And, well, you know all the crime we have to deal with now because so many people get high? It was like that back then. Imagine, say, the drinking habits of your average working-class Englishman and then imagine them being with corn liquor rather than Guinness. Just like that. It was a mess. Really, really ugly. It wasn’t at all like our drinking habits are now. We’ve actually gotten a good bit more civilized, even with drunk driving deaths and that kind of thing.

So NO, this wasn’t a case of the mean old Government being nannies or not letting anybody have any fun. It was a matter of clamping down on something that was destroying a lot of people’s lives in very unpleasant ways. Until you have had to live with an alcoholic parent or spouse or obnoxious neighbor day in and day out and had to suffer their abuse and then multiply that effect by about a thousand, maybe you’ll never understand.

It’s for that reason that I don’t really care if they ever legalize drugs. OK, I might be all right with pot being legalized, because I’ve smoked it and it’s like alcohol without the hangover for me, but people are already rude and nasty with their tobacco-smoking habits, they already force me to imbibe their drug right along with them when they light up in front of me out in public without asking me… I would imagine they’d do that with pot too. Best to just leave it to people who would be criminals anyway and let the law-abiding people take up other, less destructive hobbies.

There are more ways to harm a person than by merely taking their property. Maybe you should consider that in your critiques of government and so-called “collectivism.”

That said, I agree that this man’s arrest and sentencing were just inexcusable and baseless. I also do not understand why harming a cop carries a stiffer penalty than harming a civilian, since a police officer takes the job knowing he is risking his life, but there is no such job description for civilian life. It’s ridiculous and it just props up the authoritarian state with no real benefit to anyone.

Let’s suppose that a black man dressed as a thug actually is “orders of magnitude more likely” to commit a violent crime than a white man in a suit. Apparently, you conclude from this that it is appropriate to assume that NO white man in a suit is a threat, and that EVERY black man dressed as a thug IS a threat. This does not follow. The chance of the white man attacking you could be 0.001%, and the chance of the black man attacking you could be two orders of magnitude higher, at 0.1% — which is one chance in a thousand. You are not even CLOSE to demonstrating that the black man is more likely to attack you than not, and I believe that is Junyo’s point.

If your logic were true, then every law-abiding black man should assume that any police officer who approaches him is going to arrest him without reasonable cause, fabricate evidence, and lie on the stand to convict him. After all, police officers are orders of magnitude more likely to do this to a black man than people who are not police officers.

To his question, yes, the folks described who are young and male and black and dress like thugs are many many times more dangerous than people at random, little old ladies, or white men in general. Order of magnitude differences are involved.

If these people as described are not in fact a threat, then it’s too bad, but the “indignity” they suffer is mostly to be watched more closely and for their neighorhoods to be avoided. These are inconveniences, and in a free society more restrictive things like restrictive covenants, racial discrimination, policies with disparate impact, and the like should be acknowledged as totally legitimate uses of liberty. I mean, let’s face it, the subdivision rent-a-cops should be looking at who is out of place and more likely to commit crimes, no? And since they’re private and these are private neighborhoods, libertarians should not complain, I would imagine.

Just google “Color of Crime” study to see some of the basic numbers on this.

Anybody’s guess? Is that what we call police testimony nowadays?

…Because police testimony is well known to be always factually correct and honest.

This is one of the most moving posts I’ve read in some time. You’re a rock star. The damage done to families in the name of preserving family values is beyond perverse, and the wisdom and compassion to all of the victims here you display and bring to life is incredibly moving.

Thank you for pursuing this, for publicizing this, for simply being a dedicated, honest, wonderful person.

And you are… as long as people agree with you?

> The room wasn’t “well-lit.” It wasn’t even dimly lit. It was dark.

Yeah, so all the news outlets got it wrong? Sure.

> Officer Jones’ clothing wasn’t plainly marked.

And since any reasonable person would agree with you, that is why the police department effected a change in uniform… oh, wait they didn’t? Another fine, lawyerly point.

> Whether or not they were yelling “police!” is anyone’s guess.

Anybody’s guess? Is that what we call police testimony nowadays?

Fortunately, the jury did not believe that.

It’s pretty clear you aren’t interested in discussion or debate. But I will correct you on a couple of things:

The room wasn’t “well-lit.” It wasn’t even dimly lit. It was dark. There’s no dispute about this.

Officer Jones’ clothing wasn’t plainly marked. I’ve seen what he was wearing. It was dark clothing, with a small police insignia on the sleeves and another on the back, which Cory wouldn’t have seen.

Whether or not they were yelling “police!” is anyone’s guess. Only they and Maye know the truth about that.

