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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
So, I remember some pages back we briefly suggested talking about stuff other than the horse race between Trump and Clinton. Lets give it a try. I've got a couple of stories I've been keeping in my pocket because so much of the talk is about the election of debating the motives of various candidates or their supporters.
Task force finds that Chicago residents are absolutely right to not trust police and that CPD has a clear history of racism
These findings include the fact that black residents make up 74% of those injured or shot by police were black, as were 76% of those tased by police. (For the record, blacks make up 33% of the population.) Also, black and hispanic drivers had their cars stopped and searched 4 times as often despite the fact that searches of cars driven by white people were much more likely to turn up illegal contraband, and that there is virtually no accountability within the department for officers who receive complaints about their actions and excessive force. Many of the incidents are never even investigated.
A few quotes form the article:
"The community’s lack of trust in CPD is justified," the task force concluded. "There is substantial evidence that people of color — particularly African-Americans — have had disproportionately negative experiences with the police over an extended period of time. There is also substantial evidence that these experiences continue today through significant disparate impacts associated with the use of force, foot and traffic stops and bias in the police oversight system itself."
The task force, with members appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, was asked to investigate the Chicago Police Department late last year, shortly after video of the police shooting of Laquan Mc Donald, a 17-year-old black teenager, was released. By and large, the report validates the criticisms and protests of racial justice activists, who have demonstrated against racial disparities in policing and the criminal justice system.
The task force stated, "Stopped without justification, verbally and physically abused, and in some instances arrested, and then detained without counsel — that is what we heard about over and over again."
...
The report found:
The linkage between racism and CPD did not just bubble up in the aftermath of the release of the Mc Donald video. Racism and maltreatment at the hands of the police have been consistent complaints from communities of color for decades. And there have been many significant flashpoints over the years — the killing of Fred Hampton (1960s), the Metcalfe hearings (1970s), federal court findings of a pattern and practice of discriminatory hiring (1970s), Jon Burge and his midnight crew (1970s to 1990s), widespread disorderly conduct arrests (1980s), the unconstitutional gang loitering ordinance (1990s), widespread use of investigatory stops and frisks (2000s) and other points. False arrests, coerced confessions and wrongful convictions are also a part of this history. Lives lost and countless more damaged. These events and others mark a long, sad history of death, false imprisonment, physical and verbal abuse and general discontent about police actions in neighborhoods of color.
...
Every stage of investigations and discipline is plagued by serious structural and procedural flaws that make real accountability nearly impossible. The collective bargaining agreements provide an unfair advantage to officers, and the investigating agencies — [the Independent Police Review Authority] and CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs — are under-resourced, lack true independence and are not held accountable for their work. Even where misconduct is found to have occurred, officers are frequently able to avoid meaningful consequences due to an opaque, drawn out and unscrutinized disciplinary process. …
The enduring issue of CPD officers acquiring a large number of Complaint Registers ("C Rs") remains a problem that must be addressed immediately. From 2007-2015, over 1,500 CPD officers acquired 10 or more C Rs, 65 of whom accumulated 30 or more C Rs. It is important to note that these numbers do not reflect the entire disciplinary history (e.g., pre-2007) of these officers.
Any one of these metrics in isolation is troubling, but taken together, the only conclusion that can be reached is that there is no serious embrace by CPD leadership of the need to make accountability a core value. These statistics give real credibility to the widespread perception that there is a deeply entrenched code of silence supported not just by individual officers, but by the very institution itself. The absence of accountability benefits only the problem officer and undermines officers who came into the job for the right reasons and remain dedicated to serving and protecting.
"Our analysis reveals that the Pentagon exaggerated and distorted the facts in order to undermine fundamental reform of the military justice system," reads a new report released Monday by the victim advocacy group Protect Our Defenders and confirmed by an Associated Press investigation.
It's not clear who exactly at the Pentagon was responsible for this. The inaccurate testimony came from Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he could have been working from bad information.
Winnefeld told Congress in 2013 — falsely, it turns out — that civilian prosecutors "refused" to prosecute 93 specific sexual assault cases that nonetheless went to court-martial because a military commander "insisted" on it. He used this statistic to bolster his claim that it would be bad for victims if military commanders were stripped of their power to decide whether to prosecute military sexual assault cases.
Whether Winnefeld knew he was wrong at the time or not, one thing is clear: The military released disingenuous data about how it prosecutes sexual assault cases. And that data was used in high-level testimony before Congress to squash a major victims' rights reform — at a time when most military sexual assault victims still refuse to come forward because they don't trust the system, and risk brutal retaliation if they do come forward.
...
The Pentagon opposes the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA), which Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and victim advocates have been pushing for since 2013. The MJIA would strip military commanders of the authority to decide whether a sexual assault case should move forward, and hand that authority over to independent military prosecutors instead.
The bill's supporters say this is necessary to protect victims whose commanders might be inclined to sweep a case under the rug — because he's friendly with an accused rapist, for instance, or because he has old-fashioned attitudes about sexual assault, or because he doesn't want bad press.
