Category: Law Enforcement Misconduct

So Not Surprised

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After well documented aggravated assaults against Occupy protesters, the DA has decided not to prosecute the thug cops who got caught on tape:

Two New York City police officials involved in separate incidents during the Occupy Wall Street protests won’t face criminal charges, according to a report from NBC News New York.

Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna (“Tony Baloney,” as he became known to Occupiers) and Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona were investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Bologna, who was immortalized in a hilarious Daily Show segment called The Vigilogna, was disciplined by the NYPD for pepper spraying two women who were caught behind mesh police netting during a demonstration in 2011. The department docked him 10 vacation days and reassigned him to Staten Island, but the DA has decided there’s not enough evidence to prosecute him on criminal charges.

Kaylee Dedrick — one of the pepper-sprayed women — filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD and the officer.

The other incident, involving Cardona, was a few weeks later during an altercation with Occupy protester Felix Rivera-Pitre. The NYPD said that Cardona was sprayed in the face with an unknown liquid by a group of demonstrators and that Rivera-Pitre attempted to elbow Cardona in the face. Cardona is seen in the video below lunging at Rivera-Pitre. The protester said the attack was unprovoked and that Cardona punched him in the face, and tore an earring from his ear.

What a surprise.  Cops break the law in the service of the banksters, and the prosecutors no-bill.

You can see the videos at the link.

Can We Throw His Ass in Jail for Civil Rights Violations?

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We now have a report that New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly deliberately target people to be terrorized by the police on the basis of race:

Ever since the New York City Police Department initiated its reviled stop-and-frisk technique, the force’s laughable refrain has been that its officers are not engaging in racial profiling. It may not look like racial profiling to Mayor Michael Bloomberg or NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who oversee stop and frisk, but to the millions of blacks and Latinos harassed by the NYPD over the years it is a blatant campaign against dark skin.

Today, a New York legislator testifying in a class-action suit against stop and frisk confirmed that those suspicious of the program’s racial motivations are correct. Doubling down on an accusation he made in 2011, New York State Senator Eric Adams said on the record that he heard Commissioner Kelly tell then-Governor David Paterson and a room of other lawmakers that stop and frisk targets minorities because “he wanted to instill fear in them that any time they leave their homes they could be targeted by police.”

What Ray Kelly is alleged to have said here is exactly the same as burning a cross on a hill overlooking a minority neighborhood: Instilling fear in minorities on the basis of their ancestry.

This is Bull Connor sh%$, and it’s illegal.  It’s detention and harassment on the basis of race.

If the FBI is not on the case, someone needs to get their head out of their ass, and do their f%$#ing job.

It’s Always the Tapes………

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We now have NYPD managers on tape giving quotas on stop and frisk, and telling officers to target blacks and Hispanics:

The New York police department’s controversial stop-and-frisk program is being driven by a high-pressure quota system imposed upon lower-ranking officers by their supervisors, two NYPD officers testified in court this week.

The claims were made as part of a landmark class action lawsuit that began Monday. The suit seeks to prove that the nation’s largest police department has demonstrated a widespread and systemic pattern of unconstitutional stops that disproportionately target minorities.

Lawyers for the city have dismissed allegations of quotas and scrutinized the credibility of the suit’s plaintiffs, including their allegations of racial bias on the part of the department.

………

The trial represents a historic challenge to the legacies of NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and mayor Michael Bloomberg, who have both vocally supported stop-and-frisk.

………

Darius Charney, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in opening statements that the trial is about more than numbers. “It’s about people,” he said. The NYPD has “laid siege to black and Latino communities” through “arbitrary, unnecessary and unconstitutional harassment”, Charney added.

………

By mid-week lawyers for the plaintiffs shifted focus from the experience of street stops to the internal NYPD incentive structure that allegedly motivates them.

Officer Adhyl Polanco began his testimony Tuesday by saying “there’s a difference between” the department’s policies on paper and “what goes on out there”, on the city’s streets.

Polanco testified that in 2009, officers in his Bronx precinct were expected to issue 20 summons and make one arrest per month. If they did not they would risk denied vacation, being separated from longtime partners, undesirable assignments and other consequences.

Polcano claimed it was not uncommon for patrol officers who were not making quotas to be forced to “drive the sergeant” or “drive the supervisor”, which meant driving around with a senior officer who would find individuals for the patrol officer to arrest or issue a summons to, at times for infractions the junior officer did not observe.

