Indeed. I live in Northern Ireland; not a place known for its entirely peaceful neighbourhoods. But even here I would be shocked about a police officer arresting a student for starting a waterfight for example, even if it did result in damage to property that was not excessive. I have colleagues who wonder why I wouldn't want to move, along with my family, to the US for work.
For reference, the murder rate in Belfast recently is around 3-4 per 100k. In comparably-sized cities like Newark, NJ or New Orleans, LA, it's 10-20 times higher.
The peak of violence in Northern Ireland was apparently 1972, when ~500 people were killed. At the time, the area had a population of 1.5 million people, so the rate was 333 per million. At least 18 U.S. states have rates above 50 per million, and crime is the lowest in the U.S. that it has been in decades.
I'd like to say that most people have common sense, wherever in the world they happen to be, and that these stories are only news-worthy because they're rare.
But these extremes have recalibrated people's expectations of what's acceptable. Is it okay to have police in schools if they're not zip-tieing children?
I think it's baffling to have police officers stationed in schools.
Here's the thing: I don't think Europeans can appreciate how totally and prevasively dysfunctional our inner cities are.[1] Inner city schools are rife with gang activity. Teenagers shoot each other up all the time (usually not directly in the school though, but the fights that lead to shooting often start there). Just last month in Chicago, a woman was shot in the chest while holding a child because a gun fight broke out on an alley by an elementary school.[2] Posting police might not be the best response, but its not baffling. Who the hell would want to teach at some south side Chicago schools without an armed police officer nearby?
And when the suburbanites hear about kids accidentally getting shot in gang hits in parks,[3] they want police in their schools too, never mind that the dangers are far less there.
[1] Chicago is the deadliest major (1m+) city in the U.S., with ~18-20 murders per 100k people per year. But it pales in comparison to small/mid-sized U.S. cities like Wilmington, DE (38 per 100k), New Orleans (53 per 100k), or Flint (65 per 100k). In comparison, London is 1.4 per 100k, Berlin 1.0 per 100k, Toronto 1.7 per 100k, and Paris is a hell-hole at 4.4 per 100k. In the neighborhoods where getting shot is a real threat, the murder rate is far higher than the above numbers per capita.
The list of top 50 world cities by murder rate has U.S. cities like St. Louis hanging among company that is almost entirely cities in Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Iraq, and South Africa, or Honduras: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate. Compounding the average rates is the highly segregated nature of violence in American cities. As an aside, this is apparently mostly just a list of battlefields for the drug war. Except Detroit and Mosul, which I think are not so much on major drug trade routes like say Baltimore, but rather are simply parts of failed states...
I'm not convinced police officers stationed in school is generally a good idea, but the bigger issue here seems to be more the actions of the police officers in question. Whilst some incidents might be open to framing by the media, there are simply no circumstances under which charging a 5 year old with battery of a police officer would be appropriate. (I think we can safely apply "zero tolerance" here; someone should be fired for sanctioning the charge)
It's genuinely quite scary to think how an officer that considers that an appropriate response might react when dealing with adults suspected of committing something which might actually be a crime.
Zero tolerance policies specifically disallow common sense though, as surely tolerance is a major part of common sense in these kinds of situations.
Also rare is an imprecise term.
The US jails more people per head than any other country, and also jails a larger percentage of its children than any other country in the world, so if you compare the situation in the US to the global norm, rather than rare, it would seem to be frighteningly common.
The problem with the incarceration rate is that it's not just 'US does more', but 'the US is an extreme outlier'. Pretty much all the developed nations are in the band 50-150/100k population, from memory New Zealand is an outlier at 200, and the US is... 750. It's such a mind-bogglingly extreme outlier. South Africa at the height of Apartheid 'only' had 550.
Because of all the imported US media bleating on about harsher penalties for criminals, that mentality is starting to take foot here in Australia, too. Prison sentences are never 'long enough', and the public perception is shifting from the previous one that was a punishment/rehabilitation mix to one that's punishment only.
The thing is, that when you talk to people about a criminal - "they did -foo-, and were locked up for -bar-", it's common to hear "that's not long enough! there needs to be a message sent!". But the Law Institute of Victoria (my state) did an interesting study: they polled people about what sentences people should receive for certain crimes, but actually gave them details of specific cases. Instead of being the shallow news "it was a burglary, the sentences was -bar-", they were given more detail. It turns out that the respondents suggested sentences were actually shorter than the sentences given in court.
