convince residents to allow them to search their homes, a tactic several lawyers say is illegal. The officers targeted residences where individuals with outstanding warrants were thought to be living, and told them that dispatch had received a 911 call from that address, when no such call had been made.
TRICKY! Hopefully — hopefully they would use it as a last resort, for some pretty serious warrants, not on frivolous nonviolent possession charg–
In February, Officer A.B. Beck knocked on the door of the defendant’s home in South-Central Durham. When the defendant answered the door, Beck told her—falsely—that someone in her home had called 911 and hung up, and that he wanted to make sure everyone was safe. The defendant permitted Beck to enter her home, where he discovered two marijuana blunts and a marijuana grinder.
When Beck took the witness stand, he admitted to fabricating the 911 story in order to enter the house. Beck testified that his true intent was to serve a warrant, though he never produced the warrant in the courtroom.
Beck further testified that the 911 ruse was permitted under a department policy in cases where domestic violence is alleged, recalled Morgan Canady, the defendant’s lawyer.
During cross-examination, Canady quizzed Beck further.
Did you say there was a 911 hang-up? she asked.
Yes, he said.
But there was not a 911 hang-up?
No.
So you entered the house based on a lie?
Yes.
And this is your policy for domestic violence warrants?
Yes.
The Durham police chief has since sent out a memo banning the practice, which I find adorable for some reason. “No more fake 911 calls, lads. Make a note of it. Do you think you can remember that, or should I send out a memo? I’ll send out a memo.”
As a nation, we’re not so rich in beloved, award-winning journalist that we can afford to detain and arrest them:
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and filmmaker José Antonio Vargas, who started the campaign Define American and has been outspoken about being undocumented, was detained in McAllen, Texas as he was trying to board a plane, according to a press release from United We Dream.
But here we are, detaining and arresting them.
The only IDs I have for security: Philippine passport and my pocketbook US Constitution @DefineAmerican & @MAC_UTPA pic.twitter.com/IFH0Vb4oX7
— Jose Antonio Vargas (@joseiswriting) July 15, 2014
The ACLU has a rather disheartening primer on the subject:
- Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.
- The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”
Any time an explanation of civil liberties begins with “Now, normally under the Constitution, people are not subject to ____” it’s not going to end great. This one doesn’t end great.
Tags: immigration, news, run-ins with the law
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It’s too early in the morning to be this angry.
both of these stories are just ugh. whether you like Vox or not, this piece by Dara Lind is pretty good outlining why Jose Antonio Vargas is unlikely to be deported,
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/12/5893711/jose-antonio…
I need a primer on Vox. (I’ve only read a couple trend pieces so far). What’s not to like? Is the name a new euphemism for vagina? Am I wrong in thinking this?
Sorry, this is off topic, but I’ve been wondering for the last few days, and you linked to Vox…
I mean, I’m no expert on various media dramas so maybe someone else can jump in. Too many think pieces about them was annoying. Also, this made it really obvious when they only hired white guys and a few white woman. (They have since hired at least one woman of color, Lauren Williams, from Mother Jones).
Their brand of explanatory journalism is also sometimes a bit much, like this http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5710252/who-is-solan… piece. Like, clearly we can tell who the audience is and it’s annoying.
I definitely read them still, it’s why I knew about the piece I linked to above.
Cool, thanks.
Vox, as in vox populi.
Which, if anyone is unfamiliar with the phrase, means voice of the people, vox being voice.
Jeezus…I’ve had nothing but positive interactions with the police (knock on wood + Canadian White Female) but am I the exception to the rule, here? Have any other Toasties encountered truly terrible PO’s? Or, for that matter, compassionate and professional PO’s?
My arresting officer was quite polite and helpful, but I think being a young white women had roughly 85% to do with that.
Ooh what were you arrested for?
*mumbles*
I met a few K9 handlers during a summer camp *mumble* years ago, and they let me pet their compatriots. Police dogs are generally fluffier than bomb dogs.
