[Rancid]

I don’t think you even find that mug shot funny Big Steve.

There is a valid discussion surrounding the morality of that mugshot. It’s a shame the Sherrif in that American county can’t see that. They should be having this discussion...

It's hard to change a culture, and even harder to change it in law enforcement I'm sure. Ultimately, in the US, it's about what makes money. There's no money to be made when you respect privacy. There's less money to be made through rehabilitation, and more to be made through punishment.

Sad, but true.

[Pants-of-dog]

Provide evidence that it doesn't take place elsewhere...

Nice try at shifting the burden of proof.

It's not questionable at all.

Yes, witness testimony is often unreliable, especially when there is information to lead the witness in a particular direction, like these photos do.

And this would not be the first time the cops forced someone to confess to a crime they did not commit.

[Pants-of-dog]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/ ... journalism

On 17 April Dickface made another run for it, which was not unusual. Less than a week earlier a trigger-happy parole officer here in Montana had shot out the guy’s tires and, after a chase and a crash, police arrested him for multiple felony charges. A month before that Dickface had fled from police after failing to appear in court and he was arrested hiding in a car in a garage.

Police called him Dickface because of an unfortunately shaped facial tattoo from forehead to jawline meant to depict exposed machinery. They also called him a “runner” (though he’s not a good one) and a “frequent flier” for his regular arrests.

I call him Dickface now because it’s more ethical than smearing another poor person by publishing his legal name in the newspaper and contributing to the ruination of his life.

Doing that day in and day out didn’t feel like journalism to me and actively prevented me from writing important stories to the point where I quit my job.

When Dickface ran again last April, he was arriving at the courthouse in an ambulance from a secure hospital where he had been administered a mental health evaluation after harming himself in jail. When the ambulance doors opened, police said Dickface bolted, eluding police for 20 minutes until an off-duty officer spotted him at the hospital and he was arrested again. He faces as much as 75 years in prison.

Journalists have seen the value of covering chases – those at high speed and on foot – since KCOP Channel 13 introduced a live chopper cam hovering over the Los Angeles freeway in 1992. Even though we all know how chases end, even a print story about one is more enticing to local readers than just about anything else in the paper. And with three chases under his belt in a little more than a month, Dickface racked up the pageviews.

Despite his outsized media presence, Dickface is hardly a criminal mastermind and far, far from the worst criminal I covered. He just seemed like another poor kid who stole something too expensive when he was young and stupid and who was doomed by a five-year sentence in prison into a cycle that would lead him back there. During his incarceration at Montana State Prison, a Department of Justice survey identified the facility as the worst prison for sexual assault in the country. I’d probably run, too.

As the sole crime reporter at a daily paper in Butte, Montana in charge of putting out the daily blotter, I found the process for deciding which poor residents of my city to shame completely arbitrary. There’s almost never enough real crime worth covering, but if a couple nasty assaults occurred there might not be room to include some poor guy getting caught with a gram of meth. If nothing happened the next day, maybe that user would go in. The blotter was often all minor drug arrests.

Over time I established a system: the more harm someone was doing to others, the greater the priority. Reporting about violent criminals such as guys hitting their girlfriends is pretty easy on the conscience, and so are DUIs and endangerment.

After a while I stopped including people arrested for shoplifting food from Walmart despite how frequently it happened and how much readers loved laughing about it.

When I stopped including simple drug arrests in the blotter nobody noticed, not even my editors, which begs the question of why we consider minor drug crimes worthy of attention in the first place.

Not all news outlets publish the names of arrestees, but even small cities have a daily, a weekly and TV stations so desperate for material by deadline that the names often get through. I know of no outlets in Montana that withhold the names of arrestees.

Names of arrestees are publicly available information that anyone can get from the police, but without journalists they’d sit unseen in databases unconnected to the outside world. The rise of online journalism means the role of the modern crime reporter is to bridge the air gap between the deep web databases of the criminal justice system and the publicly indexed repositories of online news archives.

Journalists play an unintended but integral role in the modern continuation of the poverty-prison cycle. If you do a Google search for Dickface’s name, the first results are stories about his alleged crimes. How is he supposed to get a legitimate job when a potential employer takes a cursory glance at his name? How is he expected to make an honest living and stay out of trouble?

Citizens in some countries can petition big data companies like Google to prevent certain URLs from appearing when their name is searched and say in the network age everyone has a right to be forgotten. But even that leaves a Streisand Effect-like paper trail when journalists fight back against what they see as censorship, such as the BBC’s index of links to stories removed from search engines by right-to-be-forgotten requests filed under EU law. (Almost every removed story is a crime.

While the minor crime stories churned out by the thousands every day have an enormous, devastating long-term effect on their subjects, all but the most heinous of offenses are simply not worth reporting and are a waste of resources already stretched thin. No one becomes a more informed member of their community after 30 seconds spent reading a story about a homeless woman who shoplifted meat. They just laugh and move on.

Read the comments section of any crime story and you’ll see that readers and viewers love nothing more than judging those in their community. Poverty crime stories generate clicks because everyone thinks it’s hilarious when a naked man runs down the street screaming even if it’s because he can’t afford his medication.