It's pretty easy to say "lock 'em up for longer"; it's both quick and simple. But when you actually have to think about it, you realise all the implications - from rehabilitation and reintegration, to cost of incarceration, both fiscal and social. Zero tolerance has the least amount of thought available to it, so...
I wonder how much the massive adoption of zero tolerance policies has to do with the name "zero tolerance" itself. It sounds indisputable. Why should we tolerate things like weapons or drugs in schools? Those things are bad. If you're against "zero tolerance" of them, it sounds like you're in favor of tolerating them.
The truth is that there are many ways of not tolerating those things, and "zero tolerance" is an extreme one that causes harm. If it were named more accurately—"extreme enforcement", say—this would be easier to see.
The renaming of the Secretary of War to "Secretary of Defense" has an interesting history that is not at all to do with manipulation of the language, but rather the fact that the War Department and the Navy were separate bureaucracies prior to WWII.
It's all to avoid responsibility and blame. Something happens, hysterical parents throw fit, parent/reporter/boss you don't have a policy against that, or you used common sense/judgement. Well fu! Your job/career is over and we are suing/charging you. Or, Why, yes we have a ZERO TOLERANCE policy and I just say no to everything or pass the buck so no one can blame me. Well darn, I guess we'll have to blame rock'n'roll, drugs, or sex then.
You're probably right that that's why administrators like it, but I'm talking about public opinion, which is different. Tacit public support is a necessary ingredient here.
In the past I would have thought "zero tolerance" meant that all minor bad behaviour was addressed by the school.
I can understand why parents would support teachers who want to improve behaviour of pupils. And zero tolerance got a good name after it worked in New York. (Did it work? Or am I wrong? I'm aware of the freakonomics abortion-reduces-crime thing).
How about zero tolerance for police misconduct?
How about zero tolerance for appointed government servant's lying to Congress?
After all, these individuals should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us if they want to impose their will upon us without our explicit approval.
How about an officer who has to break the law/procedure to expose corruption or save someone's life?
Life is rarely so black-and-white; zero tolerance strips us of our ability to use reason and discretion based on the arrogant assumption that our rules and procedures are perfect and infallible, which is just silly.
If cops have to break the law to save someone then the law is at fault. But I cannot, for the life of me, think of any such scenario.
As for exposing corruption or being a whistleblower, there are many who want to modify laws to make it easier(Infact, Obama's stance on it during his elections is a prominent example.), but by definition, whistleblowers are fighting against the more powerful and/or the rich which has made it a losing battle.
> If cops have to break the law to save someone then the law is at fault.
Yes, this is precisely the point. Zero-tolerance assumes that the law cannot be at fault, when we know full well that it can be. Ergo, until the law is perfect and unerring, zero tolerance is flawed.
No, it just means that there are things that are true but cannot be proven given the axioms of the system if the system is powerful enough to express Peano arithmetic. It has very little to do with laws, as they don't really prove anything (that is for the jury/judge to do).
If cops have to break the law to save someone then the law is at fault.
This may be, but it still means that they broke the law, and would still be affected by zero tolerance. Just because the law is an arse doesn't mean the law has no teeth.
As for an example of breaking the law in the course of duty, in a lot of places police are required to have lights and sirens before they break traffic rules - no sirens means no breaking traffic rules. There are times when police serve better by doing just this.
What situation would warrant breaking traffic laws without using light and sirens? It seems almost a tautology that doing so is a danger to everyone else on the road...
It's not remotely a tautology, because you're assuming that any breaking of a traffic rule is dangerous when that just isn't true. Ever seen a 'no u-turns' section in the dead of night with no cars in sight? There's plenty of times and places where traffic rules can be safely broken, and there are times when police have to respond in a timely but not urgent manner.
For example, frequently with theft, they'll take a while to get to the location where it was reported - this is because the one place the criminal is not at is the site of the theft. So they drive around the location for a bit, sirens off so as not to alert the criminal, and see if they find anything suspicious. Then they can come in to do the report after the scout around.
If you honestly cannot think of a situation where police need to respond without using sirens or breaking traffic rules, then I would suggest you're not close enough to understanding what the job entails to be passing comment on their procedures.
Yes I have seen people make u-turns in the dead of night when "no one" was around, and they proceeded to hit me while I was riding my bike.
No one has 100% perfect situational awareness which is why traffic laws exist in the first place. Are you arguing that breaking traffic laws does not increase the likelihood of an accident, because every statistic on the matter disagrees with you there.
And I don't see why an officer has to break traffic laws when patrolling for a burglar. Seems like breaking traffic laws would alert the criminal as much as running sirens.
