[HN Gopher] Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Ar...
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Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year
Author : rntn
Score : 158 points
Date : 2024-01-18 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| Euphorbium wrote:
| All drug arrests are bogus, tests or no tests. Unless they are
| aresting for nonpurity of drugs.
| buro9 wrote:
| then they would arrest you for selling cocaine that is 100%
| impure (it's bird poop from your car bonnet)
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Reasonable suspicion: unknown white substance....
| dylan604 wrote:
| You can absolutely be arrested and convicted and serve time
| on attempt to sell/distribute even if the thing is 100% not a
| real drug.
| fragmede wrote:
| It surprised me to find out that selling fake drugs is a
| crime.
| dekken_ wrote:
| any form of unjust parasitism is basically slavery
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I think this Conor McGregor's take on the issue...
| giantg2 wrote:
| The real root of this sort of issue is how the courts treat the
| standard of probable cause. It's supposed to be that the evidence
| presented is proof of a crime (but not as far as beyond
| reasonable doubt, but just that the 1 sided evidence supports
| it). Instead they often use the lower standard of reasonable
| suspicion.
|
| As an example, a bag of white powder cannot meet the standard of
| probable cause by itself. Maybe if the person holding it had a
| record of trafficking, or something like that. If the instant
| tests have a 90%+ accuracy rate, then that should be enough for a
| warrant to seize and test the substance with an high accuracy
| test. But I would contend that without other evidence it
| shouldn't be enough for a custodial arrest.
|
| But none of this really matters because the judges are not
| impartial. They want to think of themselves as good guys, and
| they think of the cops as good guys. So of course they
| automatically side with the cops. Or as we in civil things like
| red flag laws, they generally ignore the "more likely than not"
| standard to "err on the side of caution" by issuing them almost
| by default. Absolutely insane that they get away with this,
| especially the ones who admit it.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >But none of this really matters because the judges are not
| impartial.
|
| Of course they are not impartial, in the US they are elected.
| If you're not "tough on crime" you're getting replaced next
| election.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Varies by jurisdiction, and not true in any federal court.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Appointed ones aren't really any better. They all have
| biases. The system is just built in a way that they are
| untouchable. How do you control someone who you have no
| recourse against? Perhaps the elected ones have the most
| accountability, even if it forces those biases to be more
| present. Even things like judicial conduct complaints are
| considered so secret that you can't subpoena them even if
| they contain exculpatory evidence. Judges are able to be sued
| (at the state level anyways) and investigated on civil rights
| and color of law violations. It just doesn't seem to happen.
| Even something like admitting in a red flag hearing that they
| are erring on the side of caution is a violation. Yet nobody
| cares to investigate or pursue it.
| zo1 wrote:
| Except in certain states, where "tough on crime" has been
| replaced with "tough on some crimes, and everything else
| small-ish gets a free pass, because hey, too many black
| people in jail or something."
|
| Low effort response, but seriously reading about this non-
| sense in the USA I'm wondering why you guys even have laws in
| the first place. Either have them and enforce them, or get
| rid of them via democratic means. Right now it seems like you
| have the worst of both, and _real_ people get stuck in the
| middle.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Some people do want to reduce the laws on the books. That's
| very difficult to do, especially as more laws are passed
| every year.
|
| Most people are indifferent because the laws don't affect
| them. Why should they care when they can benefit from
| selective enforcement? Everyone speeds and then only a
| couple people get upset that they got a ticket because
| they're the only ones caught.
| zopa wrote:
| Nowhere anywhere ever has perfectly and strictly enforced
| all its laws, or even come particularly close.
| Prosecutorial discretion isn't something the US invented.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Right now it seems like you have the worst of both, and
| real people get stuck in the middle.
|
| Also commonly called "anarcho-tyranny."
| digging wrote:
| > I'm wondering why you guys even have laws in the first
| place.
|
| In many cases, we have them for the specific purpose of
| criminalizing nonwhite people and political dissidents.
| reaperman wrote:
| Also absurd that smelling marijuana, either by human LEO's or
| K-9's, is still considered strong enough evidence to search.
| And finding anything that appears to be marijuana or a THC
| product is enough to arrest someone.
|
| The reason this is absurd is because Delta-8 THC, THC-A, and
| CBD marijuana is legal as long as they have low enough levels
| of delta-9 THC. The bud will look and smell exactly the same as
| marijuana flower with high levels of illegal Delta-9 THC. So
| the observation of marijuana (sight or smell) shouldn't be
| considered to "probably" be the illegal version today. If
| anything, in states where delta-9 THC is illegal, a bag of
| marijuana flower is far more likely to be one of these legal
| versions, because they're for sale at every fucking vape shop.
| It blows my mind to see QP's of marijuana just sitting in jars
| on the counter at every vape shop in Texas.
|
| Which also means that K-9's should have to be replaced with new
| K-9's that aren't trained to smell or "indicate" on marijuana
| because they can't distinguish between legal THC-A weed vs.
| illegal delta-9 weed. So their "indication" can't be considered
| a reliable piece of evidence when they still indicate on legal
| material.
|
| But as you said, courts are very very hesitant to limit the
| powers of the police.
|
| Also the idea that due to the "Farm Bill", vape shops can
| legally sell packages containing many grams of delta-9 THC in
| the form of gummies/etc but still can't sell plain old delta-9
| marijuana, is _completely and utterly_ absurd. I 'm glad that
| prohibition is easing up, but the inconsistencies in the
| current transitory phase are beyond ridiculous.
| timcobb wrote:
| Also absurd is arresting people for consuming marijuana
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _If anything, in states where delta-9 THC is illegal, a bag
| of marijuana flower is far more likely to be one of these
| legal versions_
|
| You don't actually believe this, do you? Marijuana is
| incredibly abundant everywhere I've ever been, legal or not.
|
| I'm Canadian, weed is legal here. I think it's insane people
| can get locked up for it. I toke on occasion myself. But if
| you get pulled over by the police and your car smells like
| dope, I'm a-ok with that being the bar of suspicion for a
| DUI. If you're the 1 in 1000 smoking pure CBD, I suppose you
| have nothing to worry about.
