posted
With the several recent topics of people's fear of police, a child wrongly imprisoned, and the lengths police will go to in order to find evidence of a crime, I've been thinking of abuses of power in general. They're everywhere, and because of their very nature, it seems very difficult for the average individual to do much.
Examples could include the legal system in the US favoring the wealthy, corporations abusing their ability to ignore rules and cause harm to a great number of people, politicians acting beyond their purview, and countless other cases.
What do you do when faced with a bully you can't stare down? How do you even go about finding justice, when the very system you might use is stacked against you?
Is the best option just to stay below the radar, and hope you're never targeted, or are there things an individual, or small group can do, which are not simply idealistic grandstanding or changing the very foundations of society?
Perhaps an easier question: what cases have you run across, and have you had any luck making a stand?
I've fought the law, and the law won.
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posted
What do you do when you, as an average citizen, abuse the power that you have? The abuse of power might be to a younger sibling, it might be at work, it could be to a waitress in a diner. I am sure at some point you have had power over someone and have abused that power. What did you do? I hear this a lot about how others are abusing their power and I like to turn it around and ask what do you do when you have abused power that you have.
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posted
I believe the ONLY thing you can do in that sort of situation is be as loud and as open about the injustice as you can. Call the media. Tell everyone around you.
Sometimes they won't be interested, but sometimes they will.
I was watching 16 Blocks the other day, and it occurred to me during the bus hijack scene that the entire movie could have ended right there had the protagonists simply explained what was going on and asked a member of the crowd for a cellphone.
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posted
The principle remedy for abuse of police power right now is exclusion of the evidence against the person whose rights were violated.
This means that there is no effective remedy for many violations against innocent people.
There are causes of action (called section 1983 lawsuits) for violations of constitutional rights under color of law, but the types of damages available are generally limited absent physical harm. Most small abuses of power can not be remedied by such actions.
This has another effect that many don't appreciate: it makes exclusion absolutely necessary, as there is no other check on police action that has proven effective on such a scale. And, if you think about it, exclusion is a notoriously poor remedy with a very high social cost. If another remedy existed that actually deterred 4th amendment violations, exclusion might not be necessary.
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The most important thing I can think for people to do is to insist on their rights in most situations. Don't consent to the search of your car (again - don't oppose it, just actively say "I do not consent"). Right now, people are suspicious of others who assert their rights. "What do they have to hide?" The only way I see to change this is to make rights assertion commonplace and expected - that it be viewed as a duty to be proud of, not something to be suspicious of.
I've mentioned at least one situation where I think consenting to a search is a good idea - when police are rapidly trying to clear areas/cars/people in a situation where life is on the line. For example, if a child is missing, I would allow a search so police could concentrate on places the child might be.
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It's also important to remember that a judge dismissing charges does not mean the police did anything wrong. The standard for arrest is probable cause - a very low standard. Judges will dismiss charges in many cases where that standard has been met.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
DarkKnight: The power that I have in any given situation is tiny compared to the power of the police, or a corporation, or the US Government. I do my best to be a good person, and act in a way that doesn't harm others, but I can't put anyone in jail for life or start a war if I'm feeling cranky one day.
-Examples I'm thinking about:
A friend of mine had her car towed for parking in a red zone. Strictly, her car was 3 or 4 inches into the red, but she wasn't blocking the driveway in any way. The towing company essentially took her car for ransom.
She had the right to contest the towing of her car, but that process takes up to a week. That's a week that she would have to be without her car, and every day the car is in the impound lot, she's charged $50 storage fee. If she wants to get the car out of the lot, she has to sign a waiver that says she agrees to the towing, and will not contest it.
Clearly, the way this is set us makes it nearly impossible for anyone to actually contest any towing. You have no way to prove that your car was legally parked (if it had been completely out of the red zone), or that the towing was unreasonable, and even if you fight it, you'll have to go without a car for a week, and should you lose, owe the company another $350. It's a no-win situation.