The Earth is 12,700 km in diameter. I'm not sure how that statistic disagrees with me.
What statistics did you mean? Quote some relevant statistics, because just making an empty appeal to some vague authority - that you assure me is on your side - is a terrible way to argue.
Seems like breaking traffic laws would alert the criminal as much as running sirens.
Can you hear someone doing a u-turn like you can with sirens? Can you tell that its the police doing so? The whole point of sirens is to attract attention. They are specifically designed to pull your attention.
There you have it u-turns cause accidents, which I would think is fairly obvious...
Also, that's some amazingly judicious quoting you did there. You'll note I said "every statistic on the matter." I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not a native english speaker, so for future reference this is how antecedents work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antecedent_(grammar)
Also, believe or not, criminals (like most humans) are blessed with more senses than just hearing, it is quite possible to notice illegal traffic maneuvers with your eyes.
True, you did say "on the matter", and I did overreach, but my point is still strong: You provided none, and just made the assumption that they 'all', 'them' being an implied multitude, agree with you.
As for your prime (and only) example of u-turn accidents, right there in the text it says that u-turn accidents are so rare, they had to add in left-turns in order for it to be analysable.
In addition to that, you've provided a statistic on 'making u-turns', not 'breaking traffic laws', which was your original complaint. The segment you've bookmarked doesn't talk about how legal the turns taken were.
it is quite possible to notice illegal traffic maneuvers with your eyes.
Your argument counters itself. On the one hand you say you can't see illegal manoeuvres, so they're always downright dangerous if not deadly, and on the other hand you say that any such manoeuvre is visible and obvious.
You're right I provided none, this stuff is covered in pretty much every drivers manual in every state in the United States, you are right I shouldn't have assumed you were a licensed driver.
But that makes it pretty easy to disprove me, all you have to do is provide one statistic to the contrary. And no, just because something is rare doesn't mean it doesn't count, it still increases the risk of an accident. So If you'd like to provide a counterexample, you might have an actual argument.
That's not the argument I made, that's a complete strawman. My point was that other drivers on the road are not necessarily going to notice someone breaking traffic laws. A criminal breaking the law and paying attention to any nearby police will.
I don't have to provide a statistic to disprove you, because I wasn't the one rabbitting on about how 'every' statistic 'agrees with me'. If you make the claim, you have to provide the evidence. So far you're presented one statistic, and it doesn't reflect what you've had to say so far. And again you resort to an 'everyone knows' argument ('in all the books!') which again is bad argument style - if it is that easy to source, then source it! Don't deliver it with an underhanded ad hominem, because it's not my responsibility to support your argument.
A criminal breaking the law and paying attention to any nearby police will.
Contrary to popular belief, criminals are humans too, and frequently let their guard down or are just plain stupid. You really are assuming we're dealing with an idealised Hollywood world, where everyone is an over-the-top stereotype. This comes back to the point I made about not commenting on police procedure if you're that unaware of what the work entails.
My statement is unprovable but easily disproved, so I'm not sure what you want me to do here. If you don't want to go through the effort of finding one counterexample I don't know what to tell you...
Also the one statistic I provided absolutely agrees with me, are you arguing a small increase in risk doesn't count as an increase in risk? At what percent increase in risk will you deem it a legitimate increase in risk, since apparently we are going by how you personally feel and not what the numbers actually say.
Stop throwing up strawmen arguments and provide a counterexample, and yes it literally is in all the books, have you red your states drivers's manual?
These are terrible examples. The point of the sirens is to let other people know to be aware when the police find it necessary to break the rules. "timely but not urgent" doesn't make any sense if, because the police decide to drive on the wrong side of the road to avoid traffic so they can get there in a timely fashion, they get into a head-on collision because the other drivers were not expecting it. The sirens are on because the rules are being broken by police, the sirens are not orthogonal to breaking traffic laws.
It's in the best interest of the police and for scoping out the area around where a theft has occurred to not draw attention to themselves, by both NOT turning on sirens on AND by not skirting traffic laws. If they are are intent on not alerting the criminal, then driving normally would help with that. And if they are driving normally, then there is no need for sirens then either.
You want a better example? Suppose the officer is covertly following a suspect of a serious crime to see where he goes. Turning on lights and sirens will obviously give the officer away. The suspect is violating various traffic laws as many people often do (speeding, ignoring "no turn on red" etc.) and the officer has to match the violations or lose the suspect.
The point is, zero tolerance is stupid. We need to have an appropriate balance between clear rules and discretion, so that the law actually means something rather than only being whatever the prosecutor says it is, without being so overly rigid that you have people being prosecuted for doing harmless or beneficial things.
