Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

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Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

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Re: Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

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wjfox wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:21 am
Too slow?
Internet used to be an escape from the real world.
Now the real world is an escape from internet.
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Re: Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

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Lurking wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 8:50 am
wjfox wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:21 am
Too slow?
Here in the USA it should be interesting to see how the very ultra zealous police worshippers react if the COVID situation gets worse.
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‘Dystopian world’: Singapore patrol robots stoke fears of surveillance state

Wed 6 Oct 2021 06.05 BST

Singapore has trialled patrol robots that blast warnings at people engaging in “undesirable social behaviour”, adding to an arsenal of surveillance technology in the tightly controlled city-state that is fuelling privacy concerns.

From vast numbers of CCTV cameras to trials of lampposts kitted out with facial recognition tech, Singapore is seeing an explosion of tools to track its inhabitants.

That includes a three-week trial in September, in which two robots were deployed to patrol a housing estate and a shopping centre.

Officials have long pushed a vision of a hyper-efficient, tech-driven “smart nation”, but activists say privacy is being sacrificed and people have little control over what happens to their data.

Singapore is frequently criticised for curbing civil liberties and people are accustomed to tight controls, but there is still growing unease at intrusive tech.

The government’s latest surveillance devices are robots on wheels, with seven cameras, that issue warnings to the public and detect “undesirable social behaviour”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ance-state
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Exclusive: Smart guns finally arriving in U.S., seeking to shake up firearms market
By Daniel Trotta
January 11, 2022
12:32 PM EST

https://www.reuters.com/technology/excl ... 022-01-11/
Jan 11 (Reuters) - Personalized smart guns, which can be fired only by verified users, may finally become available to U.S. consumers after two decades of questions about reliability and concerns they will usher in a new wave of government regulation.

Four-year-old LodeStar Works on Friday unveiled its 9mm smart handgun for shareholders and investors in Boise, Idaho. And a Kansas company, SmartGunz LLC, says law enforcement agents are beta testing its product, a similar but simpler model.

Both companies hope to have a product commercially available this year.

LodeStar co-founder Gareth Glaser said he was inspired after hearing one too many stories about children shot while playing with an unattended gun. Smart guns could stop such tragedies by using technology to authenticate a user's identity and disable the gun should anyone else try to fire it.

They could also reduce suicides, render lost or stolen guns useless, and offer safety for police officers and jail guards who fear gun grabs.
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Re: Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

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I guess this would be a good place to note that I have just finished reading the book Abolition for the People which is edited by Colin Kaepernick. It is a collection of essays in which the abolition or defunding of the police is advocated. It is a little weak in explaining exactly what would take the place of the police but does stress the importance of shifting spending priorities to addressing the root causes of crime. It argues that past reform efforts merely strengthened the role of the police and did nothing to address the systemic racism found within the U.S. police system. The situation has apparently gotten so bad in some minority communities that the police are simply not seen as being able to offer any constructive role in the community. Reforming the police is seen as similar to the idea of reforming the institution of slavery. The obvious answer is not reformation, but abolishment. Or so the argument goes.

A strength of the book is to note and document just how extensive and counterproductive is the carceral state that the United States has become. We are far and away the leading country on the planet in terms of incarceration of our fellow citizens. Moreover, people of color are far more likely to fall victim to incarceration than white folk. All sorts of statistics are provided to demonstrate that condition. An aspect of this is the manner in which "justice" is equated with "punishment equal to the crime." Neglected are constructive efforts at conflict resolution, rehabilitation, or a more medical approach to addressing mental health issues.

Another valid point made is that all too often, reform simply means giving the police more resources to carry out their repressive function.

Reformist ideas also focus on the "bad cop" or "rotten apple" approach while ignoring the more systemic underlying dynamics at work. Therefore, reform fails to transform the system in any truly progressive fashion. Moreover, the primary role of police is historically that of protecting property. This is how it fits into the capitalist system of production. The police function to protect the interests of a propertied elite, and therefore fail to benefit the public good.

In my mind, abolition as a strategy would seem to be most applicable to certain urban areas. The problem is that rural folks, especially in areas where there are few minorities or where minorities are thoroughly assimilated into the community, are not going to be able to make much sense of the arguments presented. Especially when they are reduced to bumper sticker slogans about the need to "Abolish the Police" or "Defund the Police." The old fears of anarchy are likely to be renewed, and the ideas perceived as a threat to stability and order. The abolition movement needs to understand this response, and differentiate between the legitimate function of the police, as opposed to its more repressive nature. Admittedly, doing so can result into falling into the old traps created by past reform efforts. So, the approach needs to be taken on a community-by-community basis, with recognition that in some communities the police are genuinely seen as the good guys, and not as repressive agents of a racist system.

