Kicking the Pigeon

February 17, 2006 7:02 PM

Kicking the Pigeon:On Sunday, April 13, 2003, at about 5:00 p.m., Diane Bond, a 48 year-old mother of three, stepped out of her eighth floor apartment in 3651 South Federal, the last remaining high-rise at the Stateway Gardens public housing development, and encountered three white men. Although not in uniform, they were immediately recognizable by their postures, body language, and bulletproof vests as police officers. Bond gave me the following account of what happened next.

“Where do you live at?” one of the officers asked. He had a round face and closely cropped hair. Bond later identified him as Christ Savickas.

“Right there,” she pointed to her door.

He put his gun to her right temple and snatched her keys from her hand.
posted by jennyb (48 comments total)

Brought to you by The Invisible Institute.

More info about Stateway Gardens, and a response to "Kicking the Pigeon" from the Chicago Reader.
posted by jennyb at 7:02 PM on February 17, 2006

Wow. Of course, its based entirely on plantiff's testimony.
posted by delmoi at 7:10 PM on February 17, 2006

The cops deny having any contact with Bond on the dates described. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

My gut feeling is that the cops rousted Willie for drugs that weren't there when they did the roust, and they did some damage to her place and handcuffed her, and that the stories she's telling are exaggerations (and falsehoods) in order to get a measure of perceived justice. No "dry rape", no forcing of the kids to beat each other up.

Kalven, by writing "true fiction" a la Capote during an open court case, is being irresponsible and reckless and should deserve no legal protection under his claimed right of "free association"; it is telling that he is not claiming protection under freedom of the press.
posted by solid-one-love at 7:25 PM on February 17, 2006

I've heard far more fantastic stories than this from plaintiffs alleging police brutality. Even if this were interesting, which it's not, there's absolutely no reason to believe it's true. The only value of tales like this lies in weeding out people who firmly believe in a presumption of innocence toward any criminal but instantly accept as fact the most insubstantial allegation against police or government authority.
posted by cribcage at 7:26 PM on February 17, 2006

If the cops were indeed in her apartment surely there'd be forensic evidence. Can't somebody get some independent forensic help, or is it only the cops who get to dust for prints?
posted by kaemaril at 7:28 PM on February 17, 2006

It would cost a ridiculous amount of money to have forensic tests done.

I thought after Rodney King that black America would have video cameras and audio recorders all over the place because police misconduc cannot be proven or believed without video evidence. It never happened. At some point, it will happen. When it does, things will change drastically.

Laws making it a requirement for police to be armed with cameras and record their arrests would stop police brutality in its tracks. Don't expect law enforcement to get behind that anytime soon.
posted by flarbuse at 7:34 PM on February 17, 2006

Kalven, by writing "true fiction" a la Capote during an open court case, is being irresponsible and reckless and should deserve no legal protection under his claimed right of "free association"; it is telling that he is not claiming protection under freedom of the press.

You oppose the first Amendment? Wow. I mean I guess your canadian, but wow.

Laws making it a requirement for police to be armed with cameras and record their arrests would stop police brutality in its tracks. Don't expect law enforcement to get behind that anytime soon.

I totaly agree. If cops have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear, right?
posted by delmoi at 7:37 PM on February 17, 2006

The only value of tales like this lies in weeding out people who firmly believe in a presumption of innocence toward any criminal but instantly accept as fact the most insubstantial allegation against police or government authority.

This is the CPD we're talking about, which in the past has run its own burglary ring, to cite one of the more interesting cases to be found among the more routine beatings and torture of suspects and protestors (1, 2). And yours sounds to me like the statement of someone who's not spent much time in the company of the police.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 7:43 PM on February 17, 2006

The only value of tales like this lies in weeding out people who firmly believe in a presumption of innocence toward any criminal but instantly accept as fact the most insubstantial allegation against police or government authority.

Ahem. Ermmm. Well, maybe this guy had it coming. Or, that twelve year-old in Pennsylvania.

I can't even possibly begin to respond to your statement, cribcage. I guess you're right -- these sort of articles do weed out "people who firmly believe in a presumption of innocence toward any criminal" (one of the founding principles of the US legal system) and those who put their horse behind "police or government authority."

Yes, those officers are innocent until proven guilty. But you'll forgive me if I err towards Ms. Bond's side of the story, given the history of police brutality towards the working class.

And I thought the article was very interesting, jennyb.
posted by ford and the prefects at 7:47 PM on February 17, 2006

This story is totally bogus.
everyone knows Vic Mackey works in LA.
posted by CCK at 7:49 PM on February 17, 2006

You oppose the first Amendment? Wow. I mean I guess your canadian, but wow.