“We were handcuffing kids for no reason,” Polanco said. Claiming he was increasingly disturbed by what he was witnessing in his precinct, Polcanco began secretly recording his roll call meetings.

In one recording played for the court, a man Polanco claimed was a NYPD captain told officers: “the summons is a money–generating machine for the city.”

Bronx police officer Pedro Serrano also secretly recorded comments made by supervisors at the same Bronx precinct. His recordings were also played for the court this week.

On a track played Thursday, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack was heard telling Serrano he needed to stop “the right people, the right time, the right location”. When asked what he believed McCormack meant Serrano told the court: “he meant blacks and Hispanics.”

Later in the tape McCormack says: “I have no problem telling you this … male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”

Serrano claims his attempts to raise concerns about stop and frisk and the existence of quotas have been met with retaliation, including fellow officers vandalizing his locker with stickers of rats.

I think that both Bloomberg and Kelly know that this is racial profiling, but they don’t care, because they know that any protests serve to reinforce their image as being “tough on crime”.

Tough on crime in the United States means dealing with minority neighborhoods as if the police department is an occupying foreign force.

Un-Dirtyword-Believable

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The New York Police Department has established a policy to conduct criminal background checks on the victims of domestic abuse:

Women who report domestic violence are exposing themselves to arrest under a new NYPD directive that orders cops to run criminal checks on the accused and the accuser, The Post has learned.

The memo by Chief of Detectives Phil Pulaski requires detectives to look at open warrants, complaint histories and even the driving records of both parties.

“You have no choice but to lock them up” if the victims turn out to have warrants, including for minor offenses like unpaid tickets, a police source said.

“This is going to deter victims of domestic violence . . . They’re going to be scared to come forward.”

The directive tells detectives that when they are investigating cases of domestic violence, they should run a search that cross-references all NYPD databases.

Beside warrants, a person’s criminal record and history of making criminal complaints should be checked, the directive says.

I’m beginning to think that the NYPD needs another Knapp Commission a the reforms associated with such an endeavor.  (The whole racial profiling of Muslims thing, and the abuse of protestors comes to mind.)

There is a lot of rot in the force, and it this fish is rotting at the head.

I’m Conflicted about Christopher Dorner

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Basically, I’m inclined to believe his accusations about his firing, you are rarely going to go wrong by overestimating the venality and corruption of the Los Angeles police force*, but his victims were innocent, and at best only vaguely rated related to the specifics of his complaint, and he was f%$#ing murdering people.

I will leave you with the conclusion of Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I don’t really know how anyone, with any sort of coherence, adopts Christopher Dorner as a symbol in the fight against police brutality, given how he brutalized those two human beings. I cannot understand, except to say that sometimes our own anger, our pain, becomes so blinding that we fail to see the pain of others. This is the seed of inhumanity, and inhumanity is the seed of the very police brutality which we all deplore.

 In my time here I have blogged relentlessly about police brutality. It’s an important and legit issue. When cops brutalize innocent black people, they erode the contract between citizen and country. But the case against police brutality enjoys more eloquent, and more moral, voices than a coward who ambushes innocent people in a parking garage. We don’t need a Jesse James. No one needs a Jesse James.

I’m still hoping that there will be an independent investigation of the circumstances of his firing though.

If there is any truth to his accusations, it is an indication of deep and systematic problems with the LAPD.

*The LAPD of Jack Webb never really existed.

Surrender Your Privacy for the Good of the State Comrade

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The good folks at the Orwellian named Department of Homeland security has decided that they can seize and search your electronics without cause:

The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security.

The DHS, which secures the nation’s border, in 2009 announced that it would conduct a “Civil Liberties Impact Assessment” of its suspicionless search-and-seizure policy pertaining to electronic devices “within 120 days.” More than three years later, the DHS office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties published a two-page executive summary of its findings.

“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” the executive summary said.

The memo highlights the friction between today’s reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government’s stated quest for national security.

Civil rights? How September 10th of you.

I do not like what our country is becoming.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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This is why privacy, and innocent until proved guilty are important.

If your entire life is available to the state security apparatus, they will find something, and so you had better not be inconvenient to said state security apparatus, because they already have the means to destroy you.

You do not want them to be inclined to actually do so.

It is depressing that the truth tellers in our society are cartoonists and comedians.


Link

I am adding cartoonist Zach Weiner to my list of, “People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.”

Damn, This is Heavy

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A man in the process of breaking up with his wife, and alleged that she was involved with laundering money transfers to Switzerland, and the bank got him committed to a mental hospital for ten years:

A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims.

