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The best way to win as a black man against white cops:
Don't make it about race.
Also, being in the legal and moral right certainly helps.
This is the story of Afroman, a rapper most known for the hit single "Because I Got High". Then his house was raided by the sheriff's office of Adams County, Ohio, based off of... almost nothing, as far as I can tell.
They damaged his door, gate, and security cameras. They were looking for narcotics smuggling and kidnapping victims, but instead found a few blunts and unused pipes, and filed no charges. The repairs cost $20k, not a single cent of which was paid by the officers, who also kept $400 of his cash.
So Afroman did what anyone would do if the cops came and unjustifiably kicked down his door and paid nothing for it: He made songs making fun of the raid, complete with his own security camera footage of the cops. This led to the production of such classics like "Will You Help Me Repair My Door", "Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera", and "Lemon Pound Cake" (about the officer who was eyeing a rather delectable slice of lemon pound cake sitting on his countertop). And in a sane world, this would have been the end of it, and the raid and associated songs would have faded into obscurity.
So of course, the Adams County Sheriff's Department decided to do the dumbest thing possible: Sue Afroman.
Somehow, the case went to trial, with the deputies unironically arguing -- with a straight face -- that Afroman's videos seriously defamed their character and reputation, enough to cause $4 million in damages. This led to a hilarious examination where a female officer cries on the stand as "Licc'em Low Lisa" plays. Afroman played his defense straight, pointing out that the entire situation was caused by the cops fucking up and raiding his house for basically no reason, and that he has a First Amendment right to criticize and make fun of the police. Also, he was wearing a badass suit covered entirely in the American flag.
The jury sided with Afroman.
A couple culture war takeaways here. First, I think the biggest factor in his success was not playing the race card at all, even though he easily could have. Instead, he stood behind the freedoms that every American has, and demonstrated that this could have happened to anyone, black or white. Every American has the right to not have their privacy invaded or property damaged, and when that right is violated, they have the right to speak freely and mock those who violated their rights. The race card would have only served as a distraction at best and polarized the jury at worst.
Second, this verdict could have only happened in America, where there is a strong legal tradition of freedom of speech. If it had taken place in a European country like Germany, where calling the government "parasites" gets your house raided, he would have lost. Having a jury trial was also very important in this case, because the judge was almost blatantly biased in favor of the plaintiffs. If this case had taken place in a country like the United Kingdom, which is seriously considering scrapping most jury trials, he also would have lost. Turns out, jury trials are there to protect the people from corrupt judges.
The point is that though Americans may be stereotyped as being irrationally fearful of a tyrannical government, this fear is entirely justified, and this case is a good example of it. Or at least a good example of how small town cops abuse their power, which seems to happen an awful lot in small towns across America.
And as a German I say rightfully so.
We have something called Persönlichkeitsrechte, or literally “right of personality”, which encompass the right to personal honor, the right to one's name, or the right to one's own image. There doesn’t seem to be an English wiki article about the concept, only a German and French one, so I link the translation:
https://de-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Pers%C3%B6nlichkeitsrecht_(Deutschland)?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
https://de-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Afroman should have pixelated the cops faces. The state invaded his home, not individual agents. If a cop would have been ill or on vacation or whatever they would have been replaced by a different officer. Also while I sympathize with Afroman as a victim of the almighty Leviathan there is also a power imbalance between him as a rich celebrity who can direct millions of YouTube views vs an individual police officers.
I get your point and entirely reject it.
The US government has at times murdered Americans. Including in the past few decades. By which of course I place personal blame and responsibility on the individuals who pulled the triggers, not on the amorphous and impersonal state.
"The department did [bad thing]." Makes it sound like an out of control building is victimizing Americans. Remember these are individuals with just as much moral agency as you and I. Don't let them hide behind a mask of collective guilt. As though department policy is an evil spirit haunting the land.
Thats kinda silly. The people executing the search warrant dont know what the PC was. Thats on the detective and the judge.
The search warrant forced them to disconnect his cameras and literally steal the cash out of his wallet? If they merely searched his place, determined he doesn't have a slave dungeon in his non-existent basement and then left than would be one thing. But no, they went further and disconnected his cameras and stole his cash. I now have no sympathy for them and advocate cruel public shaming.