This approach can then play upon the old conservative notion of the importance of community control. Then the argument can proceed along the basis of "We won't wreck the just and orderly system you have in your community as long as you allow us to correct the thoroughly dysfunctional and unjust system that we find in our community."
Last edited by caltrek on Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

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caltrek wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:52 pm I guess this would be a good place to note that I have just finished reading the book Abolition for the People which is edited by Colin Kaepernick. It is a collection of essays in which the abolition or defunding of the police is advocated. It is a little week in explaining exactly what would take the place of the police but does stress the importance of shifting spending priorities to addressing the root causes of crime. It argues that past reform efforts merely strengthened the role of the police and did nothing to address the systemic racism found within the U.S. police system. The situation has apparently gotten so bad in some minority communities that the police are simply not seen as being able to offer any constructive role in the community. Reforming the police is seen as similar to the idea of reforming the institution of slavery. The obvious answer is not reformation, but abolishment. Or so the argument goes.

A strength of the book is to note and document just how extensive and counterproductive is the carceral state that the United States has become. We are far and away the leading country on the planet in terms of incarceration of our fellow citizens. Moreover, people of color are far more likely to fall victim to incarceration than white folk. All sorts of statistics are provided to demonstrate that condition. An aspect of this is the manner in which "justice" is equated with "punishment equal to the crime." Neglected are constructive efforts at conflict resolution, rehabilitation, or a more medical approach to addressing mental health issues.

Another valid point made is that all too often, reform simply means giving the police more resources to carry out their repressive function.

Reformist ideas also focus on the "bad cop" or "rotten apple" approach while ignoring the more systemic underlying dynamics at work. Therefore, reform fails to transform the system in any truly progressive fashion. Moreover, the primary role of police is historically that of protecting property. This is how it fits into the capitalist system of production. The police function to protect the interests of a propertied elite, and therefore fail to benefit the public good.

In my mind, abolition as a strategy would seem to be most applicable to certain urban areas. The problem is that rural folks, especially in areas where there are few minorities or where minorities are thoroughly assimilated into the community, are not going to be able to make much sense of the arguments presented. Especially when they are reduced to bumper sticker slogans about the need to "Abolish the Police" or "Defund the Police." The old fears of anarchy are likely to be renewed, and the ideas perceived as a threat to stability and order. The abolition movement needs to understand this response, and differentiate between the legitimate function of the police, as opposed to its more repressive nature. Admittedly, doing so can result into falling into the old traps created by past reform efforts. So, the approach needs to be taken on a community-by-community basis, with recognition that in some communities the police are genuinely seen as the good guys, and not as repressive agents of a racist system.

This approach can then play upon the old conservative notion of the importance of community control. Then the argument can proceed along the basis of "We won't wreck the just and orderly system you have in your community as long as you allow us to correct the thoroughly dysfunctional and unjust system that we find in our community."
The advances in artificial intelligence and other tech should help ease things up as time goes on. Hell even the post I made recently about smart guns will help alleviate a lot of bs by disabling guns as needed. I'm not sure about the rest of the world but here in the USA we have an epidemic of ugly losers picking up badges and being the usual suspects whenever there is police wrongdoing because of them taking out their anger on the world.

Enough is enough man especially here where I am at! The longer tech advances take to make the world safer the more these muppets will keep annoying the rest of us. That is the pesky little secret behind all the complaints of police reform here in the USA. Between that, the mentally ill, and absolute idiots that currently make up the rest of USA law enforcement you can understand one of many reasons why I am committed to technology in this regard.

Its funny too because I learned REAL QUICK what USA law enforcement really is when I was young. Even though I am in a position to directly benefit from the damn force I despise the current system as it is because I know the reasons why it is jacked up. That is one of the reasons why whenever I hesitate to go forward with technology I remember the gremlins who would hide back in the old days doing messed up stuff and push forward with this brave new world.
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Re: Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

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In my earlier post in this thread, I discussed the book Abolition for the People. In that book reference is made to a number of organizations involved in the abolition movement, or at least in the broader movement of prison reform. These organizations in one way or another are challenging society to rethink its attitudes and biases regarding "criminals." For example, there is an organization that calls itself No More Prisons that is involved in what is described as the Prison Moratorium Project. Here is the approach they take in challenging us to rethink our approach to criminal conduct.

