The future of law enforcement tech is already here
March 21, 2019 4:03 PM   Subscribe

Catch Me Once, Catch Me 218 Times, The program GraffitiTracker presaged law enforcement’s ability to use technology to connect people to past crimes. The sheriff had been keeping tabs on him and every other tagger in the city. It was 2010, and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department had recently rolled out a database called GraffitiTracker—software also used by police departments in Denver and Los Angeles County—and over the previous year, they had accumulated a massive set of images that included a couple hundred photos with his moniker. Painting over all Kyle’s handiwork, prosecutors claimed, had cost the county almost $100,000, and that sort of damage came with life-changing consequences. Ultimately, he made a plea deal: one year of incarceration, five years of probation, and more than $87,000 in restitution.

Here's the kicker- $87,000 dollars for tagging, where the cap for restitution fines for rape is $10,000. Kyle is still paying off the interests on the loans he had to take out to pay that fine, on top of his jail time. Is this the best use of law enforcement? And a lot of these taggers being forced to pay out sized fines are minors.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis (63 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
So long as we let technology lead while the law follows behind, who knows where we’ll end up.

This is really the core of it. The tech community has an ethos which has left them deep in the Ian Malcolm Problem - while resources are easily placed on trying to solve a problem, none are reserved for considering the ramifications of doing so.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:13 PM on March 21, 2019 [17 favorites]


Here's the kicker- $87,000 dollars for tagging, where the cap for restitution fines for rape is $10,000.

Is that the cap for a rape or is that the cap for 218 cases of rape? By my math, it looks like he's paying $400 per instance of tagging. How much more or less than $400 does the city spend cleaning up each instance, and should the amount of resources that the government spends in repairing damage be a factor in how much the convicted are required to pay?

The article says that the results are lucrative for the city, but "lucrative" seems like an overstatement if the city is actually spending what they say that they're spending on clean-up. It looks a lot closer to "breaking even".
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:30 PM on March 21, 2019 [16 favorites]


What annoys me is that, well, if they hadn't been painting buildings this technology never would have been invented. So now there's this tech which has an ability which will undoubtedly be put to use in unexpected ways over time, and I don't think always for the public good.
posted by hippybear at 4:31 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


$87k for 218 counts comes to $400 per offense. That is probably not too far out of whack with what it cost the city to clean it up. We are not talking about some crypto-surveillance pre-crime here - Kyle committed actual crimes with actual victims and actual damages and was caught and tried.
posted by AndrewStephens at 4:32 PM on March 21, 2019 [11 favorites]


I think he shouldn't be jailed at all. Probation and paid restitution should be standard for vandalism crimes. And $400 per tagging instance is a very reasonable fine.
posted by tclark at 4:36 PM on March 21, 2019 [13 favorites]


I don't know how much our individual views on the outcome in this case are central to the point the article is making. The question is not really "do you agree?", it's "is this what the law was intended to do?". Laws are responses to events and conditions in the world, and we are meant to agree on them through a process of legislative oversight which takes account of their effects. Drastic changes to the practical effects of those laws must be subject to similar oversight.
posted by howfar at 4:47 PM on March 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


What annoys me is that, well, if they hadn't been painting buildings this technology never would have been invented. So now there's this tech which has an ability which will undoubtedly be put to use in unexpected ways over time, and I don't think always for the public good.

As tech goes, I'm not sure how impressive and/or insidious I should consider "make a note of every time someone signs their name to a crime".
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:47 PM on March 21, 2019 [11 favorites]


Back in 2010 which is when his arrest was made, that was actually pretty impressive.
posted by hippybear at 4:58 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


So, uh...they're using "the tag we caught you painting looks a lot like this other tag that was painted on another building" as evidence to convict someone of a crime?

That seems...problematic.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:08 PM on March 21, 2019 [11 favorites]


Don’t be disingenuous. That’s what tagging IS. It’s like saying “we can’t hold up this contract in court because even though the signature looks like yours, anyone could have written it.”
posted by rikschell at 5:13 PM on March 21, 2019 [6 favorites]


I'm not being disingenuous, and a tag is nothing like a signature on a contract. It's an artwork. I don't doubt that this artist was responsible for most of the tags he was charged with - but courts of law are supposed to uphold a higher standard of evidence.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:24 PM on March 21, 2019 [15 favorites]


Don’t be disingenuous. That’s what tagging IS. It’s like saying “we can’t hold up this contract in court because even though the signature looks like yours, anyone could have written it.”

