263 years, 263 years. She got you in prison, got you for 263 years

January 21, 2016 3:09 PM

Disgraced ex-officer Daniel Holtzclaw sentenced to 263 years.

After a last minute motion for a new trial was denied, the longstanding saga of corrupt police officer and convicted rapist Daniel Holtzclaw has ended. Today, Judge Timothy Henderson sentenced Holtzclaw for the full 263 years recommended by the jury and for that sentence to be served consecutively.

[previously...]

posted by Talez (61 comments total)

That list of charges is hideous.
posted by inconsequentialist at 3:15 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I suspect making friends will be a challenge during the next phase of his life.
posted by uraniumwilly at 3:17 PM on January 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

"I think people need to realize that this is not a law enforcement officer that committed these crimes"

No, that's exactly what he was, and part of how he could do it, and if you try to No True Scotsman it away, you'll never find the other Holtzclaws. Cops are people, not angels.
posted by jeather at 3:21 PM on January 21, 2016 [238 favorites]

Awfully earlier in 2016 to already have our worst human on earth winner, but there you are.
posted by Keith Talent at 3:24 PM on January 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

Women singing in the hallway while awaiting the sentence. SLFB - not sure if the link will work but it seems to be only on FB.

Almost Every Other Day a Police Officer Loses Their Badge of Sexual Misconduct - Bitch Media
posted by bunderful at 3:27 PM on January 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

Yeah, if it wasn't a law enforcement officer that did this then where did he get the uniform he wore when he picked up these women? And I gotta wonder how someone who wasn't on the force for that long figured out how easy it was to leverage that uniform to commit crime? Came up with all those methods all on his own I bet.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:28 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Hell yeah!
posted by Oyéah at 3:29 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's disconcerting that having a background in logic or basic rhetoric does not appear to be necessary to perform the duties of Oklahoma County District Attorney.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:32 PM on January 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'm not ashamed to say that I teared up when I saw this news. He used his authority to prey on the vulnerable, and he got the sentence he deserved.
posted by Ruki at 3:33 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

I suspect making friends will be a challenge during the next phase of his life.

Don't they normally segregate convicted cops from the general population?
posted by Thorzdad at 3:34 PM on January 21, 2016

Statement from the DA there is all "sorry for actually addressing your institutional issues, it won't happen again."
posted by Artw at 3:35 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

He'll probably serve less than a fraction of that thanks to the LIBERAL GOVERNMENT and the limits of a human lifespan.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:35 PM on January 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

Don't they normally segregate convicted cops from the general population?

For 263 years?
posted by uraniumwilly at 3:35 PM on January 21, 2016

May he live as long as possible.
posted by Artw at 3:35 PM on January 21, 2016 [32 favorites]

Well solitary confinement makes people crazy real quick, but it doesn't stop the US from doing it, even to juveniles. And for long periods of time.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:45 PM on January 21, 2016

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
posted by Fizz at 3:45 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Fitting that his sentencing came on the feast day of Agnes, patron saint of rape survivors.
posted by Cash4Lead at 3:48 PM on January 21, 2016 [41 favorites]

Good that he was convicted, but i really don't like the da's use of the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy when referring to this asshole's choice of job.
posted by dazed_one at 3:50 PM on January 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

Screw this guy, and screw everyone who allowed this to happen including his cop buddies who HAD to have known about a few of these incidents.

That's the thing that gets me. 263 years, take away this man's freedom, fine, yes, but how many other people knew about this and turned away?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:51 PM on January 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

Sadly I messed up the links in my list post. The link to the ACLU report on solitary confinement is here. The juvenile link on the other post is about effects of solitary confinement. Sorry
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:53 PM on January 21, 2016

Good that he was convicted, but i really don't like the da's use of the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy

It's just such a perfect, textbook example it makes you want to change the name of the fallacy to "No True Law Enforcement Officer."
posted by Drinky Die at 3:56 PM on January 21, 2016 [20 favorites]

but how many other people knew about this and turned away?

