The whole thing is just insane. Instead of going up the supply chain and arresting the big fish, they are creating their own supply chain and go after addicts. Everybody involved in this should get fired. Almost as stupid as the FBI years ago going into mosques with undercover people radicalizing some young and then arresting them. Basically they are creating their own crimes which they then solve.
>The results of a perverse incentive scheme are also sometimes called cobra effects. This name was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on an anecdote taken from the British Raj. The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. The cobra breeders set their snakes free, leading to an overall increase in the wild cobra population.
No. What they did is worse. They abused their power to do the crime and evade prosecution. That's a much worse crime. It's a double standard. It undermines the entire authority system. It doesn't just harm the people they are selling crack to, it undermines the entire police system. Even a "single isolated incident" of authority abuse undermines the entire authority system.
Authorities aren't equal in the eyes of the law. They are held to a higher standard. Do I have to quote fucking Spiderman (Uncle Ben Parker)?: With great power comes great responsibility.
They should be charged with manufacturing schedule I drugs, selling schedule I drugs, AND conspiracy to defraud the {federal government,state of Florida,people of Florida,police}, and a bunch of other crimes. I would go so far as to say that such acts are those of treason. They acted in a way to undermine the trust of the American people, to undermine the justice system, to undermine the government that they are representing. It is unquestionable that they have caused a betrayal of trust.
I think this is a problem that we let slide due to apathy. But that's why I'm so pissed about this kind of stuff. It's because treason can build slowly, and even be explained away with "best intentions." But it is this slow slide that sows distrust to the institutions we have. It gives legitimate reason to be distrustful of these systems. And without going after bad actors or without holding them to a higher standard, this too undermines the entire system. I don't think you have to be draconian, but I do mean that if you get charged for selling drugs (as one charge of possibly many) you should be receive higher punishment than any non-authority person in a similar setting.
forced labor in prisons, prison factories are a business model. you need workers there. can't call them slaves any more, but that's what they are. young, strong and _not_ free to go.
perfect, business wise.
No, you definitely can still call them slaves. From the text of the US 13th Amendment:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
This made me remember that originally the Nazi party was quite weak and innocuous, German government then tasked a lot of people in infiltrating the party to prepare to arrest everyone. The infiltrators ended upgrading the party instead and made it too strong to stop. Hitler was one of these infiltrators.
- Maintenance of roadways and bridges - Governments don't create wear and tear, vehicles and weather do.
- Food safety standards - Governments aren't harvesting lettuce with e. coli or selling diseased meat.
- Public healthcare - Governments don't create disease, but they ensure access to healthcare (at least the good ones do).
- Building codes - Governments rarely build houses themselves, but they do enact requirements for acceptable building materials, wiring standards, safe insulations, and so on.
- Environmental regulation - It's not entirely accurate to say that governments create zero pollution, but it's an insignificant factor compared to the industries for which they control regulations.
I'm sure some could try to argue each of these points with very narrow counter-examples, or try to stretch the meaning of "have a hand in creating" to be so wide as to encompass everything. Governments are a major part of society, after all. But on the whole, these are solutions created in response to problems in society that emerged naturally, without government oversight, programs, or committees behind them.
This is such a tiresome cliche I can only assume you intended it to be humorous.
Reagan’s “nine most terrifying words in the English language” works just as well when you replace “government” with “corporate” or “church” or “mob” or even “next door”.
Reagan did enormous damage with this quote. Instead of asking for better government people now believe that government can never work. Unfortunately things don’t work without any government so we have a permeant state of bad government.
> For three years, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office produced its own crack cocaine, so it could sell it to people that deputies would then arrest for buying crack cocaine.
Putting aside the insanity of a police department manufacturing crack cocaine, I’m specifically curious how they ran the books for something like this. There’s the crack money collection, the laundering of cash, expensing raw materials (i.e., powder cocaine).
Fun fact: the sheriff who came up with the crack reverse sting operation was also the guy who tried to prosecute rappers for obscenity. Basically his only interactions with the Supreme Court of Florida was being reprimanded for unconstitutional actions.
Not so much "an" illegal act, just this particular illegal act of manufacturing and selling crack cocaine. Unfortunately they can still get away with other things that ordinary citizens would be punished for, e.g. civil asset forfeiture.
The sentence you're arguing with comes directly from the court, and your argument doesn't show it's wrong. While it's true that police officers can "get away with other things that ordinary citizens would be punished for", that's because certain laws treat police officers differently -- because those acts aren't illegal when police officers do them -- and not because they can commit illegal acts. Similarly, it's illegal for a 20 year old to drink but legal for a 21 year old to drink, and that doesn't mean 21 year olds can do illegal acts.
You can certainly believe that it's bad for the law to allow civil asset forfeiture; but that has nothing to do with the court's statement here. Furthermore, it's rather absurd to say that the law should never treat police officers or other government agents differently in any way, which you seem to be implying by referring to this as categorically "unfortunate". Police officers need to arrest and jail people, for example, which are (with some exceptions) powers not granted to ordinary citizens. If agents of the government had no powers beyond those of ordinary citizens, then in what sense would we even have a government?
Yup, and is typically the case there are explicit carve outs in the law for law enforcement for possession, etc. ‘in the course of their duties’ (Florida 893.06(2), 893.09(5), among others).
