Am I the only person here who thinks that trespassing should be an arrestable offense?
If it's not your property gtfo
It is an arrestable offense, but the person has to first be told they're trespassing or be in a place that a reasonable person would know they're not supposed to be
A reasonable person knows if a piece of property is theirs or not.
Except there's a thing known as public property? Wtf?
Yeah ....
You can't really trespass on public property unless you're in an area designated for staff or after hours in which case I'd advise you to not do those things
I work in a state owned hotel/office building combo, it is by definition public property, and I call police about once a week to issue a trespass warning or arrest if the warning was previously given. It is not always a given or easy to see you aren't supposed to be somewhere you're not supposed to be, but going by what you profess they should be locked immediately because they made a mistake and took a right instead of left.
See, I like to give people the benefit of doubt instead of immediately giving them a criminal record as mistakes do happen.
Hold on now, that's not been what I'm saying
This started with you saying trespassing should be an arrestable offense. I corrected you saying it is after a warning or if a reasonable person knows they are where they shouldn't be (ie due to signage or fencing). You called that bullshit which says to me you think warnings/signs/fencing is unnecessary and your examples lead me to believe you think trespassing should be treated the same as someone actively stealing/B&Eing hence my "get the fuck on the floor" arrest post, edit: and arrest means a criminal record. We provided many reasons why your bullshit is actually bullshit, and now we are here.
So, what are you saying?
Damn drafts!
You quoted the part I thought was gone!
Edit:
Now that I have a second
I really should have began my whole argument by defining what trespassing is (at least in my mind), and I apologize for not doing so earlier.
If you're getting your frisbee, you're not trespassing
If you're in someone's wooded lot long enough for them to notice, call the cops, and have them arrive to arrest you, you are trespassing.
The fact of the matter is that people know where they should be. If there's a question, the answer is that they probably shouldn't be there.
Between streets, sidewalks, easements, parks, WMAs, and any number of other public areas I can't think of off the top of my head, there shouldn't be anywhere you can't reasonably get to if need be.
If your argument is that people are calling the police on people who aren't trespassing, I'll agree that that is wrong. If the police arrest you for 'trespassing' on a street, I also agree that that is wrong.
If you've been hanging out on some vacant lot because you don't think anyone will care, you shouldn't be surprised to be arrested because it's not your property and you know it.
I think Community Representation should go beyond racial/gender diversity. Cops should live where they work. One of the big problems with the NYPD is that a lot of those cops actually live on Long Island and don't give a shit about NYC at all, because it's not their home. They have no ties to the community whatsoever. Cops should have to live in the neighborhood they police.
This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons which is why most police forces have rules against living in the area you police. The most obvious is the risk it presents to the officer. Living with your family in the same area you're arresting gang members for attempted murder, GBH, possession of offensive weapons etc, and searching far more of them then that on a frequent basis increases the chance of things going badly.
I would be very suprised if it had any effect in a wider sense anyway. In a city of six million people the fact that you live in the centre of the city isn't going to have any meaningful impact on your view of the far north east of it, and for smaller cities you run the risk of personal connections being much more likely wherein the person the officer arrest is his sons friends father or whatever.
You also have the reality that in the major cities the middleclass are invariably pushed out to the suburbs to raise families, so you are going to encourage recruits to only come from a very set profile (young single people) and limit the intake of people who have had careers and time to mature outside the job.
This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons which is why most police forces have rules against living in the area you police.
Really? Can you cite this? Because my understanding, at least from a US point of view, is that residency requirements used to be fairly common and that the relaxation of them is fairly recent. Going in entirely the opposite direction is novel to me.
I wonder if this is mostly a non-US thing.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Phone posting so can't immediately do so in afraid. And this is mostly personal knowledge of the way things are run in the ex common wealth countries.
However, there's a difference between a requirement to live I the same major city/county/whatever your equivalent to this is which we occasionally have. And living in the actual immediate local area you're policing which is discouraged or prohibited.
I.e. You could have residency requirements to live in Cambridge, or London to serve in those areas, but you would for example be heavily discouraged from living in the London Borough of Lewisham (population 250,000), as a Lewisham officer.
And without requiring living in the latter level of proximity, I would be surprised if residency requirements have any meaningful impact on police behaviour (outside possibly slightly correcting for demographic differences). Could you clarify which the American police tend to require in residency criteria?
Am I the only person here who thinks that trespassing should be an arrestable offense?
If it's not your property gtfo
It is an arrestable offense, but the person has to first be told they're trespassing or be in a place that a reasonable person would know they're not supposed to be
A reasonable person knows if a piece of property is theirs or not.
There is not a presumption that private property is not open to the public.
