http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2012/aug/09/no-more-details/

Please read the above article.

I too have read each of the posts and several other stories and posts from both sides of the issue. At the end of the day, the legitimacy of any government service is earned through that agency’s or department’s interactions with the public. An agency which utilizes legislation to be less than transparent with the public, erodes its own legitimacy. I find myself in the very unpleasant position of agreeing with many of the posts I find here. Much like Kosmo Kramer wished to opt out of receiving his US Mail, I find myself in the position of beginning think some of us ought to opt out of county services whose agents have the apparent legal authority to kill its citizenry and then refuse to share the results of their “internal investigations”. While I understand the needs of the federal security infrastructure to withhold certain intelligence gathering techniques for instance, I fail see how that type of logic, in anyway, shape of form conveys to my county provided protective services.

Look, it’s called “TRANSPARENCY”. Transparency breeds trust and may help actually lead to FCPD regaining some of trust and legitimacy I and others once bestowed upon it. In the absence of the highest degree of transparency, I am unable to disagree with many of the points made in the above posts and therefore find the providers of what are suppose to be protective services to have lost their legitimacy.

I am greatly troubled by this. Though I was less than 10 years old, I still remember the Watergate hearings and I remember the lesson:No one; not even the President, is above the law. Those who would hide behind the law to conceal the methods they use to enforce it, are clearly placing themselves in direct conflict with the Commonwealth’s sacred motto and with the hand that feeds them. Sic semper tyrannis…It’s not just a good idea for Virginia’s citizenry, it’s a good idea for the law and regardless of the FOIA loopholes VA’s law enforcement agencies may have lobbied into existence; the constant use of it, even to conceal information from victims and their families, is nothing less than tyrannical.

Come on. This goes to the very core of our Nation’s value system. I agree, I am far more concerned with any interaction with our state’s law enforcement agents than I am with our state’s citizenry. I shouldn’t feel this way and I certainly should not pay to feel this way.

Just do the right thing and share the investigative records of the citizens who have died at your hands…really at our hands as we are paying you to provide these services; and just answer the question: Why?

Thanks to The Virginia Citizens Coalition for Police Accountability, Inc. / The Executive Director of the CCPA, Nicholas Beltrante and the Mount Vernon Gazette for asking all the right questions. Eventually, we will get the answers and when we do, it will be good for everyone, especially for law enforcement.

He’s still a pretentious buffoon, but let’s make sure that a search for Randolph Sengel, Commonwealth’s Attorney for the City of Alexandria lands on this post.

“Officer”

“Agent”

“Federal Agent”

And my favorite: “Special Agent”

Why do we call these people these silly, made up names when all they are are freak’n employees, just like most folks?

Take your phony, made-up moniker and cram it: I ain’t impressed.

Why in the Hell do we call these people these silly, made up names when all they are are freak’n employees, just like most folks?

Take your phony, laughable moniker and cram it: I ain’t impressed.

Maybe if the police actually felt that they were working for and being paid by the public they wouldn’t shoot so many of us? Or maybe if their pay was partly determined by public feedback? Yeah, I know, crazy talk!

I doubt any of them are so motivated to do “the public good” that they would volunteer their time, absent the pay and perks their GovJob brings them.

CHORUS: The greater good.

PS: Another big win for public service unions! (bring it!)

As the old saying goes, who are you going to believe? The police, or your lying eyes? (Not to mention all the cell phone videos)

Protect & Serve (Themselves!)

Conscientious and dedicated judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and law enforcement officers work in a system which is as transparent as it needs to be, constrained by reasonable and appropriate limitations which are there for the greater good, not for purposes of playing hide the ball.

Apparently, “reasonable and appropriate limitations” is “every single time, EVER”. That logic error alone makes the whole letter a joke… the rest is just gravy (and there’s plenty of it!).

Civil complaint, plus opposition to motion to dismiss on the pleadings (based on qi and/or Iqbal), plus discovery request, plus motions to enforce discovery requests equal many, many thousands of dollars worth of effort.

People can do this themselves (that is, no lawyer, pro se), but they seldom want to spend the time and energy learning how (it would be a full time job for a year or so).

If they want to go the lawyer route then they are probably going to need to spend $20K to $50K, which a lot of people either don’t have, or else don’t want to spend on attorney (Americans tend to loath atty’s and their fees).

Contingency fees are an option, but it can be tough to get a contingency lawyer to take the case without knowing enough of the evidence to know that there is some chance of a big win. This is probably the primary reason that VA police go so far to hide all evidence in every single case. Specifically, in the cases at the margin where a contingency atty might (or might not) be presuaded to take the case, the police don’t want enough data out there for the contingency attys to rationally make that judgement. By hiding the data in any and all cases, they don’t have to make special excuses in that sub-set of cases where the police report or police audio recording or physical evidence would make the difference between the contingency atty saying (a-la Harvey Birdman), “I’LL take the case!” as opposed to the contingency atty saying, “too many unknowns here — I’ll pass.”

By the way, the police in the West Memphis Three case are now making valiant efforts to hide all the physical evidence in that case. The problem there is that if the public starts fisking the evidence, then they might be able to prove that police did a lousy investigation in the first place (or, worse yet, had actual reason to know who th real killer was). Compounding the problem is that if one of the families did the murders then they presumably will destroy any physical evidence that is relinquished to them.

Virginia State AG Sengel should be very careful about relying on men and not laws. What would he do if this system turned on him?

I love the whole “greater good” line – has Sengel ever googled the source? It’s from the freakin Communist Manifesto, and the concept has been used to justify all sorts of tyranny:

“History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy.” — Marx, Letter to His Father (1837)

You may remember that there were riots in England late last summer. These were (at least partially) in protest of the police shooting of a fellow named Mark Duggan. The suspicion is that police shot him because: (i) he had previously acquired a gun (specifically a “converted starter’s pistol); and (ii) he tried to run when his cab was stopped. Even under UK law, this is probably not enough for the police to legally shoot a suspect.

Back in March, the authorities said that there may not be an inquest into the Duggan shooting because of a newish law shielding certain details of police investigations from public scrutiny. On October 23 they are having a hearing to decide if they can have an inquest into Duggan’s death.

To me, this is the biggest anti-transparency shocker of the year. So, like, make a note to break out your Clash records on October 23. They may become relevant again.