| TylerE wrote:
| In a non-legal state, he's probably right. There are 13
| vape shops with a two mile radius of my house, in a city of
| under 100k. They're always busy. One big advantage they
| have is they can do credit card sales, whereas since
| marijuana is still federally illegal the credit card
| companies, banks, etc won't touch it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Driving is a actually a bit different since it's a
| privilege. You can be compelled to give a blood test or
| other sobriety test or lose your license.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if there's case law around the
| smell of non-alcoholic beer on a driver.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| But as the upper commenter noted, 'suspicion' is not
| probable cause.
|
| In a state where marijuana is legal, pulling over a driver
| and noting a scent of marijuana does not seem like
| _probable cause_ for that driver to be intoxicated. What if
| the driver just drove a friend or rideshare to the airport,
| and they smelled like marijuana? What if the driver just
| bought the legally permitted limit of marijuana at a
| dispensary, and the bag is in the car? The smell of pot is
| pretty notorious for being strong, and for lingering for a
| long time.
|
| >If you're the 1 in 1000 smoking pure CBD, I suppose you
| have nothing to worry about.
|
| I don't think anyone who has experienced being suspected
| of, blood tested for, and then exonerated over a baseless
| DUI would say they have nothing to worry about. It is a
| dreadful, stressful, worrisome experience in which everyone
| except you is hoping you will fail and is in fact furious
| if you don't.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Which also means that K-9's should have to be replaced with
| new K-9's that aren't trained to smell or "indicate" on
| marijuana because they can't distinguish between legal THC-A
| weed vs. illegal delta-9 weed. So their "indication" can't be
| considered a reliable piece of evidence when they still
| indicate on legal material.
|
| I'd agree with most dogs that have already been trained.
| However, I'd be curious to see if a dog could be trained to
| differentiate the two. I wouldn't discount it out of hand,
| those noses are something else.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Didn't we already learn that K-9 mostly take cues from
| their handler rather than actually working?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2017/11/20/563889510/preventing-
| police-b...
|
| https://www.animallaw.info/article/cueing-and-probable-
| cause...
| Clubber wrote:
| That's like the counting horse.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Even if you could train a dog to reliably do that, how do
| you train people to reliably operate the dog? This is the
| problem with drug dogs now, they are highly attuned to the
| desires of their handlers.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's worse than that.
|
| In principle you could easily avoid K9 detection just by
| putting the drugs in an airtight container. In practice
| it's hard to avoid any of the drugs getting on the
| outside of the container or any person who walks into a
| room with them, and the dog may be able to smell that.
|
| But the same is true when you don't actually have any
| drugs. Walking through a room (e.g. a club) where someone
| else has drugs can cause the scent to get on you.
| Infamously, the majority of cash has traces of drugs on
| it. So the dog can't detect a kilo of drugs in an
| airtight container, but it can detect traces of drugs
| outside of it, which are commonly on people who don't
| actually have any drugs. The whole thing is a pretext.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > The bud will look and smell exactly the same as marijuana
| flower with high levels of illegal Delta-9 THC.
|
| Leaving aside the broader issues of US drug policy, I'm not
| sure about that logic: Isn't it like how guns and bags of
| money and corpses _could_ be totally innocent movie props?
|
| There's always some point where investigation has to happen
| based on probabilities because nobody starts with perfect
| knowledge.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Is it common for people to carry around baggies of white powder
| that isn't drugs? The container might tip the scale one way or
| the other. If there is a little white substance at the bottom
| of a dunkin donuts bag, I'd err on the side of not being enough
| for an arrest if it flags as positive since it is more than
| likely powdered sugar, but if its in a little baggies that are
| commonly used for distribution, I'd probably say that would be
| enough.
| reaperman wrote:
| I carry around ziplock bags of unflavored protein powder
| pretty much everywhere I go, as well as creatine powder. Both
| of these can look very similar to large amounts of cocaine,
| heroin, MDMA, 2C-B, MDA, or methamphetamine...especially the
| bags of creatine crystals.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Ever buy a doughnut, or work with drywall?
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2017/10/16/558147669...
| reaperman wrote:
| Or kitty litter: https://abc13.com/meth-drugs-arrest-
| houston/1690696/
| bostonsre wrote:
| Right.. hence my dunkin donuts statement.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This was a fragment of doughnut glaze on the floor of the
| car; the other incident cited drywall dust on the floor.
| It's very clear people are being detained just off
| "tested positive"; no apparent extenuating "they had a
| bunch of dime bags" in either scenario.
| rpmisms wrote:
| When I was a teenager, I would carry around small baggies of
| baking powder, just in case I got arrested for something. I
| enjoyed trouble a bit too much, although never enough to
| actually get arrested.
| hoten wrote:
| I would be immensely paranoid that an arresting cop would
| find this somehow personally offensive, and replace my joke
| cocaine with real cocaine.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I've been tempted to put a folder of kitty porn on my
| computer. Exactly as labeled--cats having sex.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Make sure to label everything by the age of the cats
| involved, too.
| mhluongo wrote:
| Creatine and other supplements
|
| Probably should default to "I don't know why someone would do
| that, but they probably have a good reason I can't think of"
| when we're discussing taking away their liberty.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yea, makes sense, didn't think of that. It would indeed
| sketch me out a little to carry that around, but could see
| wanting to carry it around.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "but if its in a little baggies that are commonly used for
| distribution, I'd probably say that would be enough."
|
| I'd say possibly. Like in my original comment, if they have a
| record of distribution that adds a lot of weight. Just having
| a baggie of powder, or rock candy, etc isn't enough.
|
| As a kid, I had little baggies of glow powder I would
| sometimes have on me. I've had some unlabeled white pills in
| my car (asprin) in case of an emergency. I'm sure there are
| other examples too. It's not really about what's common, but
| what's probable - those are two different things. But yes
| they would require more details to differentiate.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yea.. there is so much ambiguity in stuff like this.
| Reasonable and probable mean different things to different
| people and its not like we have statistics to show that
| when a powder of a given texture of a given quantity in a
| given container is found, what percentage of the time is it
| drugs and what percentage of the time is it something
| innocent.
| cbsks wrote:
| My daughter drinks Miralax every morning, which is a white
| powder. When we go on trips I usually put a few scoops in
| clear plastic bag rather than take the entire container.
|
| From my college days, I seem to recall cocaine being a
| different consistency than Miralax. But I don't know about
| other drugs and at first glance it definitely looks
| suspicious.
|
| I am aware that my willingness to do this is a sign of my
| privilege, that many people in the US do not enjoy.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Hehe if your privilege runs out, you better eat your stash.