We're not, like, Norway, where it's entirely legal to camp on others' land while traveling as long as you don't approach the house. But if you don't want anyone cutting through your yard, the onus is on you to put up fencing and/or signage.
That's horseshit in my opinion and it should be horseshit in everyone's opinion.
Is something yours?
If yes, proceed.
If no, it's not yours and you don't get to do what you want with it!
This is kindergarten stuff.
I'm suddenly really curious what sort of neighborhood you live in and what your compound looks like.
My home and yard remain completely unchanged from when I moved in.
the co-op requires a standard chainlink fence in good repair. People tresspass ALL THE TIME. Occasionally they pick my flowers, steal my kids outdoor toys, or break my garden ornaments.
Even if they didn't, I still wouldn't want them on my property because it's my property. I don't waltz on other peoples property to do anything because (again), it isn't mine!
I don't open up peoples cars and sit in them. Or wander in their houses look around and leave, etc.!
I don't expect other people to either.
Why should trespassing get a (heh) pass? What should be legal about it?
Are you saying that you don't immediately recognize what property is yours and what property isn't?
edit: also, my neighborhood is comprised mainly of dealers, takers, alcoholics, crack heads, and the guy across the street that got arrested for making videos with a dog.
edit2: even if my neighborhood wasn't so crappy, I'd still be against trespassing, because there is still no reason to.
Reasons to go onto others property without an explicit invitation:
Kids playing in the neighborhood running onto front lawns.
Chasing pets.
Cutting across large backyards in unimproved areas.
Going for a walk in suburbs without sidewalks.
Access to unimproved ponds or such for fishing and play (again, large rural yard issue).
Access to unimproved woods without an obvious owner.
Recovering lost toys/sporting equipment
Tracking shot wildlife
Talking to the neighbors (gotta access the property to knock on the door).
Trespassing should be illegal, but defining trespassing as broadly as "ever being on property you do not own" is silly. Your situation, e.g fenced property with signage, is already trespassing. The laws don't need to be changed so police can arrest people for taking a walk.
I wouldn't consider most of these as trespassing as there is an actual (if not always urgent) need.
I was under the impression that we were talking about trespassing as in people entering and remaining on property for no real reason.
that said, I think these four:
Cutting across large backyards in unimproved areas.
Going for a walk in suburbs without sidewalks.
Access to unimproved ponds or such for fishing and play (again, large rural yard issue).
Access to unimproved woods without an obvious owner.
are crap reasons.
having lived in the suburbs for most of my life, when you go for a walk, you use the street and sidestep onto the easement when a car comes.
I'm actually not for everyone having access to unimproved ponds. Is everyone paying that person's property taxes? No? Then they should be told to piss off.
Access to unimproved woods? For what reason?
There are thousands of acres of public land set aside for people to wander around on if they want to. Fishing and play areas too.
I live in a complete shit area and I can drive to 2 public fishing areas (no license required) and well over a dozen parks, WMAs, docks, and etc. in under a half hour. No trespassing required!
I know I probably sound like a curmudgenly jerk, I just think that you should respect other people's property. I know not everyone has the means to buy a house on 50 acres and a pond (I don't either), but just because you can't, doesn't mean you should get automatic claim to someone who does. There are public areas for all of that!
A bit late, but I think there are some issues here:
Your stance of "you should know if you're on property that isn't yours, and if you are it's trespassing" is different than most of my examples being "not trespassing." You may actually have a stance similar to mine if you believe that trespassing requires intent, though I still think it requires intent and for somebody to tell you (in person or via sign) that you should leave.
Anyway, for the things you mentioned:
Walking on the street is both dangerous and considered "suspicious" by police. Maybe the latter should change, but walking on the easement does no harm to the property and is much safer (especially for pets) so I think it's a good thing to allow.
In large rural yards, ponds can be quite far from the owners property, and if they don't have improvements on them or frequently go there, it's not likely you cause any harm by going there. Again, this is mostly a "no harm but provides good" argument, and applies much more to large rural yards than e.g. fishing in a suburban koi pond.
Unimproved woods: Because sometimes kids (and their parents) want to go somewhere that doesn't require driving; in the 'burb I lived in before this one, certain houses had fairly large swathes of undeveloped forest (with unknown owners), and kids being kids played around there. Saying that being there is trespassing or even cutting through a yard to get there is trespassing seems bizarre to me, since the only way you could care is if you called in that people were trespassing on property that wasn't yours either.
E: Anyway, tying it back to the BLM movement, the majority of these minor trespassing offenses are frequently called in on black residents of a neighborhood doing exactly the kind of thing everybody else does. More narrowly tailored trespassing rules would prevent this sort of abuse, which is the point. You should not be allowed to call in trespassing if you don't own the property or have a very good reason to believe the person should not be there, and if you own the property you should give notice before calling the police. That definition of trespassing still covers any harmful invasion of property, without giving police or homeowners a legal reason to harass black people.
