I wish people would stop saying “It’s July. Well done for wasting half a year.” Did you make someone smile in the past six months? Did you stroke a cat or throw a stick for a dog? Did you learn a new fact or teach someone a new joke? Did you laugh, cry, scream or sing in the past six months? Because if so, congratulations for not wasting your time at all.
Despite growing concerns about police misconduct and the excesses of the war on drugs, this important information has remained largely unavailable to the public.
The Innocence Project has helped free hundreds of wrongly convicted people from prison in the last decade, and they point to studies which estimate that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent, which suggests that roughly 46,000 to 100,000 people are currently serving time for crimes that they did not commit. Keep that in mind the next time you are tempted to believe that your innocence will protect you from prosecution.
How could this happen?
The lie is that police won’t manufacture evidence unless it is a murder case but planting and manufacturing evidence is a very common practice. The temptation is great when and if an officer thinks you are guilty of some crime, even if not this one. After all, if you are a “criminal” in his mind, he is doing society a favor by framing you. Try to have a friend videotape any arrest just in case, and if you suspect that anyone witnessed the planting of evidence, get their names and phone numbers so your attorney can talk to them.
Police Steal Video Equipment
The police often feel that citizens do not have a right to videotape them in action. But the right to do so has been recognized by most courts so far. That does not mean officers will allow it though. Police officers still routinely claim the right to take cameras from bystanders or to destroy videos. If you are arrested and friends are videotaping it, tell them to load the video to a social media site immediately to stop the cops from destroying the only copy. Do the same yourself, if you are the one with the camera.
Police Coerce Confessions
Geragos and Harris point out in their book that of the hundreds of people wrongly convicted and then free through the Innocence Project’s introduction of scientific evidence (usually DNA testing), the defendant had confessed in one third of the cases. We all like to think we would never do so, but after hours of grilling and a lack of sleep it is easy for people to say what is demanded and sign whatever is placed in front of them, sometimes thinking they can correct the confession later, or sometimes no longer caring as long as the torture of the moment ends…
Under the current law after your arrest the police are allowed to keep asking you questions even if you have already told them that you don’t want to say anything. This repeated questioning period can last for hours and hours. During this time you have to keep repeating that you have nothing to say!!!!!!
On serious cases the police may tell you that if you take a polygraph test you can clear your name if you pass. Remember that you are under no legal obligation to take the test. Remember that the results of the polygraph cannot be brought up in court. Remember that the guy giving the polygraph test works for the police. He is likely to tell you that you have ”failed” the test and then the cops come in and start the questioning by looking you in the eye and saying, “Well we know you are lying. The machine says so. Why don’t you tell us the real truth”. Most people by this time start sweating and talking. Don’t fall for this trick.
!!!!!!!!!There is no such thing as a truth machine!!!!!!!!!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The police may try to get you to talk by bringing a form in and say something like, “All right, we understand that you don’t want to talk to us but we have to get some basic information, where do you live?”. You do not have to comply with any of their request for information. This is a trick to get you to start talking to the police. You can choose not to say anything apart from your name and date of birth. Most people who don’t know these police tricks and tactics and start talking actually help the police convict them.
This may surprise you but under the law the police are allowed to lie to you when they are questioning you.
They may tell you things such as, we have your fingerprints and DNA all over the scene. They may tell you, we have video of you at the scene, what do you have to say about that? They may say that your buddy that you did the crime with has made a full confession and told us that you were the one who planned this crime and he just stood there, what do you have to say about that? Once again you have to be strong under these conditions to exercise your right to remain silent.
Police officers also engage in mock executions, putting plastic bags over heads, cigarette burnings and severe beatings. Chicago PD used electrical shock on a 13-year-old boy, Marcus Wiggins.
Good cop bad cop
Sometimes the police will play the old good cop bad cop routine. This is the classic tactic where one guy will be a total asshole and the other guy will be much nicer. When the asshole is not around the nice cop will “confess” to you that he does not approve of what the asshole guy does and how he does it. He will pretend to be your friend and try to get you to talk because now you will have a common “enemy”. You would be surprised how often this routine works and people start talking.
Undercover pigs
There are times when police will send you back to the holding cells after their first attempt at getting you to talk and put an undercover officer in the cell beside you. This undercover officer will try to get you to talk by saying things like, he too is being screwed by the cops etc. Sometimes the undercover officer will pretend to be asleep and just listen carefully to everything you mutter or say aloud to yourself or to other prisoners. These undercover cops are usually excellent actors and look the part of belonging in a holding cell.