I've run into similar situations with parking tickets, such that if you try to contest the ticket, you only end up wasting your own time and money, and you're required to pay anyway.
When the checks on the system are a farce, it invites abuse of power.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: "Color of law"?
"Color of law" is an important phrase in constitutional rights analysis - it means acting under the pretense or with the appearance of legal authority.
Constitutional rights (other than the 13th amendment, which we'll ignore for now) can only be violated by state action. If a government official is acting in a manner that violates your constitutional rights, he is, by definition, not acting within his official powers. Therefore, a case could be made that the government hasn't violated your rights - a private actor acting outside the scope of his official authority has.
"Color of law" is the phrase that says, "Even though he was not acting with official sanction, his apparent exercise of authority is state action."
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quote:She had the right to contest the towing of her car, but that process takes up to a week. That's a week that she would have to be without her car, and every day the car is in the impound lot, she's charged $50 storage fee. If she wants to get the car out of the lot, she has to sign a waiver that says she agrees to the towing, and will not contest it.
Is she sure such waivers are enforceable? Also, is she sure the company has the right to require such waivers? It's worth investigating.
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posted
The towing happened over a year ago, so I don't know what legal recourse, if any, is still available to her.
It happened in San Francisco, where there has been some small uproar over the towing situation for a while. Several years ago, the city decided that it made sense to have a private towing company handle all the towing-related parking violations.
They were given the authority to scout for cars in violation and tow them, rather relying on the city parking enforcement to find cars in violation. The towing company goes out looking for the least infraction, because they can then take cars hostage and let these fees accumulate.
They also strong-arm people into paying and waiving their rights, because obviously people want their car back in their possession.
I agree Dagonee, that it would be worth investigating the extent of their legal authority to require people to waive their rights to compensation upon reclaiming their car, but it's a bad situation for someone to get into in the first place.
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quote:When the checks on the system are a farce, it invites abuse of power.
A strong system of checks and balances is essential to reducing abuses of power. I think this is what the US founding fathers had in mind when they devised a system of government with a clear separation of powers as well as a distribution of power between national and local levels.
Unfortunately, I think we as Americans have become far to accepting of those who seek to expand their authority or abuse power in other ways. We need to develop a zero tolerance culture for all types of abuses of power.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Unfortunately, I think that the tendency of power to corrupt is something deeply imbedded in the human phyche. It is recognizable in Aristonphones' play the birds. The Bible warns against it when the Israelites seek a king. It is specifically noted and condemned in Mormon scripture.
I think that there are very very few human beings who can be trusted with power without some sort of clear system of checks. Among those who seek power, there are virtually none who can be trusted not to abuse it.
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posted
Many people don't appreciate the extent to which separation of powers is involved in the criminal justice system. It requires every single branch of government to convict someone of a crime and imprison them, plus (for almost all cases) the people. From the paper I linked in the hate crimes thread:
quote:[T]here is a concept we call "crime" that is fundamentally important to liberty. A crime is the gate through which the executive must pass to detain its citizens. This gate requires keys from the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and the people before it will be opened and a citizen tossed through. A crime is defined by the conduct which a person must perform and other facts which must be true for the person to commit the crime and a range of punishments which those who commit it might face. Both parts of the definition are set by the legislature. A crime is charged by the executive. The identity of the crime in the charge informs the defendant what facts must be proved against him and what sentence such proof will subject him to. The people, in the form of a jury, will authorize a judge to impose a sentence within the pre-defined range if and only if they find that each fact was proved by the executive beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge will exercise his discretion to impose a sentence within the range authorized by the legislative definition of the crime and the jury findings.
Each branch, plus the people, can eliminate a prison sentence (with the exception of mandatory minimum sentences, in which case the judiciary can only reduce).
I think some (not all, but some) of our problems with allowing abuse of power come from not carefully tending to the structural limitations on the exercise of power. Both conservatives and liberals (as groups, there are exceptions on each side) do this quite often, generally in different ways. We see a structural impediment to something we see as a great good and make an unnecessary compromise.
Soon the structure has holes riddled through it.
