Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Well this certainly is going to sneak up on me again as a really unpleasant CSI/Law and Order. How does this get fun though?
Plus it's hard to believe that you could be that desperate for $5000 as a NY cop, and a married one at that - not got to be a lot over a months wages is it?
Look, he's not doing it for the money, it's doing it because it's something he loves.
Realistically, there are some crazy people out there. Some of them even act normal enough to fool other people, and I can see why a psycho like this would be attracted to police work. Some are going to slip through the cracks at one point or another...I'm sure there are a few serial killers in blue somewhere right now.
I'm wondering if this is going to be a brain tumor or something, because I would think that if he was this crazy, but smart enough to be a cop for six years, he'd be smart enough not to use police resources to find victims. That seems like it would be a no brainer. All that shit has audit trails.
I've noticed a trend in the news for potential serial killers to be caught after one or zero victims, which suggests that law enforcement have got some sort of handle on catching them. There just seem to be less of them caught with horrific numbers of victims these days. A good trend, or one I am imagining?
Well this certainly is going to sneak up on me again as a really unpleasant CSI/Law and Order. How does this get fun though?
Plus it's hard to believe that you could be that desperate for $5000 as a NY cop, and a married one at that - not got to be a lot over a months wages is it?
Look, he's not doing it for the money, it's doing it because it's something he loves.
Realistically, there are some crazy people out there. Some of them even act normal enough to fool other people, and I can see why a psycho like this would be attracted to police work. Some are going to slip through the cracks at one point or another...I'm sure there are a few serial killers in blue somewhere right now.
I'm wondering if this is going to be a brain tumor or something, because I would think that if he was this crazy, but smart enough to be a cop for six years, he'd be smart enough not to use police resources to find victims. That seems like it would be a no brainer. All that shit has audit trails.
All it takes is one slip-up to get caught. Even a smart person can be lax for a moment, or make an erroneous judgment that ends up biting them in the ass.
The part that really gets me is how, after their terrible rights abuses during the Occupy protests, the NYPD basically said, "Hey, sometimes shit happens, but at heart we're decent folks," then it takes the FBI to catch this guy because no one at the NYPD raised a red flag when Officer Sweetmeats kept using their databases to get the full rundown on a hundred different women.
The part that really gets me is how, after their terrible rights abuses during the Occupy protests, the NYPD basically said, "Hey, sometimes shit happens, but at heart we're decent folks," then it takes the FBI to catch this guy because no one at the NYPD raised a red flag when Officer Sweetmeats kept using their databases to get the full rundown on a hundred different women.
I don't find that suspicious at all. I would be very surprised if someone was actually monitoring the audit trails / access information to pin something like that down. At least, before there was an issue and change in policy.
Cops need access to that information to do their job. The IT group is probably way too understaffed / busy to spend all day looking at audit trails and activity, and verifying that the particular officer actually needs to be looking at those records.
Based on my experience, I would guess that the only time that anyone, ever, looks at that audit information is when there is an issue with a celebrity's confidential information being leaked. You see the same thing with hospitals, and they actually have HIPAA laws on that data.
If one of those girls showed up missing, I'd say it would be unlikely that anyone would pull the audit trail on her record and then start looking at the officers who were pulling that record. In the event that actually happened, it would probably be more to reaching out to the other officers for information / leads instead of looking at the officers as suspects.
With any of those systems - police, medical, even intelligence, once you are given access / trust nobody really watches or restricts you. Look at Bradley Manning and the amount of information he was able to get. Look at any of the hacks on major companies where an employee's access was compromised.
Still, he's stupid to do it. He has to realize that IF he gets caught, he left fingerprints that will never disappear all over those girls records.
That's all well and good, but it means that what they did, is after the claims against them of humans rights abuses, made themselves look even worse, like they have pretty much no internal policing of the entire organization.
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Well, if you believe Than, they don't.