Do not talk to the police
The police are experts at questioning. You give an inch and they will take a mile. A small detail that you got wrong will be used to make you look like a liar. In my view there is no advantage to talking to the police upon your arrest. Remember that if you talk about your innocence to the police some judge down the road at your trial may even say that the story you told at the police station was false and self serving. In my opinion, there is no upside to talking to the police once you have been arrested. It is always much better to wait until trial to tell your side of the story.
Remain silent: what you don’t say can’t hurt you.
You have the right to refuse searches: saying no to searches can’t be held against you.
Determine if you’re free to go: police need evidence to detain you.
You don’t have to let them in: police need a warrant to enter your home.
Report misconduct: be a good witness.
Don’t get tricked: remember, police are allowed to lie to you.
The police have a very long history and pattern of abuse. Do a Google search and you’ll see that this problem is nothing new.
“What few people understand, but police know all too well, is that your constitutional rights only apply if you understand and assert them. Unless they have strong evidence (i.e. probable cause) police need your permission to search your belongings or enter your home. The instant you grant them permission to invade your privacy, many of your legal protections go out the window and you’re left on the hook for anything illegal the police find, as well as any damage they cause in the process.”
What few understand is that cops can write shit on paper and it is real in the eyes of the law. I read on paper that they read me my rights. I read on paper that I gave permission to search. … well, I read a lot of things on paper that had its own reality. There were even things that I could have proven to be bogus but for a lawyer who worked against me. Advice – Do not hire lawyer from same town you are being tried in.
#Cops #CrookedCops #Police #Abuse #Justice
#StayWoke
REBLOG! This can save someones life!
Damn that’s important af
Black Tumblr Boost
here’s good video too
Black folks gotta know all this
My dad, a policeman for forty years, was one of the good guys. Still, he always told me: if I ever got into any kind of trouble, no matter what got said to me or what was done to me, it was absolutely essential to answer *absolutely every question* with a polite “I don’t want to answer any questions; I want to speak to a lawyer.”
There are three kinds of cops: those who will do the right thing, those who will do the wrong thing, and those who will follow the lead of whichever type of cop they happen to be working with. Problem is, they all look the same.
Also, every kind of cop lies at least in certain situations, usually to trick a suspect into confessing. We were taught in my crisis counseling training that many people who are actually guilty of crimes like domestic violence or sexual assault will be quite candid if they think they have a sympathetic ear, and cops count on that. In any interaction where you’re being questioned by police, remember that’s what they’re hoping for, and even good cops can convince themselves that that’s what happened.
People have a confirmation bias: we look for things that back up what we already believe is true and ignore or forget information that contradicts it. Cops are people, and they’re subject to all the same fallacies of judgement as the rest of us. In an environment where corruption is tolerated or encouraged (and power over other people tends to breed corruption), cops will convince themselves that what they or their colleagues do isn’t wrong, because they don’t believe that they’re the bad guys.
So I am fascinated by extreme/unique living conditions and the different ways humans manage to live. Often these are urban areas such as Pruitt Igoe or Kowloon. The newest place I’ve learned about is Norilsk, Russia, and it’s just amazing.
I know the Daily Mail is like, not a “good source” on things but it’s honestly got one of the few articles I’ve found about Norilsk that isn’t like, “Ugh welcome to the most polluted, awful place on Earth”. The article has a lot of really beautiful photos. It actually shows the citizens and talks about life there, so if you want to read that article, it’s right here:
If you want to see some footage, the documentary Frozen Planet (which is amazing, you should watch it regardless) has an episode about humans living in extremely cold conditions and they mention Norilsk. It’s Episode 6: “The Last Frontier”, the last episode in the series. Frozen Planet is available on Netflix, so check it out!!
let’s be honest though, millennial hate is totally a thing rich folks started because they’re pissed that we have really unpredictable consumer habits and it isn’t as easy to get us to buy into stuff, so they’re mad we aren’t just money giving/traditional economy supporting machines like they expected us to be
like look at how much millennial hate articles are things like “millennials aren’t eating cereal and it’s hurting the cereal industry” or “millennials aren’t buying houses and that’s bad” or “millennials #1 utmost priority isn’t trying to make as much money as possible” and rich folks are mad about it, so just posturing our unpredictability/nontraditional values as “laziness” gets everyone else on board the hate train in some weird attempt to collectively subdue us
“You are Doing Capitalism Wrong and it scares me” – bitter Boomers to Millennials who are not buying into their shit (or buying their shit)
Keep in mind that the subprime mortgage crisis was at a pretty pivotal time in Millenial’s lives, and taught them that financial institutions are not on your side, will lie to you, and specifically will lie to you about what you can afford.
Like, this isn’t coming from nowhere.
