CDZ RCC Podcast: Lying for Justice

[Andylusion]

So this thread on the forums showed a video, where a group of black men (boys), where gambling on the street corner, which of course is illegal. When the police showed up, which they do when people call police, the men started to disperse. The police started going through the men there, they found one that they claim looked suspicious, and tackled him to the ground, and found a gun on him.

Blue Lies Matter: How The Rise Of Video Shattered Police Credibility

In the officer statement, the cop said he had his hands in his pocket, and looked suspicious. In the video, you could see he didn’t have his hands in his pocket, and he didn’t look suspicious.

This video is cited as evidence the police officer lied. Now for the rest of this chat, I want to make this to be understood as the context. I’m not trying to discuss police that simply make up that so-and-so was drunk, when clearly they were not. Nor talking about planting false evidence, or taking bribes.

Why? Because what is the point? We have systems in place to find these people, and punish them. As they are discovered, they are dealt with. There will always be bad apples in any group, because every group is made up of humans, and humans are sinful beings. Moreover, every state has their own police force, that they have to deal with. If your state has a corruption problem, then you need to deal with it, at the state level. As much as we would like to help, that’s not really a problem that can be fixed at the national level.

However, the problem we’re talking about now, is the legal technicalities that allow criminals to commit crime, and manage to get away with it, by finding some entirely minor flaw in the police conduct that allows them to go free.

Now several years ago now, I read a research paper on police lying. They also avoided outright corruption, and planting evidence, false accusations, and the like for the same reason, I outlined.

In their report they found the fundamental issue being that many police to this day, find that throwing out evidence to be an immoral law. The work so hard to capture these people, and then when they finally get the rapist, and get the clear undeniable evidence against him, when they get to court it is all thrown out because of some failure to dot the ‘i’ or some minor technicality.

Then the rapists is released back into the public, and rapes another woman, and the police have to deal with the weight that they had this guy, and he got away.
Today we have so many restrictions on police, that being able to arrest a criminal, without violating some obscure rule, is nearly impossible. So when police go into court, they routinely doctor their police reports, or their statements, to either avoid getting themselves into trouble, or to avoid allowing the criminal to go free, because clearly incriminating evidence is being thrown out.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/181241.pdf

Again, this aspect of policing is well known. The report I read was from the 1990s, published in 2000. A fact I find fascinating, since those on the left would have all police fired on the spot, if not thrown into prison for lying about anything. But isn’t that ironic, that the survey of police perjury was researched in the 1990s, when a certain left-wing president, committed dozens of cases of clear perjury, and was completely accepted by the left-wing?

Yet that isn’t the entire problem either. Police also are not perfect little robots that record every aspect of their day. Even with body cameras, it’s impossible to see everything the officer sees. Additionally, it’s impossible for people on the outside to understand the sense of danger, and the adrenaline rush, from being placed in any stressful situation.

The point here is that, police often ‘react’ in ways that in a normal calm situation, they would never act. Because their live of work simply is not a calm normal situation. I’m always amazed by how easy it is for people to say that police should never make a mistake, when they themselves have never been in any position of danger, or authority. Again, police have been targeted, and killed. Some left-winger at a university, newspaper, or burger king, doesn’t exactly have the credibility of experience in my opinion.

The result again is that the police officer doesn’t want to write down something that he likely regrets, but only happened in the heat of the moment, the result of which is that either he gets into trouble, or the criminal that is clearly guilty, is released back to harm the public again. So the incentive again, is to lie.

At this point, people start screaming that I support police lying. Again, the common result of trying to debate any topic with a left-winger is that they immediately jump to accusations, instead of looking at the facts.

I’m not saying I support police lying. I am explaining WHY they lie. There’s a reason for this. And the problem is, as with nearly everything in life, incentives matter. They really matter.

The reason incentives matter, is because if you refuse to deal with the incentives, the results will be the same. If you decide to fire every police officer that is caught lying, and replace them with new officer without changing the incentives, the result will be that the new cops fall into the exact same habits at the ones they replaced. Because the incentives are the same.

