Posted by Scott on October 30th, 2007 — Posted in Police Misconduct
In the following video Michael Moore uses comedy and antics to bring attention to NYPD racism and police brutality:
I do not agree with all of Michael Moore’s politics, but he makes informative documentaries. Regardless, I think we can all agree that police brutality and racism need to come to a stop.
The video must have come out a while ago, since he mentions Amadou Diallo, an unarmed, innocent man who four plain-cloths cops killed by shooting at him 41 times.
As I read more and more about police brutality, I become more and more convinced that protecting ourselves from police needs to make up a major part of our overall self-defense and victimization-prevention plan.
I think vice cops do most of the damage, as opposed to detectives of violent crime. A homicide detective tends to be of a higher caliber and have more important things to do, while the same cannot be said of the street cops in charge of chasing down 16-year-olds kids with a nickelbag of marijuana. Legalizing drugs and replacing low-class vice cops with professional detectives would help eliminate the war on the streets between corrupt cops and non-violent civilians.
Additionally, paying police more would result in a bigger and better pool of applicants, which would allow the police force to hire more qualified police officers and dismiss those with questionable records.
Of course, power corrupts. We need to constantly work to actively weed out corruption if we ever want to eliminate it.
What do you think?
3 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 25th, 2007 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
A press release about rape in America from Dennis Mahoney had the following to say:
With the systematic use of rape as a tool of war in places like the Congo, it is easy to forget that hundreds of thousands of women are raped each year here in the United States. One of the reasons this epidemic remains hidden is because well over eighty percent of the attackers are known to their victims, with sixty percent falling into the category of an intimate (boyfriend, husband, etc.). The subject is so uncomfortable to people that no one wants to talk about it. But silence is not the answer.
October is Crime Prevention Month when government agencies, civic groups, schools, businesses, and youth organizations in an effort to create safer, more caring communities reach out to educate the public. There is an abundance of information available from women’s support organizations that could help to educate women. Unfortunately due to a lack of funds that would enable these support groups to disseminate the information on a wide scale, most women who receive it are already victims.
Theresa Murphy and Dennis Mahoney are working to change this with their book, A Different Ending: Lessons In Violence Evasion by presenting this information given generously from numerous women’s support organizations, in an effort to help prevent the violence.
One of the most misunderstood areas of crime is sexual violence. Sexual violence remains the most dramatically under reported crime. It’s estimated that two-thirds of attacks go unreported in large part due to the inaccurate stigma that the victim was some how responsible for the attack.
I agree with everything he says in the press release, except his first statistic that hundreds of thousands of women get raped in the United States each year. From my previous research, I believe the number is around 100,000 per year. Perhaps, his number comes from an estimation of unreported rapes.
For more information about rape prevention from Theresa Murphy and Dennis Mahoney, you can get a free copy of The Seven Steps of Self-Protection at www.LessonsInViolenceEvasion.com.
What do you think?
2 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 24th, 2007 — Posted in Politics & Commentary
I recently posted about how I (and every other driver passing through) had been stopped and pestered at a DUI checkpoint. While I was not that bothered by the unwarranted inconvenience, I speculated that it seems indicative of a police state and unconstitutional.
Today, I read an article that confirmed my suspicions about DUI checkpoints. In the article, James Bovard recounts the history of DUI checkpoints and shows how they violate people’s right to unreasonable search and seizure, because they are not based on any type of individualized suspicion. The first three sentences of his article sum it up nicely:
Tens of thousands of innocent Americans are stopped each month at police checkpoints that treat every driver as a criminal. These checkpoints, supposedly started to target drunk drivers, have expanded to give police more intrusive power over citizens in many areas.
The demonization of alcohol is leading to a growing nullification of the constitutional rights of anyone suspected of drinking – or anyone who might have had a drink anytime recently.
By ignoring probable cause and stopping everyone, DUI checkpoints treat people as guilty until proven innocent and stand against the Fourth Amendment and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I want to protect people from drunk drivers, just like I want to protect people from rapists, murders, vandals and thieves. However, I also want to protect people from police states, because police states systematically victimize innocent people.
Even though police states and authoritarian procedures are often supposedly made to fix certain problems (such as drunk driving), they usually end up being counterproductive, especially because power corrupts and police states abuse their power.
In analogy, I adamantly oppose murder, but I do not want police to be allowed to go around forcing their way into anyone’s house they please to try and find anyone who may have committed a murder. To search someone, these police need probable cause and reasonable suspicion that that specific person has committed or is planning to commit a certain crime.