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quote:Unfortunately, I think that the tendency of power to corrupt is something deeply imbedded in the human phyche.
This is why I posted what I did about the structural protections being important.
I don't want to leave the impression that structure is all that's important, of course. The content of what's done within that structure are of great importance, and any structure that allows effective government will allow some abuses of power through. We need non-structural ways to oppose that.
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quote:A strong system of checks and balances is essential to reducing abuses of power. I think this is what the US founding fathers had in mind when they devised a system of government with a clear separation of powers as well as a distribution of power between national and local levels.
But in stressing these laws, and the balance of powers, I think it becomes too easy to see the structured law as the only constraint against morally indefensible behavior. This is an especially grave danger in our hyper-competitive society.
quote: I don't want to leave the impression that structure is all that's important, of course. The content of what's done within that structure are of great importance, and any structure that allows effective government will allow some abuses of power through. We need non-structural ways to oppose that.
I agree. I believe if more time, energy, and resources were spent developing non-coersive approaches, we, as a society, would be the better for it.
quote:This has another effect that many don't appreciate: it makes exclusion absolutely necessary, as there is no other check on police action that has proven effective on such a scale. And, if you think about it, exclusion is a notoriously poor remedy with a very high social cost. If another remedy existed that actually deterred 4th amendment violations, exclusion might not be necessary.
I hate letting the guilty go free to punish police abuse. Why not punish the guilty *and* punish the police for abusing their power, such as firing or imprisonment? But it's true, right now exclusion is all we have, so we'd have to first have something better in place before we got rid of it.
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quote:I agree. I believe if more time, energy, and resources were spent developing non-coersive approaches, we, as a society, would be the better for it.
I agree. But I don't think we should reduce the effort we spend on the criminal justice system (in fact, we need to make it much better in many ways). Including, and possibly the highest priority, ensuring that prison sentences of any length are not sentences to be beaten and raped.
quote:I hate letting the guilty go free to punish police abuse. Why not punish the guilty *and* punish the police for abusing their power, such as firing or imprisonment?
Because I've never heard a viable system for doing that. Most of the cases of unconstitutional searches are inadvertent. Many of our precedent setting cases are decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court, after two different lower court decisions. It's hardly fair to punish a police officer for doing something that 4 justices of the Supreme Court think is constitutional.
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quote:I hate letting the guilty go free to punish police abuse. Why not punish the guilty *and* punish the police for abusing their power, such as firing or imprisonment?
Because I've never heard a viable system for doing that. Most of the cases of unconstitutional searches are inadvertent. Many of our precedent setting cases are decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court, after two different lower court decisions. It's hardly fair to punish a police officer for doing something that 4 justices of the Supreme Court think is constitutional.
I don't think the problem lies solely with unlawful searches and detentions. A few weeks ago there was a thread on Hatrack about an on going battle between a family that had installed a "speed trap" of sorts in front of their house and a police officer neighbor who routinely sped past their house. In the story, it was reported that this police had repeatedly used his badge in the course of their dispute even though the neighborhood was outside his jurisdiction as an police officer. Some may think that this is just a little thing, but it is a clear abuse of authority for a police officer to use his badge to intimidate people during a personal dispute. In my experience, this is hardly an unusal circumstance. In some areas, police routinely use their authority to intimidate and harass people for personal rather than legal reasons. In some regions where I have lived, many of the police were known as bullies in their youth and they were likely drawn to police work because they saw it as a career where they could legally bully people. We need to have a zero tolerance policy for this sort of abuse. Officers who misuse their authority in such ways should be suspended from the force.
I think that a zero tolerance policy for petty abuse of authority would go a long way to resolving the bigger problems. If nothing else, it would reduce the number of bullies who choose police work as a profession.
[ April 08, 2007, 12:33 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:I don't think the problem lies solely with unlawful searches and detentions.
I agree Rabbit - I was answering a specific line of thought related to exclusion, which began with my contention that the principle existing remedy for police abuse of power is exclusion, not the topic as a whole.
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