Re: Backing the Blue
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2022 5:11 pm
It's not just one issue. It does start with laws and self-righteous officials and for everyone in the justice system rule number one is cover your own ass. I don't know about Kevin's state, but several states have mandatory arrest laws and so if you call the cops about a family member and anything at all about that call can be construed as an altercation between yourself and the person you're calling about, they are legally required to arrest at least one of you. And it only gets worse. A friend of mine who is a step parent, an immigrant, and not white, who was raising this spoiled white kid, had the loser fallen real dad calling the police on him any time the kid didn't get his way and wasn't allowed to be as rude and disrespectful as possible. Fortunately, he didn't get cuffed, but had the kid made the call, he probably would have, and even an arrest for domestic for a non-citizen can be fatal.
And there's no way to fix the problem other than fix it yourself. No, you can't get counselling. Because in some states, even raising your voice to a family member is technically a misdemeanor. And so let's say you find a counselor and you're talking through your problems, and you get to the problem -- a real problem that is significant enough to be going to a counselor about, not one of these invented woke problems of not feeling valued enough or something, and the counselor is legally required to report the incident to law enforcement. A friend of mine at work had problems with his wife, she was even a counselor herself, they went to a counselor, they got to the part where he had put his arm around her to restrain her because she was flailing at him, and the counselor went white as a ghost and pulled the form from his desk to show the wife and they stopped telling the story. The wife, being a counselor, got the message -- "you can't tell me that or I'm bound to report it!"
But of course tribalism among cops and all the way up the chain is a huge problem. If cop A makes a bad call, cop B will back him up even if he knows it's wrong. But that goes all the way up to the Supreme Court where half the court is Catholic and members of the unhinged Federalist Society.
Another problem is that of low-hanging fruit. Rather than getting real bad guys off the street, it's easier to write speeding tickets and make life hell for people on minor domestic calls like this. Sting operations are in the same ballpark of going after low-hanging fruit because agencies can't do real work.
My wife used to tell me stories about how her Mexican friend kept her kids in line, and they respected the hell out of her mom while my step-kid got away with everything. I'd tell her flat out, she can do that because she's Mexican and cops will just say it's cultural but you try any of that crap and you'll be in jail.
Of course, all the overreach and stupidity is a function of real things also. If abuse wasn't such a serious issue, then we wouldn't be in this situation, and the number of people getting screwed on technicalities is still probably fewer than the number of serious abuse cases than never get dealt with.
Oh here's a great one. I heard this from somebody at jury duty. Wife calls on her husband for domestic. They arrest him but she was also guilty. As Kevin says, DA presses charges, not the victim, so they go all-in prosecuting this guy and force the wife to testify against him, because if she doesn't they'll arrest her also. Why?
DAs are part of the problem. All they care about is their prosecution rack record. Look at any DA site and they'll say something like a 96% or 98% successful prosecution rate. What that means is they were able to scare a bunch of low-hanging fruit into plea bargains.
So I see the entire criminal justice system as I do any other natural predators. I think it takes a certain kind of person to be a cop, a prosecutor, a DA, an FBI agent, or even a judge, and it's not the kind of person I have a lot in common with. Just as I respect coyotes, I keep my distance. They "sort-of" do their job and maintain a balance of nature, but I believe these are people who are typically more broken than the average person, and so stay back.
One day I was on a walk and some dense object came flying through the air and nearly hit me in the head. I kept walking assuming I was the target of something. Once I realized I was safe, I came back to the scene and found it. A pistol. I went home. I wasn't going to say anything because who knows the mood of the cop and will he try to accuse me of something? I began feeling guilty though because what if a kid found it? So I called the HOA security. Well, hours later, I ended up having to meet a cop at the scene. He was super friendly like we were best buds. The perp had thrown it right before this cop had cornered and arrested him and so I'd done him a big favor. But I count that as luck of the draw.
And there's no way to fix the problem other than fix it yourself. No, you can't get counselling. Because in some states, even raising your voice to a family member is technically a misdemeanor. And so let's say you find a counselor and you're talking through your problems, and you get to the problem -- a real problem that is significant enough to be going to a counselor about, not one of these invented woke problems of not feeling valued enough or something, and the counselor is legally required to report the incident to law enforcement. A friend of mine at work had problems with his wife, she was even a counselor herself, they went to a counselor, they got to the part where he had put his arm around her to restrain her because she was flailing at him, and the counselor went white as a ghost and pulled the form from his desk to show the wife and they stopped telling the story. The wife, being a counselor, got the message -- "you can't tell me that or I'm bound to report it!"
But of course tribalism among cops and all the way up the chain is a huge problem. If cop A makes a bad call, cop B will back him up even if he knows it's wrong. But that goes all the way up to the Supreme Court where half the court is Catholic and members of the unhinged Federalist Society.
Another problem is that of low-hanging fruit. Rather than getting real bad guys off the street, it's easier to write speeding tickets and make life hell for people on minor domestic calls like this. Sting operations are in the same ballpark of going after low-hanging fruit because agencies can't do real work.
My wife used to tell me stories about how her Mexican friend kept her kids in line, and they respected the hell out of her mom while my step-kid got away with everything. I'd tell her flat out, she can do that because she's Mexican and cops will just say it's cultural but you try any of that crap and you'll be in jail.
Of course, all the overreach and stupidity is a function of real things also. If abuse wasn't such a serious issue, then we wouldn't be in this situation, and the number of people getting screwed on technicalities is still probably fewer than the number of serious abuse cases than never get dealt with.
Oh here's a great one. I heard this from somebody at jury duty. Wife calls on her husband for domestic. They arrest him but she was also guilty. As Kevin says, DA presses charges, not the victim, so they go all-in prosecuting this guy and force the wife to testify against him, because if she doesn't they'll arrest her also. Why?
DAs are part of the problem. All they care about is their prosecution rack record. Look at any DA site and they'll say something like a 96% or 98% successful prosecution rate. What that means is they were able to scare a bunch of low-hanging fruit into plea bargains.
So I see the entire criminal justice system as I do any other natural predators. I think it takes a certain kind of person to be a cop, a prosecutor, a DA, an FBI agent, or even a judge, and it's not the kind of person I have a lot in common with. Just as I respect coyotes, I keep my distance. They "sort-of" do their job and maintain a balance of nature, but I believe these are people who are typically more broken than the average person, and so stay back.
One day I was on a walk and some dense object came flying through the air and nearly hit me in the head. I kept walking assuming I was the target of something. Once I realized I was safe, I came back to the scene and found it. A pistol. I went home. I wasn't going to say anything because who knows the mood of the cop and will he try to accuse me of something? I began feeling guilty though because what if a kid found it? So I called the HOA security. Well, hours later, I ended up having to meet a cop at the scene. He was super friendly like we were best buds. The perp had thrown it right before this cop had cornered and arrested him and so I'd done him a big favor. But I count that as luck of the draw.