In reality, they do, but Internal Affiars is "Too Blue for the citizens and shouldn't be looking an officer's shoulder" to pharaphrase Shaft.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
The whole Blue Wall thing isn't surprising - you'll find similar behaviour in any exclusive club. The main difference (an important one, I'll admit) is the authority (both real and implied) they have. Of course, the whole 'Us vs Them' thing is both dumb and kind of makes sense, depending on where and who you're applying it to. Of course, it also propagates itself so..
As for the main topic, I'm just glad he was caught relatively quickly.
So, maybe this is just shameless Devil's Advocating, but came across this piece today suggesting that the case against this guy is perhaps a bit overblown.
Casts some doubt on whether he actually had a legitimate intent to commit the acts alleged, or whether this was more of a sick fantasy thing. Wasn't familiar with "vore" as a porn genre before, but apparently it comes in right above clowns. Yay internets.
Considering some of the other deviant-ass stuff that's out there, I guess I just took this as an opportunity to give a second thought to this whole situation. Obviously there's a line somewhere between deviant and violent fantasies and action, but do we arrest somebody before they take the final step towards actually realizing any such fantasies? Given that some never will, or never truly intend to? Or do we wait until we have an actual victim? Seems that's a bad idea, too.
That's all well and good, but it means that what they did, is after the claims against them of humans rights abuses, made themselves look even worse, like they have pretty much no internal policing of the entire organization.
This has nothing to do with OWS, and I think imputing this one sick individual's plans to the entire police force and calling it another example of why the NYPD is bad just like how they handled OWS (which I disagree with anyway) is ridiculous.
Don't they have psych screens for cops?
Surely 6 years of service is insufficient to turn someone into a rapist/cannibal/kidnapper
The standardized tests that they use to screen law enforcement are laughably easy to fool. Any decently intelligent person can give them whatever result they want.
If your fantasy play is not distinguishable from planning to do it in person, there's where the problem starts.
Agreed. Same way if it becomes difficult to differentiate porn from evidence of a crime (thinking specifically of rape porn), that's a problem as well. But I think it just makes the situation marginally less clear-cut than it might have originally seemed.
Considering some of the other deviant-ass stuff that's out there, I guess I just took this as an opportunity to give a second thought to this whole situation. Obviously there's a line somewhere between deviant and violent fantasies and action, but do we arrest somebody before they take the final step towards actually realizing any such fantasies? Given that some never will, or never truly intend to? Or do we wait until we have an actual victim? Seems that's a bad idea, too.
The line between reality and fantasy is very clearly delimited. As anyone who's put up with the "do video games turn our children into monsters?" argument before knows, consuming* or producing art on various subjects does not necessarily and in most cases does not at all imply any will toward making the subject of that art a reality. The catch is that this situation doesn't involve art, this involves apparently hunting through databases of real people, which is acting out. So, yes, this was a very real threat against real people. ... or so I get the impression.
* HA
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Did this person tell others that he was planning to kidnap and do BDSM on the stalking victim, negotiate a price to do BDSM on the victim, research how to kidnap them and abuse government granted access to get more stalking information?
This is ultimately going to be up to a jury, where it belongs, rather then behind a wall of silence.
The standard should be not is there doubt about his motives but if it is a reasonable doubt.
It just seems to me that when your defense is "I am just a sick, twisted but ultimately harmless perverted stalker" and putting that before a jury you have probably already crossed the line.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Did this person tell others that he was planning to kidnap and do BDSM on the stalking victim, negotiate a price to do BDSM on the victim, research how to kidnap them and abuse government granted access to get more stalking information?
This is ultimately going to be up to a jury, where it belongs, rather then behind a wall of silence.
The standard should be not is there doubt about his motives but if it is a reasonable doubt.
It just seems to me that when your defense is "I am just a sick, twisted but ultimately harmless perverted stalker" and putting that before a jury you have probably already crossed the line.
If the only laws you've broken pertain to misuse of government resources and stalking someone, then you should only be tried for those. Given what we've got on this case, the case for conspiracy seems rather thin.
