Morning Ed: Crime {2016.04.04.M}
Hey companies, pay your employees well because many will sell you out.
This is swell and I’m sure won’t lead to people getting killed.
We recently discussed laws which were intended to target business practices with disparate impact that backfire (and I wrote about it here), and Ban the Box came up. As it happens, there’s a new working paper out on the subject of Ban the Box.
Emergency operators end up having to field a lot of pocket-dials.
A story of prosecutorial misconduct in Alabama.
Vigilantism! With drones! Not sure it’s actual vigilantism, but it’s certainly interesting. Other sex-worker “vigilantism,” though, may be backfiring.
Minnesota’s revenge porn law has an enemy in Hollywood.
How ’bout them Panama Papers?
This story *SHOULD* have legs… but I don’t know how it will play out in reality. It seems like Bernie and Trump have the best ability to make hay from this…Report
I suspect that it will get a lot of press – cynically, if for no other reason than because it’s more comfortable to focus on how Middle Eastern politicos handle their bribe money (Panama Papers), than the other big corruption story, which is mostly about where those bribes are coming from (Unaoil bribery scandal).Report
I’m thinking legs, but weak spindly ones. it’s not exactly shocking that Putin, various Mid East govt big shots, and FIFA officials are stashing money, lots of money, in secret hidey holes. It also seems to me that these docs can’t be used easily for legal action, or at least criminal legal action, because of attorney client privilege.
The interesting thing is that the two founders of the company that was ‘hacked’ – one is the son of a Nazi that later (allegedly) became a CIA man in Panama, and the other wrote this book. Whose plot is about government officials who keep their power through a shadowy network of corruption and media manipulation.Report
Iceland’s Prime Minister has been toppled by this already. (Warning, autoplay video.)Report
How long was the riot this time?
(last time it was two hours. it gets dark early there.)Report
Here is another crime. The FCC voted to had out more of your money. Sign up now for Obama internet.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3051019/networking/fcc-votes-to-expand-lifeline-program-to-include-broadband-subsidy.htmlReport
Hillary says “unborn person” and makes pro abortion folks unhappy.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/3/hillary-clinton-unborn-person-has-no-constitutiona/Report
Password selling: They may sell you out even if you do pay them well. 1K? 1K? Not for that pittance.
“ProPublica reported in 2014 that 380 New Yorkers gave up their fingerprints and portions of their Social Security numbers in exchange for a cookie.” Dear god….. A cookie.
And I get crap on this site for calling people stupid…..
Cellphone gun: Pfft. It’s a derringer. And a .380 to boot. Ain’t no one getting “killed” unless it’s up close and personal. Most likely a breech loader as well. No one’s going on a rampage with this thing.
Ban the Box: If hiring in one population group is suppressed then no longer suppressed, some other group is the benefit of the detriment. Who’d a thought?Report
Many people are cheap. I’m constantly surprised by the small amount of money involved in these sort of schemes.Report
I remember reading a case where a judge in No. Carolina accepted a bribe of two mortgage payments on his beach house.
So, I’m thinking his mortgage payment was probably around $1300 or so = $2600 to buy a judge; a fairly small sum.Report
If it’s one case, aren’t you really just renting the judge?Report
Sort of like a time-share?Report
I don’t think people are worried about the cell phone gun killing people directly. It’s that the cops’ “He had a cell phone and I feared for my life,” excuse for going after people who photograph them is no longer hilariously stupid. Now it’s not just a thin justification for false arrest and assault. It’s a legitimate justification for deadly force.
Brilliant idea. Thanks, guys.Report
Bingo.Report
“Ain’t no one getting “killed” unless it’s up close and personal. ”
The point is not that bullets fired from this thing will kill anyone; the point is that if you have a cell phone and use it to film a cop, he can shoot the shit out of you and point to this thing as justification. “Felt threatened, y’know. Mighta been one’a them cell-phone guns.”
edit: bah, beaten.Report
The “people will get killed” angle, Damon, is that a law enforcement officer can now plausibly claim a cell phone shaped object could have been a weapon.Report
@north @densityduck @troublesome-frog
To all the “law enforcement officer can now plausibly claim a cell phone shaped object could have been a weapon.” They’ve been using that excuse for 10 years now. “I thought it was a weapon.” and getting away with it. Will the cops tend to shoot more? Maybe. But really, no serious person would be carrying this weapon as a concealed carry. It’s next to useless and I’d have thought the “cops be a shooting more” would be self evident.Report
It’s not about the actual people carrying the gun. Nobody here is especially concerned about that (at least not in comparison to people carrying guns that look normal). It’s about people carrying phones that now look like they could be guns.Report
Especially people who are using cell phones to legally photograph LE/public interactions. How long before some bright bulb comes up with an equivalent of “stop resisting!” for use when LEOs see themselves being videoed?Report
Not just cops. I can now claim to be defending myself is someone is waving a cell phone in my direction. Right? It could be a gun after all.Report
There’s a difference between shooting somebody and then pretending you believed they had a gun after the fact and shooting somebody because you genuinely believe they have a gun. We already have enough trouble with cops pretending to be idiots to get out of trouble. We don’t need to turn them into *actual* idiots.