In most jurisdictions they don't prosecute caught taggers for previous tagging for precisely this reason. It would be very easy for a lawyer to say "someone copied my client's tag to set him up" or "my client was just copying a tag he had seen".

The only convictions for these kinds of things will be from plea bargains by suspects with shit lawyers.
posted by srboisvert at 5:28 PM on March 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


IANAL, but I believe criminal law has higher standards of evidence than civil law. An easily forged signature might be enough to enforce a contract but not to convict.
posted by Zalzidrax at 5:30 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


Seems to me like it's a fork of CompStat. Inevitable.
posted by unliteral at 5:41 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


“we can’t hold up this contract in court because even though the signature looks like yours, anyone could have written it.”

Which is why every important contract I've signed has had witnesses. Sometimes even notaries public. Most "signatures" are symbolic acts of assent, and can be substituted by an X or other symbol—and historically often were for the illiterate.

A contract holds up in court because somebody's got witnesses that will testify who agreed to what.
posted by traveler_ at 6:22 PM on March 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


they're using "the tag we caught you painting looks a lot like this other tag that was painted on another building" as evidence to convict someone of a crime?

Yeah, this is the problem. Normally the prosecutors would get to charge for one crime at a time, and go through the whole court process for each one. Having one trial for 218 counts is insane and seems to violate due process.
posted by corb at 6:51 PM on March 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


I think Howfar's point is really the fundamental one here. Did anyone imagine life-changing penalties of this sort back when the laws against graffiti were passed? If not, why should we imagine that this reflects our society's wishes?

Even the restitutionary argument has limits: Bernie Madoff forfeited over $17 billion, but he wasn't (e.g.) sentenced to involuntary servitude to pay the rest of his victims' losses. It may sound fair to charge Kyle the cost of cleanup, but at some point this becomes absolutely crushing. There's a social element even in crimes against property, and I don't think society's interests are served by the simple arithmetic used in this man's punishment.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:00 PM on March 21, 2019 [20 favorites]


This is a nightmare of capitalism, and facism.
posted by Oyéah at 7:19 PM on March 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


Kyle is/was solvent enough to take out a bank loan to pay off his fines. I'm not going to worry too much about him.
posted by vespabelle at 7:41 PM on March 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


I am reminded of something that happened in my high school when I was around 14 myself. Everyone tagged. Everyone painted- if you got caught you'd get in trouble but it was generally just a thing that happened, maybe you'd get suspended if you kept getting caught. But one day a cop car came down Irving street and two burly cops fucking body slammed two teenagers from my school they caught tagging- dragged them away in cop cars, and we never saw them in school again- guess they got expelled. Guess their race. GUESS.

There is no way laws like this wont be selectively used to punish POC and send them straight to prison and ruin their prospects forever because that is how laws like this work in this country. This is a tool of the fascist police in their quest to put POC into the school to prison pipeline.

This. Is. Wrong.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:59 PM on March 21, 2019 [24 favorites]


Real graffiti is art, taggers are just vandals.
posted by furtive at 9:19 PM on March 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


There's no standard of evidence when you accept a plea deal.
posted by ryanrs at 9:28 PM on March 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


I agree with TWF. However we feel about tagging, if we’re going to be all “Well, you did the graffiti, pay the fine” letter-of-the-law types now, it’s gonna be hard to protest when the cops announce that new data mining techniques have allowed them to identify and issue fines for every individual instance of speeding with a cellphone in the car since 2008.
posted by No-sword at 10:14 PM on March 21, 2019 [14 favorites]


I agree with TWF. However we feel about tagging, if we’re going to be all “Well, you did the graffiti, pay the fine” letter-of-the-law types now, it’s gonna be hard to protest when the cops announce that new data mining techniques have allowed them to identify and issue fines for every individual instance of speeding with a cellphone in the car since 2008.

To be honest, I've found myself wondering why this hasn't arrived yet. It doesn't seem technologically difficult to do - install software in all cars which tracks how fast they're going and then match it to speed limits as determined by GPS or something. But then I'm no inventor.
posted by AdamCSnider at 12:32 AM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


Real graffiti is art, taggers are just vandals.