Critics of the MJIA, including the Pentagon and lawmakers like Sen. Claire Mc Caskill (D-MO), say this reform would undermine the chain of command and interfere with commanders' ability to deal with problems in their units — and that commanders are actually more aggressive than outside prosecutors about moving forward with sexual assault cases.
The latter point is what Winnefeld testified to before Congress in 2013. He said that between 2010 and 2013, there were 93 documented cases of military sexual assault that a local district attorney "refused" to prosecute but that still went to trial because a military commander "insisted" on it. If you strip commanders of that authority, he argued, fewer cases will go forward, and victims will suffer. Several senators who voted against the MJIA cited Winnefeld's testimony to explain their votes.
But Protect Our Defenders decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request on those 93 cases. Three years later, the group finally got data back on 81 of them from the Army and the Marines; the Air Force never responded, and the Navy said it didn't have any such records.
The results were startling. Not one of the 81 cases had any evidence that the case went to trial because a commander "insisted" on it. None of them showed evidence that military prosecutors were less willing than commanders to go forward with a case. The conviction rates for sexual assault in these cases were also significantly lower than the military claimed, and the sentences were arbitrary and unpredictable — including one major who was sentenced to just 30 days in confinement for molesting a child.
Two-thirds of the cases either didn't even involve a sexual assault allegation in the first place or showed that the local DA didn't "refuse" to prosecute at all — rather, the DA handed the case over to the military so that the case could be prosecuted.
The other third of the 81 cases may in fact have been "refused" by local prosecutors or other local authorities — but about a third of those cases never resulted in sexual assault charges at all. And again, there's still no evidence that a military commander pushed any of these cases forward after they were rejected by a civilian prosecutor.
But this latest drug epidemic is not driven primarily by illicit drugs. It began with a legal drug: opioid painkillers. Back in the 1990s, doctors agreed — and many still do — that America has a serious pain problem: Tens of millions of Americans experienced debilitating pain, and it was left untreated. So they looked for a solution — and, fueled by a misleading marketing push from pharmaceutical companies, landed on opioid-based painkillers, widely known by brand names such as Oxy Contin, Percocet, and Vicodin. The drugs proliferated.
But this led to unintended, devastating results. Prescription painkiller abuse went up, and overdose deaths linked to the drugs did as well. Then, as policymakers and doctors took notice of widespread painkiller abuse, they pulled back access to the drugs. But federal data shows many of these drug users didn't just quit the drugs altogether — some instead moved to a lower-cost, more potent opioid, heroin, and some are reportedly moving to the even stronger opioid, fentanyl.
As a result, nearly 29,000 deadly drug overdoses in 2014 — more than half of all overdose deaths that year — involved some type of opioid.
...
There isn't a single medication that will relieve all pain for all patients. But there was a huge push in the 1990s and 2000s — from drug companies in particular, the federal government's flawed "Pain as the Fifth Vital Sign" campaign, and pharmaceutical-backed advocacy efforts — that doctors do something about pain.
As Keith Humphreys, drug policy expert at Stanford University, explained, the evidence on whether opioid painkillers can even treat chronic pain is weak at best, but it's clear that prolonged use can result in very bad risks and complications.
But pharmaceutical companies saw an opportunity for profit, and they marketed opioids to doctors as a safer, more effective way to treat pain than other medications on the market. The result: Drug companies made a lot of money as people got addicted and died. As opioid painkiller sales increased, more people got addicted — and died.
Pharmaceutical companies' claims of safety and efficacy were, of course, inaccurate, and Purdue Pharma, producer of the opioid Oxy Contin, later paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for its false claims. Opioid painkillers carry a significant risk of addiction and overdose, especially for long-term users who build up a tolerance of the high and use more and more of the drug without building as much resistance for the respiratory effects that lead to overdose.
But many doctors, under pressure to treat pain more seriously, bought into the messaging from those decades and prescribed a ridiculous amount of painkillers to patients. In 2012, US physicians wrote 259 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers — enough to give a bottle of pills to every adult in the country. And these pills don't just end up in patients' hands, instead proliferating to black markets, getting shared among friends and family, landing in the hands of teens who rummaged through parents' medicine cabinets, and so on.
...
When opioid users couldn't fulfill their cravings with painkillers, many turned to an opioid that is, despite its status as an illegal substance, cheaper and more accessible than the legal medicine: heroin.
So as painkiller overdose deaths leveled off at around 16,000 to 17,000 for a few years, but later reached 19,000 in 2014, heroin deaths skyrocketed from just over 3,000 in 2010 to nearly 11,000 in 2014, according to CDC data. Though all heroin users didn't necessarily start with painkillers, it's the transition from painkillers to heroin, experts say, that led to the recent dramatic spike in heroin abuse.
The data backs this up: A 2014 study in JAMA Psychiatry found many painkiller users were moving on to heroin, and a 2015 CDC analysis found people who are addicted to prescription painkillers are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin.
So, institutionally racist? Is that a good descriptor of the Chicago police? Wonder if there are any police departments that don't have racism issues.
About that opioid epidemic, I wonder why it's peaking right now.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman"Exclusive: Congress probes Fed's cyber breaches, seeks records dating back to 2009" - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0YP281
Double-post for an article shaming Paul Ryan
for his endorsing the Drumpfenfuhrer.