Phone posting so can't immediately do so in afraid. And this is mostly personal knowledge of the way things are run in the ex common wealth countries.
However, there's a difference between a requirement to live I the same major city/county/whatever your equivalent to this is which we occasionally have. And living in the actual immediate local area you're policing which is discouraged or prohibited.
I.e. You could have residency requirements to live in Cambridge, or London to serve in those areas, but you would for example be heavily discouraged from living in the London Borough of Lewisham (population 250,000), as a Lewisham officer.
And without requiring living in the latter level of proximity, I would be surprised if residency requirements have any meaningful impact on police behaviour (outside possibly slightly correcting for demographic differences). Could you clarify which the American police tend to require in residency criteria?
Ah, gotcha.
In our case, the laws were generally enforced at the city level. For example, there's a law on the books that Boston police (and in fact all employees on the city payroll) must live in the city of Boston (645,000 people, 232 square km)... though it's weakly enforced.
None of our cities have separately-incorporated buroughs (except for New York City, who is an outlier, and maybe a few other cities I'm aware of). I'm not aware of any American police department policies that discourage police from working in the same neighborhoods or districts in which they live, but that might just be my own ignorance.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Am I the only person here who thinks that trespassing should be an arrestable offense?
If it's not your property gtfo
It is an arrestable offense, but the person has to first be told they're trespassing or be in a place that a reasonable person would know they're not supposed to be
A reasonable person knows if a piece of property is theirs or not.
Except there's a thing known as public property? Wtf?
Yeah ....
You can't really trespass on public property unless you're in an area designated for staff or after hours in which case I'd advise you to not do those things
Okay so if there are no signs or anything how do you know if you're on public or private property?
There's a huge difference between "knowing if a piece of property is yours" and "knowing if a piece of property belongs to someone else."
I guess I've never encountered a situation where I was so lost and/or confused I didn't know what was what
I'm only 35 though, so I guess I've got time left!
It doesn't take getting really lost and confused. It takes someone just not marking an area as private or not caring if people are on it. And then for cops to decide to only every really care when black people are on it.
The conversation also reminds me of the times where we've had homeowners shoot at "trespassers" because the people who are on the property simply wound up getting a friend's address wrong when going to meet them.
When I was in college for Law Enforcement Foundations we actually talked a lot about Broken Windows as a doctrine.
The instructor, a 20 year veteran of the Toronto Police Service, believed in it.
I found serious flaws and problems with the doctrine as many in this thread have already pointed out and I wrote a paper criticising it.
Some of the students in the class also had problems with the concept, explaining how they've personally felt targeted by police for harassment as a result of this kind of approach to policing.
The fact that all of the students that had these experiences were black or natives was not lost on me, or to be fair, the instructor.
LanzLeitner, sorry, but you're wrong. Hiring locally can be an incredible way to keep a small to medium sized city's police force interested in making the place better for all.
The Madison Police Department is ramping up recruiting efforts to focus on hiring officers raised in the Madison area.
Department officials launched the new campaign Monday with a billboard along the Beltline. The goal is to recruit local people like Tyrone Williams and Kristin Parks, who started in other professions before finding their calling in law enforcement.
Recruiting leader Sgt. Tim Patton spend 10 years as a teacher before joining the force.
“We’ve done this forever. We have a long track record of connecting with people from Madison, but I think this initiative is really about reaching people who may not have thought about this as a way to serve,” Patton said.
They are in the final two-month stretch of recruiting applicants for their 2016 class. The application deadline is Nov. 2.
Everyone they hire, including officers that are hired from outside of the department, are put through Madison PD's own police training course where the chief teaches a lot of it himself. The people they look for have a varied background and a background in law enforcement is actually seen as a negative. They want teachers, people who have stellar customer service skills, people who know how to deal with people, and have done so very successfully, without the weight of the law behind them. They especially love people who are from the area as they tend to already know the problems, have a drive and desire to improve it, and generally come with ideas on how to do so that aren't from a law enforcement background.
Of course, Madison is not normal and the police force is generally regarded as a top department in the country, and it's all thanks to former Chief David C Couper. I also feel more people need to read his writings and listen to his teachings about policing in America. He completely transformed Madison's PD from a struggling small city force into what it is today. Had Giuliani followed his methods instead of subscribing to Broken Windows and turning it into the racist form of policing we know today, the world would be a much better place
To be fair, what works here may not work for a place like NYC or the other very large metropolises in the US. I believe that once a city gets to a certain size it changes the dynamics of just about everything within it so that while their problems may be similar they're different enough that it may be best to almost think of them as a completely separate entity. I mean, NYC's police force alone has a larger population than the entire population of an average city/town in America (~35,000 vs ~20,000).
