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Small Victories
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009The Maryland SWAT transparency bill was signed into law today.
It’s a start.
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Right now Im not sure there are any small victories against the police. It seems like every victory is big.
So now they just have to publish a list of instances of jack-booted thuggery?
Color me unimpressed?
Unless the bill was modified now they just have to rename their “SWAT” teams to something else, anything else, and report nothing as usual.
Is there a mechanism for obtaining these reports? Can Joe Citizen request them?
I thought of the renaming game as well, ktc2.
What the hell, celebrate…with an understanding of how hard real change is.
Militarized police abuse of citizens continues. I don’t think anyone here doubts that.
I’m not sure why #2 is modded down. Honestly, I do think it’s a good bill, my main concern is that “it’s a start” turns into “it’s good enough”.
The renaming thing shouldn’t be a problem. The bill defines a SWAT team as something along the lines of “2 or more officers with specialized training carrying more powerful weapons than normal police officers”. Just because something isn’t officially called a “SWAT” team doesn’t mean it won’t be covered.
#2 and #6: It is a start, but an IMPORTANT start.
Here, you have information that is gathered by the state, pursuant to a state law. As a result (1) less effort needed to get information and (2) it is formally recognized information. Government generated information has a stamp of authority that the government and courts recognize -it’s official government findings. This does not mean that the data is better or more accurate, only that it is much easier to lobby the government for change on the basis of this information than on the information collected by Radley etc.
#7: of course, the problem with that definition of SWAT teams is that you could give all cops bigger and badder weapons, and not train them. Or, get usual cops doing violent entry raids.
Yay!
At least legislators (not powerless people like us) are starting to recognize that police CAN abuse their powers. Most lawmakers act as if they can’t. Just the fact that it passed an elected body is kind of a new thing and a positive sign. It ain’t much but maybe its a start.
Now if we could get a SWAT raid on Scalia, we might actually get something started.
While we’re at it, they should ‘find’ some pot and child pornography at his place. The raid would be ruled a mistake, but of course, that won’t matter, haha.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090519/sc_livescience/somepeopleneverforgetaface
And in other news, “science” and “a study” have proven that some people never forget a face, even if it’s someone they don’t know and saw only in passing! The best quote: “The finding could be important in courts, where one person’s eyewitness testimony might thus be more credible than another based on their varying abilities to recognize a face.”
Now we will have certain people certified by “experts” to be better face recognizers, therefore their testimony about seeing “the defendant” holds more weight in trial.
I don’t know how it’s done in Maryland, but Mobile Police Department of Mobile, Alabama outfits most officers in a supervisory role with AR-15s in the trunks of their squad cars. Just outfit SWAT teams the same way and they could conceivably get around that…
I have to admit, this really sounds like great news. If I weren’t such a bitter cynical depressing old man, I’d celebrate immediately rather than waiting to see how it works in practice.
Dave should celebrate immediately, especially with your advanced age and all.
(j/k)
“It is meaningful to us that something good has come out of the terrible tragedy of last summer,” Calvo said as he waited for O’Malley to sign a bill requiring new reporting requirements for SWAT teams. “Hopefully, it will be a first step in being able to better police our communities.”
I applaud Cheye Calvo for pressing all the right buttons in getting his Maryland SWAT transparency bill passed into law and Radley Balko for giving him support and an additional forum.
It is a start…and one that gives me hope.
http://www.justiceforsal.com
Now we will have certain people certified by “experts” to be better face recognizers, therefore their testimony about seeing “the defendant” holds more weight in trial.
I wonder what would happen if a defense lawyer were to leave the room so that a co-lawyer could resume the case, and if the co-lawyer then asked a witness to identify which of several similar-looking photos was the attorney who had just been questioning him. A risky gambit, but if the witness couldn’t identify the lawyer who was questioning him, that would considerably diminish the significance of his identifying the defendant.
congratulations to Mayor Calvo! as cynical as I can be, I see this as a wonderful start…
OFF TOPIC:
Interesting video of five cops who, after a chase, attacked and beat the unconscious body of the defendant after he was ejected from the car in a crash.
On CNN today, a cop spokesman explained how the video shows that the cops stopped beating the guy as soon as it was clear he was unconscious. Thankfully they were terminated. Anyone else would, of course, would have been crucified.
It would be interesting to know where these 5 dismissed Birmingham cops land in future law enforcement jobs and if these “11 seconds” of fame have any impact on them as officers of the law.
There’s no way of knowing whether these cops had distinguished careers up until now when it’s standard policy to excuse misconduct and hide it from the public. Personally, I find it hard, to believe that a cop who suddenly starts beating an unconscious suspect with a billy club has never has anger management issues in the past.
Also, I’d like to find out what this guy did that justified a police chase endangering the lives of everyone else on the road. The only charge I know of is the attempted murder charge apparently for almost running down the officer.
But, it’s nice to know that beating an unconscious person with a stick doesn’t rise to the level of attempted murder (at least when it’s done by the boys in blue).
More on the 5 Alabama cops.
Apparently the beating was was edited out of the video before it was originally given to the DA and the extra footage was only recently discovered by accident.
#22: Dave Kruger:
The google-fu is strong with this one…
From http://cbs5.com/national/unconscious.man.beaten.2.1015492.html
Certainly, that’s no excuse for leading police on a high speed chase, but there’s even less excuse for continuing one in such an egregiously dangerous manner.
Chief A.C. Roper didn’t lose “50 years of combined Police experience” because of 11 seconds of tape, he lost them (temporarily… they can appeal the termination) because he operates his department like a vicious pack of dogs instead of a professional Police Department. Corruption starts at the top, asshole.
Here’s the full 20 minute chase from one car’s ( I think car 521) point of view, all the way up to the crash and including the cop who ran back to the car to turn off the video. (The Mustached guy whom I will refer to as “Officer leadfoot”)
http://videos.al.com/birmingham-news/2009/05/birmingham_police_beating_vide_1.html
This is Chief A.C. Roper’s idea of RESTRAINT? Is he fucking insane? This guy wasn’t going to stop until he crashed, almost certainly taking other motorists with him.
At many points, Officer Leadfoot recklessly swerves around traffic in an effort to continue the pursuit. There were so many chances for a fatal collision I stopped counting.
I have no love for those who run from cops… but there is a point at which you have to STOP PURSUING!
Interesting. So apparently he had reason to run. On the other hand, he apparently knew of the video before copping a plea. I wonder who he had as a defense attorney. Seems like the city would have done everything it could to keep that tape from going public, including dropping the charges.
On the other hand, if you read the comments at the AL.COM site, it’s pretty depressing. Even the cover-up doesn’t diminish their mindless support of the cops.
Continuing the off-topic discussion…
My daughter told me of a case about a week ago in Frenso where a suspect surrendered, laid down on the ground, and the cops went up and kicked him in the head and then did a high-five. This was caught by a news chopper which the cops didn’t pay any attention to because they thought was a police chopper.
She also mentioned that the cops out by her don’t turn on their dash cams anymore because the video is used against them too often. She’s a public defender out in California, so I gather she heard that through her colleagues.