On Thursday Mr. Ryan capitulated to ugliness. It was a sad day for the speaker, for his party and for all Americans who hoped that some Republican leaders would have the fortitude to put principle over partisanship, job security or the forlorn fantasy that Mr. Trump will advance a traditional GOP agenda.
Explaining his belated endorsement of Mr. Trump in a home-state newspaper, the speaker said that conversations with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee have reassured him. Mr. Trump will help turn House GOP ideas into law, Mr. Ryan said, in a way that a President Hillary Clinton would not.
This is fanciful, as Mr. Ryan must understand. Judging by his wild swings of position over the years, Mr. Trump does not believe in much of anything. The convictions that he does hold — against free trade and U.S. leadership abroad, for dividing the nation by religion and ethnicity — are antithetical to the principles Mr. Ryan has said guide him. Having secured the nomination without Mr. Ryan’s help, a President Trump certainly would not feel bound by any assurances that Mr. Ryan believes he has heard from the candidate.
“That’s the thing about politics,” Mr. Ryan said a while back. “We think of it in terms of this vote or that election. But it can be so much more than that. Politics can be a battle of ideas, not insults. It can be about solutions. It can be about making a difference. It can be about always striving to do better. That’s what it can be and what it should be.”
Now Mr. Ryan has endorsed a man whose “solutions” include banning Muslims from entering the country, who casts aspersions on judges because of their ethnicity, who mocks people with disabilities, who lies repeatedly, who would muzzle the free press. Each one of these is disqualifying — particularly for anyone who believes in conducting the nation’s politics in a constructive, reasonable manner or who claims to have the long-term interests of the nation, rather than a short-term win at the ballot box or in Congress, in mind.
Following Mr. Ryan’s endorsement, some insisted that the speaker had little choice. This is false. “My dad used to say, ‘If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem,’ ” Mr. Ryan said in March. When he has a comparable conversation with his children, how will Mr. Ryan explain the decision he made in this campaign?
@Wanderer I don't really think you can necessarily infer institutional racism on the part of the police force simply by virtue of those statistics; we'd need to also know about the economic situation of the black population of Chicago, among other factors hat need to be controlled for; for poverty is a major predictor of the types of crime that tend to involve police tazing people, and scross most of the country, the African American community bears the brunt of extreme poverty.
Now, the fact that African Americans control far less of the nation's wealth than their share of he population is itself a race issue, by far the biggest in my opinion, and one that, if addressed would dramatically improve pretty much all the other race issues.
@Silasw: I'm being a bit hyperbolic, yes, but then again so was that article; a person can not support the current deal with Iran and not want to go to war with them. It's a dumb opinion, since not coming to an agreement will eventually force a war.
edited 3rd Jun '16 12:42:27 PM by CaptainCapsase
Also, black and hispanic drivers had their cars stopped and searched 4 times as often despite the fact that searches of cars driven by white people were much more likely to turn up illegal contraband,
Not sure how that can be explained without racial prejudice.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman![]()
you'd have to control for the type and condition of the car they're driving and whether or not any traffic laws are being violated by the driver; especially at a distance, an officer may not know the ethnicity of the driver, but an old, beat up car tends to raise red flags, and for the very poor, that's oftentimes all you can afford. I'm not saying there is not institutional racism going on here, just that a lot more factors need to be eliminated first before you can draw a conclusion. Racism on the part of officers is almost certainly plays a factor, but there's probably a lot else at work.
edited 3rd Jun '16 12:48:54 PM by CaptainCapsase
X4 Yeah, how the hell is what
X3 quoted not a giant indicator of racism?
Edit:
And you're assuming that they didn't because...?
Also not all stops end in searches. Sure they probably stop the car evenly, but then once they see a black guy driving they search it, they see a white guy they say "you need to drive more carefully" and let them drive off.
edited 3rd Jun '16 12:50:35 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranMy impression is that if you control for actual traffic violations, the racial bias becomes even larger. That is mostly out of memory, though. I can't find anything for "type of vehicle", and some arguments that a perceived "mismatch" between a vehicle and its driver is a frequent reason for racial profiling, which would be an argument against.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Much as I would expect then, though as far as type of car, I'm suggesting that someone driving a beat up van is much more likely to get searched tha on someone driving a relatively new civic. I was vaguely aware of the perceived mismatch issue, but that wasn't specifically what I was talking about.
edited 3rd Jun '16 1:07:27 PM by CaptainCapsase
Yeah I believe the numbers show that a black person in a smart car is even more likely to get searched if they do get pulled over, because the cops assume that they must have stolen the car. This is a common enough thing the Captain America 2 made a joke about it.
Also racial profiling isn't that hard to do from a car, determining the ethnicity of a driver isn't hard, even if both vehicles are in motion.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranA quickie thing my Reuters app notified me of:
"Clinton opens up double-digit lead over Trump nationwide: Reuters/Ipsos poll" - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0YP2EX
It's not an academic study. It's a review of police-community relations ordered by the mayor.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |

So long as Trump continues to provide such wonderful raw material I would expect she shouldn't have an issue with it.