I‘ll give you an example, from my own life. So several years back I had a job at a production facility. When I was hired on, I was told how lazy and slow the previous employees where, and they were all replaced by me and the others they hired with me. So over the course of a years employment, many of the new people hired on, started off working hard, but over time got slower and less productive.

I decided to determine the cause of this. I noticed that people who worked hard, would run out of work, and because they ran out of work, they would be ‘punished’. Now, by punished, I don’t necessarily mean they were targeted with punitive action, but rather that by nature, the managers would complain people were not working, and then give them extra duties, or sent home. Either one is essentially a punishment, and it’s a punishment for being productive.

For example, Bob is a lazy person. He slowly works on this order, turning one screw an hour, and puts out about 5 units a day, but still gets just enough done that no one realizes how little he does.

Then there’s Tim. Tim is a go-getter, and he’s punching out product, and is not only completing his work, but he’s doing it days ahead of schedule. Tim pushes out 15 units, and an hour before quitting time, has nothing to do.

Now the manager walks out, and sees Bob working…. granted on the same unit he started at lunch, and Tim is doing nothing. What does the manager do? Who does the manager praise as always working, and who does he punish? Well he’s going to tell Tim that he needs to be working. He’s going to tell Tim to sweep the floor that doesn’t need swept, because he’s not allowed to be doing nothing, even if he’s the most productive person on the shop floor. He’s going to send Tim home, which means Tim doesn’t get a full pay check. And he may even tell Tim, he needs to be more like Bob.

And Tim learns. Tim grasps the incentives the policies create. The result is Tim becomes as slow and lazy as Bob.

Then the company ends up wondering why it takes 15 people to do the job of 5. The reason is simple. People adapt to the incentives they are given. The companies normal response was to fire a bunch of people, and hire new people. But the new people would end up just as unproductive as the ones they let go.

Now I have worked at another company where, if you ran out of work, you could play games, watch a movie, do whatever you wanted. And the result there, was that when work came in, we all jumped on it, and got it done. Because we knew we would be rewarded for completing the work, and not punished for it. Routinely we got out product days ahead of the scheduled ship date.
Incentives matter.

By the way, you people who intend to get into management, need to think about that when you read these cheezy text books that talk about having a point system, and creating all these methods of measuring productivity, as if you can force people to work hard, when the incentives are to be lazy. It doesn’t work.

Similarly, demanding the police all be truthful simply because that’s the right thing to do, and “they should”, doesn’t work. It’s nice to moralize, and maybe if we were still a Christian nation, with Christian moral value, then that would carry some weight.
Which reminds me, it’s interesting to talk to the left-wing which has always pushed a “moral relativism”, and deny that there is any such thing as absolute truth, and then turn right around and say police are lying… which implies…. there’s absolute truth. Sorry pagans… but it doesn’t work both ways. Either all truth is relative, and who are you to say the police version of truth is wrong, or there is absolute truth, and you need to be teaching that in schools.

But regardless, under the current system, with the current incentives, if you fired all the police, and replaced them, the new police would have the same exact incentives as the ones they replaced.

This leads to the call for police to be tried and punished, and sent to prison even, for lying on police reports.

This presents a large number of problems. Again, what if the police officer simply didn’t remember some detail of the event? What if in the heat of the moment he made a mistake? What police officer is going to even bother with this job?
Again, I point to Chicago. After the protests and police officers getting in trouble, the police have basically pulled back from those areas, and simply refused to do stops and patrols. Then anarchy reigns, and people die. Usually the very people in the areas who were protesting the police.

Am I wrong? I had another guy say “so it’s one extreme or the other, huh?”, and my response was, well you tell me. Look at the evidence, and tell me if I’m right or wrong.

Another individual screamed that if the police are not going to do their job, then they should be fired. Ok, great…. what does that solve? Police recruitment across the country is in dramatic decline.