I get this isn't my nicest view, but civil asset forfeiture is so vile. The incentives so perverse. I say good riddance and hope for more robbers wearing law enforcement uniforms to weep on camera from the targeted shaming.
This wasn't a civil asset forfeiture thing. It was a poorly issued criminal search warrant thing. Every jurisdiction has their own regulations, but disabling cameras might be standard. Seizing all cash in drug/prostitution operations certainly is standard for most jurisdictions.
The officers carrying out the search warrant weren't like NAZIs "just carrying out orders" they were literally executing a search warrant, not only approved by their superiors, but signed by a judge, and in a way that was indistinguishable from the dozens or hundreds of search warrants they had conducted in the past that looked (to them) the exact same. The petty cash tallying problem is a problem. But also they are not the smartest folks.
The real problem is this alleged source and the detective (and his Sergeant/Lieutenant) that believed it. They are the ones that created the situation and then lied to or misrepresented the facts to the judge. And not to let the judge who signed the warrant off the hook. Obviously, they are supposed to swear detectives to their search warrants. If you see something like this, its your judicial duty to bring down your weight on the department and detective. Perhaps through a contempt action, or simply refusing to sign all future warrants.
But they literally stole his money. It was also a civil asset forfeiture thing.
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I'd... argue otherwise.
It's especially bad here, where the alleged source was almost certainly a malicious or self-serving motivation behind the lurid claims, but a probable cause affidavit is just that: it's not a claim something must be wrong, but that someone could be wrong. Like a grand jury indictment, the standards for a search warrant are hilariously low, and the people signing it off and executing it have very close to cart blanche. Not everyone being searched will have evidence of a crime, and not everyone being investigated will be guilty, necessarily.
Which makes it a problem when these things are world-upending, without any valid need. There may well be a scenario that requires a six-person team with assault rifles. As with countless other examples such as Malinowski and going all the way back to Ken Ballew, it's very hard to understand what is benefit derived from those tactics here, which look to be optimizing for shock-and-awe at the cost of not just inconvenience to the suspect, but danger to the community and even alleged victims.
That's a criticism that sometimes is delivered with perfect hindsight or expecting clairvoyant police and judges, but I think it applies here even when considering the least convenient world. In an alternate universe where Foreman had been guilty and had dangerous control over kidnapped women, and had been at the residence at the time of the raid, this raid could have easily resulted in the kidnapped women turned into hostages or 'made incapable of testimony' at the first kick at the door.
This is a consideration police do take, before serving even far more strongly evidenced search or arrest warrants.
It's just really easy for them to not, when they're morons. My personal favorite example is the FBI leaking to press the location and time of the search of a suspected mad bomber, presumably not for the purpose of maximizing casualties if he went Molotov, but there's a long and storied set of examples. Some of that's bad-but-at-least-foreseeable motivations -- arrest warrants in particular tend to get served at home despite it being well-known to be dangerous as shit, because SCOTUS hasn't slapped down searches-while-executing-arrest nearly aggressively enough. A lot of it's just how things have always been done.
That's still not reason, alone, to keep doing it that way.
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This is where I'm at. Civil libertarian types like to screech about searches gone wrong but the reality is that a whole lot of searches, conducted in exactly the same way, go just fine, and you just don't hear about them because they went just fine.
I think this is misunderstanding the problem. Imagine if someone came along and said that those civil engineer types like to screech about bridges that fall down but the reality is that a whole lot of bridge, with cut corners in the same ways, are standing just fine, you just don't hear about them because they are still standing.
Using a disastrous result to highlight bad incentives, policies, and procedures is the expected part of examining something. If we only ever look at the medians and averages, we are basically ignoring the downsides as they are, by nature, almost entirely going to happen on the fringes in freak circumstances.
Even ignoring that, do we know that all those median searches go just fine? Is there not a loud and vocal movement against the justice system's current methods under the umbrella of "the process is the punishment"? Do people enjoy interacting with the justice system as witness, suspect, or even jurist or is it usually avoided at all costs, as recommended by the very profession that interacts with it the most?
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Those individuals were carrying out the will of the elected officials that supervise those departments. As well they generally should (except when those officials ask things that are beyond the pale) we can't have a democracy and also give the individuals that are staffing that agency at the time veto power over everyone else.