"But I'm a cool supporter of authoritarian dystopia!"
posted by ominous_paws at 1:07 AM on March 22, 2019 [6 favorites]


I would love a system that fined drivers for every single speeding infraction! I would also prosecute every driver when someone is injured by their car for manslaughter. But I hate cars, and these policies would not fly politically. So the criminalisation of tagging does indeed reflect power: speeding okay, tagging not.

At the same time, tagging is also wrong: it's about power and ownership of a space, and power and ownership of public spaces should not be ceded to young men (typically) outside of our societies' power structures: this contributes to poor behaviour, crime and a lowering of the quality of life for everyone.

The support for tagging on MetaFilter I guess is because it was common for MetaFilter members to engage in tagging when they were young men?

I recall reading but cannot find an article about a trial of speed cameras in a city. It said that they found that yes, the same driver would get multiple fines in one journey, so they changed the system so you only got one. Power again. But I may have made up that factoid!
posted by alasdair at 1:31 AM on March 22, 2019 [7 favorites]


Yeah, okay, I also hate cars, so let’s make it jaywalking. Or copyright violations online. The structure of the argument remains the same. If we’re going to live in a total surveillance state where the traditional “too much trouble, let it slide” systems are abandoned, I’d at least like it not to be applied retroactively.
posted by No-sword at 3:10 AM on March 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


Ah, sorry, I understand your point now and you are right, my bad. I agree that we should have a social convention that changes in enforcement are not generally retrospective for non-violent crimes. So DNA testing for sexual crimes, yes, using AI to spot collusion by white-collar financiers to fix pricing, no. (Deliberately choosing an example out of sympathy with MetaFilter).
posted by alasdair at 3:47 AM on March 22, 2019


While my lawyer always tells me to stop confessing my crimes on the Internet, I'm going to admit that yes, since getting my license 25 years ago, I have occasionally exceeded the posted speed limit.

If you were to compile a list of every single time I've done so, you'd have a nice, lengthy list of potential fines. The difference is that you wouldn't have a list of actual harm. Nobody has been injured or even moderately inconvenienced by my speeding.

In comparison, every single tag is an actual harm that a real person has to expend real resources to correct. While it sucks that this poor kid has to pay back $87,000, he actually did $87,000 in harm.
posted by Hatashran at 5:33 AM on March 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


I suspect that one's reaction to all of this hinges largely on whether one identifies more with a graffiti artist, or a building owner.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:03 AM on March 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


I identify with the dude from the city who has to go out and cover up graffiti some days, or even many days, rather than doing his normal job. And myself, who has to walk by ugly shit all day because taggers aren't exempt from Sturgeon's Law and 90% of it is shit, 90% of what's left is still shit. I get to walk by formerly nice sculpted walls made by craftspeople who get THEIR work shit on by taggers. I identify with the street mural artists here in LA who do beautiful murals in every style who get their work shit on by a tagger.

Tagging isn't a victimless crime just because you hate building owners for being the property-owning class and you hate the cops because they're cops (which means they're almost universally assholes because they either commit crimes under color of authority or keep quiet for those who do). I don't give much of a shit about building owners and cops. They can take care of themselves. I care about everyone else involved, though.
posted by tclark at 7:48 AM on March 22, 2019 [6 favorites]


Outside my window there is one of those boxes that you see tucked into corners all over the city. Something to do with the phones or other utilities, I dunno. It's about the size of a file cabinet, dull green to blend in with the hedge. Someone tagged it and it's been bugging me for a year now.

When the weather warms up I plan to go down to the hardware store and get some swatches, find the closest matching spray paint I can for the original green. Then I will go over there, in broad daylight, and paint over that tag. I don't expect anyone will call the police since I am white and old and therefore privileged. I'm not calling any authorities either. They might look for someone to punish, when all I want is to get some green spray paint applied. Taggers grow old too; let them move into their young adulthood without fines or arrests. I just want it cleaned up so I will take care of it.

It won't be the first incidence of guerilla community improvement, here. These things don't need to be official.
posted by elizilla at 8:04 AM on March 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


tclark, yeah! The tag I am going to cover is just a white scrawl. Probably an illegible obscenity.