If two people on a forum discuss how to best overthrow a government, including doing substantial research into how best to implement that, would you say they're planning on overthrowing a government? Or would you say that they're discussing something over the internet, and that their actions are not punishable.
There's a gigantic leap between talking about something and actually planning to do it. We don't have anything like enough information to determine that he was doing more than talking and fantasizing. Yet people seem more than happy to jump to the conclusion that he was planning on committing several very obvious felonies instead of waiting to see how the trial goes.
Lets be clear on what they're claiming this guy was conspiring to do: "The officer's name is Gilberto Valle III, and he was charged in connection with a plot to kidnap and cook as many as 100 women, including his girlfriend." That seem likely to you? On the other hand, if the claim that he's conspiring to kidnap more people than most serial killers kill is false, what other claims might the prosecution be making that are false? Particularly, which ones do we have no actual information on?
Of course it's unlikely that he would have kidnapped all of those women. But the case can be made, quite easily, that he was casting a wide net so as to have a lot of potential targets to choose from.
Planning to bomb X government building with Y resources that I have found and acquired? Conspiracy.
When you are role playing do not bring (unwilling) real life actors into your fantasies or you will be held accountable for it, I do not think this is a very difficult line.
Free speech has limits and extreme vore role playing about real people while stalking them I am comfortable with.
At the very least, again, these should be facts for a jury to decide.
We can never get inside someone's head, we need to make judgements based on the evidence we have, you do not know what he was really thinking is never a good defense.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Did this person tell others that he was planning to kidnap and do BDSM on the stalking victim, negotiate a price to do BDSM on the victim, research how to kidnap them and abuse government granted access to get more stalking information?
This is ultimately going to be up to a jury, where it belongs, rather then behind a wall of silence.
The standard should be not is there doubt about his motives but if it is a reasonable doubt.
It just seems to me that when your defense is "I am just a sick, twisted but ultimately harmless perverted stalker" and putting that before a jury you have probably already crossed the line.
If the only laws you've broken pertain to misuse of government resources and stalking someone, then you should only be tried for those. Given what we've got on this case, the case for conspiracy seems rather thin.
If two people on a forum discuss how to best overthrow a government, including doing substantial research into how best to implement that, would you say they're planning on overthrowing a government? Or would you say that they're discussing something over the internet, and that their actions are not punishable.
There's a gigantic leap between talking about something and actually planning to do it. We don't have anything like enough information to determine that he was doing more than talking and fantasizing. Yet people seem more than happy to jump to the conclusion that he was planning on committing several very obvious felonies instead of waiting to see how the trial goes.
Lets be clear on what they're claiming this guy was conspiring to do: "The officer's name is Gilberto Valle III, and he was charged in connection with a plot to kidnap and cook as many as 100 women, including his girlfriend." That seem likely to you? On the other hand, if the claim that he's conspiring to kidnap more people than most serial killers kill is false, what other claims might the prosecution be making that are false? Particularly, which ones do we have no actual information on?
It's actually a big deal to "misuse government resources" in the manner he did, absent anything else
To be clear, I'm not saying this guy was innocent. Obviously not of the minor charges, and perhaps not of the major charges. And yes, this is what juries are for.
I guess I was just surprised to see a halfway interesting argument that there might be more to it than it appears, and I think it's important to prepare for the idea that a jury may have to acquit on the major charges...not because "zomg cops always get away with everything," but rather because he may not actually be guilty.
Of course it's unlikely that he would have kidnapped all of those women. But the case can be made, quite easily, that he was casting a wide net so as to have a lot of potential targets to choose from.
Go ahead and make it then. Because I'm not seeing it. Particularly, I'm not seeing the bit where he has the means to a) capture them (recipes are one thing, the chemicals he needs for them are another) and b) cook/eat them (I'd like you to consider how big that oven would need to be for a bit. Particularly for some variety of slow cooking apparatus as mentioned in one of the various linked articles).