In a plot worthy of a crime blockbuster, Gustl Mollath, 56, was submitted to the secure unit of a psychiatric hospital seven years ago after court experts diagnosed him with paranoid personality disorder following his claims that staff at the Hypo Vereinsbank (HVB) – including his wife, then an assets consultant at HVB – had been illegally smuggling large sums of money into Switzerland.

Mollath was tried in 2006 after his ex-wife accused him of causing her physical harm. He denied the charges, claiming she was trying to sully his name in the light of the evidence he allegedly had against her. He was admitted to the clinic, where he has remained against his will ever since.

But recent evidence brought to the attention of state prosecutors shows that money-laundering activities were indeed practiced over several years by members of staff at the Munich-based bank, the sixth-largest private financial institute in Germany, as detailed in an internal audit report carried out by the bank in 2003. The report, which has now been posted online, detailed illegal activities including money-laundering and aiding tax evasion. A number of employees, including Mollath’s wife, were subsequently sacked following the bank’s investigation.

………

Asked why the bank kept the report to itself and did not approach the authorities, the spokeswoman added: “In 2003 HVB initiated extensive investigations via internal audits in response to information provided by Mr Mollath on transactions that had taken place a long time before … It was determined that employees had acted contrary to their instructions regarding Swiss banking transactions”.

But while the findings, it said, had resulted in sackings, the audit “did not produce sufficient evidence indicating criminal conduct … that would have made a criminal charge seem appropriate”.

If you believe that the banks had nothing to do with his commitment, you are naive.

This is Bavaria, the heart of the German right wing, and doing the banks’ bidding is pretty much a requirement for civil servants there, so I have no doubt that Hypo Vereinsbank decided to act like Stalin’s NKVD.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Someone Here Should Be Going to Jail, and It Ain’t Kim Dotcom

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It turns out that most of the evidence in the case against Kim Dotcom and Megaupload was kept on their servers at the request of the US government:

A fresh legal bid to throw out the case against Kim Dotcom in the United States is being made after claims of an FBI double-cross.

 Evidence has emerged showing the Department of Homeland Security served a search warrant on Mr Dotcom’s file-sharing company Megaupload in 2010 which he claims forced it to preserve pirated movies found in an unrelated piracy investigation.

 The 39 files were identified during an investigation into the NinjaVideo website, which had used Megaupload’s cloud storage to store pirated movies.

 ………

 Mr Dotcom said Megaupload co-operated with the US Government investigation into copyright pirates NinjaVideo and was legally unable to delete the 39 movies identified in the search warrant.

 Mr Dotcom said: “We were informed by (the US Government) we were not to interfere with the investigation. We completely co-operated.

 ………

 The FBI application to seize the sites said the “Mega Conspiracy” members were told by “criminal search warrant” in June 2010 “that 39 infringing copies of copyrighted motion pictures were present on their leased servers”. The application was approved to allow the seizure of the domain names.

Someone was outright lying to judges in both the United States and New Zealand in order to do a favor for the pukes at the MPAA.

This is what happens when you make the conscious decision to use the powers of government as the enforcement arm of private interests.

It is inherently corrupt, and inherently corrupting.

(on edit)

If you want to make the argument that the MPAA is just being a zealous protector of its client studios, it’s not.  It’s about power.

If the movie studios were to look at the effect of low levels of file sharing, like that which was done by some Megaupload customers, they would know that shutting down the file storage site cost them money:

A new paper suggests that box office revenues were negatively impacted after the shutdown of Megaupload. The dip in revenues was most visible for average size and smaller films. According to the researchers this may have been caused by the loss of word-of-mouth promotion by people who used the popular file-hosting site to share movies. For blockbuster movies the Megaupload shutdown had the opposite effect.

In common with every file-sharing service, Megaupload was used by some of its members to host copyright-infringing movies.

For this reason the MPAA was one of the main facilitators of the Megaupload investigation, which ultimately led to the shutdown of the company in January.

The movie industry was quick to praise the government’s actions, but a new report suggests that Megaupload’s demise actually resulted in lower box office revenues.

Researchers from Munich School of Management and Copenhagen Business School published a short paper titled “Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload.” The study analyzes weekly data from 1344 movies in 49 countries over a five-year period, to asses the impact of the Megaupload shutdown on movie theater visits.

The researchers theorize that some films may actually benefit from piracy due to word of mouth promotion, and their findings partly support this idea.

So some level of file sharing can help, particularly with smaller films, like indie films.