It is important to be able to distinguish between police K9 puppies and bomb dog puppies. Very important.
I had to get across the Boston Marathon this year to get to work and at one place when I asked the cops how to get there he said, “Uh, wait eight hours?” And then went back to chatting with his cop friends. The next cop I asked, four miles up the road when my cab abandoned me with a “good luck,” told me I could just run across. When I asked him if I would be arrested he said, “Well, if you get tackled, it won’t be by me.”
I wasn’t tackled! But I am a white lady and the second time I started to cry I was so frustrated, and I am almost positive had I not been white or female something would have happened.
As a POC, I avoid police at all costs, so I don’t have too much firsthand experience. I’m mostly successful (except in airports, but I’m so used to being extra-screened, even when I get pre-checked, that it’s a breeze now), but I have been cited (for fare evasion) where I’ve witnessed others get by with just an apology.
My fear of the police does impact whether or not I call them (e.g. Noise complaints), and I suspect others have the privilege not to second-guess calling the police for legitimate purposes.
The two times I’ve been stopped for traffic violations, the officers were respectful and nice. But I am a white lady. I am also a criminal defense attorney, and so I am absolutely certain that being a white lady makes a huge difference in the level of respect police treat me with.
I, a white lady, have been pulled over twice. Once in MA by a white dude cop, who was so startled by my braless, pajama-ed, and pin curled self, that he just let me go with a warning (didn’t even run my license/registration). The second time was by a lady POC cop in DC, who was EXTRAORDINARILY polite and professional, explaining that my tags had expired six days earlier. She also let me off with a warning (instead of a $150 ticket), even though it was my partner’s car and I didn’t have proof that it was insured or that I hadn’t stolen it. I really liked that lady.
ETA: Naturally, I suspect that being a white lady who was clearly also very hapless was definitely working in my favor.
This is absurdly beside the point but I really want to hear the story behind the first pull-over. It takes a great force to get me out of the house in my pajamas, and I can imagine this is probably the case with most people.
(It is absolutely okay if you don’t want to share, naturally.)
Oh, unfortunately it is not very interesting! It was when I was in high school, during the summer, and I didn’t have a car so I’d often drive my mom to work at 8 am so I could use the car during the day. I wouldn’t bother with getting dressed (my MO was to drive her, blearily, then go back home and sleep for several more hours), so on the day in question, I was wearing a self-tie-dyed t-shirt sans bra, bootie sleep shorts, and had my hair in lopsided buns/pin-curls. I looked, as they say, a treat.
I think my last substantive police interaction was getting caught up in a mass sweep where they roughed me up and broke my camera, but they cut me loose without charges and I didn’t have to spend a night in an unheated cell without shoes or a jacket like some of my buddies did so I guess that balances out to 3/5 stars
Never had direct experience with trying to actually get them to do anything productive because lol no but had a family friend who got burgled a few years back and I was there to watch the cops come over and make fun of her for asking if they might catch the guy who did it, it was instructive.
I also know of some seriously heartbreaking brutality against mentally ill people–some police aren’t properly trained to manage or confront mental illness and resort to force when it’s not necessary. I have to be vague, but ugh it breaks my heart.
Also, police violence and hostility toward homeless people is well documented and pretty obvious if you ever witness an encounter. So, nope, I have nothing nice to say about the police as a generality, although I’m sure there are some nice people out there, somewhere.
speaking of heartbreaking brutality against the mentally ill, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/nyregion/rikers… this piece on what happens at Rikers in NYC is just awful. As someone who volunteered with the NYPL to provide library services on Rikers, this makes me extra mad and I’ve been avoiding reading about it, but it’s important so I just did.
While it’s awful that the guards beat the mentally ill, no one should ever expect Rikers of all places to be the biggest mental hospital in the country. What the hell are we doing.