That box belongs to a utility company. They have enough people trying to get their services working; I'm not going to wait on hold to ask them to send a truck to clean graffiti off their box when that truck could be fixing someone's power or internet or whatever.

A can of green spray paint will cost like $10. No more time and money spent than, say, planting a new perennial in the border, and similar effects in terms of prettying the place up. It might get tagged again but then a new plant might get eaten by deer, too. You just keep working at your garden.
posted by elizilla at 8:18 AM on March 22, 2019


Why not punish graffiti with community service to clean up graffiti?
posted by graventy at 8:25 AM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


While it sucks that this poor kid has to pay back $87,000, he actually did $87,000 in harm.

Did he? People are taking it as a given that he cost the city $400 per tag, but that's just the number you get if you divide his fine by 218. We don't actually have any information on dollar values in damage. We don't even know how much it cost to clean up, people are just doing simple math and saying "that sounds about right."

I'm surprised that people are so dismissive of an $87,000 fine. For perspective, I'm about $80,000 in debt. It dominates my life, and it will continue to dominate my life for decades. Did his tagging impact the city for decades, as well? There comes a point at which punishment for the perpetrator far outweighs the impact of his crimes on the community. Why is everyone so confident that this is a matter of simple math?

Anyway, this is a pretty sweet deal for the police. The longer it takes to catch someone, the more you can eventually soak them for.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 9:51 AM on March 22, 2019 [6 favorites]


If they are running speed cams and don't ticket every infraction, immediately, then this catch up enforcement is selective application of the law. When they only retroactively ticket certain individuals, that is how selective persecition happens. Then people in turbans, or hajib, or people of color, or when combined with facial recognition, people of a certain political persuasion suddenly find they are inhibited from participating in our "free" SSociety by financial and legal mountains out of nowhere.
posted by Oyéah at 9:58 AM on March 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


The $87,000 number is bullshit, even accounting for 218 incidents of tagging. Think about how much would it cost to employ someone and provide for the equipment to paint over the tags?

I'm going to assume 2 tags covered per working day, which sounds to me like a ridiculously low rate, but whatever. That means 109 working days, or 872 person hours, at $40 per hour (to account for a generous wage plus cost of benefits, retirement, pension, etc.) comes to $34,880. Assume $5,000 for equipment and supplies (how could it possibly be that much, I don't know but whatever). Transportation costs, I don't know how to estimate, but it's certainly less than $40,000 for the rest of the project, so I don't know how an honest restitution bill of $87,000 is arrived at.
posted by skewed at 10:15 AM on March 22, 2019 [5 favorites]


I don't think jail time for this offender served society. I also think that instead of taking out loans the court should have given him a payment plan that he could pay back in a reasonable manner; interest free.

"I suspect that one's reaction to all of this hinges largely on whether one identifies more with a graffiti artist, or a building owner."

Well, I certainly don't identify with a building owner. But I'd like to think that I have more respect for graffiti artists to conflate them with taggers.
posted by el io at 10:18 AM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


I think the division between taggers and "true" graffiti artists is an artificial one. Lots of artists got their start tagging, lots of taggers put a lot of effort into the kind of stylized writing that has now been embraced as a part of urban culture. Plenty of people make art and continue tagging, as well, and can be beloved members of their communities (like Anemal in the Bay Area).

And plenty of graffiti murals are treated like public nuisances, too. I remember when a mural near my place in LA, which had been preserved after the death of its artist, was suddenly painted over by the owner of the building. Some of the great Chicano graffiti artists in LA were treated as no more than criminal vandals until years later.

People hear "tagging" and imagine juvenile scrawls, gang tags, and other stuff that certainly does exist. But there's a lot more to it than that, and I think it's telling that one of the justifications for such a severe penalty has been that "it wasn't art." I don't like that people want to have it both ways, praising "real" art if they find it acceptable, while embracing harsh punishment for everyone else.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:36 AM on March 22, 2019 [5 favorites]


Leaving the "building owners are rentiers" problem aside, how does tagging make you feel? Does it make you stop and appreciate the wide variety of talent on display? Do you wish you could Patreon-donate money to the few that show potential? When you look out the window of the train at 5.30 am in the morning where you're grinding out a commute and you see people spray painting random slogans on the walls of the apartments that face the train tracks, does that make you proud of your society? Would you show people pictures and say "look at my awesome community, come and live here"?