I mean boomers refuse to pay a living wage to anyone and then wonder why those people don’t buy anything? I am sorry but what exactly is the disconnect here?
Millennials value work that has meaning above work that pays well and they hate that as well. It means we can’t be shut up with busy work while they’re made to seem like they’re running a well oiled machine. They come from a generation of a boss being someone who says “do what I say because I told you to” and we come from a generation who values a boss that says “what can I do for you that will help you excel at your job?”
Millennials do not cope well with meaningless busy work so their boss looks better. They don’t cope with being talked down to or not being assisted by their boss when they have a problem. They do not deal well with their innovative ideas being shut down because “that’s not how we do it here.” and I don’t see how any of those things is a problem.
Millennials are also the first generation since the internet was a prominent thing to utilize it as a source of information in a way that is empowering for each other. A single millennial can buy a product and then inform anyone who wants to know about the quality of said product. It only takes a handful of millennials to say “this is a substandard product” to render all the millions of dollars spent on advertising that product completely useless.
Big business has been a blotch on millennials lives since before most of you could even assume a role in adulthood to effect it, so you trust one another more than you trust advertisements or sponsorship, etc.
On the flip side, though, you enthusiastically will push and promote things that you love.
Big business and their baby boomer CEOs and presidents HATE this. Because it means that they can no longer provide a substandard product while making the consumer feel there is nothing better out there.
In the past, if every dish soap was awful, you just had to continue using awful dish soap. Now, you can crowd source an alternative. You can post in a forum, your facebook, a mass text, etc and say “I hate every dish soap, what can I do?” and you will be directed to actual good brands or you will be taught how to brew your own.
You’re a great generation, I’m really proud of you guys.
Seriously, tho.
I’d love to buy a house, but I can’t afford a down payment and can’t be certain that I’ll have the same income levels for thirty years and I don’t actually know whether the banks will accept my highly-fluctuating, self-employed-and-seasonal-labor income as stable enough or high enough to be approved for a mortgage.
And also every new housing development I’ve seen in the past five years has been “Executive Housing, Starting At 390K” and the realtor websites are full of last decade’s foreclosed subdivision homes in the $275K region, and there’s legit no one, including the zoning board, that’s going to help me find or make a cute little house on a tenth of an acre in the region of $50-60K, let alone every other millennial who might like to settle down in a place that suits her desires and means.
Oh, and that same zoning means five people aren’t allowed to share that $300K, 5-bedroom McMansion, because fuck us, that’s why.
And what else? The refrigerator that recently conked out on me was manufactured in 1967. That thing lasted almost fifty years, and today if I walk into a big box store’s appliance department to buy a new refrigerator they will tell me I should really buy a warranty to cover the apparently-substantial risk that it will break within two to five years.
Oh, and there’s apparently a $400ish premium to buy one with a convenient configuration because if you want the refrigerator on top and accessible without bending down for anyone taller than your average first grader there aren’t any of those in the entry-level price range. Once again, fuck us.
Then there’s the labor market itself, where “entry level” positions want three-to-five years of experience, and everybody won’t shut up about the trades but even that requires a $5K+ outlay to go to school for it, and every fast-food restaurant out there has a permanent “Now Hiring” sign up because they drive employees away as fast as they can replace them.
And so many food-service jobs involve being forced to throw away loads of food as it expires but if you eat it or take it home it’s viewed as stealing, and retail jobs sometimes require you to smash perfectly good computers with a sledgehammer so nobody can use them, and fuck all of this, yes, I’m gonna make my own goddamn laundry detergent from a recipe I found on the internet, and I’m gonna buy as much of my vegetables as possible in seed form, and I’m gonna fucking read the consumer reviews on shit before I buy it and I’m going to source a refrigerator from Cragislist for approximately the price of the warranty on a new one, and if The Market wants me to buy a house, it can bloody well wait for me to have the money.
Because seriously, with its “Ask not what your economy can do for you, ask what you can do for your economy” mindset and historic, far-reaching fuckery, the business side of the equation has little room to complain about millennials being the selfish ones.
“Helmsman of the USS Enterprise, Hikaru Sulu, played by John Cho, is shown in Star Trek Beyond as the loving father of a daughter with a same sex partner. And in typical trailblazing Trek fashion — it’s just not a big deal.
Cho visited Sydney to promote the third movie in the franchise successfully rebooted by JJ Abrams in 2009, along with cast mates Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Karl Urban (Dr McCoy) and director Justin Lin. He said the decision by writer Simon Pegg and Lin to make Sulu gay was a nod to George Takei, who played the character in the original 1960s series, and was a sign of what he hoped were changing times.”