| The back of that police car would be some nasty evidence
| that you were relling the truth.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| It doesn't work that fast. I've had a whole bottle of it
| before and it was some time before there was any
| reaction. (Colonoscopy prep.)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Be careful with taking stuff like this every day. Miralax
| in particular is indicated for occasional use. You're
| supposed to stop and consult a doctor after 7 days of use.
|
| I overused a popular fiber supplement for a few months and
| wound up with a kidney stone. I kept my PCP in the loop for
| all of this but it wasn't caught. An EMT is the only one
| who blurted out "kidney stone" although EMTs aren't
| supposed to diagnose anything. And nobody in health care
| drew the connection to the habitual supplement usage.
| kube-system wrote:
| Miralax is frequently prescribed by doctors for long term
| use. I believe the OTC directions are not because it is
| known to be dangerous for long term use, but because the
| symptoms it treats should be evaluated by a doctor.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yea, didn't think of that. I would probably be too scared
| to pack that for a flight.
| mindslight wrote:
| I'd say that being "scared" or "sketched" about doing
| perfectly legitimate things is a direct symptom of the
| overbearing totalitarian system created by this war on
| drug users. I hope you won't be so quick to support it in
| the future! The ideals of freedom would indicate a high
| bar for locking someone in a cage, and private possession
| of consciousness altering substances doesn't clear it.
| It's essentially a false axiom from which so much of the
| contemporary police state has crystalized.
| godelski wrote:
| I'll give an even different example that what others are
| saying here. I would love to carry my medicine around in
| little bags so that I don't have to carry a whole bottle. It
| keeps things organized, more comfortable, and reduces
| problems if lost. But doing this can be illegal or suspicious
| no matter what that medication is, including simply
| ibuprofen. This is not dissimilar from the others saying they
| just want to not carry around a giant tub because the item is
| bought in bulk.
|
| The important take away here (combined with the white powder
| examples) is "just because you don't see a reason or
| understand a reason doesn't mean it isn't a rational thing
| that someone else might do." The law is supposed to be about
| reasonable doubt. Even deeper, the law is about protecting
| citizens. These activities might be "suspicious" but that's a
| vague term. At worst, these would be drug __users__ and not
| __distributors__ and I'd say those are the higher priority.
| They're also easier to identify because having many small
| bags is much more suspicious because it is harder to justify
| the convenience of replacing a storage container and/or
| taking a daily/lower quantity of whatever that substance is.
| It might seem weird to carry a bag of creatine, but it much
| weirder to be carrying 20. But maybe I'm falling trap to my
| own critique, though I'm saying I'm placing this on a
| sprecturm of suspicion instead of a binary condition to allow
| for other context.
| alan-hn wrote:
| What if instead of having a large container that has powder
| that needs to be measured someone wants to take premeasured
| single dose bags? Or should people to carry a scale on road
| trips to measure their creatine? I don't think it should be
| suspicious at all
| godelski wrote:
| I fully agree with you. I was just suggesting that a
| larger quantity is of higher suspicion but you're
| pointing at a clear context I wanted to be open to.
|
| I fully believe that there is no hard rule based system
| that can adequately account for all reasonable scenarios.
| In fact, I think a key part of what makes us different
| from machines is being able to reject "rules" because we
| understand they're more akin to guides. So I agree and
| thank you for bringing this up.
|
| Side note: in many countries medicine does in fact come
| in pre-measured dose bags. It might be more plastic but
| it sure is convenient and has other advantages.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yea, I didn't think of something like creatine. That
| being said, I would still be a little sketched to travel
| with it like that as I would assume the first thoughts of
| a police officer isn't going to be "that's probably
| creatine" when most of the times they are exposed to
| something like that in the past, it was drugs.
|
| That probably sways my thoughts on should it be enough
| for an arrest if it flags as positive some though.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Unfortunately police don't tend to be very bright and
| seem to constantly try to find things to pin people for,
| it's what they're trained to do. Drugs being illegal is a
| bad idea partially because of this issue. This is just
| another example of how drug prohibition causes more harm
| than good.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Their job is to enforce the law. It doesn't seem quite
| right to denigrate them and call them not bright for
| doing their job. Shouldn't you be blaming someone else
| and not the people in the trenches? Also, I'm not sure
| its so black and white about how drug prohibition has
| caused more harm than good. I definitely wouldn't want to
| live in Portland or SF and some of the people stuck in
| the throws of inescapable addiction might disagree with
| you.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A lot of them are not bright by design, departments
| select for obedience rather than intelligence, and at
| least one person sued and lost after learning that they
| were rejected because of having too high an IQ:
| https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-
| library/abstracts/jordan-v...
|
| Here's you're equating cops' default behavior with doing
| their job of law enforcement, while overlooking the fact
| that they often don't perform that job well because they
| discount reasonable possibilities that initially suspect
| activity is not actually illegal, and reflexively waive
| issues like presumption of innocence, 4th amendment
| limitations and so on. Read up on police training, which
| is _terrible_ in the US.
| bostonsre wrote:
| You cite one instance and equate that to a lot of them
| are not bright by design. I am sure there are indeed some
| cops that are not great and some that have lower
| intelligence. The bad cases are usually highlighted,
| while those that serve their country honorably and
| professionally get zero recognition. It is an incredibly
| hard and thankless job and we will be a lot worse off as
| a country in the future if we keep shouting them down and
| denigrating them instead of giving constructive criticism
| about the system. The better ones will become more and
| more discouraged and people will have more and more to
| complain about in the future.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No, I gave yo a general report on the topic that cited
| one instance of a lawsuit. I don't give a shit about
| police morale. They are generally well paid, have massive
| benefits including all sorts of legal immunity,
| incredibly powerful unions, and often net up to half of
| municipal budgets. It's not a thankless job, politicians
| fall over themselves to do photo ops with police and talk
| about how great they are. If cops have a morale problem
| maybe they should worker harder at treating everyone with
| respect and upholding their constitutional rights instead
| of thorwing money at concepts like 'killology'.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Portland and SF don't have fully legal and regulated drug
| supply so I'm not sure what your point is.
|
| Drug prohibition is the entire reason that fentanyl is
| now in the drug supply and prohibition where supply is
| unregulated is a large reason for overdose deaths. Most
| overdose deaths are due to inconsistency in potency which
| would not be a problem if the supply were regulated.