Full disclosure: I am finishing up my own application to the Madison PD and will be submitted it within the next couple weeks. I may be a little biased regarding this town
Madison doesn't sound like a small town... it's the state capital and Wikipedia puts the pop at 240,000. Am I missing something? (Though sure, it's small by comparison to MSP, but... MSP is actually pretty damn big)
Lanz, sorry, but you're wrong. Hiring locally can be an incredible way to keep a small to medium sized city's police force interested in making the place better for all.
The Madison Police Department is ramping up recruiting efforts to focus on hiring officers raised in the Madison area.
Department officials launched the new campaign Monday with a billboard along the Beltline. The goal is to recruit local people like Tyrone Williams and Kristin Parks, who started in other professions before finding their calling in law enforcement.
Recruiting leader Sgt. Tim Patton spend 10 years as a teacher before joining the force.
“We’ve done this forever. We have a long track record of connecting with people from Madison, but I think this initiative is really about reaching people who may not have thought about this as a way to serve,” Patton said.
They are in the final two-month stretch of recruiting applicants for their 2016 class. The application deadline is Nov. 2.
Everyone they hire, including officers that are hired from outside of the department, are put through Madison PD's own police training course where the chief teaches a lot of it himself. The people they look for have a varied background and a background in law enforcement is actually seen as a negative. They want teachers, people who have stellar customer service skills, people who know how to deal with people, and have done so very successfully, without the weight of the law behind them. They especially love people who are from the area as they tend to already know the problems, have a drive and desire to improve it, and generally come with ideas on how to do so that aren't from a law enforcement background.
Of course, Madison is not normal and the police force is generally regarded as a top department in the country, and it's all thanks to former Chief David C Couper. I also feel more people need to read his writings and listen to his teachings about policing in America. He completely transformed Madison's PD from a struggling small city force into what it is today. Had Giuliani followed his methods instead of subscribing to Broken Windows and turning it into the racist form of policing we know today, the world would be a much better place
To be fair, what works here may not work for a place like NYC or the other very large metropolises in the US. I believe that once a city gets to a certain size it changes the dynamics of just about everything within it so that while their problems may be similar they're different enough that it may be best to almost think of them as a completely separate entity. I mean, NYC's police force alone has a larger population than the entire population of an average city/town in America (~35,000 vs ~20,000).
Full disclosure: I am finishing up my own application to the Madison PD and will be submitted it within the next couple weeks. I may be a little biased regarding this town
You know I'm nearly a month late in seeing this post but uh... I have no idea whatsoever what it has to do with the two posts I've made in this thread, the first concerning racial bias in calling in "suspicious activity" and the second of which demonstrating the lethal repercussions of being paranoid about tresspassers.
I think you mixed up my post with some of Leitner's?
Do you know if Campaign Zero has a model police force, in the U.S. or elsewhere, that they feel is a good simulacrum for what other precincts should be aiming for?
You know I'm nearly a month late in seeing this post but uh... I have no idea whatsoever what it has to do with the two posts I've made in this thread, the first concerning racial bias in calling in "suspicious activity" and the second of which demonstrating the lethal repercussions of being paranoid about tresspassers.
I think you mixed up my post with some of Leitner's?
And I'm nearly two months late on this, but yeah, I think you're right. It probably was Leitner's post and not yours that got me to type out that post. Not sure why I put your name in there, maybe saw it as I was typing and had a brain fart or something, but either way I'm sorry about that.
Do you know if Campaign Zero has a model police force, in the U.S. or elsewhere, that they feel is a good simulacrum for what other precincts should be aiming for?
This is actually probably important, since it's really hard to use the "doesn't understand being a cop" dodge when you're pointing to another department and saying "them, be like them".
I know some people on here have been pretty positive about Madison's police.
You know I'm nearly a month late in seeing this post but uh... I have no idea whatsoever what it has to do with the two posts I've made in this thread, the first concerning racial bias in calling in "suspicious activity" and the second of which demonstrating the lethal repercussions of being paranoid about tresspassers.
I think you mixed up my post with some of Leitner's?
And I'm nearly two months late on this, but yeah, I think you're right. It probably was Leitner's post and not yours that got me to type out that post. Not sure why I put your name in there, maybe saw it as I was typing and had a brain fart or something, but either way I'm sorry about that.
Do you know if Campaign Zero has a model police force, in the U.S. or elsewhere, that they feel is a good simulacrum for what other precincts should be aiming for?
