Law abuse precedes cop abuse

You want to reduce police shootings of black men, and prevent any possible retaliation? 

Get rid of your bs victimless crime laws. Those laws are  abusive and so their enforcers will be abusive.

So...

Stop harassing people for selling stuff on the street without a license.

Stop endangering lives on the road to enforce traffic and vehicle laws that do nothing but raise revenue for The State.

Get rid of the drug laws. and gun laws. They were enacted in the first place with racist intent. Using a drug or possessing a firearm does not victimize anybody else.

And get rid of the Drug War-induced  asset forfeiture laws in which innocent people see their cash, cars, or even homes taken from them without so much as being charged with a crime.

As it stands now, the police are REWARDED for harassing people, and they'll racially profile NOT because blacks are more likely to be criminals, but because they're more likely to be poor and have fewer resources to fight back with competent legal counsel. 

If we repeal victimless, abusive laws, the police will have fewer incentives to be abusive.

Trying to understand the mind of the prosecutor

Football player Plaxico Burress's case has been delayed, probably until 2010, which will allow him to play football. It is still expected that he'll eventually serve jail time.

I don't agree that what Burress did should be a crime at all, and believe he shouldn't be prosecuted. Besides that, what is striking is:

• The maximum fine under this law, and any compensatory damages, would have been the cheapest way out for the State of New York.
• There is no evidence that Burress had violent intent against anyone, and indeed did not hurt anyone else.
• Due to the costs Burress has already paid for his mishap, he should have had is "wake up call" already and jail won't do any good. Jails tend not to rehabilitate people. There are two kinds of reckless people who get in this situation: those who "wake up" and rehabilitate themselves at the first sign of trouble, and those who never "wake up" despite one or more trips to jail. I don't know which way Burress falls, but jail won't make a difference. If he hasn't woken up now, jail could just as easily make him worse.
  

Why, then, does Mayor Bloomberg and the D.A. office insist on jail time for Plaxico?

Probably for the same reason prosecutors in other cases add count after unnecessary count in order to extract a plea deal and guarantee jail time.

They don't care for justice in the individual case. Imprisonment isn't a particularly just punishment. It adds cost to the taxpayers, it doesn't compensate victims, it doesn't rehabilitate, and its usually temporary, meaning that most prisoners, even violent ones, will be released at some point in the future.

The one thing jails and prisons have going for them is that they are absolutely dreadful places. For me, there are some illegal things I know are wrong and would think I would never do, like commit violence. There are other things I wouldn't do whether they are legal or not. There are some things I might do, or at least try, if they were legal.

I don't do them, not because conscience bounds me to obey stupid and unjust laws, but because I don't want to go to jail.

For me, jail is a deterrent. The more prosecutors cram the jails and prisons with more people, the more they scare the rest of us into compliance.

It's one of the more brutal and inefficient ways to maintain "law and order." It seems to me that a system where victimless crimes are repealed and, in violent crimes, perpetrators are made to compensate victims through work, would lead to more efficient enforcement, a safe society, just outcomes and the best chance at genuine rehabilitation of the criminal.

But I do see the logic in the heavy-handed methods of prosecutors. In our flawed, broken system, the use as jail/prison as deterrence is the one tool they have to "get tough" on crime. It still doesn't make it right.

Free Plaxico

Earlier today ESPN radio had stories that Plaxico Burress, New York Giants wide receiver, will have to face jail time because his gun accidentally went off in his pants at a nightclub. (I hate when that happens!) The question is whether he'll be able to get out to play football this year, or if the jail term will derail that.

Some people swear by firearms and pack heat everywhere they go. In terms of the law, that is (or should be) their unalienable right; if there is no right to self-defense there is no right to life, which means there are no rights at all. The city ordinances and state laws concerning gun control should be repealed. At the same time, property owners also have the right to tell guests to surrender their weapons upon entering. If the guests don't like it, they can leave.

I agree with ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd, who said when the story broke some months ago that if you believe you need a gun to feel safe where you are, you should be somewhere else. If Plaxico believes he's not safe at nightclubs, he has a responsibility to himself and his employer not to go to them.