| Compound that issue with the harm that the legal system
| does to someone with an addiction, essentially barring
| them from normal life if they have a conviction, and we
| have the recipe for disaster which is the current state
| of affairs. People with drug convictions are generally
| seen as having a scarlet letter of unemployability which
| generally keeps them in a state of addiction and/or
| homelessness and there is a massive stigma attached not
| only to drug addiction but mental health issues which
| usually go hand in hand. That makes it incredibly
| difficult to get proper treatment.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| As a purely practical matter, a measuring spoon works
| just as well. I keep a 7.5ml spoon in the creatine jar
| because it's a quantity I don't seem to ever need for
| anything else. I agree with all the points about
| reasonability and probable cause described above, but
| it's _also_ smart to assume that cops are low IQ jerks
| and (for example) if you 're traveling, to keep your
| creatine in a labeled container, ideally the one you
| bought it in. Failing that, print out a fact sheet on
| creatine and keep it with the creatine.
|
| _Of course_ we shouldn 't have to engage in pre-emptive
| defensive strategies like this. Cops should operate to
| far higher standards and exemplify the principle of
| innocent until proven guilty. But the reality is that a
| lot of them are stupid and/or corrupt. Having been
| arrested on false pretences a few times, your post-
| contact explanations, no matter how reasonable, don't
| carry much weight if the cop finds you suspicious for
| some reason. For all practical purposes, cops are trained
| to maximize confirmation bias.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| And the flip side of this is I've seen security doing the
| same thing in the other direction. My wife set off a nuke
| scanner in Shanghai. To compound the problem the card
| from the lab (it was a nuclear heart scan) was sitting in
| the pocket of the jacket she planned to wear--and changed
| at the last minute. Despite that it was resolved with a
| little bit of conversation (admittedly, my wife speaks
| native-level Mandarin with a Shanghai accent), nobody did
| the simple test of waving around a geiger counter to see
| if it was her or something she had that was hot. (And to
| say something of the state of security--she passed
| through one US airport when 8x as hot and another when 4x
| as hot. A sufficiently sensitive detector could figure
| out that it's 140keV gamma rays and thus medical, but
| that's not the sort of thing that could be determined
| from a distance.)
| godelski wrote:
| > nobody did the simple test of waving around a geiger
| counter to see if it was her or something she had that
| was hot.
|
| Not to justify the experience, but I don't think the
| purpose of the test is to explicitly discriminate the
| difference between a person being hot or an item the
| person has being hot. The test is often used to identify
| people who work with nuclear materials, where then you
| want to determine if they are a nuclear worker, spy,
| terrorist, or simply a member of the public.
|
| I'll also add that despite being really good at detecting
| radiation there's really high variance in how people
| respond to sources. I had a tritium keychain shipped from
| China a decade ago and it sat in customs for several
| weeks. The general public does not know the difference
| between radiation types or even understand levels. I
| highly doubt they are using sensitive detectors and just
| using a cheap Geiger Counter (which beta emitters will
| set off). I very highly doubt they are using neutron
| detectors.
|
| Interestingly I bought the tritium on Amazon but it no
| longer seems like you can buy them there. There are
| several listings that __look__ like they sell them, but
| here's an illustrative example[0]. Note the last picture
| specifies the vial is not included. When you search
| Amazon you will come across a lot of phosphorous and
| certainly there are many sellers trying to pass this off
| as tritium. It looks like you can still buy uranium ore
| though...
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/TEC-SCR-Isotope-Chain-
| Reaction-Aqua/d...
|
| [Note] For those reading, tritium is perfectly safe.
| Radiation levels are not high enough to pass through skin
| and even light clothing will block it. A keychain is
| typically a very small quantity which is contained in a
| glass vial that is coated with phosphorous (to emit
| light, like a CRT monitor), and then contained in
| acrylic. I have personally tested that keychain and even
| let students use it as an extra credit in a radiation
| detection lab (they were asking about the safety). There
| is danger if you consume it or rub it in your eyes or
| genitals (or other soft body parts), but the amount you'd
| have for a keychain is very insignificant and poses zero
| risk. It's worth mentioning that tritium is going to be a
| gas, so if you break the vial it still will not represent
| danger unless you break it inside your mouth or right in
| front of your eyes (still likely low risk) due to the
| fact that it will quickly disperse (it is lighter than
| air). Tritium is fucking awesome and I wish production
| was a bit higher so we could have more access. It is
| commonly used in watch hands and gun sights but can
| essentially be used in anything you want to "permanently"
| glow in the dark. Half life is about 10 years but worth
| mentioning that you won't get a bright glow, but it will
| be easily identifiable at night or very low light
| conditions.
| worik wrote:
| I had to look up "creatine"
|
| It is (?) an unproven performance enhancing drug
|
| Much more serious and dangerous than even the most
| dangerous recreational drugs is it not?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The law is supposed to be about reasonable doubt."
|
| That's what you'll be evaluated in court with (or should
| be).
|
| To arrest or get a warrant, it's only that the law has been
| broken by a preponderance of the evidence to meet probable
| cause. Although it seems that the courts aren't even
| holding it up to this standard very often.
|
| "It might seem weird to carry a bag of creatine, but it
| much weirder to be carrying 20"
|
| Very true, and it's absolutely a spectrum. One thing to
| point out is that most departments require police to make a
| "thorough investigation". If there's a valid reason then
| they should be able to confirm it. If stuff sounds fishy,
| they can investigate further. A lot of the failures talked
| about in the article are not strictly test failures -
| they're failures of judgement or knowledge by not relying
| on other facts or by relying too heavily on the tests.
| godelski wrote:
| > they're failures of judgement or knowledge by not
| relying on other facts or by relying too heavily on the
| tests.
|
| I think this is well put and I really appreciate your
| response. I generally agree and I'm generally one that is
| quite critical of metrics. But I do not see this article
| as solely about a failure of test, but the
| interconnectedness and reliance on poor metrics rather
| than using them to update priors.
|
| Particularly why I like the last sentence is I find this
| being one of the key points that distinguishes us humans
| from machines. Because we are able to do such things as
| "I see the rules, I understand the rules" and more
| importantly "I understand why the rules were made, and
| while this violates the rules it was clearly not
| something the rules were intended to prevent." Because
| rules __are__ made to be broken. Because rules are
| imperfect. Tests are imperfect. Literally everything is
| imperfect. We have a strong desire for order and
| perfection which helps us decrease the noise but I think
| we all could do a bit better at embracing the chaos a bit
| more.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Depends on the stuff.