Ugh yes. I see that hostility towards homeless people here in DC all the time. When I see cops telling a homeless person to move, I try to make it very clear that I, a Nice White Lady, am watching them. Gotta try to use my privilege for good.
On the other hand (“not all cops”), I had an interaction this spring with a police officer that gave me some renewed hope. I was volunteering at a tax site at a library, and I guess some dude wanted to come in to get his taxes done but had been banned from the library. So a cop came down to the basement to where the tax prep was and got a flyer so he could tell the guy where he could go! (there were sites at community centers and job training programs.) It made me feel good to see that cop actually protecting and serving someone who clearly did not have a lot of privileges in life.
In my experience, basically no police are properly trained on how to respond to mentally ill people. Which is just a recipe for disaster, since large county jails have become the biggest “mental health facilities” around the country.
When I was 18, I was put in the back of a cop car after a college party got busted my first year at school. I was in the back seat with two friends, and the police officers put us in there and ignored us while they rounded up other underaged drunk idiots.
Finally, we knocked on the window, asking to be let out because we really had to pee. So the officer told us to pee behind a nearby building. My friend in the back seat with me, drunker than I was by a little bit, looks the officer dead in the eye and says, “Oh, why, so you can arrest us for public indecency and urination?”
We peed beside the building, got a misdemeanor for being drunk, paid $265, and she ended up as my roommate.
Were we not young, white, female and in Montana, I doubt it would have worked out so nicely for us.
My experience has changed over the years. For reference I am a white lady.
When I was a surly goth teen who was a poor who lived among poors and sometimes committed minor crimes, my experiences were always bad. Even if I was being crimed against myself, they were at best lackadaisical and at worst verbally abusive. Then again, I literally was doing illegal things sometimes, and I did not expect police to treat me well or give a shit about me because they were considered the enemy in my peer group. Not in a “we’re afraid they’ll shoot us to death” way though. More like “damn cops always hassling us!” way.
As I got older and more “respectable” looking, it was like someone flipped a switch. Suddenly if I was involved in something sketchy, I got all this benefit of the doubt and shit and never did see the back of a police car again. And they were nice and called me ma’am. And if I was the victim of a crime, they like….did stuff! Caught the criminals involved, even! It was very strange and interesting to observe.
Then again – I’ve told the story of me refusing to give ID to a cop once as a teenager to friends of mine who are not white and they were all like….yeah, I’d have ended up on the ground in cuffs if I’d done that, end of story. They are almost certainly right about that! I did not get arrested at that time – I was not doing the crimes for once and was exasperated that they were questioning me and threatening to arrest me for having done nothing, so I just refused to give ID because “I didn’t do anything and you are wasting your time”. They probably didn’t want to bother with the paperwork and just told me to GTFO.
In retrospect, I for certain see my privilege working in my favor in that instance and many others! Also the simple fact that I was never convicted of anything, or sent to jail despite literally doing (minor! I promise!) crimes and getting caught occasionally. So while the cops were not nice to me until I got older and less sketchy looking, they sure as shit weren’t busting me for every single thing or beating the crap out of me, etc.
One of my best friends is not white, and she has zero good cop stories – zero. For her that switch never got flipped, despite her also now being older and respectable looking just as much as I am (if not more so – she wears penny loafers sometimes).
I got catcalled by a group of police officers staked out in my neighborhood at about 2am a few weeks back.
Made me feel really safe. /sarcasm
BURN THEM
So here’s the thing about Durham police: they have this weird way of being extremely calm and professional and even weirdly thoughtful while they completely dick people over. It’s a Southern thing, I guess: they’re a paramilitary agency with little civilian oversight who are the front-line troops of the security state, but there’s no need to be *rude* about it.
I love my city dearly, but yeah. It’d be good to avoid police attention if you can manage it.
I’ve had generally positive interactions with the police, but it has mostly been in the context of car accidents and the one time I called 911 because I saw a lady get her purse snatched and I thought she got pulled into the alley as well*.