The existing law is very, very far away from being overly rigid. Government officials have far too much discretion and get away with far too much. But it is theoretically possible to go too far the other way -- we just haven't, and never have to worry about doing so in practice, because of the politics of the situation. Politics making zero tolerance for police misconduct unachievable in practice doesn't mean it would be a good idea even if we could manage to implement it.
This is a bad example too, and is pretty much the same example I already refuted. The point here is that there is no such thing as "covertly following" if the police are disobeying traffic laws. They'd have to be close enough to keep track of the suspect, and that means the suspect will see that someone else is "matching their violations". In this case, many police departments will not pursue because a chase endangers too many lives (I don't have a reference handy for this, but I believe I read about here on HN some months back).
Yes, zero tolerance is stupid, and this remains a bad example.
>The point here is that there is no such thing as "covertly following" if the police are disobeying traffic laws.
If the suspect is flagrantly running red lights or driving 140 in a 55, someone else doing the same thing is going to be conspicuous. If the suspect is ignoring "no turn on red" signs or driving 65 in a 55, they're doing the same thing as 80+% of other motorists and someone else doing the same thing is not going to stand out.
> In this case, many police departments will not pursue because a chase endangers too many lives (I don't have a reference handy for this, but I believe I read about here on HN some months back).
You're referring to situations where the suspect is aware of the pursuit.
Are you aware that there are often long stretches of road which, if you follow the traffic rules completely, take you quite a ways out of your way before you can double back? Similarly, using sirens late at night in urban areas for non-emergency events is not pleasant for residents.
Are you suggesting convenience is more important than the safety of everyone else on the road?
Please don't forget the fact that you have the privilege of being encased in a few tons of steel with multiple safety systems. When doing your moral calculus and weighing how many lives are worth risking to save time, please remember there are other people on the road who don't have that privilege. Cyclists have to be constantly aware of cars breaking traffic laws if they want to stay alive, and they are not as visible as you would like to imagine.
If there is a non-zero chance of causing an accident and harming someone by breaking traffic laws, and the only benefit is saving time or not annoying residents, how do you justify that?
If there is a non-zero chance of causing an accident and harming someone by breaking traffic laws, and the only benefit is saving time or not annoying residents, how do you justify that?
I justify that because I am not an absolutist. If you're really going for the 'what price a life' argument, unless you're giving your entire income and free time (excluding enough to keep yourself alive) to a relevant charity (say, clearing minefields), you also don't believe in 'any-percentage-over-zero-is-too-high'.
Absolutely. I've also seen a police car slowly enter a no-entry T-intersaction in the dead of night, the road behind being two-way. No other cars moving, and they were going slowly enough that even someone with a walking stick could have escaped their movement. Nevertheless, they still broke the law, something that would not be allowed under 'zero tolerance'.
The problem with zero tolerance is that large systems are about balance, so when you're designing a process to govern a large system, rules quickly become untenable when measured in absolutes, and become about managing probabilities. When designing the rules for a legal system, for example, we can never have 100% correct outcome, so we have to decide whether we're ok with 100 innocent people going to prison for every guilty person, or 1 innocent person, or 100 guilty people going free for every innocent person going to prison, etc.
Sociological systems are governed by laws of nature, and we can't just ignore them any more than we can ignore the laws of physics. Zero tolerance is a copout. It sounds good, but real systems simply don't work that way. It might be manageable for congressmen or senators because the system is small enough, but is completely untenable for a system as large as a police force.
Even for a police officers, zero tolerance is a foolish standard. But in this case, even under the most lenient of systems, this cop should have been gone from the force a long time ago.
I have known a lot of cops over the years, and I can honestly say that there are a lot of awesome guys doing that job. But it also attracts these power hungry assholes, who could care less about law and order, and only care about pushing people around and compensating for what I can only presume their manhood inadequacies.
For instance, I knew a guy who was a very successful civil litigation attorney, very shitty attorney, but very successful. He worked part time as a patrol cop. Why? He did not need the money, he did not care about the law for a bit, and he could give two shits about helping people. But he loves the power. In his own words, he was bullied as a kid, and now it's his turn. That man is still a cop to this day, and he absolutely should not be one.
Unless you have the ability of perfect distinction of guilty versus innocent, then any policy that demands action against 100% of the guilty is going to catch a lot of innocent as well. So no, I don't have a zero tolerance for police misconduct. I have a low tolerance for it, and would prefer that it be treated more severely, but if a few cases slip by, that is OK, because the alternative would inevitably be dysfunctional.