|
| 20 small bags of creatine for a 20 day trip makes
| perfectly good sense. Leave your measuring equipment at
| home.
|
| And they are test "failures"--the problem is the field
| tests are not specific enough and will react to innocent
| materials. (Same as fertilizer or glycerin setting off
| the bomb sniffer at the airport. Lots of skin products
| contain glycerin.) And expect any competent drug smuggler
| to know the cross reactions of the stuff they are
| carrying--thus what they say isn't really relevant.
| godelski wrote:
| > 20 small bags of creatine for a 20 day trip makes
| perfectly good sense. Leave your measuring equipment at
| home.
|
| It's also worth noting that in high likelihood you'd have
| additional context around this. Namely luggage or other
| such travel accessories. Because it is unlikely that you
| would create such daily allocations and then carry them
| on your person. It's more likely to leave them wherever
| you're staying. Everything is still likelihood based
| (dependent on model we use, which is why I specify
| likelihood).
| evancox100 wrote:
| Protein powder supplements come to mind.
| rurp wrote:
| A friend of mine went through an ordeal because a cop spotted
| a ziplock bag filled with climbing chalk in his car.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| People carry powdered supplements. Most are optional, some
| are required. Some are hygroscopic and the original container
| becomes problematic in humid climates--measuring out daily
| amounts is essential.
|
| People on the road often have one-load baggies of laundry
| detergent. Yes, pods exist--but if you're in a humid climate
| and don't have airtight storage you have a problem. Pods are
| hygroscopic and will fail if not adequately protected. (Think
| about it--the pod goes somewhere when you toss it in the
| wash. Where it goes is it dissolves in the water.)
| kube-system wrote:
| Also poor people exist, and sometimes they gotta make do
| with what they've got, even when it might be something that
| looks sus, that a middle class person wouldn't ever do.
|
| And those people are often the same people to be targeted
| by police for drugs.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > But none of this really matters because the judges are not
| impartial.
|
| I was lingering around in court waiting for a small claims case
| related to my stepdaughter in a car accident. I present this
| not as a counterargument to your point, but an agreement. That
| to me, this exchange was so notable that it stood out in my
| mind because it _should_ be the norm. It was at a hearing to
| revoke bond and other conditions of pre-trial release:
|
| Prosecutor: _waffles on about other details before..._ In
| addition, Mr Defendant has also done or said nothing that
| indicates him taking any responsibility for his actions in this
| matter...
|
| Judge, interrupting: I'm going to stop you there. Mr Defendant
| has plead not guilty in this matter and has not been found
| guilty by a jury of his peers. In the eyes of this court, he
| has zero obligation at this point in time to "take
| responsibility" for his _alleged_ actions, and the court will
| not be considering that in reviewing this order.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Haha I wonder how many other judges this prosecutor has
| gotten away with that.
|
| If we're sharing chuckles, I once had a magistrate say "I'm
| not prejudiced" in response to a request to dismiss with
| prejudice.
| Two4 wrote:
| Does that mean the judge grants the dismissal, but not with
| prejudice?
| giantg2 wrote:
| With prejudice just means it can't be refiled.
| tantalor wrote:
| > red flag laws... issuing them almost by default
|
| Do you have any evidence of that, or are you just making stuff
| up.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I should have made it more generic and said orders of
| protection to include the more traditional orders as well.
| The process is well known to be abused, especially during
| divorce proceedings. These processes do not include the
| protections found in criminal law and result in lower burden
| of proof, ex-parte hearings, and no right to an attorney.
|
| It's hard to find data on a lot of this. If you talk to
| divorce attorneys, they will tell you it's common. Here are
| some stats on my state. The initial order is granted,
| typically ex-parte, 89% of the time. Only 18% are granted a
| final PFA. Almost half of all cases are either withdrawn or
| an no-show. These are some abysmal numbers. They are granted
| readily and the vast majority don't stand up when challenged,
| even considering the lower burden of proof. I can't did the
| article, but there was a retired judge that openly admitted
| to approving most orders because the cost for being wrong was
| too high.
|
| https://www.pacourts.us/news-and-statistics/news/news-
| detail...
|
| One estimate that every 10-20 seizures saves one suicide. So
| clearly not living up to the more likely than not standard,
| or we would expect to see a closer to 50% result. This study
| also notes that the rate of firearm assault was too low to
| assess crime against others. You can also see some of how the
| process works without the protections on the criminal justice
| side (prosecutor statements).
|
| https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer.
| ..
| tantalor wrote:
| Thanks! Great resources and well explained
| jcranmer wrote:
| > One estimate that every 10-20 seizures saves one suicide.
| So clearly not living up to the more likely than not
| standard, or we would expect to see a closer to 50% result.
|
| But that's not the standard. The thing you're trying to
| prove generally isn't "is going to kill themself with 100%
| probability," but "is _at risk_ to kill themself or other
| people ", an unquantified metric but one for which a 10%
| chance isn't entirely unjustifiable for an intervention.
| It's that level of risk for which you would want a "more
| likely than not" scenario to reach 50% probability of
| demonstrating; if you multiply the two numbers together,
| your expected avoidance should be far lower than 1 suicide
| per 2 seizures.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 'But that's not the standard. The thing you're trying to
| prove generally isn't "is going to kill themself with
| 100% probability," but "is at risk to kill themself or
| other people",'
|
| Can you please link to that standard in law? The ones I
| have seen are all using the more likely than not
| standard. Yes, they are evaluating the risk - the risk of
| it being more likely than not that they would do
| something to harm themselves or others. I understand you
| multiplying those numbers, but that's not how any of the
| laws are written or work.
|
| What we can see from the numbers I posted earlier about
| PFAs, is that the vast majority are rubber stamped at
| first and then rejected or abandoned when met with a 2
| party hearing at which evidence for both sides can be
| presented. To me, this seems to support that a large
| number of individuals have been subject to restrictions
| in liberties without any real risk of being a threat at
| all.