My context is that I’m an (southeast) Asian American lady who speaks English with no real Asian accent, and looks pretty middle-class so that makes me look pretty non-threatening to most police in Maryland/mid-Atlantic. I understand from reading the news on West Coast communities (and Minneapolis) that other Southeast Asians don’t tend to get the same kind of positive experience with the police though, by virtue of being a more prominent (by pop density) minority.
My tall, black, also middle class, husband has gotten the stinkeye from the local police though, esp if he’s wearing gym clothes.
*said lady was from Eastern Europe, and actually decided to chase the purse snatcher into the alley; it was a dark corner and I was really paranoid from reading about women getting pulled into alleys to get raped so.. I know I could’ve gone after her but I got really freaked out by the whole situation and settled for calling 911 on a lit corner instead. o_O She was okay and possibly a badass.
When I was about 14 I came home from school to find a cop car sitting outside. The cop informed me that the house alarm had gone off and no one had answered the phone when the alarm company called, so he was there to check on it as is normal. He then made several comments implying he had BEEN IN THE HOUSE (when no one was there, I’m saying), and started hitting on me (I WAS A CHILD). I remember going into the house and standing in the doorway while he asked me whether I was in high school or college, telling him “high school,” and shutting the door in his face, and then basically hiding under the bed until my mom came home.
I don’t trust cops ever. I still get the benefit of my whiteness when I’ve had to deal with them since, of course, but I never feel comfortable around them and it would not occur to me to go to one for help unless in great extremity. I don’t even like to ask cops for directions.
I’m sure Cecily McMillan could tell you that even being a white girl is not sufficient protection from police violence. I do remember being terrified of the police as a small child at a political demonstration with my father, but it doesn’t take much to scare a little kid. What stands out most in my personal experience is a police officer who visited my AP American Government class and told us that if he caught one of us (mostly white, unaccented) kids “with a future” with pot, he’d let us off with a warning, but that of course he’d arrest “some gangbanger.”
Man we had the DARE officer who made us sign oaths to never do a drug, with the promise that he was keeping them and if we ever got caught on drug charges he would be informed, and he would be COMING FOR US
Also, while I don’t remember him coaching us to snitch on our parents my folks apparently vividly do, so there was that.
I have had limited contact with the police. mostly good but when it is bad it is very bad. I am a middle-class white women in my mid-thirties.
I was in a car accident about ten years ago and had a panic attack while the officer was talking to me. I wasn’t trying to get out of anything but he ended up reassuring me that everything was going to be ok and didn’t cite me for the accident.
My sister was pulled over for speeding when we were driving from Arizona to California a few years ago. She pretty much made a sad face and apologized and he let us go with a warning.
Last month my father and I were escorted from the Veteran’s Administration building by half a dozen Phoenix Police officers after a supervisor on a power-trip said my father was being argumentative and threatening when he pointed out that the supervisor was interrupting our meeting to chat with the benefits rep. I had a panic attack (proving that I should never go anywhere without anxiety meds) and my father mentioned that he thought I was owed an apology since the supervisor made me cry. My father is in his sixties, is about 5’6″, maybe 150lbs, and is on oxygen. Very threatening.
It’s probably because I am white (at least in appearance), have interacted with police mostly in low stress situations (getting fingerprinted for work, socially, the most boring US-Canada border crossing ever), and lived most of my life in a town with a fairly chill police force, but I haven’t had many bad experiences with police. Since I’ve moved to northern Canada, though, I have heard story after story of bad behaviour especially towards Indigenous people. I’ve still met some good cops up north, but it doesn’t seem a coincidence to me that the one that seemed the best was a PoC woman.
Ugh.
I live in Durham, NC and absolutely love it here, but our police have been in the news for some pretty terrible shit recently (see this, also from the Indy).
YES. This place is full of sweet, sweet people, but whenever we’ve made the national news in recent years, it’s not for anything good (voter suppressing “voter ID” laws, terrible treatment of teachers, etc). It’s a damn shame.