According to federal filings, Valle and Van Hise negotiated over the details and price of a cannibal abduction on Feb. 28. Cellphone records suggest that, just two days later, Valle was on the block of the intended victim's home. The prosecutors will argue that he was conducting surveillance for his crime (though it's also true that Valle knew this woman socially). But given this damning incursion from online talk into creepy behavior, did the FBI swoop in and arrest Valle for the kidnapping plot? No.
The feds' caution proved appropriate when Valle appeared to abandon that plot altogether. He did have something else cooking by the end of May, though, when the Bureau caught him accessing a law-enforcement database for personal details of a second victim. (It's not clear whether he discussed this woman with Van Hise or anyone else.) Given this illegal use of private information in furtherance of another cannibal plot, did the FBI swoop in and arrest Valle? No.
Once again, the government's prudence was rewarded. The second plot fizzled, too, and a few months later, Valle was on to a third. Ever the mercurial maniac, he's said to have discussed his various schemes with more than 20 people online. On July 9, Valle communicated with one of these co-conspirators—or a fellow role-player—about a plan to kill, cook, and eat another woman. (In an instant message, he described her as "tasty.") Two weeks after that, he traveled to Maryland and took the alleged victim out for lunch. As in, the two of them ate lunch together. Now, given that Valle made contact with one of his intended victims—that he went so far as to consume food in her presence—did the FBI swoop in and arrest the cannibal cop? No.
That's at least 3 months in which he switches between 3 separate people without harming any of them, or even doing more than being (really) creepy towards them. Here's an alternate explanation for this guy's behavior:
He likes to fantasize about doing decidedly unpleasant things to women, particularly women he knows (much like a teenager might fantasize about his classmates, if a hell of a lot creepier). He is, however, rational enough to know that these aren't things he should actually do. Thus, he sticks to fantasies and the occasional stalking.
No conspiracy, just some fairly creepy behavior which would still be sufficient to put him in jail for a few years (~5 for the database thing alone, not sure what laws cover stalking if there's no restraining order).
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Not at all comparable?
This guy looked up women and solicited help with his intent to kidnap and eat them.
You just threw the BDSM line in there like people are assuming he was conspiring to eat her because he was into Vore not because he did things that explicitly say he was.
The only similar metaphor is if your stalker hired people to help him find a girl that would be easily abduct-able and told them his intention was to keep her as a pet or something.
Planning to bomb X government building with Y resources that I have found and acquired? Conspiracy.
I have found no evidence he completed that step. If you have otherwise, please throw a link out.
When you are role playing do not bring (unwilling) real life actors into your fantasies or you will be held accountable for it, I do not think this is a very difficult line.
Should we then ban everyone who fantasizes about another person who quite clearly would not consent to the fantasy? Should we arrest people for having, but not acting on, rape fantasies?
We can never get inside someone's head, we need to make judgements based on the evidence we have, you do not know what he was really thinking is never a good defense.
And yet, there appear to be 3 different people on page 2 suggesting that he's clearly guilty of attempting to kidnap, murder and eat someone. That's what I object to, not putting it in front of a jury if there's serious evidence. Although, just to be clear, what we do have seems to indicate that at least some of the charges brought against him are simply not true.
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Did this person tell others that he was planning to kidnap and do BDSM on the stalking victim, negotiate a price to do BDSM on the victim, research how to kidnap them and abuse government granted access to get more stalking information?
This is ultimately going to be up to a jury, where it belongs, rather then behind a wall of silence.
The standard should be not is there doubt about his motives but if it is a reasonable doubt.
It just seems to me that when your defense is "I am just a sick, twisted but ultimately harmless perverted stalker" and putting that before a jury you have probably already crossed the line.
If the only laws you've broken pertain to misuse of government resources and stalking someone, then you should only be tried for those. Given what we've got on this case, the case for conspiracy seems rather thin.
