Stacking the deck. by Fremdfirma

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Stacking the deck.

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 28, 2010 08:17
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Tuesday, December 28, 2010 5:30 AM

Given that we're all, yanno, potential "suspects" - but also, potential journalists, and fuck what the law says about it, finally technology has broken the lockdown on information previously held by the state-worshipping cronies of the press and given each of us, all of us, the perfect weapons with which to expose the seedy underbelly of the politely frosted shit sandwich which the powers that be would foist upon us in lieu of the truth...

Imma once again point out that playing their game with their marked cards at their table is asinine, defeatist, foolish, and for once I've gotten at least a few Anarchists and fellow rabble rousers on board with the notion.
http://c4ss.org/content/5564

Quote:
“If you put all your hope for social change in legal reform … then … you will find yourself outmaneuvered at every turn by those who have the deepest pockets and the best media access and the tightest connections. There is no hope for turning this system against them; because, after all, the system was made for them and the system was made by them. Reformist political campaigns inevitably turn out to suck a lot of time and money into the politics—with just about none of the reform coming out on the other end.”
...
The weakest link in any legal regime, no matter how repressive on paper, is its enforcement.

They mention a recent "jury revolt" in Montana, and lets expound on that.

Jury Pool stages "mutiny"
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_d6b
1aaca-edfc-527f-ad11-f1691fdc6e3b.html

Quote:
They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana. Never mind that the defendant in question also faced a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

The tiny amount of marijuana police found while searching Touray Cornell’s home on April 23 became a huge issue for some members of the jury panel.

No, they said, one after the other. No way would they convict somebody for having a 16th of an ounce.

In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.

District Judge Dusty Deschamps took a quick poll as to who might agree. Of the 27 potential jurors before him, maybe five raised their hands. A couple of others had already been excused because of their philosophical objections.

“I thought, ‘Geez, I don’t know if we can seat a jury,’ ” said Deschamps, who called a recess.

And he didn’t.

I was kinda waiting for this, given that these days a jury is expected to rubber stamp a guilty verdict, and refusal to do so often comes with all kinds of nasty threats from the bench, not to mention every grudge-holding badge knows who you are, but dare tell the judge you will not convict, and they'll send you packing in a hurry, be damned to the ludicrous idea of a fair trial, right ?
So what then, if they have to send EVERYBODY home ?

You see, when it comes right down to it, the ACTUAL enforcers of the law, that's you and me, any of us, all of us - really how often are the badges all johnny on the spot at the exact moment of a crime, just about never, someone calls them, and does so either because they believe their presence is needed, or as an act of aggression against others, and all too often the latter in hopes of using the state as a weapon against folks whom they do not like, a practice which'll fall off soon enough given how our surveillence society and related backlash is gonna land on snitchers and rats once they are exposed for what they are.

So - if the law is wrong, or being wrongly applied, why the fuck should YOU enforce it ?
Turn a blind eye, refuse to point the finger, and when confronted by the boys in blue, give em the stone wall of silence - if dragged into a jury pool, refuse to be their rubber stamp, don't play ball, don't comply.
You don't take their orders, they cannot use you to inflict tyranny on others, it's real simple.

Consider well my primary rule when it comes to a Law - "Am I willing to kill someone, over this?"
Cause if you ain't, then you got no business asking anyone else to, do you now ?

That goes for grand juries too, as this epic ham sandwich incident shows all too well.
The Worst Kind of Ham Sandwich
http://www.slate.com/id/2278244/pagenum/all/#p2

Quote:
Reynolds appealed the 10th Circuit rulings on both the subpoena and the seal to the Supreme Court, but it declined to take the case. That means Treadway's deployment of a grand jury investigation to silence Reynolds will stand. The demands of the subpoena have broken the Pain Relief Network. Reynolds is shutting it down because she's out of money. Federal law allows criminal defendants who are acquitted to be reimbursed for their legal expenses. But Reynolds has been neither indicted nor cleared. There's no deadline for ending the grand jury investigation. Can this possibly be how the system is supposed to work?

That comes rather personal to me, since what confines me to a wheelchair outside of work hours isn't necessarily the damage and patchwork, but rather the crippling pain that comes with it, alleviated by nothing more than OTC medication occasionally boosted with a shot of rum - likely a death warrant for liver and/or kidneys but I am on borrowed time anyway... and because these days doctors, especially ones who service the poor, are at risk of malicious persecution for actually doing anything about someones pain, all part of the ridiculous "war on (some) drugs", which yet then turns a blind eye to en-masse doping of children ?

I mean, what kind of a message does it send when we tell a kid "just say no" and then when they "just say no" to *US* and our fucked up society, we force ritalin and haloperidol on them, eh ?
Fuckin preposterous, and long past time we simply quit playin ball with the so-called "authorities" and realized that their authority EXTENDS FROM US, and if WE DO NOT GIVE IT TO THEM, if we DO NOT TAKE THEIR ORDERS...
Then they are damn near powerless to inflict their whims upon us!

And as for their boys in blue, their mafia enforcers, I give unto you the statistical data showing they're actually *more* of a threat to the average citizen than we are to each other, once again giving lie to the notion that we need be controlled "for our own good" - if anything, it is our so-called protectors who need a goddamn leash.