Extract:
At the Prison Moratorium Project, we are firm believers in the claim that prisons create more problems than they solve. The way they operate currently in the United States and other countries is that they are a finishing school for criminals. There’s really no other way to describe them. Somebody might come in as a juvenile for some sort of petty crime like spray painting a wall or vandalizing a car in a minor way, but since that person has been tagged as a problem youth and is subjected to increased levels of police scrutiny, there’s a higher chance that person will find himself or herself back in the criminal justice system. This can continue again and again and again.

Throughout that process, the crimes that this person is being charged with becomes more and more serious. Somebody might come in with shoplifting and then after enough time of going in and out of detention and prison, they end up with murder.

That’s how society has written off a large chunk of its members because they happen to have a bad day, made a bad decision, and they have to live with this for the rest of their lives. It’s as if we are pushing them through this lifelong series of stigma to go back to jail and get trained for worse and worse crimes.

In the Scandinavian countries, for example, the focus is on reform. The focus is on looking at behavioral bases that result is antisocial behavior. As much as we'd like to avoid it, a lot of people who end up in prison are not criminals, but are sick people. Maybe it's a function of a bad childhood. Perhaps it's a function of drug addiction or substance abuse. Possibly, it's a function of being of the wrong mental and emotional coping mechanisms. Whatever the case may be they were at the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong things, through the wrong people, and they end up behind bars.

Now, the question is what are we going to do as a society about it?
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Offering Buprenorphine Medication to People with Opioid Use Disorder in Jail May Reduce Rearrest and Reconviction
January 18, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/939961

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) A study conducted in two rural Massachusetts jails found that people with opioid use disorder who were incarcerated and received a medication approved to treat opioid use disorder, known as buprenorphine, were less likely to face rearrest and reconviction after release than those who did not receive the medication. After adjusting the data to account for baseline characteristics such as prior history with the criminal justice system, the study revealed a 32% reduction in rates of probation violations, reincarcerations, or court charges when the facility offered buprenorphine to people in jail compared to when it did not. The findings were published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

The study was conducted by the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN), a program to increase high-quality care for people with opioid misuse and opioid use disorder in justice settings and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, through the Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative.

“Studies like this provide much-needed evidence and momentum for jails and prisons to better enable the treatment, education, and support systems that individuals with an opioid use disorder need to help them recover and prevent reincarceration,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., NIDA Director. “Not offering treatment to people with opioid use disorder in jails and prisons can have devastating consequences, including a return to use and heighted risk of overdose and death after release.”

A growing body of evidence suggests that medications used to treat opioid use disorder, including buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone, hold great potential to improve outcomes among individuals after they’re released. However, offering these evidence-based treatments to people with opioid use disorder who pass through the justice system is not currently standard-of-care in U.S. jails and prisons, and most jails that do offer them are in large urban centers.
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Re: Police and Law Enforcement News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

I originally posted this in the Violence and Terrorism thread. Now, I have decided to move it to this thread.


Bagman for India-based Telemarketing Scam Gets 9 Years in Prison
by Edvard Pettersson
March 2, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/bagman-f ... in-prison/

Introduction:
LOS ANGELES (Courthouse News) — A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a Southern California liquor store owner to nine years in prison for his role in an India-based telemarketing fraud scheme that scared elderly victims into sending tens of thousands of dollars in cash to ward off fake arrest threats.

Anuj Mahendrabhai Patel, 32, was also ordered to pay $490,500 in restitution.

"These people are so vulnerable," U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II said, explaining why he went beyond the 6 1/2-year sentence the prosecution had asked for. "I don't understand why anyone could be so heartless and cruel."

Patel pleaded guilty in 2021 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Federal prosecutors said he was the U.S. connection for a scam targeting elderly victims with calls from purported government agents who frightened them into believing that their identities or assets were at risk. In some cases, victims were told that their Social Security number was linked to a crime and that they faced arrest.

Once the impostors had convinced the victims, they directed them to send as much as much as $100,000 in cash in FedEx and other parcels to Southern California pickup locations such as Walgreens stores. Patel recruited and paid local couriers a few hundred dollars to pick up the parcels using fake IDs. He managed the proceeds of the fraud on behalf of his co-conspirators in India while keeping a percentage for himself.
caltrek's comment: A surprisingly large number of people I know indicated receiving robocalls indicating that "their Social Security number was linked to a crime and that they faced arrest." I also received more than one call to that effect. In all cases, the instant recognition of the fraudulent nature of the calls occurred.
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