If two people on a forum discuss how to best overthrow a government, including doing substantial research into how best to implement that, would you say they're planning on overthrowing a government? Or would you say that they're discussing something over the internet, and that their actions are not punishable.
There's a gigantic leap between talking about something and actually planning to do it. We don't have anything like enough information to determine that he was doing more than talking and fantasizing. Yet people seem more than happy to jump to the conclusion that he was planning on committing several very obvious felonies instead of waiting to see how the trial goes.
Lets be clear on what they're claiming this guy was conspiring to do: "The officer's name is Gilberto Valle III, and he was charged in connection with a plot to kidnap and cook as many as 100 women, including his girlfriend." That seem likely to you? On the other hand, if the claim that he's conspiring to kidnap more people than most serial killers kill is false, what other claims might the prosecution be making that are false? Particularly, which ones do we have no actual information on?
It's actually a big deal to "misuse government resources" in the manner he did, absent anything else
I distinctly agree, which is why I think he absolutely should be charged for those. Particularly since there doesn't seem to be much debate that he did that.
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Not at all comparable?
This guy looked up women and solicited help with his intent to kidnap and eat them.
You just threw the BDSM line in there like people are assuming he was conspiring to eat her because he was into Vore not because he did things that explicitly say he was.
The only similar metaphor is if your stalker hired people to help him find a girl that would be easily abduct-able and told them his intention was to keep her as a pet or something.
Again, it may be arguable that in the context of a community that's into deviant role-playing it may be difficult to distinguish legitimate solicitations and intent and mere fantasy. It may even be the case that this is why the authorities took so long to pick him up...because he hadn't yet crossed the line to overt action showing true intent to follow through on his fantasies.
It's actually a big deal to "misuse government resources" in the manner he did, absent anything else
I obviously agree with this. And I think the context should probably be considered at sentencing, if he's found/pleads guilty.
EDIT: And checking back to the article on the OP, the Slate article is just going into more detail as to the argument his defense has been making all along. I don't know, when it's laid out I guess I just...buy it? Well, that's too strong, but I think it might constitute some very reasonable doubt.
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Not at all comparable?
This guy looked up women and solicited help with his intent to kidnap and eat them.
You just threw the BDSM line in there like people are assuming he was conspiring to eat her because he was into Vore not because he did things that explicitly say he was.
The only similar metaphor is if your stalker hired people to help him find a girl that would be easily abduct-able and told them his intention was to keep her as a pet or something.
Again, it may be arguable that in the context of a community that's into deviant role-playing it may be difficult to distinguish legitimate solicitations and intent and mere fantasy. It may even be the case that this is why the authorities took so long to pick him up...because he hadn't yet crossed the line to overt action showing true intent to follow through on his fantasies.
Granted but I feel like when you get to this point you've crossed out of the fantasy department.
Lets strip the sex out of this.
A man explicitly seeks out someone and offers to pay them to kill a third party. Without truly knowing his motives has he committed a crime?
Yeah I'd say once you start picking a target its ok to say yes this person was planing to commit a crime.
Would a stalker with a bdsm fetish be planning to commit a crime (other than any laws they violated while stalking)?
Not at all comparable?
This guy looked up women and solicited help with his intent to kidnap and eat them.
You just threw the BDSM line in there like people are assuming he was conspiring to eat her because he was into Vore not because he did things that explicitly say he was.
The only similar metaphor is if your stalker hired people to help him find a girl that would be easily abduct-able and told them his intention was to keep her as a pet or something.
Again, it may be arguable that in the context of a community that's into deviant role-playing it may be difficult to distinguish legitimate solicitations and intent and mere fantasy. It may even be the case that this is why the authorities took so long to pick him up...because he hadn't yet crossed the line to overt action showing true intent to follow through on his fantasies.
Granted but I feel like when you get to this point you've crossed out of the fantasy department.
Lets strip the sex out of this.
A man explicitly seeks out someone and offers to pay them to kill a third party. Without truly knowing his motives has he committed a crime?
