This may be viewed by some as ironic b/c federal $ and pressure to prosecute the war on drugs has contributed to abuses of power by local police forces, but that’s fine. The USFG isn’t monolithic and I hope the judiciary would respond to such clear abusive actions by the police.

No, it doesn’t generally lead to people shooting at the cops. It generally leads to people avoiding the cops whenever possible. If you’re in a country where the cops are as likely to shake you down as take a statement, and where they’re also liable to smack you around if you catch them on a bad day, then you do everything you can to avoid coming to their attention. You don’t report crimes, you try to bribe your way out of any legal problems, you certainly never come forward as a witness or call the police because you see something suspicious, if you are a witness and the police want to take a statement, your only thought is “how do I get out of this with all my teeth and kidneys still intact” rather than “how can I help them catch the bad guys.”

Talk to people who grew up someplace with seriously corrupt cops. Hell, talk to someone black who grew up in a rough neighborhood.

Police abuses that used to be hidden are now coming out into the open. Thuggish demands that nobody videotape them, and that anyone with a camera on the scene of a shooting have their footage and cameras and phones destroyed, will not keep that from happening. Nor will cozy relationships with media sources, because the media gatekeepers are rapidly losing power to decide what will and won’t be news. If police departments and supervisors and unions keep tolerating thuggery on the part of the police, that will come out, more and more, until it’s part of everyone’s mental picture of what the police are. And then, the police in most places will simply be unable to count on anyone’s help. This will make the US a much worse place to live, but it’s the inevitable consequence of widespread abuse coming out, alongside a decades-long code of silence keeping it quiet. Go ask some non-pedophile Catholic priests how parents look at them these days.

The only way to prevent that happening is to actually take overt, visible, consistent action to respond to police abuses. Cops who destroy evidence and get caught at it need, at a minimum, to have that end their career in law enforcement. Really, they need to be charged with a felony and face some actual jail time.

I don’t think this will happen. Like the otherwise-decent priests who knew there were problems with pedophiles in the Church, but went along with keeping the problems quiet and covering for the pedophiles for reasons of tribalism and institutional inertia, otherwise-decent policemen and prosecutors and judges will continue letting this stuff slide, because standing up against it will be painful and hard and upsetting. So, instead, we’ll get more and more “isolated incidents” coming to light, until the common media narrative shifts and suddenly, the assumption is that police are corrupt and thuggish.

Tweezers?

Huh. I have a Desire, and I’ve never had a problem snatching the SD card out with my big ol’ meat paws.

After I’ve removed the back and the battery (which damages the back of the phone – WTF, HTC?), of course.

Regardless about nattering about removal methodology, I’d still like to buy Benoit a drink. Do they make Dr. Pepper in ‘Hero’ flavor?

In theory, the police are members of the executive branch of government, charged with keeping the peace, enforcing the laws passed by the congressional branch, and delivering lawbreakers to the judicial branch for trial.

In practice, police are treated as a member of the judicial branch. Humans are generally tribalists. They protect their tribe first, and all others after that, if at all. Citizens cannot press charges in most places, despite what Hollywood would have you believe. Mostly, citizens make formal complaints, then it’s up to the prosecutor (judicial branch) to decide what charges, if any charges at all, are pressed. But if a prosecutor views a cop as a member of the judicial “tribe”, and the citizen is some “foreigner”, the prosecutor will almost never side with the outsider, he’ll side with his tribe. And since it’s almost impossible to get a prosecutor arrested, let alone tried or convicted, and suing one in civil court is harder than getting a conviction of a prosecutor in criminal court, they’ll likely continue to side with their tribe, right or wrong (much like family will usually back family, right or wrong).

So while by the strict letter of the law, cops are just as subject to being arrested, tried and convicted for crimes they commit, in practice, you’d have better odds of winning the lottery than getting most prosecutors to do what they swore an oath to do.

1. People really do think these are isolated incidents.
2. People think that the victims of police abuse somehow deserve what happened to them.
3. People aren’t paying attention.
4. People are dealing with so many other problems that this just doesn’t seem like a priority right now.
5. People think this is something that only happens to other people.
6. People don’t know what to do about it, even if they want to do something.

My guess is that the reasons are various, and there are probably others that I haven’t listed.

Maybe someone in TV-land could do a TV special where they knock down each one of these. E.g., “These aren’t just isolated incidents, and here’s why. . . .”, “This could happen to you, and you have no remedy because . . . .”, “This is an important problem, because it strikes at the very heart of what a democracy is supposed to be, whether you’re conservative, liberal, libertarian, etc. . . .”

Armed robbery at that. But in the real world, the law belongs to those that enforce it.

while I do understand about the difference between popping caps at the range and firing in actual combat, I swear to Cthulu I wouldn’t have to squeeze off so many rounds.

You know the score, pal; if you’re not cop, you’re “little people.”

History shows that, if the superiors won’t punish the officers, eventually, the people will start KILLING the officers, usually indiscriminately (that is, killing the decent ones, which do exist, along with the corrupt/criminal ones).

So, LEOs, you have two choices – start cleaning your house, or hope that you manage to retire before the people start cleaning it for you. How long the people put up with it is fairly random (from very short to decades)… will you keep rolling the dice?

I’d have a hard time not responding with “papa-paparazzi”.

How dumb are the cops? First, stomping the phone is just destroying someone’s property. It has little chance of destroying the SD card. Doesn’t matter though. Video of a cop willfully breaking people’s shit just because STILL won’t get anything other than pats on the back.

Rage-on you crazy fucking cops.

Some version of “destruction/withholding of evidence” would be particularly hilarious.

…And so you shall have… http://qik.com/

But regardless, we all agree police THINK they should be able to do that, if evidence is being destroyed, right?

But then they’re so fucking fast to destroy evidence. With no repercussions.

This will result in some ‘paid suspensions’ and some ‘retraining’, or as I like to call it, NOTHING. Absolutely no part of the end game in this incident will give these police the message that “this shit is not ok – don’t do that.”

And that’s just fucking reprehensible. I’m so livid right now. I am a peon, a serf, I have no rights and no hope for fair treatment in this country if a policeman wrongs me, and given how they act, the odds that a policeman WILL wrong me if I have any kind of interaction with him are not at all insignificant.

Benoit might at least get a nice cash settlement out of it.

I didn’t see any comments on the Miami Herald site. I was expecting to see a spittle-storm from badge lickers.

Yes, I just checked the docket. This is scheduled to occur right after
Hell freezes over.