I don't believe there is, but at the same time, they're working more towards pointing out specific policy flaws. Look at the above infographic, where they highlight four common policies placed into police union contracts:
Limits interrogation: Many of these contracts have clauses limiting how and when police officers can be interrogated after an incident. Several require 48 hours to pass before initial interrogation, others limit the length of interrogation sessions.
Erases officer personnel files: Contracts routinely have clauses requiring that information on misconduct be removed from personnel records. This can either be a term out period - prior to their consent decree, Cleveland purged information every two years; or selective insertion of misconduct information - the cop at the center of the firestorm in Chicago had been accused of misconduct numerous times, but because of union policy, the majority were never entered into his record because the complaints were dismissed.
Disqualifies complaints: Several contracts disqualify complaints against police officers outright for things like being brought forward anonymously.
Limits civilian oversight: Contracts limit what authority non-police individuals have in overseeing police conduct. Oversight boards of individuals outside the department may have limited power to demand records, or may even be only able to issue non-binding advisory decisions.
(Yes, I really dislike the phrasing on that last one. Police are civilians and should be referred to as such.)
Other issues:
Mandate paid leave for officers who kill
Prevent anonymous complaints from being investigated
Restrict the amount of time an officer can be interrogated for misconduct
Protect the identities of violent officers from public scrutiny
Require cities to pay for misconduct settlements
Prevent civilian oversight structures from being able to interrogate or subpoena officers
Am I the only person here who thinks that trespassing should be an arrestable offense?
If it's not your property gtfo
It is an arrestable offense, but the person has to first be told they're trespassing or be in a place that a reasonable person would know they're not supposed to be
A reasonable person knows if a piece of property is theirs or not.
Except there's a thing known as public property? Wtf?
Yeah ....
You can't really trespass on public property unless you're in an area designated for staff or after hours in which case I'd advise you to not do those things
I work in a state owned hotel/office building combo, it is by definition public property, and I call police about once a week to issue a trespass warning or arrest if the warning was previously given. It is not always a given or easy to see you aren't supposed to be somewhere you're not supposed to be, but going by what you profess they should be locked immediately because they made a mistake and took a right instead of left.
See, I like to give people the benefit of doubt instead of immediately giving them a criminal record as mistakes do happen.
Hold on now, that's not been what I'm saying
This started with you saying trespassing should be an arrestable offense. I corrected you saying it is after a warning or if a reasonable person knows they are where they shouldn't be (ie due to signage or fencing). You called that bullshit which says to me you think warnings/signs/fencing is unnecessary and your examples lead me to believe you think trespassing should be treated the same as someone actively stealing/B&Eing hence my "get the fuck on the floor" arrest post, edit: and arrest means a criminal record. We provided many reasons why your bullshit is actually bullshit, and now we are here.
So, what are you saying?
Damn drafts!
You quoted the part I thought was gone!
Edit:
Now that I have a second
I really should have began my whole argument by defining what trespassing is (at least in my mind), and I apologize for not doing so earlier.
If you're getting your frisbee, you're not trespassing
If you're in someone's wooded lot long enough for them to notice, call the cops, and have them arrive to arrest you, you are trespassing.
The fact of the matter is that people know where they should be. If there's a question, the answer is that they probably shouldn't be there.
Between streets, sidewalks, easements, parks, WMAs, and any number of other public areas I can't think of off the top of my head, there shouldn't be anywhere you can't reasonably get to if need be.
If your argument is that people are calling the police on people who aren't trespassing, I'll agree that that is wrong. If the police arrest you for 'trespassing' on a street, I also agree that that is wrong.
If you've been hanging out on some vacant lot because you don't think anyone will care, you shouldn't be surprised to be arrested because it's not your property and you know it.
So as long as i manage to avoid detection, i am not trespassing, but if you notice my stumbling on a discarded beer bottle and falling to your yard, i should be arrested?
Between streets, sidewalks, easements, parks, WMAs, and any number of other public areas I can't think of off the top of my head, there shouldn't be anywhere you can't reasonably get to if need be.
This, is a very urban view on property rights and transportation.
But then i live in a city that is half forest itself.
Freedom to roam is one of the few things I consider borderline sacred. It's part of the cultural heritage, and anyone trying to get it limited/removed beyond its current form should be publicly denounced as the greedy fascist dickbag they are.
But I'm strongly biased in this, as the freedom to roam in Finland at least is what I'd consider a basic right. But what do the forest barbarians know about freedom...
Freedom to roam is one of the few things I consider borderline sacred. It's part of the cultural heritage, and anyone trying to get it limited/removed beyond its current form should be publicly denounced as the greedy fascist dickbag they are.