|
| It would be far better to have these take place in a
| criminal court with protections such as the right to an
| attorney, the right to be present, and proof beyond a
| reasonable doubt. Otherwise it's just a slippery slope of
| "for the children" mentality resulting in farces like
| civil asset forfeiture to get around the protections in
| the system.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The exact wording in my state for the red flag law is:
|
| > If after the hearing pursuant to subsection (a) or
| subsection (b), the court finds by a preponderance of the
| evidence that the respondent poses a risk of causing
| bodily injury to self or others by having in the
| respondent's control, ownership or possession a firearm,
| rifle, shotgun, machine gun, weapon or ammunition, the
| court shall grant the petition. If the respondent does
| not appear at the hearing pursuant to subsection (a) or
| subsection (b), the court shall grant the petition upon a
| determination that the petitioner has demonstrated by a
| preponderance of the evidence that the respondent poses
| such a risk.
|
| The key operative words are "a preponderance of the
| evidence that the respondent poses a risk". It doesn't
| give any specific wording as to how likely the risk is,
| but a plain reading would expect that it could be less
| than 100% and perhaps as low as 10%.
|
| Also note that, at least in my state, the respondent is
| afforded the opportunity to be present at the hearing
| determining whether or not they pose a risk.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "and perhaps as low as 10%."
|
| And why stop there? Why not .01%?
|
| "a preponderance of the evidence that the respondent
| poses a risk"
|
| Preponderance of the evidence is more likely than not. I
| would assume there is case law on what a risk is, or a
| definition somewhere in the text. If not, this is overly
| vague as the general definition is just a possibility of
| loss, which would include any level of risk, even .01%.
|
| "Also note that, at least in my state, the respondent is
| afforded the opportunity to be present at the hearing
| determining whether or not they pose a risk."
|
| Really, I thought that all states that had red flag laws
| had ex-parte initial hearings and that respondants were
| only allowed at the final hearings, after things likes
| having property seized and being forced out of thier
| home, etc.
|
| I wasn't able to find that text in a Google search, so
| I'm not sure which state that is for me to look into it
| further.
| zopa wrote:
| Thanks for the link to the paper. But I don't think that
| 10-20 seizures per prevented suicide estimate you mention
| can tell us anything about probable cause or the lack
| thereof. It's a guess at the rate of prevented deaths from
| suicide attempts, when the subject used a something other
| than a gun, but would have used a gun if the cops hadn't
| taken it from them. It's not an estimate of how many
| suicide attempts were prevented: it's just a measure of how
| much less deadly the suicide attempts that happened anyway
| were. A gun seizure is a big dramatic intervention; it's
| pretty plausible that it sometimes interrupts a bad moment
| that's essentially a one-off, and sometimes leads to people
| getting the help they need. Neither of those effects play
| into the estimate you cited.
|
| Just on the legal standard: it's probable cause that
| there's a risk, not probable cause that the risky event
| will happen. If you have 51% certainty that the subject has
| a 25% chance of harming themselves or someone else, that is
| likely to be good enough. And while it gives me no joy to
| defend the US criminal justice system, to me that's
| appropriate here. Living with someone who's making violent
| threats towards you or themselves is no fun at all, even if
| there's only a 1 in 4 chance that they'll follow through.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| If it's a one-off then it's unlikely a red flag will
| matter. It will either have already been done or will not
| be done, the flag comes too late to intervene.
| zopa wrote:
| I don't know what the response time usually is in urgent
| cases, do you? There's a quote on pg 16 of the study that
| makes same-day sound unremarkable. It starts:
|
| > A lot of times the people who have their weapons seized
| are not having a bad life--they're having a bad moment.
|
| It's an ex-prosecutor's illustrative hypothetical, so
| take it for what it's worth. Still the same logic applies
| if we're talking about bad weeks instead of bad evenings.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Just on the legal standard: it's probable cause that
| there's a risk, not probable cause that the risky event
| will happen. If you have 51% certainty that the subject
| has a 25% chance of harming themselves or someone else,
| that is likely to be good enough."
|
| Do you have some citation on that? Frankly, if it's so
| ill defined that we don't know what level of risk
| justifies restrictions under the law, then we should all
| be opposing it as it can be used against anyone. Perhaps
| you play violent videos and that's enough risk?
|
| "Living with someone who's making violent threats towards
| you or themselves is no fun at all, even if there's only
| a 1 in 4 chance that they'll follow through."
|
| There are criminal charges that can be filed against this
| type of behavior. This does not require a hookie
| workaround. That's how we end up with things like civil
| assest forfeiture.
| Clubber wrote:
| The Baker Act is similar, it's seen widespread abuse, even
| against high school kids.
|
| https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2021/03/16/misuse-of-
| florida...
|
| I remember seeing a video where a police said something to
| the effect of, "I've had enough of this, I'm about to Baker
| Act him," referring to the person arguing about his rights. I
| wish I could find it.
| mindslight wrote:
| I'd say the real root is that police and their departments are
| allowed to harm people and then just wring their hands of the
| damage rather than ever having to make their victims whole. The
| harshest repercussion they worry about is having to do extra
| paperwork. This applies to everything from simple detainment
| through wrongful arrest and outright homicide. We'd be a lot
| less outraged if the people arrested with flimsy tests, dog
| shows, profiling, etc and then later acquitted were ultimately
| compensated for their time, emotional distress, and legal
| representation - out of the overall budget for the criminal
| justice system. This would be a proper accounting for the
| externalities of law enforcement, rather than the current
| perverse reverse lottery for those who unluckily fall into
| their sights.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The real problem with red flag laws is that they are engineered
| without any checks. They are the equivalent of a temporary
| restraining order, but without the short term limit of such.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Worse, this low standard is used for civil asset forfeiture. So
| the police can legally steal your assets with next to no legal
| recourse for you.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Why hasnt this triggerred a Class Action Lawsuit?
| ta988 wrote:
| Because it mostly targets poor people.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| That doesn't even make any sense.
|
| Lawyers make money on these lawsuits.
|
| There have been massive class action lawsuits that don't even
| target people per se, such as the oil spill payout.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Only if they win!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity
| dmoy wrote:
| What's the class? A class action lawsuit might be possible to
| bring if the class is everyone affected by a single
| manufacturer's field drug test, if there aren't many
| manufacturers. But if the lawyers think that the manufacturer
| won't end up losing that case, then your class is reduced to
| the people affected by each individual police department,
| separately, no? That might not be as enticing for local lawyers
| if it's say, a class of a thousand people. If the lawyers don't
| think there's a significant chance of winning (say, because of
| qualified immunity), a small class action likely won't get
| taken up, especially if it's a small class action representing
| poor people and the lawyers foot the bill on their own time.