Supposed a battered wife is in hiding and a police officer knows where she is and the husband makes some frivolous lawsuit so he can see her - would it be so bad if the police officer claimed he didn't know where she was?
As for lying in Congress I would expect it if it was to protect the identity of a whistle blower or something like that.
The key in all parts are context, but Zero Justice explicitly denies context; it would be the same as giving the driver of a car what hits and kills a pedestrian because it gets bumped by another car the same punishment you would give for first degree murder.
"Conditioning the next generation into docile, subservient servants by using fear as a tool."
Yep. At least some students and parents are not being bullied and file lawsuits, which is really the only reason why we even know about these incidents.
Police has been using fear for quite some time now. Those who terrorize others in order to obtain their goal are called terrorists by definition. Many police officers are terrorists.
I probably would not have finished school if this stuff existed in my country at the time. Then again, I remember the school's attempt to put me on Ritalin very vividly -- it ended when my mom flat out decked the school nurse after coming over to discuss it. Do not mess with seemingly gracile Italian moms.
Officers appear to have forgotten that they need the support of the population to police, and that without the support of the population they cannot do their job.
Having armed officers in schools feels bizarre, especially taking into account the reduction in violent crime.
> Combined, these two factors have resulted in criminalization of acts that were once nothing more than violations of school policies, something usually handled by school administrators.
Even without the severe examples listed in the article this criminalisation of normal teenage behaviour is terrible. Teenagers don't have fully formed brains and haven't learnt how to behave in society. That's why we restrict their abilities to do things (they can't vote, buy alcohol, have sex, join the army, etc etc).
Anecdata from one story:
"Of the remaining 80 still in the running for a spot in the next police academy, about 60 percent have military experience, Gish said."
The military don't train for the expectation of support of the population.
Zero tolerance means zero thought, zero reason, zero understanding and zero compassion. Why anybody who subscribes to such values would be let anywhere near a school? I'd ban anybody who institutes a "zero tolerance" policy - instead of exercising one's own adult judgement on a case by case basis - from ever working in education. And of course any such policy should be immediate ground for termination of administrator instituting it - as they're essentially turning themselves into non-thinking robots. Who needs non-thinking robots in charge of schools?
> Who needs non-thinking robots in charge of schools?
Somebody does, apparently. At least that's the feeling I get when I see the proliferation of this kind of idiotic policy showing no sign of slowing down. The non-thinking robots in positions of authority and instruction are more likely to churn out non-thinking robots as a result. That may very well be the goal.
Schools are the extreme of wanting to be seen to enforce the rules equally on everybody. Reasons include:
1. They're government or other not-for-profit organizations.
2. Unlike others, with which people interact only occasionally, they're experienced for 1000s of hours each by many, many individuals (and vicariously by those individuals' parents). Unequal treatment will be noticed.
3. Schools think it's part of their MISSION to teach adherence to rules.
The result is inanity.
My favorite dumb example is the girl who wanted her prom date to be her 21-year-old soldier brother, who wasn't allowed because 21-year-olds couldn't be prom dates in general (too old). The whole thing should have been settled with one phone call to his commanding officer, making sure he was under orders not to behave inappropriately. (Why that approach? Because the whole argument for letting him in was that he was a soldier, we should support our troops, etc.)
When the history of our time is written, a major theme should be the recursive multiplication of finer and finer rules to regulate what should be handled by common sense and good will.
I do know a kid who got a misdemeanor charge for a hallway scuffle at a public high school. It was settled with probation before judgment and the requirement to attend an anger management course; but it should have been handled by a detention and forgotten. He is now a teacher at the same school, and if he ever goes into administration might bring some needed perspective.
Makes me wonder how people could be so heartless as to put their children in state indoctrination(slaughter?) camps.
Then again, with the prevalence of physical abuse against young humans, it comes as no surprise that practically nobody cares, and when they do, they rarely take steps to create assurances against it.
What about their parents giving “officers of the law” and politicians unlimited exclusive license to use abusive force against humans, rape children around the world, destroy the power of free economies to mitigate poverty, and improve the health of humans?.
Private prisons are a really small part of this as far as I can tell. They e.g. don't touch at all upon the size of police forces and judicial systems, in most places those would have significantly downsized if they'd followed the sharp decrease in crime over the last couple of decades or so.
You might want to check out Arrest Proof Yourself (http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-A...): it presents a thesis that what I've taken to calling the police-judicial complex needs a steady diet of the "clueless" to keep all those people employed. What this topic discusses would just seem to be extending that.