I oppose hiding behind the law to avoid a subpoena. This is hardly a controversial opinion, so I don't grok your "wow" comment.
posted by solid-one-love at 7:57 PM on February 17, 2006

Kalven, by writing "true fiction" a la Capote during an open court case, is being irresponsible and reckless and should deserve no legal protection under his claimed right of "free association"

All of this based on your "gut feeling" that "the stories she's telling are exaggerations (and falsehoods) in order to get a measure of perceived justice."

In other words, you don't know what the hell you're talking about, but you'll shoot your mouth off and make up some bullshit based on your "gut feeling" anyway.

And you're accusing someone who was there of being irresponsible? Shame on you.
posted by MegoSteve at 7:59 PM on February 17, 2006

All of this based on your "gut feeling" that "the stories she's telling are exaggerations (and falsehoods) in order to get a measure of perceived justice."

Actually, no. I think it is irresponsible and reckless to report widely and in detail, especially in a maner in which Kelman is 'reporting', on any case currently before the courts. And lookee here, the laws of my country are such that they support my viewpoint.

Thank you for your impersonal and wholly pleasant contribution to the thread.
posted by solid-one-love at 8:05 PM on February 17, 2006

solid-one-love writes "My gut feeling is that the cops rousted Willie for drugs that weren't there when they did the roust, and they did some damage to her place and handcuffed her,"


Does your gut inform you that cops, without a warrant, intentionally "doing some damage" is a violation of the victims' civil rights, or would you be OK with cops doing the same to you?
posted by orthogonality at 8:16 PM on February 17, 2006

Of course it would be an infringement of their rights. And I think that she's lying about the bulk of what had occurred and that the cops are withholding the truth about what they did and that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

By the same token, would you be OK with someone making false claims that you had infringed on their rights multiple times, even if you had done it on one occasion?

Because there's equal amounts of public evidence for both sides of the story, yet I'm sure seeing a lot of pissed-off people taking only one side.
posted by solid-one-love at 8:23 PM on February 17, 2006

i hope people remember this the next time they talk about moving from "bushland" to canada ... this is the 2nd time this week some canadian has cast doubt upon our constitutional freedoms

it's not necessarily liberal-land up there

i find this story pretty believable ... i don't think it's common ... but it does happen
posted by pyramid termite at 8:25 PM on February 17, 2006

it's not necessarily liberal-land up there

You would be hard-pressed to find a Canadian more liberal than I. If you can make a solid ethical argument for Kelman to not turn over his recordings, I'd love to hear it, but his argument that (paraphrasing) "I would be outcast from the subculture about which I am reporting and this would violate my freedom of association" is about as flimsy as can be.
posted by solid-one-love at 8:31 PM on February 17, 2006

The only value of tales like this lies in weeding out people who firmly believe in a presumption of innocence toward any criminal but instantly accept as fact the most insubstantial allegation against police or government authority.

Lovely chill you've brought in with you thise evening.

Dick.
posted by mwhybark at 8:51 PM on February 17, 2006

the legal concept of freedom of association

it's complicated, but it's not necessarily a flimsy defense

there is also the argument to be made that people would not tell him things at all if they knew that every thing they said would be subject to police inspection ... in short, the police want to hear what people have said to a non-policeman, without having their rights read to them and with the understanding that the person they were talking to was not a police agent

if you think that making reporters a branch of the police force isn't a problem, then ask yourself how reporters are going to get the truth of the story if the people they talk to are always going to have to wonder if what they say is going to end up as evidence
posted by pyramid termite at 9:03 PM on February 17, 2006

I know and have worked with Jamie Kalven. I also live in Chicago. The fact that anyone would doubt that this happened is astounding.
posted by mapalm at 9:08 PM on February 17, 2006

if you think that making reporters a branch of the police force isn't a problem, then ask yourself how reporters are going to get the truth of the story if the people they talk to are always going to have to wonder if what they say is going to end up as evidence

But he is explicitly not using the freedom of the press defense, making whether or not he is a reporter irrelevant to his refusal to release his recordings.
posted by solid-one-love at 10:02 PM on February 17, 2006

I can't even possibly begin to respond to your statement, cribcage.

All evidence to the contrary, although maybe what you meant to say was, "I can't even possibly begin to respond intelligently to your statement." Your counterargument is that because police brutality has occurred in the past, all future allegations should be afforded credit until proven false.