There appears to be less/no benefit to larger films, probably because most of the studio blockbusters are crap, and so word of mouth is a bad thing.

This is not about protecting the artist. This is about protecting the do-nothing job of the studio chief’s brother in law.

Or, to be a little bit less flip, it’s about shutting down potential distribution and publicity channels that threaten the movie and record distributors’ ability act as an intermediary and charge a toll.

Yes, Making a Tort a Criminal Matter is Stupid

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I can think of no better example how how our relentless criminalization of our IP laws creating an environment where prosecutors and IP holders run roughshod over our rights and the presumption of innocence than the current clusterf%$# that is the Kim Dotcom persecution:

Officials in New Zealand’s government apparently believed the law gave them the right to spy on MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom because he was a foreign national.

They were wrong.

In New Zealand today, Prime Minister John Key apologized to DotCom for the spying conducted against him by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

The United States has accused DotCom of criminal copyright violations. In January, New Zealand police raided his home and arrested him. Just ahead of the raid, the GCSB began collecting intelligence against DotCom to see if he posed any danger to the police who would later swoop in by helicopter to arrest him.

[It] Turns out that the GCSB isn’t allowed to conduct such surveillance on New Zealand citizens, and the agency was under the false impression that DotCom, who was born in Germany, was not yet a citizen.

This meant that the spying was unlawful.

If you don’t think that they were breaking the law knowingly at the explicit request of the FBI, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

This is F%$#ing Nuts!

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The Department of Justice has charged Aaron Schwartz with 13 felonies for violating the terms of service TOS of a web site:

Federal prosectors added nine new felony counts against well-known coder and activist Aaron Swartz, who was charged last year for allegedly breaching hacking laws by downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription database via an open connection at MIT.

Swartz, the 25-year-old executive director of Demand Progress, has a history of downloading massive data sets, both to use in research and to release public domain documents from behind paywalls. He surrendered in July 2011, remains free on bond and faces dozens of years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.

Like last year’s original grand jury indictment on four felony counts, (.pdf) the superseding indictment (.pdf) unveiled Thursday accuses Swartz of evading MIT’s attempts to kick his laptop off the network while downloading millions of documents from JSTOR, a not-for-profit company that provides searchable, digitized copies of academic journals that are normally inaccessible to the public.

………

In essence, many of the charges stem from Swartz allegedly breaching the terms of service agreement for those using the research service.

“JSTOR authorizes users to download a limited number of journal articles at a time,” according to the latest indictment. “Before being given access to JSTOR’s digital archive, each user must agree and acknowledge that they cannot download or export content from JSTOR’s computer servers with automated programs such as web robots, spiders, and scrapers. JSTOR also uses computerized measures to prevent users from downloading an unauthorized number of articles using automated techniques.”

It gets better.

The DoJ lost big in the 9th circuit court, which said that a violation of the TOS was a matter for civil court, but Obama’s DiJ decided not to appeal, so that they could continue to use their bogus vendettas in other jurisdictions.

Prosecutors have an obligation to represent the people.

This obligation goes beyond fishing for a suitably technically illiterate jury and using multiple indictments and the threat of decades in jail to extract a plea bargain.

This is a despicable case of prosecutorial overreach.

They are saying that, for example, lying about my appearance on a dating site would be a felony.

Prosecutors want to make their job easier, but their method, creating a world where everyone can be thrown in jail for a felony, because there is some law that they are in violation of, is repellant.

It is the hallmark of a police state.

A Baloney Sandwich

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Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, who rose to infamy when he pepper sprayed women who were peacefully behind a police line, has been thrown to the wolves by the city of New York, which is refusing to defend him in civil suits filed against him:

New York City has distanced itself from a high-ranking police official accused of firing pepper spray at Occupy Wall Street protesters, taking the unusual step of declining to defend him in a civil lawsuit over the incident.

The decision means Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna also could be personally liable for financial damages that may arise out of the suit, said lawyers familiar with similar civil-rights claims.

The 29-year veteran has asked a judge to reverse the city. “He wasn’t doing this as Anthony Bologna, mister. He was doing this as Anthony Bologna, deputy inspector, NYPD,” said his lawyer, Louis La Pietra. Mr. Bologna’s union, the Captains Endowment Association, is now covering the cost of his defense.

Mr. Bologna was one of the most contentious public figures to emerge out of frequent clashes between Occupy Wall Street protesters and police officers last fall. A video that purported to show him aiming pepper spray at a group of demonstrators who were being held behind orange netting was widely viewed on the Internet.