If he has previously shown a pattern of not following through, then I'd say probably not. No actual agreement has been made, nor has money changed hands. If he does not have the money to pay, then I'd say probably not. There's an exception here if he sets up the deal specifically so he pays after the death.
If me and a coworker talk about how much we'd really like to run over our asshole boss when he walks into the parking lot late at night, and usually alone because he stays late, have we conspired to murder him? What if we have previously talked about how easy it would be to hide a body? Does that change if 3 months go by and he's somehow not dead?
Granted but I feel like when you get to this point you've crossed out of the fantasy department.
Lets strip the sex out of this.
A man explicitly seeks out someone and offers to pay them to kill a third party. Without truly knowing his motives has he committed a crime?
Showing his motive beyond reasonable doubt is what makes this a crime. Absent a demonstrated attempt to actually go through with the crime, I don't believe this is necessarily criminal. IANAL, of course.
A little googling and reading seems to suggest that actus reus is a term the jury will become quite familiar with. I'm not sure if the "stalking" or the misuse of databases to collect information constitutes the "substantial step" to actually commit the act. I think that's what a prosecutor is going to have to show a jury beyond reasonable doubt, though.
Syrdon, one does not have to roast an entire human being whole in order to make use of slow-roasting techniques. I'll leave it at that.
Go read the Slate article. Either in it, or in one of the articles it links to (they're all short), someone is specifically quoted talking about their oven. Find it, read it, decide if it's reasonable, then comment.
The Slate article mentions "musing over the size of his oven" and then "his favorite cuts of meat" directly after that. It does seem a bit less cut and dried than when the story first broke, but the trial's just getting in gear.
This sounds like such bullshit. Oh, he was talking about some weird shit with internet people? I wonder what people would say about me from my post history...
The Slate article mentions "musing over the size of his oven" and then "his favorite cuts of meat" directly after that. It does seem a bit less cut and dried than when the story first broke, but the trial's just getting in gear.
“I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus,” he wrote to a co-conspirator in one electronic communication recovered by law enforcement authorities. “Cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible.”
When the co-conspirator asked how big the officer’s oven was, Officer Valle replied, “Big enough to fit one of these girls if I folded their legs.”
As it turns out, I was wrong. That's not from the slate article. It's not even linked in the slate article. It's from the new york times, and linked in the first line of this thread.
A few other choice bits I forgot to quote from the slate article:
The forensic psychiatrist ... Park Dietz ... who interviewed Valle for the defense, is expected to testify on his behalf, arguing that Valle showed no signs of being inclined to act out his dark role-plays, despite the ferocity of his desires.
I removed a bunch of talk about how the same guy talked to Dahmer. It's certainly interesting, but not really the point.
Also, how do you feel about me and my coworker discussing my boss @DarkPrimus? Did we conspire?
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I don't know about psych screens, but they definitely had IQ screens in my home town.
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=95836
To Serve and Protect...MAN
Look, he's not doing it for the money, it's doing it because it's something he loves.
Realistically, there are some crazy people out there. Some of them even act normal enough to fool other people, and I can see why a psycho like this would be attracted to police work. Some are going to slip through the cracks at one point or another...I'm sure there are a few serial killers in blue somewhere right now.
I'm wondering if this is going to be a brain tumor or something, because I would think that if he was this crazy, but smart enough to be a cop for six years, he'd be smart enough not to use police resources to find victims. That seems like it would be a no brainer. All that shit has audit trails.
All it takes is one slip-up to get caught. Even a smart person can be lax for a moment, or make an erroneous judgment that ends up biting them in the ass.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I don't find that suspicious at all. I would be very surprised if someone was actually monitoring the audit trails / access information to pin something like that down. At least, before there was an issue and change in policy.
Cops need access to that information to do their job. The IT group is probably way too understaffed / busy to spend all day looking at audit trails and activity, and verifying that the particular officer actually needs to be looking at those records.