To me, the question is not how bad drunk driving is. The question is whether or not we want a police state, meaning a place where anyone and everyone can be stopped and searched without any reasonable suspicion that they have committed a crime and without probable cause.
What do you think?
3 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 18th, 2007 — Posted in Property Crime
A recent AlterNet article pointed out the absurdity of strict drug laws in comparison to the softer laws against violent crime. The article focuses on the draconian laws against the possession of crack cocaine. The first sentence of the article sums it up nicely: “When crack cocaine possession means 24 years in prison and manslaughter means only 3, you know something is seriously wrong with the U.S. criminal justice system.”
Of course, crack cocaine has such strict penalties, because poor people and black people use it most of all. These laws date back decades, and the long-running war on drugs has always been motivated greatly by racism and classism. The war on drugs has in many cases been a war on poor people and minorities. Remember, in the United States, more than four-fifths of people tried with crack cocaine offences are black, which helps explain why the penalties for crack cocaine are literally 100 times more strict than those for powder cocaine which is more often used by richer and whiter users.
I found the following excerpts out of the article particularly telling:
Nearly 6 out of 10 people in state prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or high-level drug-selling activity but are often receiving harsher sentences than people who do. People caught with the drug in 2004, the last year for which data is available, served an average of ten years in federal penitentiaries, while the average convict served 2.9 years for manslaughter, 3.1 years for assault and 5.4 years for sexual abuse.
[...]
A drug abuser whose drug of choice is powder cocaine would have to be found with more than two cups of it (500 grams) before receiving the same sentence as a person caught with two sugar packets worth (5 grams) of crack.
[...]
Since crack is made by cooking powder cocaine with baking soda or another base when it reaches the street retail level, the 100-to-1 ratio has served to exact harsher punishments on low-level dealers than the kingpins supplying the raw material. According to USSC data, low-level crack sellers are punished 300 times more severely than high-level, international cocaine traffickers on an imprisonment-per-gram basis.
I find the last statistic especially interesting, though unsurprising. The government often seems more interested in using drugs as an excuse to wage a war on non-violent people, but never actually stopping drug trafficking. Besides, the drug kingpins make enough money from the multi-billion drug industry that they can buy off cops and government officials. The government and powers that be have many reasons to keep the drug game going, which explains the CIA’s continued promotion of drug trafficking.
Throwing non-violent drug offenders in jails and prisons does not help protect the general working class, but it does make loads of money for the government, the private-owned prison industry, the police unions, the drug kingpins and their cronies. Legalizing drugs would take the multi-billion-dollar industry away from organized criminals.
Violence and victimizing crime are increased not by drugs but rather by the war on drugs.
At the very least, the government could make the drug laws consistent and take out the racism and classism. Or course, if they threw many people besides racial minorities and poor people in jail, then the general public might start to object to the whole idea of jailing non-violent people for victimless crimes. The government needs to keep the racist inconsistencies in drug laws, because few people seem to care when it’s the black and poor being oppressed.
What do you think?
2 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 17th, 2007 — Posted in Home Security
Sunstkitts.com recently published an article with crime prevention and safety tips for your home. It has about 7 tips. In my opinion, the following two are the best:
Install a peephole in the door – and use it.
Don’t let any stranger into your home when you’re alone, no matter what the reason or how dire the emergency is said to be. Offer to make an emergency phone call while the person waits outside.
Also, one tip includes a mention about keeping entrances to your home well-lit. I think that is wise advice, because it will allow you and others to spot anyone out there, and it will provide safety for you when exiting and entering the house.
What do you think?
1 Comment »
Posted by Scott on October 16th, 2007 — Posted in Self-Defense Advice
How much do you think getting to know your neighbors will prevent local victimization? How much safer will it make your neighborhood? I think a lot.
Probably due mostly to our fast-paced culture, nowadays people keep mostly to themselves. We spend our time rotting lonely in front of TV screens rather than chatting with our neighbors.
I think if the people in a neighborhood get to know each other better, they will be more able and willing to protect each other. For example, you’ll know and care more if something unusual happens at your neighbor’s house if you know your neighbor.
When people do not know each other well and do not communicate much, it become very hard to spot trouble.
What do you you think?
1 Comment »
Posted by Scott on October 10th, 2007 — Posted in Politics & Commentary
A Philadelphia newspaper recently reported that U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.), U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Philadelphia) and Democrat mayoral candidate Michael Nutter talked about the need for strong federal funding for crime-fighting efforts for the city in North Philadelphia yesterday.