This is like inventing an antipersonnel bomb that happens to look like somebody’s license and registration. If we think cops are irrationally twitchy now, just wait until they’re pretty sure everything is a weapon. Even better, once enough these types of weapons exist, we can’t even really argue that they’re wrong to see the world that way.
Meanwhile, on the benefits side of the scale, we’re now able to purchase a crappy firearm in addition to all of the good ones that are already available. Yay.Report
We already have enough trouble with cops pretending to be idiots to get out of trouble.
There is no indication that there is any systematic problem with it, but people who despise the police will grasp at anything.Report
There is no indication that Black folks are more likely to possess drugs, yet stop-and-frisk.Report
Strange as it may seem to you, Kazzy, crime rates are higher in slums than they are in tract-suburbs. So, the marginal benefit to be had from deploying police officers tends to be higher in slum neighborhoods. And resident in slum neighborhoods would be…blacks and Puerto Ricans. And of interest to the police would be…young men, who tend to be amply represented in and among the population of muggers.
Given the distribution of residency, blacks in New York City in 2012 were exposed to a homicide rate that averaged to about 8.6 per 100,000. Blacks in Baltimore were exposed to a rate which averaged to about 42 per 100,000. One set of residences is more agreeable to live in than the other. And for those of you inclined to kvetch about ‘mass incarceration’, New York’s investment in prison cells is about 40% below national means. Maybe, just maybe, the New York City police had a better idea of how to do their jobs than Judge Shira Sheindlin or various and sundry occupants of this combox.Report
Let me know when you respond to my actual point.Report
I have responded to your point. I can explain something to you. I cannot comprehend it for you.Report
What is your definition of “systematic” and what evidence do you think would exist if there was a systematic problem?Report
If you scrounge around, you might find a half-dozen cases in as many years where a police officer has mistaken a cell phone for a pistol. There was a case in New York City about 15 years ago where police officers mistook a wallet for a pistol. There was a case recently in Ohio where they mistook a toy gun for a pistol. There are several hundred killings of people by law enforcement in the United States every year, the vast majority ruled justifiable homicides. If 1% or 2% incorporate the officer mistaking some other implement for a pistol, it’s not much of a driver of police killings.
In a metropolitan region of ordinary dimensions (say, Louisville or Omaha), there will typically be 1 or 2 police killings a year. Police officers routinely deal with difficult and impetuous people who do stupid and vicious things on the spur of the moment. Police forces also employ human beings and human beings make mistakes, especially when they have only seconds to think about something.Report
I don’t think the police consider executing someone in cold blood to be a mistake.Report
You need to learn to distinguish between your imagination and what’s actually out there.
In a country with a seven digit population of people employed in law enforcement, you might just find one who actually did execute someone in cold blood. In the last 15 years, there have been a couple of incidents wherein airline pilots committed suicide and took all their passengers with them. It really is not a justification for libertarian twits to organize a hate-fest against airline pilots. We cannot do without cops. Libertarian twits, on the other hand, are expendable.Report
“We cannot do without cops”
… how long does it take for a cop to respond to you, if you call?
When that time is more than two hours, you’re essentially doing without cops, for most purposes.
http://www.wtae.com/news/video-shows-police-confrontation-that-ended-with-deaths-of-k9-suspect/37825600
You’re welcome, dude.
Hey, did you just call me a libertarian twit? Thank you?Report
Clearly we need another “saturday night special” law to prevent this from happening.
“There’s a difference between shooting somebody and then pretending you believed they had a gun after the fact and shooting somebody because you genuinely believe they have a gun. ”
Yeah, I just not convinced that most LEOs actually care whether or not either way, given the number of videos of cops walking into someone’s yard and routinely killing the dog. As for non cops. Well, if you’re not in a “gun rights state”, like DC, MD, NY, I’m sure this won’t be a problem because legal possession of concealed carry guns is very hard to get.Report
re: cops walking into someone’s yard and routinely killing the dog.
There is a saying that “Bad Jurisprudence makes for bad law.”
This is a matter of the courts saying that it is permissible in those circumstances where officers feel threatened by an animal.