Perhaps you've never worked in criminal law or known a cop, so I'll oblige in educating you: For every Rodney King, there are a thousand cops falsely accused by desperate criminals hoping to gain leverage or exact revenge. Those cases are far more numerous and far less sexy, so you don't often see them on the front page — but they're there, if you take a moment to learn about the subject.

Moreover, if we apply your logic to the flip side of the equation then any presumption of innocence afforded criminals gets thrown clear out the window. The vast, vast majority of people who find themselves on the wrong side of a criminal indictment are in fact guilty of the crime alleged — so according to your line of thinking, we should just consider them all guilty unless they can prove otherwise.

On the bright side, your flimsy retort is redeemed somewhat by virtue of contrast with the fellow whose rebuttal consisted of the word, "Dick." We'll assume he's 8, though, and that Daddy left the computer logged in to MetaFilter.
posted by cribcage at 10:07 PM on February 17, 2006

Thanks for posting this, jennyb.

From reading the articles, Jamie Kalven seems pretty credible to me. But cribcage's comments make some sense too.

Here's the complaint.
posted by russilwvong at 10:15 PM on February 17, 2006

Plant some dope--once drugs are found, then all the abuse is practically justified. From there its a matter of perception and force necessary to subdue the accused is justified.

I find it fascinating how vivid the story makes the problem of police privilege gone awry. If we're not safe with the cops then where are we safe?
posted by xtian at 10:16 PM on February 17, 2006

The cops deny having any contact with Bond on the dates described. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Do I have to explain this again?

This is a fallacy, and a dangerous one. Take this reasoning to its extreme, and you can get out of any crime, simply by posing the right false explanation. At best, it is instantly throwing your hands up and saying, "Ah well, I guess we'll never know. Let's split the difference."

The fact that the Rodney King incident happened at all means we dare not dismiss reports like this out of hand. Of course that doesn't mean it happened, and it is absolutely true that the police are considered innocent until guilt is proven, but it's always surprising to see those one or two people vigorously deny the possibility, based on such limited information.
posted by JHarris at 11:38 PM on February 17, 2006

On the bright side, your flimsy retort...

You know, you're right. Looking back on it, my retort was pretty flimsy. I apologize to MetaFilter.

Still, it IS an interesting article.
posted by ford and the prefects at 11:40 PM on February 17, 2006

This is a fallacy, and a dangerous one.

I don't see how it's a fallacy. In my experience, it is a fact: the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. I don't think that I am arguing based upon an invalid inference by any means.

It is certainly not "dangerous" to be wary of both parties' truthfulness. I would suggest that without additional information, it is dangerous to not be wary of either party's truthfulness.

The fact that the Rodney King incident happened at all means we dare not dismiss reports like this out of hand. Of course that doesn't mean it happened, and it is absolutely true that the police are considered innocent until guilt is proven, but it's always surprising to see those one or two people vigorously deny the possibility, based on such limited information.

Maybe I'm having trouble with the big words, but I have seen nobody here deny the possibility, vigorously or otherwise.
posted by solid-one-love at 12:05 AM on February 18, 2006

It's a fallacy because it's fucking useless and not true to postulate that in any given individual case the truth must lie between two arbitrarily situated poles- much less evenly between two poles in some presumably noble "middle ground". This Solomonic wisdom is not foolproof, but is often the proof relied on by fools. Why "must" the truth lie in between in this case, even if anecdotally you've recalled situations where the truth has lain between two conflicting stories?


Let me make this darn clear: in a case like this, where the two parties are making diametrically opposed arguments, we can state the truth by nature cannot be "somewhere in the middle". The cops claim they were never even there, she says they were there. Both cannot be true, and unless these are Schroedinger's Vice Squad they weren't "partially" there. She also claims that they did all these things while there that should land them in prison for a long, long, long time if remotely true. If they weren't there at all, she's 100% lying; if they were there, then at most she may be exaggerating what they did there, but we'd then have very little reason to doubt the bulk of her account if the police are found to be 100% lying about not being there at all. If the police would lie about not being there, it certainly calls into question their character and makes more likely that they'd do other things alleged in this report.


So yes, there literally cannot be a middle ground here solid-one-love. Absolutely, unequivocably, no middle ground: the cops were there or they were not. The only fudgeable area is in the possibility that she's somehow exaggerated some elements of the story. But even then, even if that's true it's a hell of a lot closer to her side than theirs. That's hardly the "middle", except in the sense that the 1 yard line is "in the middle" of the two end zones. Either she's 100% wrong and they were never there, or she's 99% right and is only fudging the details while the cops are outright lying.

solid-one-love: Maybe I'm having trouble with the big words, but I have seen nobody here deny the possibility, vigorously or otherwise.