And are they not really cops too? Because they sure as hell have badges.
posted by Artw at 3:56 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's a start.
posted by Etrigan at 4:08 PM on January 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

My stars. The women singing in the courthouse hallway sent me right over the edge to tears.
posted by pipoquinha at 4:09 PM on January 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

"He's just a bad apple. He doesn't reflect our PD. Blah blah blah blah ad nauseaum."

"Now, allow me to explain why we can't stop racially profiling."
posted by Drinky Die at 4:13 PM on January 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

263 years isn't nearly long enough.
posted by SansPoint at 4:20 PM on January 21, 2016

“I think people need to realize that this is not a law enforcement officer that committed these crimes,” Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said, according to Buzzfeed. “This is a rapist who masqueraded as a law enforcement officer. If he was a true law enforcement officer, he would have upheld his duty to protect these citizens rather than victimize them.”

No he's a cop and a rapist. Unfortunately, those two things are not mutually exclusive.
posted by doctor_negative at 4:24 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is a rapist who masqueraded as a law enforcement officer.

Me: Holy shit, he was impersonating a cop too? How did I miss that part?! .... Oh, no, it's just the DA trying not to lose the support of the entire police department.
posted by bleep at 4:40 PM on January 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

Cops are people, not angels.

They're also not apples, and people should stop referring to them as such, bad or otherwise. It reminds me of "boots on the ground."
posted by Taft at 5:15 PM on January 21, 2016

And a police department isn't a barrel. These are important institutions we need to cultivate. Don't trivialize them.
posted by Taft at 5:16 PM on January 21, 2016

I could watch that video of Daniel Holtzclaw crying in court all day.
posted by orange swan at 5:36 PM on January 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

"One bad apple spoils the barrel" refers to the fact that a rotting apple releases a gas called ethylene, which promotes rot in apples it contacts. The whole point is that corruption breeds corruption and that tolerating any level of malfeasance guarantees its spread. It is a perfectly apt metaphor, and it is bizarre and saddening that it is used the way it is.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:37 PM on January 21, 2016 [58 favorites]

'One bad apple spoils the barrel' is a metaphor, comparing how overripeness can spread from one fruit to another to how illegal behaviour can spread from one cop to another. It's about the spread of behaviour, not about equating cops and apples.

'Boots on the ground' is not remotely similar. It doesn't compare two situations at all. It is an expression used solely to describe combat forces in a war zone, and it reduces those actual people into inanimate objects.
posted by Quilford at 5:42 PM on January 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Fitting that his sentencing came on the feast day of Agnes, patron saint of rape survivors.

And bitter cold it is; the owl, for all his feathers, is a-cold.
posted by jfwlucy at 5:44 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Personally, I didn't think he was going to get the max sentence. And no, he wasn't convicted of everything, but I'm not going let perfect be the enemy of good. I don't need to be told how bad this all is. I know. I'm still going to celebrate this little victory. We don't get enough of them.
posted by Ruki at 6:10 PM on January 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

He rolled the dice. When you make the court come looking for you then you don't get the luxury of concurrent sentences that you'd get with admitting guilt and being contrite.
posted by Talez at 6:12 PM on January 21, 2016

Bad cops should really be thought of like icebergs: sure, the part you see above the surface in incidents like this is bad, but 90% of them are under the water, undetected.
posted by graymouser at 6:12 PM on January 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

> That list of charges is hideous.

And still, not as bad as what some cops get away with nearly every day.
posted by king walnut at 6:20 PM on January 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Sure, metaphors are fine for what they are, but when you can go into any thread involving police and ctrl+f "apple" and guaranteed find the same circles of argument it's clear that the metaphor, when used as a misnomer and even when correctly used as a social science explanation, is a canard. If we're going to police the police in a meaningful way, we need to see each one of them as a human being, not a commodity. Two fucked-up cops can see their profession (and life) entirely differently and so can two morally upstanding officers. The goal shouldn't be to make sure everyone is the same (i.e. a good apple) it should be to regard individuals everywhere, including yourself, as potentially moral, potentially immoral agents and start from that common ground.