But I'm strongly biased in this, as the freedom to roam in Finland at least is what I'd consider a basic right. But what do the forest barbarians know about freedom...
Actually, a lot of rural states like mine have very strong field and stream access laws - basically, if the only way to reach public land is through your property, then I have the right to go through it. (I am obliged to do so in the fastest and least destructive manner possible, though.)
Freedom to roam is one of the few things I consider borderline sacred. It's part of the cultural heritage, and anyone trying to get it limited/removed beyond its current form should be publicly denounced as the greedy fascist dickbag they are.
But I'm strongly biased in this, as the freedom to roam in Finland at least is what I'd consider a basic right. But what do the forest barbarians know about freedom...
Actually, a lot of rural states like mine have very strong field and stream access laws - basically, if the only way to reach public land is through your property, then I have the right to go through it. (I am obliged to do so in the fastest and least destructive manner possible, though.)
California has some pretty strict laws about shoreline access, though I wouldn't be able to quote them reliably without googling them, which I'm not motivated to do right now.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Freedom to roam is one of the few things I consider borderline sacred. It's part of the cultural heritage, and anyone trying to get it limited/removed beyond its current form should be publicly denounced as the greedy fascist dickbag they are.
But I'm strongly biased in this, as the freedom to roam in Finland at least is what I'd consider a basic right. But what do the forest barbarians know about freedom...
Actually, a lot of rural states like mine have very strong field and stream access laws - basically, if the only way to reach public land is through your property, then I have the right to go through it. (I am obliged to do so in the fastest and least destructive manner possible, though.)
California has some pretty strict laws about shoreline access, though I wouldn't be able to quote them reliably without googling them, which I'm not motivated to do right now.
The issue there is while they have strict laws, they're poorly enforced, and the federal courst have found ways to severely undercut them as well. This is GST territory, though.
So, Campaign Zero got two wins to hang up last night. In Chicago, Cook County DA Anita Alvarez lost massively to Kim Foxx, who was running on a progressive reform platform. In Cleveland, Tim McGinty lost his bid for re-election as Cuyahoga County prosecutor.
When these outcomes are evaluated together, it reveals a disturbing picture of policing within the state. Most departments received a score lower than 60% - the equivalent of an F grade. In some cases, these evaluations confirmed what has previously been reported. For example, Bakersfield Police Department, which has been cited as one of the deadliest departments in the nation, received the 4th lowest score among the 100 California departments. Other departments received scores that were more unexpected. For example, Carlsbad Police Department received the highest score. Further exploration of the organizational culture, leadership and practices of this department might produce valuable insights into how to improve outcomes in other police departments. By contrast, Beverly Hills Police Department received the lowest score of all 100 departments, due to relatively high levels of police violence, severe racial inequities in law enforcement and a system that almost never holds officers accountable for misconduct.
These findings should prompt further investigations and interventions targeting low-performing police departments within the state, not only from local policymakers but also potentially from the California Attorney General, who has the power to initiate pattern and practice investigations into local police agencies.
When these outcomes are evaluated together, it reveals a disturbing picture of policing within the state. Most departments received a score lower than 60% - the equivalent of an F grade. In some cases, these evaluations confirmed what has previously been reported. For example, Bakersfield Police Department, which has been cited as one of the deadliest departments in the nation, received the 4th lowest score among the 100 California departments. Other departments received scores that were more unexpected. For example, Carlsbad Police Department received the highest score. Further exploration of the organizational culture, leadership and practices of this department might produce valuable insights into how to improve outcomes in other police departments. By contrast, Beverly Hills Police Department received the lowest score of all 100 departments, due to relatively high levels of police violence, severe racial inequities in law enforcement and a system that almost never holds officers accountable for misconduct.
These findings should prompt further investigations and interventions targeting low-performing police departments within the state, not only from local policymakers but also potentially from the California Attorney General, who has the power to initiate pattern and practice investigations into local police agencies.
The results are awful but unsurprising.
That said, I am heartened that they are able to collect and publish this data. I love that this report exists, despite its dismal findings.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Posts
Damn drafts!
You quoted the part I thought was gone!
Edit:
Now that I have a second
I really should have began my whole argument by defining what trespassing is (at least in my mind), and I apologize for not doing so earlier.
If you're getting your frisbee, you're not trespassing
If you're in someone's wooded lot long enough for them to notice, call the cops, and have them arrive to arrest you, you are trespassing.
The fact of the matter is that people know where they should be. If there's a question, the answer is that they probably shouldn't be there.
Between streets, sidewalks, easements, parks, WMAs, and any number of other public areas I can't think of off the top of my head, there shouldn't be anywhere you can't reasonably get to if need be.