There’s a reason the Moral Mondays campaign struck such a chord. I can only hope that the moral outrage leads to real change around here.
Yep. Totes agreed.
Between this and catching a rerun story about Hobby Lobby I am full of monster noises. I do not wish to take to the sea, because I want my monstrosity to be special, I guess?
What I’m saying is that all I need is like a billion dollars and New Lesbos will be real. I should take to Tumblr
Read the Link Roundup and then tell me that taking to Tumblr is in any way a better option.
Oh no, I was being sarcastic because I had read it. I think my sarcasm has gone so far that it’s come through the other side to sincerity? I dunno, Tumblr seems full of easy marks.
Kickstarter: The New Lesbos
Yeeeessssss
police officers lied about non-existent 911 calls to try to convince residents to allow them to search their homes, a tactic several lawyers say is illegal
TEACH THE CONTROVERSY, NEED TO HEAR FROM BOTH SIDES, ETC.
It’s just one bad apple, y’see. And obviously a manufactured story by hardened criminals just looking for attention, proving the system works. Real police woulda shot her 41 times, hitting 19.
I actually found it interesting that the policy was instituted for domestic violence cases. Not sure whether they’re referring to the policy of visiting for 911 hangups, or the policy of lying about 911 hangups.
If it’s Option 1, and it were me calling 911 and my abuser suddenly made me hang up, I would absolutely not want the police to ignore it. But if it’s Option 2, how would that work, exactly? They just pop in unexpectedly with the 911 excuse, hoping to catch the abuser in flagrante delicto? And potentially inflaming the abuser further against the victim (for allegedly calling 911)?
Clearly they hope to catch the abuser (or abusee, or just any random person) with some weed so they can arrest them on that instead. Sorta like how the feds did Capone on tax evasion instead of all the murders, only there’s no murder or Mafia or warrant in this case and also you’re going to prison for way longer than Al did, assuming they don’t shoot you outright.
I’m pretty sure that the “follow up on 911 hangups because they might be cases where a domestic abuser is forcing an absusee to hang up the phone” is a real policy that anti-DV advocates are in favor of, actually. I seem to remember hearing something about this elsewhere. The problem is that the cops can just say “Oh, we got a 911 hangup call here, mind if we came in?” It seems to me that this kind of abuse should be possible to stamp out, because if they got enough information from a 911 hangup to track it back to its source address, that information should be logged somewhere.
Much like dashboard videos, those records are exactly as available or unavailable as the prosecutor wants them to be and nobody in the legal system seems to have any problems widdat
Ahhhh I think I was misreading the excerpt in the post. I thought they were saying that LYING about getting a 911 hangup was part of their domestic violence policy, but I think it’s just FOLLOWING UP on 911 hangups that is the policy. That’s… less terrible.
Boy it’d be nice for my state to be in the news for non horrible stuff again one day! Ha ha haaaa… *tugs nervously at collar*
If NC were my child, it’d be the one that I’d tell at Christmas that while I will always love it because I have to, I am very, very disappointed in it because this is NOT how I raised it to behave.
It’s like…I love you, but you have got to stop getting drunk at family reunions and acting like a dick.
If you need something else to make your blood boil, may I recommend this Guardian piece on the militarization of police departments? Guess what, throwing flash-bang grenades into rooms with sleeping babies in them is a really horrible idea.
NOPE.
NOPE NOPE NOPE.
The pocket constitution Mr. Vargas is holding seems to be the Cato Institute one. I have Mixed Feelings about this.
Not in like, a “wrong documents! bad!” kind of way, obviously (because of how incredibly terrible/hilarious/terrible that would be), but just because it makes me sad that Cato’s got a de facto monopoly on classy-looking pocket Constitutions, and that they use it to include a big essay about what they think the Constitution means.
