Someone in a comments thread below linked to this thread on a police site, which began shortly after the botched raid on the home of Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo last summer. Some of the responses are . . . disturbing.
I blame gay marriage! I acutally have no idea what’s going on in that picture. But it seems like something you could reasonably blame on gay marriage.
NBC News Legal Analyst Dan Abrams valiantly defends the practice of convicting people in the media before they’re given a trial. I’d think Steven Hatfill and Richard Jewell might object, Dan. And I know it’s going to sound crazy, but sometimes, police really do plant drugs on people. False confessions actually happen, too.
This is kind of a nice story if you’re on the pro-Pirate Bay side of the copyright debate.
Yet more baby zoo animals. These photo collections must be traffic magnets. I should do more dog blogging.
The Worst Mayor in America plans to run for reelection.
New study says red states and family values types are the biggest consumers of porn.
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on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 7:55 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
re:porn
After their disappointing performance last fall, it seems the conservatives are beginning to get a grip on themselves.
@ Bob42: BOLSCOM!!!!
As for the good Mayor: he will be re-elected in a landslide. His constituency will “vote skin”. Also, is it not obvious that the civil rights trial against him was all a conspiracy of the White Power Structure to bring him down?
/must I?
It’s a sculpture called The Embrace.
http://fryemuseum.org/exhibition/60/
(hit back twice)
#2 I guess I woke up with a witty this morning. But it was nothing like the time I had this dream about Sarah Palin.
I forgot to add the Sarah Palin link.
the cop thread is great. how can you say that your job is to Serve & Protect when members of your group coin jewels like this regarding the Calvo raid:
“A job well done and everyone who counted went home safely.”
nice
#8 From article:
The above link is correct as well. It’s weird as fuck seeing it in person, but I was surprised at the quality of some of the pieces we have here in AZ.
Radley this artcielprobably deserves more exposure.
Victim’s Family: Wrong man Charged
Lake County, CA. Feb. 19 – It’s very unusual in a manslaughter case for a victim’s family to speak out for the defendant. But that’s what’s happening in the fatal boat crash case in Clear Lake…
Lynn Thornton died after a horrible boat crash in April of 2006. She and her friends were wrapping up a sunset cruise — it was a still night with little wind — when a power boat roared out of the darkness, launching over the sailboat, snapping the mast and crushing the cabin.
The person driving the power boat was the No. 2 man in the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, Russell Perdock.
“Mr. Perdock just slammed into ‘em, he wasn’t paying attention and it resulted in the death of my sister,” said Thomsen.
However, prosecutors ignored the speed of Perdock’s boat. He admitted going as fast as 45 miles an hour, and an independent investigation found that Perdock had broken the law by failing to maintain a safe speed.
They charged Thornton’s friend, who happened to be steering the sailboat at the time of the crash. He had been drinking, and prosecutors claimed the boat’s running lights were off…
In all, the (TV News) I-Team identified nine people — on the sailboat or on shore — who say the sailboat’s running lights, cabin lights, or both, were on.
Still, the man steering the sailboat at the time, Bismarck Dinius, faces felony charges of manslaughter and boating under the influence…
From the beginning, Perdock, the owner of the power boat, has refused to answer our questions and he declined to be interviewed for this report.
Now, the victim’s family members are letting their opinions be known.
“Russell Perdock got away with murder,” said Thomsen.
#8 | bartleby-
I’ve seen other articles on this posted, but thanks for the update. I’d like to see another cop link (like the one above linking to Calvo) to see what these weasles have to say.
Red States watch more Porn- Not That There’s Anything Wrong With It!
I only got through a few comments on the cop site about Mayor Calvo. I had to quit when I read Miguel in Miami telling us what happened: the mayor, in a recorded/video taped conversation, bought pot and agreed to have it delivered to his house.
That was enough disturbance for a Saturday morning.
Cops like making things up when they’re off the clock too it seems.
From the Dan Abrams story:
“What about those like CNN’s Nancy Grace who seems to presume every defendant guilty? Criticize her if you like, but such behavior doesn’t mean the rest of us must feign ignorance. We can question police and prosecutors without necessarily presuming they are corrupt or misguided.
Early in the investigation of the Duke University lacrosse players accused of rape in 2006, some of the very same people who suggest that the presumption of innocence be applied in all aspects of society demanded that action be taken immediately against the students. The case is now regularly cited as an example of how important it is to presume all defendants innocent in the media as well.
But that misses the point. Those of us who examined the evidence, even superficially, quickly realized the case was flimsy at best. The lesson there was not about presumptions but about the need to critically evaluate facts.
Demanding that all of us presume every defendant innocent outside of a courtroom is to demand that we stop evaluating facts, thereby suffocating independent thought and opinion. There is nothing “reasonable” about that.”