Annual 2009 NPMSRP Police Misconduct Statistical Report
http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?page_id=1588
Along with the Balko Map.
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

And for updated info, these.
http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/
http://www.copblock.org/
http://www.unknownnews.org/cops.html

Of course, since no other method of accountability has proven effective, we fall to the combination punch of exposure, both via forcing coverage of these massive floods of so-called "isolated incidents" at a tremendously greater rate than from us average joes... but also via the budget, by cutting their funding in response to abuse and/or threats, which has worked quite well, and in extreme cases, by cutting their DEPARTMENT, entire.

For general neighborhood protection and crime *prevention* (as opposed to revenue-based "law enforcement") provided one does their homework and vets the intended personnel, contract security is a much more cost effective solution and far more accountable for their behavior.

In circumstances where the wall of attitude versus non-cops can be blurred or breached, in fact mutual cooperation is an excellent alternative, since the contract people can take a great deal of the minor issues and handle them, freeing up law enforcement resources for where and when they are more critically needed.
(This has actually started to happen locally, more on that in a bit)

So yeah, it's a rotten game and a rigged system, but point of fact here, is that WE can mark the cards too, and if we're forced to play, the only moral and logical thing to do is cheat back - expose them, de-fund them, and become as non-cooperative as humanly possible until THEY comply with OUR will, as it should be.

-Frem
*(Note: This was somewhat inspired by Wendy scoring a couple issues of Transmetropolitan in an effort to cheer me up, cause Spider does amuse the everliving hell outta me, that I will give you)

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010 5:31 AM

FREMDFIRMA

All that said, I do have to give a couple shoutouts to the local department, which has not only cleaned up their act after being repeatedly smacked with the rolled up newspaper of budget cuts, but has stepped up their game and as a result seen actual cooperation from the community for the first time in decades...

Yesterday some young teen had his bicycle jacked, but via enraged locals and quick police action it was recovered within minutes and handed back to him - hopefully the goons who tried to make off with it will learn a vital lesson there, and that's sure hell a better response than taking a report over the phone and brushing the poor kid off, neither society nor the boys in blue failed him, which was IMHO, pretty damn cool.

They also managed to PROPERLY use a Taser for once, in an incident of apparent attempted-suicide-by-cop in which some nutter tried to provoke police into shooting him by taking his sister hostage with a box cutter, they instead surrounded him, and used a Taser to put him out of action long enough to recover the hostage and secure him in custody - WITHOUT any of the usual repeated zaps for entertainment/revenge, the three local departments set up the cordon, but deferred the Taser shot to a State Police officer as having the best angle, better training, and being a much better shot, since the suspect did have a hostage.
Suspect was taken to an area hospital for evaluation, as he seemed not all there upstairs.

That's an example of the proper use of the damn thing for once, where it can save lives, and proper procedure and coordination, rather than a hail of lead endangering both suspect and hostage, not to mention the suspect seems to need help of a kind not offered by the justice and corrections system, although there is the matter of him being obviously dangerous, but I suspect that's better handled by civil committment if necessary.

And the third shoutout comes from today around 6am, as they managed to successfully investigate the robbing of a party store, and because of that recent cooperation from the neighborhood, actually tracked and located the suspects, who were discretely followed by locals who were reporting their position to police dispatch - this resulted in positive identification of their location, and rather than calling in the tac-team and trying to storm the place in gung-ho fashion, the police simply flipped on their PA system and alerted the suspects they were surrounded and should surrender.
Two of the suspects surrendered immediately, one fled to the roof and was subsequently arrested, and a fourth person in the building was briefly detained but released without charges.
(probably some poor schmuck who owned the place they wanted to hide out in)
The three suspects have been booked on armed robbery charges.

That's a step too many departments skip, but it's such an obvious and effective one there's no excuse, even if it does sound like a bad gangster movie - "We know you're in there, come out with your hands up..."
But hey, it works, and it sure beats the potential disaster of sending in a tac-team and shooting the place up.

So this *CAN* work, provided the neighborhood is willing to slap the hands of their so-called protectors when they cannot behave themselves, and I am much gratified by the results.
One might think on this concerning their own communities.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010 6:05 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

"But hey, it works, and it sure beats the potential disaster of sending in a tac-team and shooting the place up."

Hello,

Please forgive me a Wulfism.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010 8:17 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Actually I've had this conversation with Sheriff Clayton, during a discussion about the stupidity of no-knock and tac-team raids.

Now, bear in mind I don't get on well with the local tac-team guys, although the rank and file guys found it utterly hilarious when they dragged me to court to testify against a couple creepers I bagged despite being injured, suffering a three-digit fever, sick with the flu, delerious and medicated half into a stupor besides...
And I apparently decided for no particular reason to verbally excoriate one of the tac-team guys for not having a decent donut shop anywhere closer to the courthouse than Canton, and when he stiffly responded that he didn't even like donuts, called him a blasphemous heretic, a disgrace to his profession, an insult to the uniform and suggested he remove the ten foot pole from his ass - none of which I even remember, but apparently I was "really eloquent about it" according to the deputy running the metal detector, prolly cause I was pissed at being more or less dragged there only to then be told my presence was unnecessary cause the bastards decided to plead it while I was en-route, bleh.

See, I actually *like* donuts, and don't give a damn how stereotypical that is, imma traditionalist, right down to the 1968 Detex-Newman watchclock - which is MINE, and I took with me, mind you.

Anyhow, said Sheriff has heard all kinds of stories, and commented that if they ever *did* have to serve a warrant, they'd just call me on the phone and ask me politely to come out to them.

"And if I decided not to ?"
"Evacuate the block and call in artillery."
"That's... extreme."
"And that godawful cannon of yours isn't?"
"Point taken."

I *think* he was kidding....

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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