Graffiti makes me feel disappointed. I do not feel proud of my town when I see the defacement of property, either private or public. I like living in a society where there are rules. One of the important rules is "Don't destroy other people's stuff". Painting crap on buildings is unambiguously destroying stuff.

If you want to destroy people's stuff, go find a society where they allow that. If you want to stay in this society, follow our rules. They aren't always great rules, but they generally prevent anarchy and mostly people can get by. It's better when we're nicer to each other and when the moral high ground creates awesome outcomes.

Spray painting my fence doesn't create a better society.

If your creative urges cause you to wake up at night in a frenzy of desire to spray slogans on big flat surfaces, go find some plywood and go crazy. It's cheap. Don't like your first attempt? Paint over it with white paint. Oh, wait, cleaning that shit up is a pain? Yeah, now you know how we feel, not only having to look at your half-baked practice efforts, but having to cover up your efforts just so you can go at it again.
posted by breezytimes at 11:35 AM on March 22, 2019


Its so nice to know so many mefites care more about property than people. Really gives me the warm fuzzies. If you don't care about the desperate people who turn to art to make meaning in their lives being turned into so much fertilizer by the meat grinder that is the "justice" system, maybe care about the fact that this technology once normalized will come for you too.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:42 AM on March 22, 2019 [8 favorites]


how does tagging make you feel? Does it make you stop and appreciate the wide variety of talent on display? Do you wish you could Patreon-donate money to the few that show potential? When you look out the window of the train at 5.30 am in the morning where you're grinding out a commute and you see people spray painting random slogans on the walls of the apartments that face the train tracks, does that make you proud of your society? Would you show people pictures and say "look at my awesome community, come and live here"?

Mostly yes? I like lot of graffiti I see. Regardless, I certainly don't want people punished this severely for it, this is excessively punative.
posted by agregoli at 12:17 PM on March 22, 2019 [6 favorites]


On the one hand, I agree that painting on someone else's property is vandalism, and should be treated as such by the law. I don't think anyone's really disputing that.

On the other hand, I'm honestly quite surprised to see so many MeFites clutching their pearls over this.

Because, yeah – I do like seeing graffiti. Some of it, anyway. There's a code – and writing on homes or small businesses (for example) goes against the code. That shit is not cool. But, a decent piece in an alley? In an abandoned warehouse? On a freight car? (The code also forbids painting over railway markings.) Hell yeah. I like knowing that it's possible for people to operate a bit outside of the law, in the name of art and self-expression. I like seeing throw-ups from all around while I wait at train crossings – and knowing that they're traveling around the country, being seen by thousands, never asking for nor receiving the blessing of some shitty busybody arts council for the privilege. I like entering a building that's been left to rot, and discovering that it's been turned into a DIY, grass-roots art gallery.

One person's wildstyle is another person's nice perennial.

I'm okay with punishing people who are caught writing on shit that doesn't belong to them. I'm just not okay with using dubious standards of evidence to ruin someone's life over it. While more damaging crimes go unpunished.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 12:25 PM on March 22, 2019 [10 favorites]


Banksy’s fucked
posted by griphus at 12:30 PM on March 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


I think you misspelled "annoying and overrated"
posted by escape from the potato planet at 1:01 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think this thread is getting fighty because everyone wants it to be about their special argument. It's okay to think that this guy got unjustly screwed BUT ALSO that tagging is a pretty shitty thing to do. It's okay for him not to be a cause celebre artiste, but just a thoughtless jerk who doesn't deserve prison time. And it's okay for ugly pointless vandalism to be frowned upon, but to hold our justice system to a higher standard of who gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

For those of you arguing that vandalism really SHOULD carry long prison sentences, or that illegible marker scrawls on every public surface is Great Art, thank you to your service to the Edgy Argument Association.
posted by rikschell at 1:18 PM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


Yeah, this is the problem. Normally the prosecutors would get to charge for one crime at a time, and go through the whole court process for each one. Having one trial for 218 counts is insane and seems to violate due process.

Really? What do you think is normally?

Paul Manafort was convicted of eight crimes. Should he have had eight trials? Bill Cosby was convicted of three crimes. Should he have had three trials? Should his victims be required to testify three times?
posted by JackFlash at 2:32 PM on March 22, 2019


For those of you arguing that vandalism really SHOULD carry long prison sentences, or that illegible marker scrawls on every public surface is Great Art, thank you to your service to the Edgy Argument Association.