Every single ‘point’ the author makes could equally well be made about a vast array of other murders. Surely, it is the first time a person chose to hide from the police in his daughter’s room? I don’t think so. The first time a killer surrendured with bullets left in his gun? Please. The first crime in which the perp’s acts don’t make objective sense to a rational observer? Umm…
And yet people… who obviously want to believe… shower this sloppy reasoning with unrestricted adulation. It never ceases to amaze me how people just turn off their skepticism like a light bulb when faced with something they want to believe.
The man blasted a cop, and he darn well knew it was a cop when he pulled the trigger. He had a lot of indications, from people screaming ‘POLICE!’ to the markings on the cop himself in the well-lit room in which the murder took place. Clever lawyering can cast doubt on each item in isolation, but all together? No.
Sure, prison conditions need improvement… for everyone, not just those chamioned by blogswarm groupthink. But that’s a seperate issue, and including it doesn’t change the fact that a jury of his peers… who saw more of the evidence than any of the commenters here ever will have… put him there.
And when you get into the ‘OMG he changed his baby’s diaper’ part… Then it starts to get just embarrasingly sloppy on the misplaced sentiment. His victim will never change a baby’s diaper… guess why?

But she’s not as likely to, is she?

If you refuse to make the kind of generalizations Roach makes, then your options are as follows:

1. Treat everyone as an equally potential threat (which means that you basically just cower in your house, since the old ladies in the walking club at the mall are clearly just as dangerous as the corn-rowed tattooed hoodie-wearing ankle-panted dudes standing on the corner in a neighborhood where lots of similar people live); or

2. Treat nobody as a potential threat, meaning that you go to an ATM in a sketchy neighborhood, taking no more precautions than you would in a mall.

The use of meth may be a form of self treatment. Something rather out of fashion these days. The medical cartel has locked up drugs and worst of all minds.

Roach, here are a few links to get you started on the self medication aspects of drug taking:

Addiction Is A Genetic Disease

Heroin

PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System

That would assume that all laws on the books are equitably prosecuted; i.e. the same percentages are plea bargined, dropped or won/lost. “Over policing” could easily be covered by your criteria by simply choosing to take most cases from suspect pool X to trial, or by the trial process being inherently skewed against suspect pool X. One would also have to assume that no other demographic correlations existed among the suspect groups, which is (pure speculation) unlikely. Not having seen the numbers, I’d wonder if the same convergence wouldn’t occur across economic lines. One think you’d tend to get a higher percentage of any group on the wrong side of the economic curve when one chooses to create a highly lucrative industry by artificially restricting supply of a highly demanded commodity, which is effectively what drugs laws do. And after criminalizing that activity to throw an inordinate percentage of your law enforcement and judicial system at those laws, as well as creating massive personal/professional incentives for the people in those systems to focus on those crimes, would further skew the data. Can objective, cut and dry conclusions really be pulled from the data?

Above and beyond anything else is the question of whether race is a valid criteria for assumption as to behavior/level of threat.
“…on the street, I worry in general about young men, and then things like clothing, demeanor, “fit” and, yes, race go into the mix. I worry about young men more than old, men more than women, and black more than white. Are these unreasonable tools to use?”
Yeah, they are. And old white woman can shoot you dead just as easily as a young black man. A killer can smile or be nicely dressed just as easily as they can frown or wear baggy pants or sweats. A young man in average shape can be out run by a middle aged man in great shape. Nobody thinks the threat is a threat until it’s too late, otherwise nobody would ever be victimized. General stats and trends do nothing to inform you of the threat that any particular individual represents to you. The smartest course of action would simple be to assume that everyone equals a threat until proven otherwise. The only time ranking or prioritizing threats is an issue is if you’re addressing multiple targets and you need to figure out which one to address first.

More than that, despite the attempt to make racism look like a purely rational response to data, the simple fact is you’re making a collectivist argument that it’s okay to knowingly violate the rights of some portion of the citizenry as long as society’s okay with the over/under. As long as everybody feels good about the theoretical and unquantifiable “avoided rapes, assaults, robberies, and murders” then the “cost on harmless and law-abiding black men” while regrettable, is a price you’re willing to pay. How magnanimous.

If a smart white guy was to choose a life of crime he would become a banker, a lawyer, or a politician.

That being said, it’s also one of the most frustrating experiences ever to read your posts. What can I do from California to help a man in Mississippi? I can’t stand reading about him and not being able to do something.

You may have done a post about what your readers could do to help and I missed it. If so, I apologize. But if you haven’t perhaps you could do one — especially at this time of year when we’re all looking for ways to help those less fortunate — and the comment section would hopefully become a clearing-house for other good ideas to help those imprisoned unjustly.

Thanks again for all you do.

You do good work for a worthy cause.

Well done, Radley.

As for Roach’s comments – it appears this comment thread has been hijacked by someone who is taking advantage of your bandwidth to preach his position. I’ve skipped most comments that have his name attached. As this post of yours (Radley) gets linked wider, Roach’s opining may get as much visibility as yours. And even though disclaimers make it clear they are his opinions, do you really want his opinions associated with yours? Is giving him a voice like this on your site – right next to such a good update on Corey, really in your best interest? Please start deleting.

Thanks for continuing to work on Corey’s situation.

Of course, I’ll continue to feel sure of myself in regards to the immorality and impracticality of the war on drugs. There just aren’t any numbers that can justify imprisoning people for merely engaging in free-trade with politically incorrect substances.

Unless you have another link, that is.