What’s unreasonable about that? Isn’t that exactly what Radley does when he comes across police stories that don’t add up?
More proof (from cops) that cops are idiots and their badge bunnies need to have their intertubes taken away.
#13:
Indeed. Plus, I think it’s particularly misleading to suggest that an adjudication on the merits in a court of law necessarily the best way to determine guilt or innocence. As we see from the Frederick case, Radley and 90% of the commentators on the site are more than happy to argue that a full adjudication sometimes (often?) gets it wrong.
The real issue, I think, is not that Radley really has a problem with making personal judgments about the innocence or guilt of a party prior to (or despite) a full adjudication in a court of law — but more that he disagrees with the conclusion. Which is perfectly fine, as long as you don’t try to hide what your real issue is.
I apologize for the above comment. I copied and pasted too much text, then didn’t reread it, then phrased my first sentence the same as Abrams phrased his last. Fail.
I stand by my point though. This is a familiar throwaway op-ed making the very important point that we should think critically about the facts instead of always deferring to a judicial verdict.
JJH2, I was typing my #16 when you posted #15. I agree 100%. I considered making the same point about Frederick (&co.), but I’m lazy and barely literate.
Re: New study says that red states…are biggest consumers of porn
And from the link “Based on their limited data, the largest consumer is Utah”
Oh, let’s all have a gleeful chuckle over that! But not for too long, since that’s not what Professor Edelman’s paper actually says. It says that if you divide subscriptions by number (per thousand) of people/broadband users/etc that Utah has the highest. That is, the highest rate of subscriptions. Not the highest consumption. Big difference (as a relatively small state population-wise, Utah’s residents would have to be consuming a truly mind-boggling amount of online porn to be the top consumers overall).
Additionally, as the authors of the paper and the linked article admit, the paper is limited by its data. In the paper itself, Edelman states that the online porn market (remember he’s talking about subscriptions to online porn only, not all online porn or all porn) is very diverse. His paper states “that the top 500 adult sites account for only 56 percent of adult site traffic, whereas the top 500 retail sites account for 76 percent of all retail site traffic”. His (non-random) data set comes from only one company (albeit with many websites, apparently) in this very diluted market. Not exactly the gold-standard for drawing solid conclusions. I did a quick read of the paper, and I think Edelman is upfront about possible problems with his data, etc. For the press, though, the study was too tasty to resist picking up, even though it should be taken with a large grain of salt. Bottom line for me: have a laugh over it, refer to it at the bar to needle your conservative friends if that’s your thing, but don’t rely on it to convince people familiar with data gathering/analysis, or you might end up looking foolish.
I could not get through all the posts on the police site either, just too sickening, but I am glad I have the site for reference. The mentality of the LEO’s on there doens’t give one much hope for the future does it?
From the article:
“A job well done and everyone who counted went home safely.” (#6 already mentioned this treasure)
Says it all, that’s for sure.
SWAT Cops, a very different and a very scary brand of people.
Oops! I meant to type
SWAT Cops, a very different and a very scary breed of people.
Well, maybe it’s a brand too : )
LEO has turned into an moniler for “Let ‘Em Open” your door anytime they want to!
The end fails miserably to justify the means in a no-knock raid in far to many cases.
Speaking of jackasses, one of our FAVORITE guys in Mississippi has responded to the accusations in both the Clarion Ledger and Hattiesurg American.
God, I needed some COMIC RELIEF today!
I’ve been nipping in Rick’s Guiness…that should have read “LEO has turned into a moniker for…”
It looks like they must have purged some (many?) of the comments on the Calvo thread because there’s only 7 comments now and the ones mentioned here seem to have disappeared.
The comments are still there with page 5 of the comments being displayed when you open the web page.
New wave journalist Radley Balko, a writer with “issues”:
New wave journalists (writers with “issues”) such as Peter Kraska and his accusations that we are “militarizing Mayberry,” to James Bovard (”Flash. Bang. You’re Dead,” Playboy) to Radley Balko’s recent “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Raids in America” from the CATO Institute, these attitudes and articles have ignored the valuable contribution that police tactical teams have made to our communities and the police business since their formation.
Learning From SWAT: …can increase officer safety
Regarding the pr0n “study”, it also might be because those people who want to by it in red states have no where else to go.
Utah, for example, restricts what is available on cable and satellite to what could be called “double XX” pron: No “money shots”, no kinky stuff. The same restrictions apply to videos and DVDs. And good luck trying to buy “dead tree” pron other than Playboy or Penthouse.
Hence, Utahns who wish to view pron (and since the state is only 2/3 Mormon, there are about 1,000,000 of them) have to go on the net to get it because it’s not available elsewhere.
Of course, you could also make the argument this high number of receipts is a sign of a lack of sophistication, because who actually pays for pron on the net anymore?