What a weirdly rude and snide way to engage with everyone.

I don't think anyone is arguing that this guy made great art. I was just making the point that people seem to be applying subjective criteria to determine what is and isn't deserving of harsh punishment.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:50 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I don't see anyone arguing that all graffiti is great art, and I for one don't think I'm being "fighty".
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:09 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


If you don't care about the desperate people who turn to art to make meaning in their lives

[citation needed]
posted by tclark at 3:09 PM on March 22, 2019


If you don't care about the desperate people who turn to art to make meaning in their lives being turned into so much fertilizer by the meat grinder that is the "justice" system, maybe care about the fact that this technology once normalized will come for you too.

Here's the rest of my sentence tclark- I take it you're pro-meat grinder then?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:11 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I've made multiple comments on this thread, and you can take them as you will, I'm not going to play the starving artist versus pitiless meat grinder rhetoric game.

I find the phrase "desperate people who turn to art to make meaning" doing an awful lot of heavy lifting for taggers, perhaps because I'm jaded about the number of middle-class assholes I knew growing up who liked to play tough-guy suburban "street gang for privileged kids" simulator in tagging crews. I knew a guy who half-bragged about stabbing a dude from a rival tagging crew in the head, and he's a cop now. Oddly, none of these guys I knew were desperate, and none of them were doing it to give their lives meaning.
posted by tclark at 3:20 PM on March 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


These laws are selectively applied. Your "street gang for privileged kids" will never get caught up in these laws, as tough as they are, they'll always get either leniency, "don't want this to ruin a good life" judges or a good lawyer. But the rest of them, mostly black and brown and all poor will be pushed into plea deals or jail time. Stop caring more about property than people.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:24 PM on March 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


See, there's (at least part of) the problem with this conversation. People are interpreting "graffiti" to mean whatever they want it to mean. Are we talking about graffiti that's done by the disenfranchised, or by suburban bros? Stuff that's done on someone's backyard fence, or on an underpass? A crude white scrawl, or an elaborate and artistic mural?

All of these qualify as "graffiti". But they don't all mean the same thing.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:27 PM on March 22, 2019


But the rest of them, mostly black and brown and all poor will be pushed into plea deals or jail time.

I see you haven't read my first comment, then. And I find your characterization that I care more about property than people both unsupported by by comments at best and disingenuous at worst. I'm not going to engage you further on this topic.
posted by tclark at 3:27 PM on March 22, 2019


Mod note: Homo neanderthalensis and tclark, you've both made your points.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 3:51 PM on March 22, 2019


Paul Manafort was convicted of eight crimes. Should he have had eight trials? Bill Cosby was convicted of three crimes. Should he have had three trials? Should his victims be required to testify three times?

I actually did assume that those counts were for individual incidents. I hate those people, but I still think it’s really problematic to put people on “this trial is for everything wrong you’ve done in your life” just to make the lives of prosecutors easier.
posted by corb at 3:58 PM on March 22, 2019


Trials aren't conducted that way.
posted by agregoli at 5:17 AM on March 23, 2019


Personally, I like the graffiti in my neighborhood. A few of the taggers are jackasses and deserve a slap on the wrist and some time spent cleaning up their mess, but there are always those few that do their best to ruin it for everyone.

I'm sure I'd have a different view if jackasses were constantly tagging people's houses, painting over street signs, and the like, but they don't. They liven up the bare walls and don't fuck up what's already there.
posted by wierdo at 5:21 PM on March 23, 2019 [2 favorites]


"Oh no, my tasteful brutalist gray wall isn't gray anymore!"

It is incredible how readily NIMBYism leads to authoritarianism.

If you ask me the Washington Monument could really use a little color. Too bad BORF is banned in DC.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:12 AM on March 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


All of these qualify as "graffiti". But they don't all mean the same thing.

Meh, I've read Barthes.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:07 PM on March 24, 2019


Real graffiti is art, taggers are just vandals.

One person's vandal is another's anti-gentrification activist.
posted by acb at 3:47 PM on March 24, 2019 [2 favorites]


anti-gentrification activist
That's my tag - mad ups.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:31 PM on March 24, 2019


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