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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32427 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Here's what a better system would be. We get a bunch of lowly paid people who issue small tickets to people who violate simple laws. Traffic and parking violations, fare evasion, jay walking, littering, etc. We put these people in stupid, non-threatening uniforms. They are instructed not to chase people, not to look for warrants, not to arrest people.

This is just anarcho-tyranny formalized. The ordinary mostly-law-abiding citizen has to worry about swarms of officers harassing them and eating out their substance (by fining them). The criminal can just run and get away with not only the minor crime, but whatever major crime they would have been arrested for.

In an ideal world, the police would be focusing their resources on catching those criminals, rather than hoping a random broken tail light will lead to a major bust. And major criminals wouldn't feel the need to run (or kill) in order to evade a minor ticket.

If we are simply using minor laws to capture criminals, then why not make more minor laws to catch criminals? I'd prefer to live in a society where laws are meant to keep people on track, rather than to undermine people in order for cops to hold broader investigations. So having wider enforcement, but smaller punishments, for minor crimes and civil violations seems more important, overall.

Police have no incentive in actually reducing minor crime if their purpose is to simply use minor crime as a pretext to find people with warrants, guns, drugs, etc.

We shouldn't make minor laws for the purpose of catching criminals. If we're going to have them, the purpose should be for them to be good in themselves. If they aren't we should just repeal them. That does NOT mean we should go to the point of the minor laws not being enforced against those willing to just run away.

Yep.

The second you say "okay you guys are charged with enforcing the law, but don't put too much effort into people who might be hard to catch," you're just licensing them to sit back and target the most law-abiding, peaceful citizens.

Wait, wouldn’t the same moral hazard apply to the real police? We have to have feedback systems like “firing commissioners” and “cutting funding” to limit them from sitting back and only chasing the easy cases.

Speed trap towns are still a thing.

Yes, it would, and it probably often does. Denver has a notoriously unresponsive (and arguably undermanned) police, but just last week there was a video of DPD trying to arrest a woman sitting on the ground because she had a sealed bottle of beer in public.

Unfortunately, my only knowledge of the DPD comes from video games. They seemed pretty competent there.

Minor in Possession CRS§ 18-13-122 seems pretty applicable and Eric Brandt was asking why they were asking for ID. That video is from pre-COVID anyways since Brandt has been serving a 12-year prison sentence since 2019. Makes sense why the cops would just walk away from him though, he's something of a well known character.

Makes sense why the cops would just walk away from him though, he's something of a well known character.

So you agree the police are willing to do nothing if they have to deal with the obstacle of "one dude yelling at them"?

For one the only evidence they were going to cite her at all is Brandt's editorial text on the video. They might not have been interested in citing an unclassified petty offense at all while talking to her. Some scuttlebutt that they were asking for information to investigate who sold the underaged woman the alcohol. Given the context and a mentally unwell, activist with a history of escalating and suing everyone involved and occasionally winning, exercising discretion to deescalate does not seem out of line. If Denver had laws more like Singapore then perhaps there would be more cause to condemn them for failure to cite.

It applies to almost everything, honestly.

If a system isn't designed to expend extra energy on 'difficult' cases it will select for the easy ones, for better or worse.

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