|
| Really feels like something that should be picked apart by
| federal prosecutors. But the feds also largely dgaf about poor
| people, so here we are.
|
| At best I think you might get local legislative changes to
| eliminate that type of testing, on a piecemeal basis, only in a
| few cities.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I believe that's called a revolution
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I am not denying that there are major problems with the tools
| used by police and that juries fail to understand their limits,
| however, I take issue with 30k bogus arrests as indicative of a
| bad test without further context. For example, how many tests
| were given? What is the false positive rate, false negative rate,
| etc. i.e. the ROC characteristics.
|
| The tests may be quite accurate, we do not know from just that
| number.
|
| The question of whether the tests should favor reducing false
| positives of false negatives is a policy decision that must take
| into account public safety risk (false negative) vs harm to the
| individual (false positive and arrest) vs lasting harm from the
| false arrest (imprisonment). A moderate false positive rate might
| be good for public safety if used as an initial screener, but
| once arrested, further tests should be used that emphasize
| reduction of false positives. Then the harm would be limited to
| the disruption of an evening, not a life.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The article said 4%, and contends that 4% is too high
|
| and goes further to notice that convictions are mostly plea
| deals, and that prosecutors in many places don't have to verify
| if the plea deal is based on any lab based evidence
|
| and further finds a bunch of departments that arrest people no
| matter what the test result is, making your standard about "bad
| tests" completely moot
|
| its a system based on total apathy and the article is saying
| thats the problem that should be fixed
| godelski wrote:
| > The tests may be quite accurate, we do not know from just
| that number.
|
| Be careful as this might go against exactly what your prior
| concern was. It's the Bayesian Trap.
|
| FWIW, the article says there's 773k arrests each year and gives
| around a 4% bogus rate. I'd say that's too high for something
| we all can admit comes at a great cost.
|
| > The question of whether the tests should favor reducing false
| positives [or] false negatives is a policy decision that must
| take into account public safety risk
|
| We have a written code that says innocent until proven guilty.
| Clearly false positive rates is of grave concern. There are
| many references to Blackstone's Ratio[0] by the founders and
| the premise is that it is better to err on the side that a
| guilty person go free than a free man lose his freedom. But
| Bayes is critical here too.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
| Closi wrote:
| Depends - I would say 4% is probably accurate enough evidence
| to support an arrest (i.e. they are detained someone in order
| to investigate a crime they are suspected of committing), but
| not enough to support a conviction. Arrest != conviction.
|
| However 4% probably isn't accurate enough to support jailing
| someone (in my view, depending on other evidence), so there
| is nuance here.
|
| Besides, while you are innocent until proven guilty, this
| doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e. detained for
| investigation) if you are a suspect.
| godelski wrote:
| > Besides, while you are innocent until proven guilty, this
| doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e. detained for
| investigation) if you are a suspect.
|
| I was with you till here. While I disagree with a bit
| prior, like you say, nuance. But this sentence is
| egregious. An arrest record is still particularly damming
| to one's life. Even if one is never convicted it can still
| greatly impact one's ability to get a job, credit, or other
| things. You may say that that is a different problem, and
| in part I will agree, but this aspect is likely easier to
| address and I do not think it is wrong to suggest we should
| have a high bar for detaining someone and placing them on
| record.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > An arrest record is still particularly damming to one's
| life.
|
| The solution then, IMO, is that if you're arrested for
| being suspected of a crime, and later found innocent or
| the charges are dropped, then the arrest should be
| removed from your record.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm perfectly fine with this solution and will even
| advocate for it. But many others have been trying to
| unsuccessfully. So I think let them continue their
| efforts, do bring attention to is, but also not be
| reliant on them fixing the problem.
|
| I should also add that arrests are public. So even if you
| are not convicted the arrest record may be found by a
| third party who is going to be less incentivized to
| expunge that data. So there's extra complexity to this
| too and why we should also not be reliant upon that
| solution.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > I should also add that arrests are public.
|
| That's a good point.
|
| My knee-jerk reaction is to think that maybe they
| shouldn't be, but there's a million reasons why they
| should.
| godelski wrote:
| Yeah it is quite a tough call really. But I think this is
| why it is so important to consider nuance. I think it is
| easy not to and we forget that what explicitly makes an
| expert is consideration of nuance. By definition this
| needs be true because if it was obvious you wouldn't
| require significant education lol.
|
| I want to also add that there are no globally optimal
| solutions. So everything has a downside and I think we
| often fall for this trap in an effort to support our
| priors and do not accurately compare. So it is easy to
| get into polarizing arguments because while we argue
| about the same problem we often do not have similar
| optimization criteria. I've found clarifying optimization
| criteria helps defuse these types of arguments.
|
| I hate to say it, but CS people also have a bad
| reputation around this. My hypothesis is that programmers
| often work in many different domains and are exposed to
| domain knowledge, but as we all know, it is exceptionally
| easy to deceive one's self into thinking they know more
| than they do (just go on any social media platform,
| including HN, if you doubt this lol. My personal favorite
| is to watch people who can't do calculus argue with Judea
| Pearl on Twitter)
| shkkmo wrote:
| > this doesn't mean that you can't be arrested (i.e.
| detained for investigation) if you are a suspect.
|
| Being arrested and being detained for investigation are
| legally different things.
|
| You need only "reasonable suspicion" to detain but you need
| "probable cause" to arrest.
| hedora wrote:
| Accepting that a four percent false positive rate is enough
| to establish probable cause means the police could decide
| to screen everyone attempting to attend a political rally,
| and then toss 4% in jail. Most people would think twice
| about attending, given the 1 in 25 chance of being
| arrested, especially since that creates a _de facto_
| criminal record in the US (commercial arrest databases
| exist and are often used in background checks).
|
| Of course, the police could also run an assay of a few
| dozen tests for different substances, each with a 4% false
| positive rate, and lock up 99% of potential attendees, or
| they could run the test every day on every person that
| takes a common commute route in an neighborhood they don't
| like.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| There is supposed to be probable cause before asking for
| a test; so blatant testing could and would be contested.
| godelski wrote:
| I've been stopped when there was no probable cause, and
| contested. I was visiting the Golden gate Park a decade
| back and asked a ranger for some directions. They stopped
| me and my friend because "they smelled weed". We still
| got searched. We did not smoke and there was no way we
| could have smelled. We did have a still sealed container
| from a local dispensary that was not know in it's
| container, but a ziplock bag. The bar for probable cause
| is so low that it can be normal things (any given
| location in SF has high likelihood of smelling like
| weed). And remember, this is because I walked up to a
| fucking park ranger and said "hey do you have a map?"