Generally, in law enforcement, once the permissibility of a matter is established, the circumstances which permit that behavior are found to occur much more frequently.
That’s what happened here with this issue.
And to say its about house pets sort of misses the point.Report
“And to say its about house pets sort of misses the point.”
Exactly, it’s about being able to kill, which they do.Report
“They’ve been using that excuse for 10 years now. “I thought it was a weapon.” and getting away with it.”
But it is less obviously bullshit now that they can point to cell-phone guns being marketed and sold.Report
The SCOTUS issued their opinion in Evenwel v. Abbott this morning. 8-0 against the challenger, so using total population to draw legislative district lines is fine. This seemed inevitable to me — I just couldn’t see the SCOTUS ruling that essentially all districts up for election this year were improperly drawn.Report
No siesta, some would call that a crime.
Spain’s Prime Minister set to drop siesta to shorten working day by two hours.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spains-prime-minister-mariano-rajoy-set-to-drop-siesta-to-shorten-working-day-by-two-hours-a6967101.htmlReport
Interesting – I wonder if this might be a bit of a beard tax thing… Spanish workers have lower productivity than German ones, and also have a siesta – so let’s ban the siesta.Report
RE: Drone Vigilante. It is so utterly right-wing that the guy thinks he’s doing women favors by getting them convicted of a crime and put in jail. I’m sure that he has this fantasy scenario in his head where she’s all “oh my god, what was I thinking, I better get my life turned around!” and then she does.Report
This.Report
It’s the same “nosy neighbor” we’ve seen since humans created villages.Report
Don’t you know that it takes a village to have civilization?Report
Since “civilization” comes from the same root as “civics” and “civil” – Latin “civis”, meaning citizen – I think that, yeah, civilization does require a village. Definitionally.Report
The activity the nosy neighbor is reporting is against the law and has been for centuries.Report
So have drugs.
So has usury.
So has slavery.
That shit still goes on. Sometimes even in the countries that have made it illegal.Report
That guy has been stalking sex workers since at least 1992. He’s a pretty horrible person.Report
There is no indication he’s ever stalked anyone. You do not ‘stalk’ abstractions; you stalk discrete individuals on repeated occasions to harass them. He filmed this pair once and turned it over to the cops. That’s ‘neighborhood watch’, not stalking.Report
Google his name, and/or “video vigilante”
He’s conveniently posted his stalking online for your perusal.
I think it’s more of a paraphilia than anything else.Report
I cannot imagine why he’d want to clear the hookers and their johns out of his neighborhood.
If he ramps up the cost to them and it occurs to them to get off cocaine, get away from their pimp and find a different line of work, that’s gravy (and all to their benefit).Report
You can’t clear out abstractions…Report
He did not ask that ‘abstractions’ be arrested. He asked that the people he filmed be arrested.Report
You’re the one wondering aloud about why he wants to “clear out the hookers and their johns”.Report
Everyone wants hookers and pimps in their ‘hood as it brings up property values.Report
@densityduck Don’t know about “right wing,” but these juxtaposed selections from an interview with the guy are pretty much what I would have expected:
Whenever I see people publicly defend people having power over others and/or being able to invade space and privacy, it invariably turns out that what they really mean is that they should be able to have that power over other people. Others having that power over them always seems to be that one step too far.Report
I think if you’d like your ‘privacy’ respected, you can help your cause by not giving or receiving blowjobs in parked cars.Report
If it weren’t illegal then it wouldn’t be happening in parked cars with a pimp watching.Report
It is illegal but somehow the employees of ‘escort services’ seem to find loci (e.g. hotel rooms) where this fellow’s drone cannot find them.Report
I wonder if “don’t carry a gun into a restaurant” ever occurred to this guy as a solution.Report
We should, of course, arm toddlers so he says “Mommy, mommy! He has the same gun as me!” and everyone smiles and is polite and there is no crime ever and unemployment is 2% and everyone gets a 5% raise and taxes are slashed.Report
In some parts of the country hearing a kid say that would be routine.Report
Minnesota, though, is apparently not one of them.
Look, guns are complicated. And one of the reasons that guns are complicated is that carrying a gun in a public place is almost always a signal of your attitude about violence and your willingness to employ it. How and why people react to that signal, positively or negatively, is a factor in that. And none of those issues are going away because someone built a gun that looks like a boring transformer.Report
He carries a gun, does so lawfully, and has his reasons for so doing not discussed. What difference does it make what sort of commercial establishment he enters?Report
re: The Minnesota law.
I think this is fantastic, and I would like to see other states follow suit.
As typical, the concerns of the MPAA are overstated.Report