In my newsroom we had a monitor that displayed live pageviews, and I was often pressured to finish police blotters as soon as possible to feed the lunch break crowd, regardless of whether there were more pressing stories to work on. I don’t blame my bosses: small newspapers need money. While the crime coverage in media hubs may be more nuanced, those outlets have far more resources and account for very little of the country. I was the only police reporter in a six-county area and was responsible for 15,000 square miles of crime.

Frequently, the demands of filling a daily crime section would prevent me from working on more important stories, such as an investigation of why the Environmental Protection Agency’s acceptable level of lead in children’s blood was set at a higher level in Butte than federal regulations allow. Lead turns children into barbarians, and the lead-crime hypothesis in Butte – known to Montanans as a rough and tumble city – has never been tested.

We should be thankful small places in America are safe enough to not always need a daily update on last night’s mistakes, but instead we blow small crimes out of proportion and ruin people’s lives for pennies, all while missing the big picture.

It’s not hard to see the big crime in Butte that people are getting away with. You can see it from orbit.

[ness31]

First thing I did was scroll down to see a picture of the awkwardly shaped tattoo. I was out of luck.

[BigSteve]

Nice try at shifting the burden of proof.



Yes, witness testimony is often unreliable, especially when there is information to lead the witness in a particular direction, like these photos do.

And this would not be the first time the cops forced someone to confess to a crime they did not commit.

What in holy fuck are you babbling about?

[Pants-of-dog]

If you ask nicely, I can explain it again.

[BigSteve]

If you ask nicely, I can explain it again.

No one's confessing to anything, and witnesses aren't always involved, so your post is pretty stupid.

See, what you need to wrap your head around is that I really don't care if it stops DUI's.

If it doesn't, the offender gets shamed and I get a morning laugh along with my morning coffee...

[Pants-of-dog]

No one cares if you care about something or not. When you tell us about how you do not care about something, it is only an indication that you have run out of arguments.

If the ”argument” is that you get to laugh about it, and we also see that the drawbacks for the individuals can be significant, it seems clear that we should get rid of these, from a moral perspective.

[Rancid]

No one's confessing to anything, and witnesses aren't always involved, so your post is pretty stupid.

See, what you need to wrap your head around is that I really don't care if it stops DUI's.

If it doesn't, the offender gets shamed and I get a morning laugh along with my morning coffee...

I'm curious, why do you get enjoyment out of the misery of others?

A lot of the people that get mixed up in bad lifestyle choices come from troubled upbringings. These are people that are abused physically and/or emotionally, come from broken homes, have little to no access to healthcare, have no one that's really in their corner, rooting for them, and helping them along. Basically, these are tortured souls. I grew up with a lot of people like this. I could have been one of them, easily.

Why does this bring you joy? Do not deflect when you respond. I'll per-empt you a little. I am not saying that these people should not feel the consequences of their bad decision making. I am just asking you, why do you enjoy watching these people that are already down and out, get hit again while they're down?

What is the source of the joy for you?

[BigSteve]

I'm curious, why do you get enjoyment out of the misery of others?

Because they create their own misery, and I enjoy laughing at such stupidity...

A lot of the people that get mixed up in bad lifestyle choices come from troubled upbringings. These are people that are abused physically and/or emotionally, come from broken homes, have little to no access to healthcare, have no one that's really in their corner, rooting for them, and helping them along. Basically, these are tortured souls. I grew up with a lot of people like this. I could have been one of them, easily.

Then I guess I'd be laughing at you.

In this case, it was just some middle-class white guy with a 9-5 job, a mortgage and a wife. While it's true that some folks choose to wallow in the shitty life they were raised in, it's silly to suggest that's the norm. I look at that jail log every day, and I occasionally see people I know; people with decent jobs, who didn't come from broken homes...

Why does this bring you joy? Do not deflect when you respond.

I explained that above.

Here's the background on the guy in the photo I posted: The guy got drunk at one of St. Augustine's many bars. While stumbling down the street, he decided he was hungry. Instead of just going home and making a sandwich, or getting his ass to the local late night restaurant (Carmello's; good pizza if you're ever in town), he decided to break into a shop that's famous for its pretzels. What he didn't know is that the owner of the shop was there doing payroll. The owner of the shop called the police and then confronted the guy, who took a clumsy swing at him. The owner then commenced to kicking the shit outta' the guy.

I think it's funny that anyone could be so fucking stupid...

I'll per-empt you a little. I am not saying that these people should not feel the consequences of their bad decision making. I am just asking you, why do you enjoy watching these people that are already down and out, get hit again while they're down?

Being shamed is one the consequences. This guy having his beaten face put on display is one of the consequences for his actions.

Like I said, I think it's funny that someone could be so fucking stupid...

What is the source of the joy for you?

Oh, that'd be the St. John's County Sheriff's Office website...

[Potemkin]

I'm curious, why do you get enjoyment out of the misery of others?