I disagree. I do not think the government needs more funding for crime-fighting. Instead, they simply need to focus their resources more sensibly.
The federal government as well as local governments waste massive amounts of money enforcing authoritarian drug laws. For example, 25% of the United States inmate population are in on non-violent drug charges, and unsurprisingly jails and prisons complain of overcrowding and insufficient funding and resources to manage the huge inmate population. As another example, marijuana prohibition costs the United States $41 billion per year.
Like I already said, the crime-fighting efforts do not need more funding. They need to use the funds they already have to actually protect people from victimization. They need to use the funds to protect innocent people from rapists, murderers, thieves, and other victimizers. They need to do that rather than waste resources bothering innocuous people solely over drug offenses and other victimless crimes such as prostitution.
Imagine how many rapists we could stop with that $42 billion wasted every year on marijuana prohibition.
What do you think?
2 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 8th, 2007 — Posted in Domestic Abuse
Trying to stop domestic violence can prove very hard, namely because victims often fail to report the abuse and leave the abusive place or relationship. Victims protect their perpetrator for various reasons, some include self-blame, psychological dependence, and fear.
Women who leave an abusive husband have a greatly increased chance of getting killed by that partner, so perhaps they have some justification for protecting their abuser.
To get the victims out of these abusive situations, we need to make it favorable for them as much as possible. We need to provide high-quality shelters that have enough resources. Additionally, these shelters need to protect the victims from their abusers, perhaps even hiding the victim’s identity or location from the public. Additionally, the victims need to be offered a pleasant and permanent alternative life. Many victims depend on their abuser. For example, we need to make sure that battered women can support themselves if they leave their abuser. Many cannot, and thus must stay with their abuser.
What do you think? How do you suggest that we get abuse victims to help themselves and get out of the abusive relationship?
2 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 3rd, 2007 — Posted in Domestic Abuse
Many police stations across Maryland have implemented a new procedure when responding to domestic violence complaints to discover which victims have the highest risk of getting murdered by their partner.
A Washington Post article describes the program, saying that it consists of an 11 questions quiz that probes whether victims have ever been threatened with a weapon, been choked or received death threats. Police also ask if the abuser has access to a handgun.
When the answers show a high risk of lethality, the police immediately call a counselor and urge the victim to talk.
It seems like a great program to me, but I wonder why it took this long to come up with one. I hope to see this program implemented even further, and to see even more programs like it.
Domestic violence poses a unique problem, because victims tend to not report it, for various reasons. Especially for that reason, our society needs to take major action to reduce and hopefully eliminate domestic violence. We need to protect victims, and we need to restrain and treat perpetrators.
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Posted by Scott on October 2nd, 2007 — Posted in Domestic Abuse
In case you don’t know, I want to tell you that October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Domestic violence is a horrible but prevalent problem. For example, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime.
You can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.
If you or anyone you know suffers from domestic violence, I urge you to take action to stop it.
What do you think?
2 Comments »
Posted by Scott on October 1st, 2007 — Posted in Hate Crimes
Chris Paredes recently wrote about a new study that shows that victimization due to sexual orientation correlates with suicidal behavior. I include an excerpt:
Students victimized because of their sexual orientation are more prone to commit suicide, according to a new study by UW researcher Heather Murphy.
The impetus for the study was a question posed by a 15-year-old gay male with suicidal tendencies whom she counseled during an internship at the School of Psychology.
The student asked her: “Does it get better in college?”
The study, conducted in 2007, found that individuals who identified as heterosexual but also reported being attracted to same-sex individuals were three times more likely to plan suicide and six times more likely to have attempted suicide in the past year, when compared to heterosexuals.
Individuals who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual were found to have been twice as likely as those who identify as heterosexual to have planned or attempted suicide.
I find it interesting that students with homosexual thoughts but who do not identify as gay have more suicidal tendencies than those who openly admit their homosexuality. It makes sense, though. Someone who admits their homosexuality both to themselves and others has probably accepted it more than someone still on the fence.
I hope that our society learns to accept and tolerate homosexuals, and all people for that matter. It saddens me greatly that nice people get victimized based on their sexual orientation. It’s bad enough when violence happens from personal conflict or for personal gain, such as when someone gets hurt during a robbery, but hate crimes happen merely out of intolerance.
Hopefully, universities will do what they can to stop intolerance and prevent hate crimes and all victimization for that matter. By doing that, they can help create an environment where students neither get victimized nor feel depressed as a result of their sexual preference.
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