[https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2023/Chapter893/All]
That second carve out making them immune to both civil and criminal penalties (talk about immunity!) is especially generous.
But as noted, in the eyes of the legislature there has to be or it would literally be impossible for them to do their jobs. And hey, it wasn’t that long ago you had literal machine gun shootouts [https://www.firearmsnews.com/editorial/mac-10-submachine-gun...]. “The two assassins returned to the van and liberally sprayed the parking lot and surrounding shops with gunfire apparently just for meanness.”
No cop is going anywhere near that insanity without near blanket immunity.
You have to go pretty above and beyond to have the courts slap you down like this in that kind of environment. Like manufacturing your own crack, apparently.
> You have to go pretty above and beyond to have the courts slap you down like this in that kind of environment. Like manufacturing your own crack, apparently.
Well, after three years of it. And then when the court says "No, don't do that any more, and erase the records of the people that were arrested and/or convicted by that" you can sit on that for three decades saying "Eh, maybe we will, maybe we won't, depends on how we feel" before it gets pushed at all.
Most of your takeaway of what I wrote is simply a fabrication, and not at all what I was saying.
My main point was to note that the ruling only makes this particular act illegal for police officers. I'm not saying the police should have no authority beyond that of citizens.
The "unfortunate" part of civil asset forfeiture is that it is almost always abused for the benefit of the police at the expense of otherwise law-abiding citizens. You are correct that it has nothing to do with the court's statement, and that's ties into my first point.
> My main point was to note that the ruling only makes this particular act illegal for police officers.
No, federal law makes it illegal generally, without any exception for police officers.
This 1993 ruling that forms the context for the recent action noted that independent illegality, found also that that illegality as an underpinning of reverse-sting operations violated due process of law and that, as a consequences, convictions based on it were invalid and should be vacated.
But this “ruling” isn’t a ruling, didn’t declare anything illegal, its an administrative action by the State Attorney for Broward County applying the 1993 ruling after a routine audit found that many convictions remained on the books despite the 1993 ruling.
No, you have it backwards. It wasn't legal for anyone to manufacture crack cocaine. The police were already committing illegal acts by doing so. I suspect they weren't really punished for it, though, unfortunately. But the court case was more about whether or not this chain of (already illegal) activity could be used to prosecute people for buying crack, and the answer was "no".
The actual problem might have been that the people who could be baited with powder cocaine were out of bounds for the police. But they had this large supply of powder cocaine meanwhile if it were crack cocaine they'd have plenty of legitimate targets.
It was incorrect of you to say the court scoped its statement to a particular illegal act. It said police cannot commit illegal acts full stop. There goes your first sentence.
You repeat your error in your reply: “the ruling only makes this particular act illegal for police officers”. That makes no sense. It literally says that police cannot do illegal acts and that this is why they could
not convict people based on making crack. How could it even be otherwise? You really think the court is saying police could vandalize a store or murder someone to bust others involved in the crime, since those illegal acts weren’t specified in the ruling?
It seems like you missed the part where eurleif said the TLDR is a verbatim quote from the ruling.
In your second sentence you made an inapt comparison to civil forfeiture. What makes civil forfeiture outrageous is precisely its legality. The whole point of the ruling is that police must confine themselves to legal behavior. So civil forfeiture is as relevant to this ruling as walking, cooking, or breathing. Legal and permissible by police.
It’s also wrong of you to accuse eurleif of fabrication. I can’t see a single thing they fabricated. They very carefully and precisely explained why your entire comment was wrong. You should thank them!
At the time, police and courts gave themselves permission to manufacture and sell crack cocaine informally, despite this being very clearly illegal.
Currently, police and the courts with formal legislative backing give themselves permission to rob people, despite this being very clearly unconstitutional.
Civil forfeiture is part of the legal codes in various states and has been left intact in its present state by the courts.
Making crack is just something some police did. No law was ever passed saying they could do it.
This ruling isn’t saying the laws on the books are good, or universally constitutional. It isn’t saying police will always stay within the constitution by following laws. It is simply saying that they are definitely not allowed to go outside the law. That’s the baseline standard of behavior the ruling established.
> because those acts aren't illegal when police officers do them -- and not because they can commit illegal acts
Well by logical conclusion, they can't commit all illegal acts, but they can commit some, if those acts aren't considered illegal when police officers do them.
in Canada, the pricing for legalised canabis was derived from the price charged in the illegal market, and is now enforced through legal protection of the sellers market.
There was NO discussion about how canibis is a weed, and can be grown and processed for less than 1% of the price now forced on consumers.
And in Canada we have a law that states that any proceeds or profits from crime are to siezed and prosecuted.
And here we have a whole industry, "ported" from crime to legal, magicaly avoiding any interem process that would let the "market" establish itself and pricing.
Then there is a whole sharad around enforcing the
wildest and strictest regulations on anyone trying to grow hemp for cloth......
My questions about what you remember that show being about aside, you don’t need to be a chemist to make crack. It is kind of famous in its simplicity of preparation, like Jello.
In America cops bring the drugs and violence. They are always the biggest and best equipped gang in the area. We're completely fucking retarded. It's fine.