Think about it: would you like it if everyone was calling people in your line of work "apples" and reducing all the important work you do every day as being a "good apple?" No, you'd be fucking annoyed of that.
posted by Taft at 6:36 PM on January 21, 2016

One shitty cop makes all the other cops shitty.
posted by Artw at 6:40 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

On balance the less cops we have that are angry bitter children with an enlarged sense of entitlement the better, so if any get annoyed at the apple thing and leave the force that's fine with me, they were probably garbage anyway.
posted by Artw at 6:41 PM on January 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

What? Smoke 'em out with harassment? What are you even?
posted by Taft at 7:26 PM on January 21, 2016

I don't support the death penalty, and i'm not about to make some crack about this being an exception, nor am i going to make some point about how he needs to be "raped back" or anything of that nature... but sitting in a box eating shitty food until he dies of old age just seems too good?

Like we do that to people for selling fucking weed. When someones raped probably way more people than we'll ever even know about, and in the way he did it, it just feels kind of light.

Maybe if we had the technology to make him actually live 263 years stuck in a box eating shitty food.
posted by emptythought at 7:33 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

One shitty cop convicted has been hiding behind several other shitty cops for years. The iceberg metaphor is apt.
posted by irisclara at 8:11 PM on January 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

These brave, brave women.
And three cheers for the grandmother who took that first step.
posted by chapps at 8:20 PM on January 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

Think about it: would you like it if everyone was calling people in your line of work "apples" and reducing all the important work you do every day as being a "good apple?" No, you'd be fucking annoyed of that.

And the possibility of someone hypothetically being annoyed that others are calling them an apple (?) is obviously an important thing for everyone to sympathize with in this context, is what you're saying? That is what should give people pause right now?
posted by clockzero at 10:06 PM on January 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

Think about it: would you like it if everyone was calling people in your line of work "apples" and reducing all the important work you do every day as being a "good apple?" No, you'd be fucking annoyed of that.
posted by Taft at 6:36 PM on January 21

if they can't handle the pressure of an apple metaphor why are we issuing them guns
posted by Awful Peice of Crap at 10:15 PM on January 21, 2016 [38 favorites]

I am not sure this apple sidetrack is productive.

The DA's statement is designed to reassure people that the system is working and everything is fine. This is a picture that is only convincing to those who see this as a blip rather than a massive fog horn indicating 'CORRUPTION HERE!'.
posted by asok at 10:20 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

What? Smoke 'em out with harassment? What are you even?

"apple" being among the more vile slurs available in the English language to apply to any group
posted by invitapriore at 10:22 PM on January 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think the best solution is to dump it right back into the "Good Cops" laps. It's their responsibility to police themselves, so we should give any Good Cop who rats on a Bad Cop, that Bad Cops accrued benefits as a reward.

Would you rather overlook the acts of a Bad Cop, or double your retirement pay?
posted by mikelieman at 10:31 PM on January 21, 2016

Abusing a metaphor can enter being an awful piece of shit territory as easy as that is all I'm saying.
posted by Taft at 10:46 PM on January 21, 2016

Mod note: Couple comments deleted -- the "apples" issue has been pretty much addressed I feel. More generally, let's not make things personal. Cheers.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 11:19 PM on January 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

The problem is systemic. The police force attracts people who are motivated by a desire to abuse power. There are not effective safeguards in place to prevent them from doing so. It encourages cops to dehumanize many of the people they are supposed to be serving and exacerbates racist, sexist and other oppressive attitudes that recruits already had. (And cops are products of a racist, sexist and otherwise oppressive society, same as all of us.) Holtzclaw is responsible for his actions, but he's not an isolated bad actor, and there will continue to be other Holtzclaws until there is systemic change: effective screening out of recruits with predatory motives; attempts at all levels to build a culture of respect and combat, rather than reinforce, dangerous attitudes; and real accountability for cops and other police officials who commit or cover up abuses.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:38 AM on January 22, 2016 [6 favorites]

Not to mention an incentive for systemic change, which right now does not exist among the people best empowered to make the change occur. And Holtzclaw's crimes should be incentive enough, but DA David Prater's statement, rife with denial and subterfuge, makes it abundantly clear that those crimes are not and will not be incentive enough.
posted by blucevalo at 5:51 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Cop" is also a synecdoche equating a person with their badge (as is "boots on the ground"). Sorry for continuing the derail.
posted by frogmanjack at 10:20 AM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

And they only found him guilty on HALF.