| Even the second ranger protested and asked to be off
| record. Couldn't contest without going back to SF and
| that's technically federal property.
|
| I'm just saying, I wouldn't rely on this being a
| sufficient safety mechanism. Abuse is rampant and
| difficult to prove.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| the next time you take a drug test for employment go see if
| you're ok with a 4% chance of losing that job.
|
| And then consider how mild that is compared to being
| arrested, where you'll often lose your job on top of
| everything else.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Innocent until proven guilty for a prison sentence. Obviously
| arresting someone has a lower bar. If you had read carefully,
| you'd have noticed that I suggested a policy of arresting
| based on tests that reduce false negatives, and then
| subsequent tests after arrest which are designed to reduce
| false positives, potentially balancing the issue you mention.
| godelski wrote:
| I did read carefully and responded to that point. I'll also
| point to other comments in this thread which demonstrate an
| over confidence in being reliant on this as a system that
| cannot easily be abused.
| sneak wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
| standardUser wrote:
| > A moderate false positive rate might be good for public
| safety
|
| Do you really think the ~0.5% of drug users who actual get
| arrested is improving public safety in any meaningful way? If
| we actually care about public safety, let's stop forcing people
| to buy their drugs from criminals. It's the prohibition of
| drugs in the first place that brings the violence.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| > Then the harm would be limited to the disruption of an
| evening, not a life.
|
| It's not just an evening, because even if your charges are
| immediately thrown out, your arrest remains public record
| forever.
| standardUser wrote:
| Our obsession with pretending we can stop the sale and use of
| drugs has been the primary force suppressing civil liberties in
| this nation for a generation at least. Everything form asset
| forfeiture to mandatory minimums to letting some dog provide
| probable cause - the list of violations we allow when it comes to
| drugs is long and embarrassing. Aside from terrorism or child
| abuse, where else do Americans so eagerly and willingly forfeit
| basic rights? And at least those crimes have victims.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| And it's a very different situation for different income
| brackets. Celebrity or wealthy person is on drugs and manages
| to get to rehab - because they have the means to dip in and out
| of rehab - and they're a heart warming story, if you're poor
| you're not a person, you're just a drug addict.
|
| Nothing drove that home for me more than hearing someone,
| during the George Floyd trial, cut someone off who referred to
| him as a man with "He was a drug addict"
| exoverito wrote:
| The whole social phenomenon surrounding George Floyd's
| veneration and martyrdom is very interesting. He was
| literally a convicted felon for multiple crimes, one of which
| was home invasion where he held a gun up to a pregnant
| woman's stomach. The day of the incident he was passing
| counterfeit bills and acting erratic which prompted the call.
| The toxicology report showed he had fentanyl and meth in his
| system. The body cam footage started with him in the driver's
| seat of an SUV without ID, acting erratic and resisting
| arrest, and when first put into the back seat of the police
| car Floyd said he couldn't breath. Odds are he was probably
| already having a heart attack from the drugs, and then
| Chauvin's maximum restraint technique pushed him over the
| edge.
|
| Objectively speaking, Floyd was a miscreant at best and
| almost certainly a net-negative in terms of benefiting
| society. A fair trial would have classified the incident as
| manslaughter, but since cities were literally burning and the
| jurors were publicly known, they were not at liberty to judge
| the case impartially. The transformation of Floyd into a
| martyr and the violent quasi-religious movement that followed
| will be a good case study for future historians.
| standardUser wrote:
| You have that entirely backwards. People don't generally
| sit around waiting for the perfect martyr. A martyr is a
| symptom of social unrest, not a cause. Dwelling on the
| specifics of the individual, instead of what they
| represent, is an obstacle to actually understanding the
| issue.
| l3mure wrote:
| No such thing as a true innocent for avowed racists
| anyways, these are people that celebrate the murder of
| children like Emmett Till, George Stinney, and Tamir
| Rice.
| fragmede wrote:
| Sometimes they do. Rosa Parks wasn't the first to resist
| racial segregation on the bus, but a sex worker did the
| same but that wouldn't have played as well in the media
| so she went un-rallied around.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Jury selection for the trial of Derek Chauvin started in
| December 2020 and the trial itself took place the following
| March - many months after rioting had ended. Get your facts
| straight.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Manslaughter??? No, that requires a lack of intent. Once
| you engage in felony violence against the person an
| inadvertent kill carries the intent of the original felony.
| Murder, not manslaughter.
|
| The cops engaged in a bit of street justice. Usually they
| get away with it, but since it resulted in death on camera
| they were caught. This is not to say that Floyd wasn't a
| criminal--he certainly was.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| his past isn't relevant to the case, there is clear
| evidence of misconduct by the police that resulted in an
| unnecessary death.
|
| Had the police been better they would have taken him in and
| no one would have batted an eye but that isn't what
| happened.
| mrWiz wrote:
| According to the toxicology report on Floyd, fentanyl and
| methamphetamine were present in his system but not at
| levels that indicated use the day he was killed.
| hedora wrote:
| The war on drugs has also helped the US balance powers in
| foreign countries. The illegal drug trade funnels money into
| foreign government corruption and crime syndicates, which
| destabilizes their governments and economies. There have even
| been recent examples of the US intervening in foreign elections
| with the result that drug lords end up seizing control of the
| government.
|
| In addition to keeping potential rival countries from getting
| back on their feet, this creates humanitarian crises that are a
| root cause of a lot of the legal and illegal immigration into
| the US. That creates a cycle where they can take away even more
| rights domestically.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I fail to believe that these judges did not know this.
|
| Just remember that judges where the ones that allowed the Nazis
| to rise to power, and rubber stamped everything. And then were
| also some of the people that they later hanged for their crimes
| against humanity. Judges are not people to be trusted with
| justice. Very often they're the worst of people, totally
| deferential to authority. They have proven to be easily corrupted
| and tools of a totalitarian state many times over and over.
| Currently sending grandma's to long prison sentences for
| protesting somewhere. Even the Bible warned us ....when Pontius
| just caved to the mob and Romans.
|
| Who judges the judges in our system...doesn't seem like they have
| faced scrutiny for a long time.
| worik wrote:
| The root of this problem is vice law
|
| Criminalising life style choice is evil
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