And if I ran a nightclub where alcohol would be served, I would prohibit guns on my premises. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of firearms owners are responsible with their guns when drinking; if you own a popular nightclub that one guy in a thousand will show up.

But what crime did Plaxico commit?

The discharge no doubt caused a public disturbance, within the nightclub and on the streets because of the ambulance. Plaxico should reimburse everyone adversely affected, and pay a fine for disturbing the peace.

Other than that, he should be let go. He didn't really harm anyone but himself. And he's paid a lot by suffering a leg wound and missing the salary from missed games at the end of last season.

If he ever causes injury to another by his negligence, he should be more severely punished. But the state would be far wiser freeing Plaxico and everyone else behind bars guilty of "crimes" that hurt nobody but themselves.

Overreaction?

Oakland University is shut down for a day after threats were written on bathroom walls. But do school shooters ever give public warnings before they attack? And do people who make general threats - whether to individuals or to a group of people - ever follow through?

It seems to me that putting the students on alert would have been better. If the students - and instructors - had the right to defend themselves, it would be less likely that anyone would attack.

Is it alright to think about race?

The USA's murder rate is 2 or 3 times that of most other developed nations we would prefer to compare ourselves to. Here's the thing: the nations with higher murder rates seem to have two or three of the following features: ethnic diversity, heavy drug trafficking, and government corruption.

Race-based analysis can destroy one's standing and reputation, but I am curious how White America compares in these statistical categories to whites in other majority-white nations, and how non-whites (and/or non-Judeo-Christians) fare in those nations. Are the most homogeneous nations the most crime-free? Are there similar disparities between whites and non-whites in education and income in other countries as in the United States? What about drug laws and imprisonment rates? Is the fact that the U.S. is more ethnically and racially diverse causing the statistics to lag behind? For instance, is white America's life expectancy, infant morality, etc. as good as any, and are non-whites, with short life expectancies, dragging the average down?

One reason to ask such questions is to answer what role guns play in American society. Does high gun ownership and high gun-related deaths tell the whole story, or are not most of those gun deaths drug- and gang-related, involving a tiny segment of the population? If white crime rates and white gun deaths are already low, how will gun control make anyone safer? And don't the stiff drug penalties, reflected in our high prison population (particularly, high non-white prison population), make the drug trade that much more high-risk and lethal?

The purpose is not to "blame minorities," but to get a more realistic assessment in differences in quality of life in America. As a nation becomes increasingly diverse, people with values and lifestyles different from the established white norm will probably not perform as well in the statistical measure that nation values. Some of this will be inevitable, but some policies, such as the War on Drugs, only make things worse for non-whites.

Disarm the Cops

Disarming police officers is the logical solution to prevent another tragedy like this.

At least we should prohibit them from carrying firearms while off-duty.

That would have prevented this, right?

Just as addicts will get illegal drugs, so it is that deranged individuals are not deterred by law.

Other thoughts related to this Crandon shooting:

Questions have been raised about Tyler Peterson passing the background check to become a police officer, which makes me think, he's 20! What "background" is there to check?

How low must the pay be for law enforcement officers in rural WI that 20 year-olds, who are not even responsible enough to drink, can become cops? If teachers have to get Ed. degrees to be "qualified," why shouldn't law enforcement officers be forced to get criminal justice degrees?

Also, he was killed by a SWAT team? In rural Wisconsin? I hope in that remote region of the state SWAT troops are part-time. Or maybe there are enough drug dealers in the area to keep them busy with no-knock raids.

How to Pass Gun Control

This is the latest Downsizer-Dispatch I put together. Excerpt:

On Wednesday, June 13, the House passed the first gun control legislation in nearly a decade, the 29-page H.R. 2640. They had to do it in a rush, in secret, so no one would know about it in advance. They had to do it by a voice vote, not a roll call, so no member of Congress would be held accountable.

This new legislation will allow the federal government to acquire, from the states, information about gun owners. It will federalize background checks. It will make it harder for law abiding citizens to acquire guns to protect themselves from criminals, but it will have no affect at all on the criminals themselves, because criminals do not obey the law.