If your argument is that people are calling the police on people who aren't trespassing, I'll agree that that is wrong. If the police arrest you for 'trespassing' on a street, I also agree that that is wrong.
If you've been hanging out on some vacant lot because you don't think anyone will care, you shouldn't be surprised to be arrested because it's not your property and you know it.
Good luck trying to discern the difference though. Sample pictures here: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/11/23/density_toronto_could_that_condos_courtyard_be_a_public_park.html
This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons which is why most police forces have rules against living in the area you police. The most obvious is the risk it presents to the officer. Living with your family in the same area you're arresting gang members for attempted murder, GBH, possession of offensive weapons etc, and searching far more of them then that on a frequent basis increases the chance of things going badly.
I would be very suprised if it had any effect in a wider sense anyway. In a city of six million people the fact that you live in the centre of the city isn't going to have any meaningful impact on your view of the far north east of it, and for smaller cities you run the risk of personal connections being much more likely wherein the person the officer arrest is his sons friends father or whatever.
You also have the reality that in the major cities the middleclass are invariably pushed out to the suburbs to raise families, so you are going to encourage recruits to only come from a very set profile (young single people) and limit the intake of people who have had careers and time to mature outside the job.
Really? Can you cite this? Because my understanding, at least from a US point of view, is that residency requirements used to be fairly common and that the relaxation of them is fairly recent. Going in entirely the opposite direction is novel to me.
I wonder if this is mostly a non-US thing.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
However, there's a difference between a requirement to live I the same major city/county/whatever your equivalent to this is which we occasionally have. And living in the actual immediate local area you're policing which is discouraged or prohibited.
I.e. You could have residency requirements to live in Cambridge, or London to serve in those areas, but you would for example be heavily discouraged from living in the London Borough of Lewisham (population 250,000), as a Lewisham officer.
And without requiring living in the latter level of proximity, I would be surprised if residency requirements have any meaningful impact on police behaviour (outside possibly slightly correcting for demographic differences). Could you clarify which the American police tend to require in residency criteria?
A bit late, but I think there are some issues here:
Your stance of "you should know if you're on property that isn't yours, and if you are it's trespassing" is different than most of my examples being "not trespassing." You may actually have a stance similar to mine if you believe that trespassing requires intent, though I still think it requires intent and for somebody to tell you (in person or via sign) that you should leave.
Anyway, for the things you mentioned:
Walking on the street is both dangerous and considered "suspicious" by police. Maybe the latter should change, but walking on the easement does no harm to the property and is much safer (especially for pets) so I think it's a good thing to allow.
In large rural yards, ponds can be quite far from the owners property, and if they don't have improvements on them or frequently go there, it's not likely you cause any harm by going there. Again, this is mostly a "no harm but provides good" argument, and applies much more to large rural yards than e.g. fishing in a suburban koi pond.
Unimproved woods: Because sometimes kids (and their parents) want to go somewhere that doesn't require driving; in the 'burb I lived in before this one, certain houses had fairly large swathes of undeveloped forest (with unknown owners), and kids being kids played around there. Saying that being there is trespassing or even cutting through a yard to get there is trespassing seems bizarre to me, since the only way you could care is if you called in that people were trespassing on property that wasn't yours either.
E: Anyway, tying it back to the BLM movement, the majority of these minor trespassing offenses are frequently called in on black residents of a neighborhood doing exactly the kind of thing everybody else does. More narrowly tailored trespassing rules would prevent this sort of abuse, which is the point. You should not be allowed to call in trespassing if you don't own the property or have a very good reason to believe the person should not be there, and if you own the property you should give notice before calling the police. That definition of trespassing still covers any harmful invasion of property, without giving police or homeowners a legal reason to harass black people.
Ah, gotcha.
In our case, the laws were generally enforced at the city level. For example, there's a law on the books that Boston police (and in fact all employees on the city payroll) must live in the city of Boston (645,000 people, 232 square km)... though it's weakly enforced.
None of our cities have separately-incorporated buroughs (except for New York City, who is an outlier, and maybe a few other cities I'm aware of). I'm not aware of any American police department policies that discourage police from working in the same neighborhoods or districts in which they live, but that might just be my own ignorance.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The conversation also reminds me of the times where we've had homeowners shoot at "trespassers" because the people who are on the property simply wound up getting a friend's address wrong when going to meet them.
EDIT: Here's the story; one of them was killed while the homeowner held the rest hostage at gunpoint until police arrived: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/warrant-23-year-old-man-fatally-shot-while-driving/nT8rm/
The instructor, a 20 year veteran of the Toronto Police Service, believed in it.
I found serious flaws and problems with the doctrine as many in this thread have already pointed out and I wrote a paper criticising it.