Based on my experience, I would guess that the only time that anyone, ever, looks at that audit information is when there is an issue with a celebrity's confidential information being leaked. You see the same thing with hospitals, and they actually have HIPAA laws on that data.
If one of those girls showed up missing, I'd say it would be unlikely that anyone would pull the audit trail on her record and then start looking at the officers who were pulling that record. In the event that actually happened, it would probably be more to reaching out to the other officers for information / leads instead of looking at the officers as suspects.
With any of those systems - police, medical, even intelligence, once you are given access / trust nobody really watches or restricts you. Look at Bradley Manning and the amount of information he was able to get. Look at any of the hacks on major companies where an employee's access was compromised.
Still, he's stupid to do it. He has to realize that IF he gets caught, he left fingerprints that will never disappear all over those girls records.
In reality, they do, but Internal Affiars is "Too Blue for the citizens and shouldn't be looking an officer's shoulder" to pharaphrase Shaft.
As for the main topic, I'm just glad he was caught relatively quickly.
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Casts some doubt on whether he actually had a legitimate intent to commit the acts alleged, or whether this was more of a sick fantasy thing. Wasn't familiar with "vore" as a porn genre before, but apparently it comes in right above clowns. Yay internets.
Considering some of the other deviant-ass stuff that's out there, I guess I just took this as an opportunity to give a second thought to this whole situation. Obviously there's a line somewhere between deviant and violent fantasies and action, but do we arrest somebody before they take the final step towards actually realizing any such fantasies? Given that some never will, or never truly intend to? Or do we wait until we have an actual victim? Seems that's a bad idea, too.
I wasn't either when I made my gamertag (Veevee Von Vore), but it's been 6 years and I'm too lazy to change it
This has nothing to do with OWS, and I think imputing this one sick individual's plans to the entire police force and calling it another example of why the NYPD is bad just like how they handled OWS (which I disagree with anyway) is ridiculous.
The standardized tests that they use to screen law enforcement are laughably easy to fool. Any decently intelligent person can give them whatever result they want.
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Agreed. Same way if it becomes difficult to differentiate porn from evidence of a crime (thinking specifically of rape porn), that's a problem as well. But I think it just makes the situation marginally less clear-cut than it might have originally seemed.
The line between reality and fantasy is very clearly delimited. As anyone who's put up with the "do video games turn our children into monsters?" argument before knows, consuming* or producing art on various subjects does not necessarily and in most cases does not at all imply any will toward making the subject of that art a reality. The catch is that this situation doesn't involve art, this involves apparently hunting through databases of real people, which is acting out. So, yes, this was a very real threat against real people. ... or so I get the impression.
* HA
Did this person tell others that he was planning to kidnap and do BDSM on the stalking victim, negotiate a price to do BDSM on the victim, research how to kidnap them and abuse government granted access to get more stalking information?
This is ultimately going to be up to a jury, where it belongs, rather then behind a wall of silence.
The standard should be not is there doubt about his motives but if it is a reasonable doubt.
It just seems to me that when your defense is "I am just a sick, twisted but ultimately harmless perverted stalker" and putting that before a jury you have probably already crossed the line.
If two people on a forum discuss how to best overthrow a government, including doing substantial research into how best to implement that, would you say they're planning on overthrowing a government? Or would you say that they're discussing something over the internet, and that their actions are not punishable.
There's a gigantic leap between talking about something and actually planning to do it. We don't have anything like enough information to determine that he was doing more than talking and fantasizing. Yet people seem more than happy to jump to the conclusion that he was planning on committing several very obvious felonies instead of waiting to see how the trial goes.
Lets be clear on what they're claiming this guy was conspiring to do: "The officer's name is Gilberto Valle III, and he was charged in connection with a plot to kidnap and cook as many as 100 women, including his girlfriend." That seem likely to you? On the other hand, if the claim that he's conspiring to kidnap more people than most serial killers kill is false, what other claims might the prosecution be making that are false? Particularly, which ones do we have no actual information on?