I'm not criticizing them for executing the warrant. I am criticizing them for disconnecting his cameras and stealing the cash out of his wallet. That is a moral failure on their part. It is also technically legal so the only recourse against their terrible behavior is to name and shame.
And also things like Lon Horiuchi shooting a dark siloute he saw in his rifle scope and oops, that's a woman holding her baby. I'm not against him or the FBI having a sniper team or obeying orders to get ready to shoot. I am bitterly criticizing them for obeying the illegal order to shoot any adult on sight. He pulled the trigger and shot an unarmed woman. He indeed had a veto against obeying that illegal order. His obedience was a personal moral failing and he deserves shame to be heaped onto him.
This is a "just following orders" debate and I'm staking out the position that following orders to steal and murder is not acceptable. I hope our democracy can survive FBI sniper teams not murdering unarmed people and local cops not literally stealing the cash out of people's wallets.
I suspect you are not really willing to bite this bullet.
If you are, then I guess I commend you, but I'm not particularly willing to concede to some future Dem DHS that they can decline to enforce immigration law (and in doing so veto Congress' law) because they believe it's illegal and/or immoral. In a world where large parts of the country deeply disagrees with what is legal & moral, an individual veto is like throwing policy into the wind.
I'd also note that "name and shame" is the weakest possible form of accountability. The strongest is ensuring accountability through the ballot box.
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Where you lose me is "these police officers did something wrong, therefore it is justified to make a 15 minute video where you hire a stripper to portray one of them engaging in a bunch of sex acts." It doesn't follow. The officer can have done something wrong without deserving to be defamed.
Of course the correct recourse would be to slap them with a hefty fine and force them to pay back the stolen money, but since the act itself doesn't seem to have been illegal, just immoral, you're limited to either defamation or some level of personal violence. I think a better outcome for all involved is afroman making fun of them on tape, although he would of course have been completely morally justified in breaking into their homes, vandalising their property and stealing back his cash.
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There is no legal recourse against them, therefore complaints about recourses actually possible against them amount to wanting them to be immune to all consequences.
There is a political process by which a legislative branch can pass institutional safeguards.
Look at the city of Oakland, they've got so many that they've all but hobbled their police department with them. By choice.
Institutional safeguards only work when the implementing institution wishes to obey them.
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Police officers can and do get charged and convicted of crimes committed on duty, and police departments can and do get sued and pay out for civil rights violations committed by officers. It is outright false that there is "no legal recourse against them." Any issues that you have with whether a specific act by a police officer is a crime or civil rights violation should be taken to your legislature.
The problem with justifying extrajudicial vengeance against police officers as the means of tackling this issue is that if the behavior by the officers is legal, then only people with the celebrity status to streisand-effect the incident actually have the power to do anything about it. You haven't actually changed the legal situation, all you're doing is socially destroying the few random police officers who happen to do a search warrant on a celebrity with the social power to destroy them. The best possible result of this is that celebrities become effectively exempt from search warrants, but nobody else.
If they had merely verified the lack of slave dungeon full of kidnapping victims they would have been fine. But no, they had to steal his money and now are getting smeared as fatsos, cucks and lesbians. Which in any other context I would be against. And I agree it is unfair in the sense that our complaints against them have nothing to do with their wives being unfaithful or licc[ing]'em low.
But no fair legal methods of retaliation exist and they deserve a good shaming. So I'll accept this little crumb of payback and hope somehow we get more in the future. Because I sure know my legislative representatives aren't going to help.
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And sometimes when you flip a coin 100 times, it lands on edge every time.
Thank you, Marie Antoinette.
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But what they did was beyond the pale. A culture of valuing independent judgment may have prevented such an egregious violation of civil liberties.
I think my standard for beyond the pale is something like "beat the living jesus out of the guy that wasn't resisting", not break a gate and steal a trifling amount of money.
And that attitude among the populace, the police, and the courts is exactly why these sorts of violations keep happening. "Hey, it's just a tiny little home invasion, they didn't even steal that much. What do you expect us to do, hold cops accountable for their actions" is an unacceptable response to police misconduct of this magnitude, in my opinion.
I was the one in favor of accountability through the electoral process. That's how people in a democratic society are meant to hold the government accountable. And that's the thing that protects the largest number of people in the future.
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