Four weeks after the Sept. 24 incident, which allegedly occurred during an unpermitted march that ended in dozens of arrests, an internal investigation found Mr. Bologna in violation of New York Police Department guidelines. He was given a departmental punishment called a command discipline and docked 10 vacation days.

The city’s action is an uncommon occurrence, and I’m wondering if this means that he will start rolling on higher-ups.

This should get interesting.

Lieutenant John Pike No Longer Works At UC Davis

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Breaking news,
University of California Police Lieutenant John Pike is no longer employed as a police officer:

Lt. John Pike, the UC Davis police officer who became a focal point of last November’s pepper-spraying incident during a campus protest, is no longer employed by the university, a spokesman confirmed late Tuesday.

UC Davis spokesman Barry Shiller said he could not discuss the details of Pike’s departure, but in response to queries from The Bee, he said Pike was no longer employed there as of Tuesday.

“Consistent with privacy guidelines established in state law and university policy, I can confirm that John Pike’s employment with the university ended on July 31, 2012,” Shiller said. “I’m unable to comment further.”

Pike, 39, declined to comment when reached by The Bee as he was sitting in a meeting on campus where he said he was being terminated.

Pike’s 2010 salary was listed as $110,243.12. He has been on paid leave since the debacle unfolded last year, sparking worldwide outrage, numerous investigations and calls for the resignation of UC Davis leaders.

It certainly took long enough, he spent something like 8 months on paid administrative leave, but don’t blame the unions.

He’s a Lieutenant, and management, and so not covered by a labor agreement.

Instead blame an internal police department disciplinary process that is pretty much written by, and for, the benefit of the cops, not the general public.

H/t the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the PhotoShops.

Speaking of Wankers

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The Australian prosecutors, who tried to seize proceeds from David Hicks’ memoir about his captivity and torture at the US facility in Guantanamo Bay:

So the Australian government has shot itself in the foot while aiming at David Hicks. It would be funny if it weren’t so appalling.

The withdrawal of the dubious literary proceeds of crime action against Hicks raises questions the Commonwealth DPP has not fully answered. Why was the case dropped? What new material was presented by Hicks that prosecutors were unaware of when launching proceedings?

The DPP’s statement acknowledges the plea Hicks entered in the US – an ++”Alford plea” whereby a defendant is able to acknowledge the evidence without admitting commission of the offences charged – “is not recognised in Australia”. Furthermore, the DPP was unable to “satisfy the court that the admissions should be relied upon”, and the defendant “served evidential material not previously available to the CDPP & AFP”.

The “evidential material” in question were his allegations of coercion and torture, which were in the book that generated the moneys in question.

And the Republican Establishment is Now Resorting to Beatdowns of Paulites

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As a result of good organization and a thorough knowledge of the rules, Ron Paul’s supporters have won significant numbers of delegates.

In Louisiana, they wan an outright majority, and response of the Republican establishment was ignore them and call in the police to administer a beat down on their elected leaders:

“I’m handicapped! I need a doctor!” “Sir, this is the chairman!” The Louisiana State Republican Convention descended into chaos Saturday morning, with several delegates being arrested and the convention chairman being thrown to the ground by police. Sources report that state party officials panicked when it became clear that Ron Paul delegates commanded a decisive majority of the delegates on the floor – at least 111 of 180 (62%).

The convention began peacefully with a prayer and invocation. Roger Villere, Chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party, then attempted to recognize the former Chair of the Convention’s Rules Committee who had been ousted from his position last night. When Alex Helwig, the newly elected Rules Committee chair, rose to address the delegation, Mr. Villere ordered him removed from the floor. Video footage shows Shreveport police dragging Mr. Helwig out of the room despite his protests that he was a duly elected delegate.

Here’s hoping that the national convention Tampa will be bat-sh%$ insane as well.

h/t Vonners at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Well, What Do You Know, The DoJ Gets One Right

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The Justice Department has vigorously defending the right of the general public to videotape police officers on duty:

As police departments around the country are increasingly caught up in tussles with members of the public who record their activities, the U.S. Justice Department has come out with a strong statement supporting the First Amendment right of individuals to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties.

In a surprising letter (.pdf) sent on Monday to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department, the Justice Department also strongly asserted that officers who seize and destroy such recordings without a warrant or without due process are in strict violation of the individual’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The letter was sent to the police department as it prepares for meetings to discuss a settlement over a civil lawsuit brought by a citizen who sued the department after his camera was seized by police.