Union: Baltimore City Police in 'Crisis' Due to Officer Shortage

Baltimore, is in trouble with more than 100 fewer police on patrol in 2017, compared to 2016, even though Baltimore is in a crime wave, with the second highest per capita homicide rate in the city’s history.

http://www.economist.com/news/unite...me-police-departments-struggle-recruit-enough

Despite a short-term upsurge in police academy enrollment after the shooting of police officers, now Dallas has such a shortage of recruits, that some classes were cancelled.

Similarly Los Angeles, came up more than 100 recruits short of balancing attrition. The police force is shrinking, even while crime is going up.

So while it’s easy to say, if the police refuse to patrol because they’ll get into trouble, then we’ll just fire them… that’s fine, but what does that solve, when we don’t have enough recruits right now to meet demand? Wouldn’t that lead us to the same lack of policing, and a crime wave we’re already in?

And I find it ironic that people complain about the police not doing their job, while at the same time complaining the moment they do in fact, do their job.

Back to the video. No one disputes that a group of men were all engaged in illegally gambling. No one even questions it. No one disputes that the individual the police caught, had a gun. No one even questions that.

But if the police had acted like those in Chicago or Baltimore, and simply ignored the criminals, and this guy with the gun had shot someone for taking his money, these same people who are calling for the police to be fired for lying, would be calling for the police to be fired for not stopping the murderers.

But you can’t have it both ways. Life doesn’t work that way. That is even assuming the charge is even true. I looked at the video, and there is no way to know where the hand of the man is, that’s not facing the camera. Nor can we tell if he was acting suspicious from that angle, and distance. I have no idea if he looked like he was hiding something or not.

And for that matter, why don’t we ever hear about the lies being told by others about the police? If the standard should be applied to police, why not the citizens that talk about police?

William Chapman was shot after leaving a Walmart in Portsmouth Va. Witnessed claimed William had his ‘hands up’. Later, after the trial was concluded, and the officer found guilty, we found out that yes William did have his hands up, up in a boxing stance to attack the officer. Not only that, but that Williams had a history of criminal activity, and that he had attacked a police officer before.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...hooting-unarmed-black-man-outside-va-walmart/

So where are the cries of lying by the people defending this criminal, and attacking the police?

This is exactly like the shooting of Keith Scott. People remember the video by Scott’s wife, telling them to not shoot him, that he doesn’t have a weapon, and then saying he’s holding book.

Everyone ran around screaming police shot an unarmed man with a book. Then we find pictures of the gun at the scene, and people started screaming the police lie! So I asked the obvious question…. ok…. alright. So where’s the book? You claimed there was a book. That he was armed only with a book. So where is it? You have a hundred photos, and a video of the entire incident, then you should show me pictures of him with the book. Where’s that picture of the book?

Of course there is no such picture, because it’s a lie. Where is the outrage at these liars? Can we send them to prison, like you want the police to go to prison? Fair is fair, is it not? Same rules should apply to both.

There was another case where an officer wrote in the report that a woman was intoxicated, and that no one was available to administer a breathalyzer test. The defense argued that the police have people available 24 hours a day to do the test, and that the police officer lied. The judge ordered the officer be investigated, and threw the case out. Then one month later, the police officer in his perjury hearing released video footage from his body camera, that included audio of him asking for a breathalyzer test, and clearly the women responded to the request saying it would be 3 hours before one could be done. So the officer was not lying, but those who claimed otherwise, were.

But all that aside, the fundamental problem is that until we reduce the regulations on officers, so that they can conduct their police duties without lying, then we are either going to have a system where officers will lie in order to enforce the law, or they won’t enforce the law. No officer is going to do their job, if doing their job means end up in court, and going to jail.

It’s easy to say, they should not lie, because they shouldn’t. Just like saying workers should always put in maximum effort, because that’s what they should do. But if they are punished for doing so, they are not going to do it. Just like if police are punished for policing, they are not going to police.

Until we fix that, police will continue to lie, or simply stop doing their job. Crime rates will rise, and police recruitment will fall. Things will get worse until we get a handle on this.

And that is the RCC perspective.