Prosecutors shot gun charges and hope some will hit. For reasons of evidence, witness credibility (at least one complaint was determined to be fraudulent), reasonable doubt, effective if brutal defense tactics, not all charges will hit. And, frankly, you might be a little concerned if they did.

But to the case at hand - as I understand it, for a matter of a few months, one sick puppy exploits his position to abuse women whom he believe will not protest or be believed if they do protest. Happily, he is mistaken. One brave soul, then more, does protest and is believed. The Police Chief fires him and the DA's office spends serious time and money making a case against him and an all white jury (come on, you know someone would have brought that up if they had acquitted) found him guilty and sentence him to the max. The DA who went full bore Atticus Finch on the guy and won, wraps it up this particularly nasty chapter* by affirming, in the currently fashionable if somewhat fatuous but rhetorically standard "That's not who we are" kind of way, his belief that the crimes were beyond despicable and unacceptable to the OC, or any other police department and where found will be prosecuted.

And he's the villain?

Do the victims feel this way? To me, it sounds like a win. The kind that might just encourage more people to report such crimes. And perhaps the Justice Department to take a lead in figuring out how to identify apples before they begin to break bad. (Probably a hopeless task, but worth a try.)

But then, I'm a glass half full kind of guy and don't make presumptions about nor have a knee jerk reaction against cops and lawyers, nor suggest cover up where evidence of cover up is absent. Especially when they nail seriously bad apples.

* David Prater: "We're going to ask the judge to make sure that this defendant never sees the light of day. And we're going to ask him to run consecutive, every count."
posted by IndigoJones at 10:29 AM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

And they only found him guilty on HALF.

He did not get what he deserved. He got less than half.

If he actually was innocent of some of those charges, it's a good thing that he didn't get convicted of them, because it means that the person who did it is still out there somewhere.

If he actually was guilty of every single charge? Maybe the prosecutors decided that it wasn't necessary (given emotional costs among other things) to push further once they knew they had several consecutive life sentence convictions in the bag. Contrary to some beliefs, the justice system does not exist to provide revenge or "closure." It's unclear what would have been gained by pursuing convictions on the remaining charges.
posted by schmod at 1:27 PM on January 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

He did not get what he deserved. He got less than half.

you realise that you can't fill a glass more than full
posted by Sebmojo at 1:52 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Maybe finding him guilty of only the most clear-cut charges would reduce the chances of a successful appeal, or the chances of an appeal being heard? In that case stopping after several lifetimes' worth of guilty verdicts might make some kind of sense ... Not sure how sophisticated a jury would be about this kind of thing, and whether or not they considered the importance of giving closure to all of the victims, not just some...

Any lawyers around who would know?
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 3:25 PM on January 22, 2016

"Cop" is also a synecdoche equating a person with their badge (as is "boots on the ground"). Sorry for continuing the derail.

Only if you think the etymology is related to the badge, which it isn't - yes, it is a shortening of the word "copper", not the metal but the agent noun based on the verb "to cop", to catch, capture, grab, per Merriam-Webster and OED (OED grants there are other attributions. can't link because paywall).

posted by gingerest at 6:51 PM on January 22, 2016 [3 favorites]

Holzclaw has been removed from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections website.

The website, which shows criminal convictions, mug shots and where inmates are incarcerated, has deleted Holtzclaw.

When asked where Holtzclaw is located, Oklahoma Department of Corrections Spokesperson Terri Watkins would only say, “We are not going to comment, it is a matter of security.”

KFOR inquired if Holtzclaw is still in custody and Watkins assured us he is.

Alex Gerszewsk told KFOR Anchor/Reporter Ali Meyer, “ He was processed at Lexington exactly as every other offender. Currently, we cannot reveal his location for security; the security of the inmate and the facility.”
posted by bunderful at 5:40 PM on January 29, 2016