There’s an old Abbie Hoffman story about him trying to grab some copies of Constitution for basically the same reasons forty years back, and the only place in town he can find it being at the John Birch Society, printed on nice parchment for a dollar
http://www.cato.org/research/immigration
I saw a thing somewhere on the Interbutt the other day which noted that it made the poster sad that, when ze saw a police car, ze felt paranoid instead of protected. (I concur.)
I live in Seattle, so…
(Middle-class white lady of medium size, usually dressed business casual for work. I tend not to have issues with police, but that is certainly not true of everyone in my city!)
Sorry to derail this too as well as Prawns above — we are hoping to plan a Seattle meetup to correspond with the Oakland Toastiversary meetup — follow @brinsonian on Twitter for details! (I really want to meet people)
Oh hey I never saw this because I am terrible at Intense Debate (for instance, will you get a notification about this? I just don’t know!) but I will keep an eye out for future meetup stuff!
Yes, I got an email. I wonder if you will.
The problem is Intense Debate, not you. I promise.
I live in Seattle. We are attempting to implement mandatory DOJ reforms. It’s not going well.
Even as a young white woman, I don’t think the police would respect me. I hope that since our new police commissioner is a woman, things may get better soon. But, I am not holding my breath.
Sorry for the derail but we are hoping to plan a Seattle meetup to correspond with the Oakland Toastiversary meetup — follow @brinsonian on Twitter for details! (I really want to meet people)
Driving through West Texas is always a fun primer on racism.
*I pull up to an interior checkpoint*
Officer: “helloUSCitizen?Okkeepdriving”
or: *waggles fingers, signifying I am not to even bother coming to a complete stop, as my blonde female self is of no interest to him, move along please*
or: “hold for the dog please…thank you, you can go now.”
Suffice to say….this isn’t how it goes if you’re a brown person. Please pull over to the Special Lane, and keep your hands where we can see them.
I was really confused about the Vargas story, because CBP is involved even though he’s not crossing a border, wtf? Anyways, buried way down in that vox.com story is the explanation: apparently they can do whatever they want within 100 miles of the border:
These checkpoints aren’t specific to South Texas. They’re located along both the southwestern and northern borders of the US, in what the ACLU calls the “Constitution-Free Zone”: the 100 miles within the United States border where Border Patrol can legally do things that, anywhere else in the country, would be considered violations of the Fourth Amendment. That includes the questioning of all drivers at interior checkpoints, as well as the search of electronic devices at the border.
Anyways. The more you know, I guess. I wasn’t aware of this, but I’ve also never lived within 100 miles of the border, so.
Ah yes. When we lived in Sierra Vista, AZ (<20 miles north of the border), the Border Patrol stopped my parents once. They were driving in a minivan with tinted windows* and the officer asked to open the side door to if anyone was inside. There was: me and my 3 siblings, all pale and blonde and under the age of 10. It’s the only time I ever remember being stopped, but this was many years before we as a nation decided we had an illegal immigration crisis.
*Did you know that minivans are a convenient way to transport small children, and that tinted windows are aces at reducing solar heat gain when you live in the desert??
Cannot click “like” on list of abuses of police authority so I have to break my lurk streak and leave a useless comment to show my appreciation for the article. THANKS MALLORY
While I’m here I may as well tell you my idle daydream of moving back to my hometown and becoming a motorcycle cop.
Pros:
– get paid to ride motorcycle rather than throwing money away on motorcycle
– sweet uniform will attract the ladies
– get to give out tickets to shitty drivers (shitty drivers are among my many, many oblivious nemeses)
– proper salary and benefits and pension as opposed to current package of $ohgodIcanneverretire
– can lie on sunny banks eating cakes during lunch break, according to observational evidence
Cons:
– powerful motivation to change the system from within likely to be crushed by distressingly tenacious perpetuation of system
– probably have to talk to a man every single day
It's like…I love you, but you have got to stop getting drunk at family reunions and acting like a dick.