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Planning to bomb X government building with Y resources that I have found and acquired? Conspiracy.
When you are role playing do not bring (unwilling) real life actors into your fantasies or you will be held accountable for it, I do not think this is a very difficult line.
Free speech has limits and extreme vore role playing about real people while stalking them I am comfortable with.
At the very least, again, these should be facts for a jury to decide.
We can never get inside someone's head, we need to make judgements based on the evidence we have, you do not know what he was really thinking is never a good defense.
It's actually a big deal to "misuse government resources" in the manner he did, absent anything else
I guess I was just surprised to see a halfway interesting argument that there might be more to it than it appears, and I think it's important to prepare for the idea that a jury may have to acquit on the major charges...not because "zomg cops always get away with everything," but rather because he may not actually be guilty.
Not to mention, there's this: That's at least 3 months in which he switches between 3 separate people without harming any of them, or even doing more than being (really) creepy towards them. Here's an alternate explanation for this guy's behavior:
He likes to fantasize about doing decidedly unpleasant things to women, particularly women he knows (much like a teenager might fantasize about his classmates, if a hell of a lot creepier). He is, however, rational enough to know that these aren't things he should actually do. Thus, he sticks to fantasies and the occasional stalking.
No conspiracy, just some fairly creepy behavior which would still be sufficient to put him in jail for a few years (~5 for the database thing alone, not sure what laws cover stalking if there's no restraining order).
edit: bold tags are hard
Not at all comparable?
This guy looked up women and solicited help with his intent to kidnap and eat them.
You just threw the BDSM line in there like people are assuming he was conspiring to eat her because he was into Vore not because he did things that explicitly say he was.
The only similar metaphor is if your stalker hired people to help him find a girl that would be easily abduct-able and told them his intention was to keep her as a pet or something.
I distinctly agree, which is why I think he absolutely should be charged for those. Particularly since there doesn't seem to be much debate that he did that.
Again, it may be arguable that in the context of a community that's into deviant role-playing it may be difficult to distinguish legitimate solicitations and intent and mere fantasy. It may even be the case that this is why the authorities took so long to pick him up...because he hadn't yet crossed the line to overt action showing true intent to follow through on his fantasies.
I obviously agree with this. And I think the context should probably be considered at sentencing, if he's found/pleads guilty.
EDIT: And checking back to the article on the OP, the Slate article is just going into more detail as to the argument his defense has been making all along. I don't know, when it's laid out I guess I just...buy it? Well, that's too strong, but I think it might constitute some very reasonable doubt.
Granted but I feel like when you get to this point you've crossed out of the fantasy department.
Lets strip the sex out of this.
A man explicitly seeks out someone and offers to pay them to kill a third party. Without truly knowing his motives has he committed a crime?
If me and a coworker talk about how much we'd really like to run over our asshole boss when he walks into the parking lot late at night, and usually alone because he stays late, have we conspired to murder him? What if we have previously talked about how easy it would be to hide a body? Does that change if 3 months go by and he's somehow not dead?
Showing his motive beyond reasonable doubt is what makes this a crime. Absent a demonstrated attempt to actually go through with the crime, I don't believe this is necessarily criminal. IANAL, of course.
A little googling and reading seems to suggest that actus reus is a term the jury will become quite familiar with. I'm not sure if the "stalking" or the misuse of databases to collect information constitutes the "substantial step" to actually commit the act. I think that's what a prosecutor is going to have to show a jury beyond reasonable doubt, though.
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This sounds like such bullshit. Oh, he was talking about some weird shit with internet people? I wonder what people would say about me from my post history...
A few other choice bits I forgot to quote from the slate article: I removed a bunch of talk about how the same guy talked to Dahmer. It's certainly interesting, but not really the point.
Also, how do you feel about me and my coworker discussing my boss @DarkPrimus? Did we conspire?