Well, you aren't denying the possibility, you're just vigorously suggesting it's a gross exaggeration without any evidence of your own, using that infallible barometer of justice, your "gut". Hence our "gut feeling" that you are damn well in fact "vigorously denying" that it happened exactly as she said. And JHarris was pointing out that this scenario is not beyond the realm of likelihood or possibility, since the seemingly outlandish claim by Rodney King that he was brutally beat by a gang of police happened to be videotaped and proven to have happened as he said it did.

Which goes to show you even the most ridiculous sounding claims can, in fact, be 100% true, and aren't necessarily "somewhat false" or "somewhere in the middle". By claiming that they are, you seem to be already vigorously denying that her story is fully true- without evidence of any kind, except your much-ballyhooed "gut".
posted by hincandenza at 1:03 AM on February 18, 2006

A: He said that the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. Not must be.
B: You are denying the possibility that both she and the cops are both, to some degree, incorrect. Is that not a valid middle ground? The middle covers a large area.
posted by JohnnyB at 1:22 AM on February 18, 2006

cribcage: The vast, vast majority of people who find themselves on the wrong side of a criminal indictment are in fact guilty of the crime alleged

Just out of curiosity, do you a have statistic to cite for that? Even leaving aside the external factors influencing decisions -- prejudice, for example -- what percentage of criminal cases are successfully prosecuted? To say the "vast, vast majority" of criminal defendants are guilty seems a bit ... overstated.
posted by mkhall at 1:43 AM on February 18, 2006

A. What, he was tossing out irrelevent comments, then? He was stating that as if it were some kind of logical argument or axiomatic foundation. It seemed to be a pillar of an argument that "Well, we just don't know, and I'm sure this lady is lying because it certainly couldn't be entirely true!", which he based on his "gut" feeling.

His gut has no basis in fact- this story could as easily be 100% true as 100% false, and there is no reason to believe that it must or even usually is in the middle in this case. Hence the rush by myself and JHarris to call it out as a "fallacy", that he was clearly implying that just because the truth "is usually somewhere in the middle" (which I don't even agree with- his own belief in that may just be confirmation bias in his own life) it had any bearing on interpreting this case, or judging this story's likelihood of being fully accurate and precise as told in the FPP. Had he said "well, black people usually exaggerate" as his axiom, I would similarly disagree with both that premise, and its relevance even if true to this particular case.

B: Please see 1-yd-line analogy. The middle doesn't cover a large area, in that "middle" implies an even-handedness, a balance between two sides. If it turns out the broken glass/picture was of her family and not of Jesus, and every other detail was dead-on-balls accurate... well, you'd hardly say that made the truth "somewhere in the middle". Even if you were technically correct that it was "somewhere between" the term "middle" implies that it's an even mixing between both sides.



Besides, I made it abundantly clear the story could not lie anywhere in the middle!!! They are making diametrically opposed statements that literally cannot both be true... how could that not be clearer to you?! Either she's lying 100% and they were never there, or they're lying 100% and they were there. The specific details of their visit, if it happened, is like the difference between 1st and goal on the 1 yard line and 1st and goal a half yard from the goal line: minor, and mostly irrelevent.

The opposing claims are "police were there" and "police were not there". The woman is also making a second claim, based on her first, that they did X, Y, and Z while there. If the police are lying about not even being there, then they are 100% wrong and there is no "in the middle". If the police had claimed "we were there, but it all happened like this", you'd have more room to claim a possible 3rd, middle ground. But their claims are diametrically opposed, and cannot both be true even in part. If her primary claim is true, the police's primary claim is false. Once the issue of the primary claim is settled, then the secondary claim becomes clearer: either she's 100% lying that they were there, and therefore all her details are BS... or the police are 100% lying that they weren't there, which certainly lends a great deal more credibility to her specific details, if the cops in question were so eager to deny their very presence...
posted by hincandenza at 1:46 AM on February 18, 2006

I'm new to his work, but I admire Jamie Kalvern. He's undeniably courageous. It is quite an acheivement to enter this world, to which so few pay attention and even fewer are willing to advocate for, and win the trust of people who are by necessity intensely guarded.

This narrative is necessarily complicated by the fact that he had a relationship with his subject. He knew her as an against-all-odds survivor of trauma most could not endure, then watched her crumble in the aftermath of these events. If someone else could have told this story, there'd be greater objectivity, but who else would? Who else cares?