Some of the students in the class also had problems with the concept, explaining how they've personally felt targeted by police for harassment as a result of this kind of approach to policing.
The fact that all of the students that had these experiences were black or natives was not lost on me, or to be fair, the instructor.
http://www.channel3000.com/news/MPD-focuses-on-recruiting-local-officers/34893340
Everyone they hire, including officers that are hired from outside of the department, are put through Madison PD's own police training course where the chief teaches a lot of it himself. The people they look for have a varied background and a background in law enforcement is actually seen as a negative. They want teachers, people who have stellar customer service skills, people who know how to deal with people, and have done so very successfully, without the weight of the law behind them. They especially love people who are from the area as they tend to already know the problems, have a drive and desire to improve it, and generally come with ideas on how to do so that aren't from a law enforcement background.
Of course, Madison is not normal and the police force is generally regarded as a top department in the country, and it's all thanks to former Chief David C Couper. I also feel more people need to read his writings and listen to his teachings about policing in America. He completely transformed Madison's PD from a struggling small city force into what it is today. Had Giuliani followed his methods instead of subscribing to Broken Windows and turning it into the racist form of policing we know today, the world would be a much better place
To be fair, what works here may not work for a place like NYC or the other very large metropolises in the US. I believe that once a city gets to a certain size it changes the dynamics of just about everything within it so that while their problems may be similar they're different enough that it may be best to almost think of them as a completely separate entity. I mean, NYC's police force alone has a larger population than the entire population of an average city/town in America (~35,000 vs ~20,000).
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Yeah, that it's definitely not a town but what I'd call a small to medium sized city.
Did I call Madison a town in my post? If I did, it was a mistake and slip of the fingers.
@Veevee
You know I'm nearly a month late in seeing this post but uh... I have no idea whatsoever what it has to do with the two posts I've made in this thread, the first concerning racial bias in calling in "suspicious activity" and the second of which demonstrating the lethal repercussions of being paranoid about tresspassers.
I think you mixed up my post with some of Leitner's?
Do you know if Campaign Zero has a model police force, in the U.S. or elsewhere, that they feel is a good simulacrum for what other precincts should be aiming for?
@Lanz
And I'm nearly two months late on this, but yeah, I think you're right. It probably was Leitner's post and not yours that got me to type out that post. Not sure why I put your name in there, maybe saw it as I was typing and had a brain fart or something, but either way I'm sorry about that.
This is actually probably important, since it's really hard to use the "doesn't understand being a cop" dodge when you're pointing to another department and saying "them, be like them".
I know some people on here have been pretty positive about Madison's police.
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No worries
I don't believe there is, but at the same time, they're working more towards pointing out specific policy flaws. Look at the above infographic, where they highlight four common policies placed into police union contracts:
Limits interrogation: Many of these contracts have clauses limiting how and when police officers can be interrogated after an incident. Several require 48 hours to pass before initial interrogation, others limit the length of interrogation sessions.
Erases officer personnel files: Contracts routinely have clauses requiring that information on misconduct be removed from personnel records. This can either be a term out period - prior to their consent decree, Cleveland purged information every two years; or selective insertion of misconduct information - the cop at the center of the firestorm in Chicago had been accused of misconduct numerous times, but because of union policy, the majority were never entered into his record because the complaints were dismissed.
Disqualifies complaints: Several contracts disqualify complaints against police officers outright for things like being brought forward anonymously.
Limits civilian oversight: Contracts limit what authority non-police individuals have in overseeing police conduct. Oversight boards of individuals outside the department may have limited power to demand records, or may even be only able to issue non-binding advisory decisions.
(Yes, I really dislike the phrasing on that last one. Police are civilians and should be referred to as such.)
Other issues:
So as long as i manage to avoid detection, i am not trespassing, but if you notice my stumbling on a discarded beer bottle and falling to your yard, i should be arrested?
This, is a very urban view on property rights and transportation.
But then i live in a city that is half forest itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Finland
But I'm strongly biased in this, as the freedom to roam in Finland at least is what I'd consider a basic right. But what do the forest barbarians know about freedom...
Actually, a lot of rural states like mine have very strong field and stream access laws - basically, if the only way to reach public land is through your property, then I have the right to go through it. (I am obliged to do so in the fastest and least destructive manner possible, though.)
California has some pretty strict laws about shoreline access, though I wouldn't be able to quote them reliably without googling them, which I'm not motivated to do right now.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The issue there is while they have strict laws, they're poorly enforced, and the federal courst have found ways to severely undercut them as well. This is GST territory, though.
The results are awful but unsurprising.
That said, I am heartened that they are able to collect and publish this data. I love that this report exists, despite its dismal findings.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.