In the lawsuit, Christopher Sharp alleged that in May 2010, Baltimore City police officers seized, searched and deleted the contents of his mobile phone after he used it to record them as they were arresting a friend of his.

I am very surprised.

Pleased, but surprised.

I’d like to see some prosecutions of overzealous cops, but I would consider this highly unlikely.

Broken Window Theory of Financial Crimes

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Bill Black has a very interesting look at the “Broken Window” theory of law enforcement and how, and whether, it might be applied to financial wrongdoing.

For those of who are unfamiliar with the “Broken Window” theory of law enforcement:

James Q. Wilson was a political scientist who often studied the government response to blue collar crime. The public knows him best for his theory called “broken windows.” The metaphor was what happens to a vacant building when broken windows are not promptly repaired. Soon, most of the windows in the abandoned building are broken. The criminals feel little compunction against petty destruction because the building’s owners evince no concern for the integrity of their building. Wilson took social norms, community, and ethics seriously. He argued that as community broke down fewer honest citizens were active in monitoring and policing behavior. The breakdown in community was criminogenic – it led to widespread serious blue collar crime. He urged us to take even minor blue collar crimes and breaches of civility seriously and to demand that they be contained through social pressure and policing.

Wilson got a lot of credit for cleaning up New York City, where crime levels did drop, but they did elsewhere, so perhaps the theory is a bit overrated.

And it should be noted that Mr. Wilson specifically excluded white collar crimes.

I think that the operative word here is “white”.

As in pigmentation, and Wilson found “white crime” just fine:

In a book entitled, Thinking About Crime, Wilson argued that criminology should focus overwhelmingly on low-status blue collar criminals.

This book [does not deal] with “white collar crimes”…. Partly this reflects the limits of my own knowledge, but it also reflects my conviction, which I believe is the conviction of most citizens, that predatory street crime is a far more serious matter than consumer fraud [or] antitrust violations … because predatory crime … makes difficult or impossible maintenance of meaningful human communities (1975: xx).

I am rather tolerant of some forms of civic corruption (if a good mayor can stay in office and govern effectively only by making a few deals with highway contractors and insurance agents, I do not get overly alarmed)…. (1975: xix).

Wilson won’t say it, and cannot now, because he’s dead, and may not admit it to himself, but he’s tolerant of white collar, because “Broken Window” enforcement should only be used when it involves cops harassing poor people and/or minorities.

That’s why Wilson created a “get out of jail free” for the crimes of the upper class.

I’m inclined to believe that small crimes beget bigger crimes, and that this problem is worse among the privileged than it is among the poor and minorities.

As Prof. Black illustrates in his article, when the little things are let slide, you end up with things like liars loans, and blacklists of honest home appraisers, with executives engaging in wholesale looting of their own firms.

H/t Yves Smith.

Republicans the Party of Values

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What a surprise. We have an Arizona sheriff being accused of corruption after he threatened to deport his gay lover in order to force his silence:

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu — who became the face of Arizona border security nationally after he started stridently opposing illegal immigration — threatened his Mexican ex-lover with deportation when the man refused to promise never to disclose their years-long relationship, the former boyfriend and his lawyer tell New Times.

The latest of the alleged threats were made through Babeu’s personal attorney, who’s also running the sheriff’s campaign for Congress in District 4, the ex-lover says.

He says lawyer Chris DeRose demanded he sign an agreement that he would never breathe a word about the affair. But Jose (New Times is withholding his last name because Babeu and his attorney have challenged his legal status) refused.

This guy first came to prominence when one of his deputies fabricated a story about being shot at by illegal aliens, and Babeu went on a self promotional media tour.

BTW, until this all blew up, he was one of Mitt Romney’s campaign co-chairmen in Arizona.

I May Be Wrong About Eric Holder

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Because it does appear that he is actually investigating allegations of police brutality, with investigations being described as having, “mushroomed to unprecedented levels,” involving investigations of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department  (Joe Arpaio), Seattle’s police department,  Newark, East Haven, Miami, and Puerto Rico.

The cynic in me notes that Obama’s closest move toward action on this matter was his now-disavowed comments on the arrest of professor Henry Louis Gates, which, when juxtaposed with his history is one of studiously avoiding involvement in any issue that might remind people that he’s black, would lead me to conclude that he is studiously uninvolved with this issue.

Compare this to clear White House directives on torture and the banksters, where it is clear that the word went out that there would be no prosecutions.

I’m assuming that the fact that actual law enforcement is occurring here because the Obama administration is largely uninvolved with this.