Defund the Police

Since I don't know all Judges, I'm not qualified to answer that question.

Period. Full stop.

That's strictly a non-judicial, law enforcement matter. Time and again, I've said on this board that except when having a valid order from a Court of competent jurisdiction, a Police Officer has discretion in all arrests up to and including murder. The finest Police Officer I've ever met is now retired. He was the paragon of fairness and integrity. I think so highly of him that I trust him with my wife, my money, and my life.

He was an absolute stickler for the letter of the law and policy. I'm serious, this guy is the very Boy Scout image of what a Police Officer should be. One of his favorite traffic citations to write was for a "cluttered cabin." After working as many wrecks as he'd worked, he knew that everything not secured in a vehicle's cabin will become a projectile in the event of a wreck. He was the only person I've ever know to write that citation. Does that mean that other officers, including myself, never encountered a "cluttered cabin?" No, we did, all the time. It's just that we used our discretionary power and decided not to charge the suspect with that offense in addition to whatever other business we may have with them.

That’s not really the point I was making.

My point. One shouldn't automatically assume that all do so.

And? Does that justify them getting slapped with a six-month jail term or a one-year term? Because that's what happened. Meanwhile, a guy who was stopped 10 times for driving without a license, and had nine "failure to appear" related to those charges got only 10 days in jail. The difference? Skin color and the guy was able to come up with the ~$10K in fines that he'd accrued, with the other folks weren't able to come up with the less than $1K in fines.

And what about the judge? Can't they do something similar?

One of the things that folks digging into questionable policing actions look into is when a citation/arrest was made. Especially if it was something that was a minor infraction of the law. In many cases (though not all, and not all jurisdictions, of course) was that they were made shortly before the officer was dude to clock out. But by making the arrest or citation, they were able to log some overtime. Apparently, in jurisdictions where the police have a bad reputation, this is a common practice, and the officers involved can rack up significant amounts of overtime.

Your bias is coming through. Very few people on this board actually understand how the legal system actually works. I know that's an appeal to authority logical fallacy, but it is what it is. Frankly, I don't have the time to answer your questions in a thorough manner. The short answer, though, is that fines are punishment. The punishment for an offense can be a fine, jail time, or both. Beyond that, certain offenses carry more time and allow for more fines than others. You also can't believe what's in the statutes as the statutory punishments are usually wholly meaningless to me. What actually matters, to me, are the rules of criminal procedure set forth in Title 15. According to Title 13A, Assault 3rd carries a fine of not more than $5,000 and/or not more than 365 days in jail. But, according to the actual rules I am required to follow, the maximum fine a Municipal or District Court Judge can asses for Assault 3rd is $500 and not more than 180 days in jail.

Every fine, cost, and jail term are codified on a schedule. Only a Presiding Circuit Court Judge, an Appeals Court Judge, or a Supreme Court Justice can deviate from them. Couple that with misdemeanors that don't have the possibility of ever turning into a felony and you have a recipe for very odd looking behavior if you don't actually understand what's going on behind the scenes. Let me give you an example. Serious misdemeanors like Assault, Domestic Violence charges, DUI, etc will eventually turn into felonies after a proscribed number of offenses in a given time period. But, minor ones never do. Take Criminal Trespassing 3rd. It will never, ever turn into a felony. I have a guy that has over 50 convictions for CT3rd. I can't put him in jail for not paying his fines. I can't hold him for more than 30 days. So, we have a dance. I let him out, time served on Tuesday, December 7th. He was arrested for CT3rd on Friday, December 10th. I'll let him sit for 30 days, bring him to court, he'll plead guilty, and I'll release him time served. That pattern will repeat for the rest of my life or his life, whichever ends first.

Same thing with Driving while Suspended, Revoked, or Canceled. Those will never turn into felonies. I have people that have dozens of convictions for those offenses and the most I can fine them is $250 and/or 10 days in jail. 10 days in jail doesn't do them any good, maybe costing them whatever dead end job they have, so their fines keep piling up, eventually into the thousands and thousands of dollars. But, again, I can't put you in jail for failure to pay. I can put you in jail and hold you in jail for failure to appear (alias warrant), but I can not put you there for refusal to pay. I just can't.

I won't deny that something like that happens. But, let me share my decades worth of anecdotal experiences. I have never, EVER met a cop that wants to work late. Work extra days? Sure. But, that's a whole shift. I have never met someone that actually wanted to work over.

For context, that's the defence argument for Officer Kim Potter who shot Daunte Wright back in April. She meant to go for her taser, but pulled her sidearm and fatally injured Wright (who was pulled over for the horrific crime of having an air freshener dangling from his rear view mirror).

They're basically arguing that she knows it was a terrible mistake, but even if it hadn't been - fuck Wright, he deserved to get shot.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/en...innesota-justified_n_61b91f6de4b0d17c785f1f5f

Kind of sucks to be held for 30 days before you're even proven guilty, tbh.

Slow down there a minute, cowboy. We're dealing with some variables here that can be important. The laws in your state and mine are certainly different in some respects, and certain fiddly aspects of the laws in mine were ruled unconstitutional. How they play in the exact circumstances of the cases I'm talking about, I don't know. There may also be other aspects involved that I don't know about but might play a crucial role. But when one person winds up in jail for six months for driving on a suspended license once (so far as I know), while another person only gets ten days for nine failure to appear, and ten instances of driving on a suspended license and the only differences between the two of them boils down to one can pay all of their fines and skin color, I don't think that it is unreasonable to have questions. Especially in the case where the guy who had only one instance of driving on a suspended license had his response of "I didn't have the money" as to why he hadn't paid his fines met with "But you had money for cocaine" by the judge. Did that guy get busted for coke at some point? I don't know.