A lot of the people that get mixed up in bad lifestyle choices come from troubled upbringings. These are people that are abused physically and/or emotionally, come from broken homes, have little to no access to healthcare, have no one that's really in their corner, rooting for them, and helping them along. Basically, these are tortured souls. I grew up with a lot of people like this. I could have been one of them, easily.

Why does this bring you joy? Do not deflect when you respond. I'll per-empt you a little. I am not saying that these people should not feel the consequences of their bad decision making. I am just asking you, why do you enjoy watching these people that are already down and out, get hit again while they're down?

What is the source of the joy for you?

This sort of thing probably ultimately derives from the 'frontier justice' of the American West in the 19th century. It wasn't unusual for miscreants to be tarred and feathered or ridden out of town on a rail, with little or no 'due process'. American society was a bit rough around the edges back then, and to some extent it still is. Civilisation never really arrived to some areas of the US....

[Finfinder]

I'm curious, why do you get enjoyment out of the misery of others?

A lot of the people that get mixed up in bad lifestyle choices come from troubled upbringings. These are people that are abused physically and/or emotionally, come from broken homes, have little to no access to healthcare, have no one that's really in their corner, rooting for them, and helping them along. Basically, these are tortured souls. I grew up with a lot of people like this. I could have been one of them, easily.

Why does this bring you joy? Do not deflect when you respond. I'll per-empt you a little. I am not saying that these people should not feel the consequences of their bad decision making. I am just asking you, why do you enjoy watching these people that are already down and out, get hit again while they're down?

What is the source of the joy for you?

this came to mind from your post

"you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool"

Hannibal Lecter

[Rancid]

This sort of thing probably ultimately derives from the 'frontier justice' of the American West in the 19th century. It wasn't unusual for miscreants to be tarred and feathered or ridden out of town on a rail, with little or no 'due process'. American society was a bit rough around the edges back then, and to some extent it still is. Civilisation never really arrived to some areas of the US....

Yea, this makes sense. It's interesting, because it's this same culture that gives rise to the culture of innovation within America. People today, still literally venture out west in search of riches in silicon valley.

[Potemkin]

Yea, this makes sense. It's interesting, because it's this same culture that gives rise to the culture of innovation within America. People today, still literally venture out west in search of riches in silicon valley.

Indeed, and the flipside of that freedom and opportunity is the looseness of central control and a certain rough-and-ready attitude towards personal safety and law and order, which is sometimes indistinguishable from vigilante 'justice'. The public shaming of petty criminals is just part of that.

[Pants-of-dog]

It also seems like a way to reinforce class divisions.

The person stealing bacon from Walmart is doing so because of a lack of a job, and since potential employers will see that as the first thing that pops up in a Google search, the petty thief is not going to get a job soon.

[BigSteve]

It also seems like a way to reinforce class divisions.

It also seems like a way to be provided a good laugh in the morning...

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes, you have already bragged about how you enjoy the suffering of others.

I consider it a point of data supporting my argument that this whole thing is more immoral than useful.

[Finfinder]

I'm curious, why do you get enjoyment out of the misery of others?

A lot of the people that get mixed up in bad lifestyle choices come from troubled upbringings. These are people that are abused physically and/or emotionally, come from broken homes, have little to no access to healthcare, have no one that's really in their corner, rooting for them, and helping them along. Basically, these are tortured souls. I grew up with a lot of people like this. I could have been one of them, easily.

Why does this bring you joy? Do not deflect when you respond. I'll per-empt you a little. I am not saying that these people should not feel the consequences of their bad decision making. I am just asking you, why do you enjoy watching these people that are already down and out, get hit again while they're down?

What is the source of the joy for you?

Yet you turned out to be an internet virtue signaler. Standing ovation for you!

[BigSteve]

Yes, you have already bragged about how you enjoy the suffering of others.

I consider it a point of data supporting my argument that this whole thing is more immoral than useful.

Well, if you don't like it, move to St. John's County, Florida, run for Sheriff, get elected Sheriff and take it down.

Beyond that, nobody really cares that you think it's immoral. Fact of the matter is that the vast majority of them wouldn't be suffering if they weren't so fucking stupid...

[Finfinder]

@BigSteve

I got big laugh out of this today how about you? I can't wait for our forum friends tell us how mean we are such terrible people .... let the virtue signaling begin.

Washington (CNN)Roughly two years after her anti-Donald Trump text messages were released to Congress and she became a public target of the President's ire, Lisa Page said it's time to break her silence.

The embattled former FBI lawyer resurfaced her Twitter account Sunday night, tweeting, "I'm done being quiet," along with a link to a new interview with The Daily Beast. In that interview, Page called Trump's attacks "sickening" and said she chose to speak out after the President did a lewd impression of her text exchanges with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, with whom she had an affair, during a Minnesota rally in October. The President has frequently criticized the series of texts in which Page and Strzok disparaged the then-presidential candidate. On Monday, Trump again attacked Page, suggesting in a tweet that she go back and read a text exchange she had with Strzok.
"I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse," she said. "It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back."
She added: "It's like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again," she said. "The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He's demeaning me and my career. It's sickening."