But I do know that there have been times in my life when even a $50 fine would have been a bridge too far for me, and I've never done coke in my life. And for fucks sake, every time that I've gotten a ticket, I've either paid it outright, or gone to court to get it knocked down (and holy shit does that make it seem like speeding tickets are a scam, but that's another matter), while the guy who got 10 days, didn't bother showing up for 9 court appearances. That means, at least here, that he was just ignoring the shit for almost a year. Does it sound right to you that somebody can ignore the law for almost a year only has to spend 10 days in jail, while a guy who shows up on his first scheduled court appearance gets six months?

There's a whole lot of variables in play here, that I won't claim to have any idea about. For example, where I live the local law enforcement folks (be they police or sheriff department) make the same amount of money (or less) than someone working an entry-level warehouse job. Sure, they can get some perks (for example living rent-free if they park their patrol vehicle in the apartment complex parking lot when they're not on duty) that I don't get, but that's not enough to compensate for the fact that they have to put their life on the line when they go to work. In other places, they make the kind of money that someone who is salaried management makes, and they're doing it on an hourly income. Could I see the folks in the second instance finagling for an extra hour or two a shift? Yeah. And even in the former instance, I can name at least one cop I knew who was happy to claim that extra bit of overtime. Not for the money, but because it gave him cover for all the other times he told his wife he had to work over while he was actually banging some chick. (And, not that it really matters, I'll point out that the specific officer I'm thinking of was a guy who was described by other folks on the force as "someone who'd arrest his own mother if she broke the law." Dude was hardcore about obeying the law, but equally hardcore about getting some tail.)

Not sure if this should go here or in the SARS 2 thread.

The Supreme Court has determined that only those people charged with capital offenses can be held without bond. Thus, everyone else, must have some sort of bond. The schedule determines the amount of the bond, but I get to determine what type of bond it is. In this case, Criminal Trespassing 3rd is a $300 bond. Ordinarily, that would be an own recognizance bond, but because he's a repeat offender with over 50 convictions, I set it as a $300 secure bond. Which means he, or his sister/caregiver, can pay a professional surety $30 and he can be released immediately. They choose not to do so.

That said, I guess I was full of the Christmas Spirit and I released him on Wednesday 12/15 about an hour before your post. At least three days per week, I buy my lunch at a local supermarket's deli. They do a fantastic meat and two. When I went to get lunch today, the police were arresting him for CT3rd. He's been trespassed from this Supermarket for about ten years. He laid down next to the ice machine near the front door and decided to take a nap. He refused to leave when Management confronted him so Management called the police, and that's when I showed up.

He saw me, smiled, said, "You a good judge! I'll see you in a few days!" I told him to behave and agreed that I'd see him on Monday to hold yet another bond and indigency hearing.

Mind you, this man isn't homeless. He lives with his sister/care-giver in a pretty nice house. But, she can't stop him from "going for a walk." He's completely harmless, he's just drank himself stupid, and I'm not a social worker. I don't have the toolset to do a social worker's job. So, he does what he does and I do what I do. Like I said, this dance will continue until one of us dies.

Its easier protect suspects and witnessenes in prison too. Frfom law anf order i really undertsand that too.

https://vtdigger.org/2021/12/17/rut...ce-as-staffing-shortage-leads-to-budget-cuts/

Ex-Minnesota police officer found guilty of manslaughter in shooting of Daunte Wright

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was shopping with her mother for a quinceañera gown (traditional party for a girl turning 15) when this coward decided he needed to unload from distance into a guy with a bike lock. She died in her mothers arms.

In the pig’s defense he said he didn’t know what was behind the lock holder before he started blowing the place up.

They've released the video. At the 20 and 24 minute marks, you can see the dude (who resembles Silent Bob) attacking people, at the 29-minute mark, you can see the police shoot him. There is audio, and it's quite loud.



There didn't seem to be any attempt to de-escalate the situation, nor did it seem like the store made any attempt to evacuate people after the first attack by the dude.

Christ US law enforcement is stunningly incompetent and cruel.

here's the lapd video (FF to 20 minutes):



The guy with the bike lock is deranged. Big guy. Still there was no effort by police to do anything but shoot. And hold diamond formation.

3 shots. Not enough time to know who else might have been in the area. The bleeding woman was out of harms way and surrounded by 4 or more cops.

idiots. fucking guns.

When I saw the small snippets of the shooting it was not clear, but that version is clear they could have done something less lethal and that girl would still be alive. They knew he just had a bike lock. I am not terribly bothered they shot him. However they knew they area was not secure of people. Even though I am OK the cop shot the guy, the reality is he should not have. The cop is not judge, jury, and executioner. It is obvious he saw the bloody woman, knew the guy savagely beat her, and just executed him. That is not how the police should be operating. I am just not sad the dude is dead.

diamond formation guys. What would I call diamond formation if I were a gun weilding maniac? I would call it a happy little clusterfuck of cop death. You know that they know there is not a gun because they have been training this shit and they are all in a tight group. That is a group meant to take down a person who does not have a firearm. I have done five man squads in close range combat with projectile weapons. That is just a good way for everyone to get hit by a shooter in the first few moments.

There's an app for that.

BTW, the ACLU has an app so that you can stream police actions.

Involuntary civil commitment, or STFU.

Someone PM or at-alert me when UA gets around to crying for the January 6th cops instead of the racist ones.

The fuck does thay have to do with anything? Do you ever let a day pass without flapping your atrophied ass cheeks?

make sure the trains run on time too?