The truth of this story, outside a courtroom (and most likely in it), is of course difficult to discover. But some facts are clear, and they are not insubstantial. People who live in public housing are widely assumed by the outside world to be an almost entirely criminal class. Their truthfulness is more automatically doubted. The officers in this story are widely reputed in the area to be extraordinarily violent, but that reputation is discounted, because the presumption is, to paraphrase one of the forum's commenters, that it's "gangbangers crying police brutality to get back on the street," as if this has anything to do with a woman who has not been arrested for, much less convicted of, any crime. Then there's this:

OPS [the Office of Professional Standards, responsible for investigating reports of police brutality] has long been sharply criticized by human rights activists who argue that it functions not as a vehicle for holding the police accountable but as a shield against such accountability. They cite the numbers. For example, from 2001 through 2003, OPS received at least 7,610 complaints of police brutality. Significant discipline was imposed by the CPD in only 13 of those cases—six officers were terminated and seven were suspended for 30 days or more. In other words, an officer charged with brutality during 2001 – 2003 had less than a one-in-a-thousand chance of being fired.

Even given that many reports of police brutality are false, that's simply astounding.

The injustice is clear: if I filed a claim about a brutal police act that occured in my home, it would be taken seriously. I am middle-class, white, professionally employed, educated, and live in a low-crime area. There's no way I would be threatened with lockdown. There's no way that such a wide array of supporting testimony from my family and neighbors would be dismissed out of hand. There's no way I would find myself trembling, soiling myself out of fear, waiting in the dark for the police lurking near my door to leave so I could enter my own home. If such things did somehow happen to me, there's no way that my local media would be completely uninterested in my claims. Maybe that's all so widely understood that laying it out like that seems naive, but it's no less horrific for its obviousness.

Kalvern is right to refuse to turn over his notes and sources; he is right to assume a role of advocacy for people who have none; he is right to tell stories that otherwise would never be heard. Thanks, jennyb (and well said, hincandenza).
posted by melissa may at 1:51 AM on February 18, 2006

You can't get the truth by taking two data points and interpolating. The idea that this is a reliable truth-finding methodology is exceptionally dangerous.

The "two sides to every story" concept is as flawed as it's destructive. Sometimes the truth lies in the middle, but sometimes the truth lies entirely on one side.
posted by I Love Tacos at 2:20 AM on February 18, 2006

The only value of tales like this lies in weeding out people who firmly believe in a presumption of innocence toward any criminal but instantly accept as fact the most insubstantial allegation against police or government authority.

They can also serve to "weed out" people who presume that such accusations are always false...if by "weed out" you mean "identify" rather than "eliminate". That's a bit of an ominous expression, you know.

For every Rodney King, there are a thousand cops falsely accused by desperate criminals hoping to gain leverage or exact revenge.

I don't claim to know what the truth is in the situation described by the article. However, I don't think Ms. Bond could be described as a "desperate criminal", since they never arrested her, nor was she under any kind of investigation. Keep in mind that she relayed this story to the author of the article, who was the one that pointed her towards OPS.

That doesn't completely rule out a revenge motive, but the officers themselves don't provide any reason why she would want revenge. Their defense is to paint her as mentally unstable. Of course, that could also be true. The author seems a bit more skeptical than you may give him/her (Jamie?) credit for; accounts of Bond's breakdowns give some credence to the officers' accounts.

There are many possibilities here, but I think you're skimming over the details and filling them in later with your own assumptions. If you take a close look at the case, you will notice that it does not fit your thousand-to-one model very neatly. But most importantly, it seems blatantly hypocritical to call out one side for its presumption of truth while doing the same.
posted by Edgewise at 2:21 AM on February 18, 2006

thanks for the post. it's clear that the specifics of the case aren't the whole point of the article; instead, it leads to an indictment of the system that lies in place to assure that the least of us gets the most chance.
posted by thethirdman at 2:22 AM on February 18, 2006

i find this story pretty believable ... i don't think it's common ... but it does happen

It may be less common today, I've nothing to go on. However, within a ten year period during the seventies, I was beaten by police to extract a confession, had a co-accused beaten in a cell by multiple cops, and had drugs planted on me -- though charges were dropped before the case actually made it to trial.

Great story. Thoroughly believable. And great points by hincandenza.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:38 AM on February 18, 2006

Laws making it a requirement for police to be armed with cameras and record their arrests would stop police brutality in its tracks.

Flarbuse I wish that was true, but it would be very easy to avoid the control of videocamera. The abusive officier should just
turn it off or abuse in ways that avoid being taped. You either have one camera following 24h the cop or the abuse will happen
off-duty.

I thought after Rodney King that black America would have video cameras and audio recorders all over the place because police misconduc cannot be proven or believed without video evidence. It never happened. At some point, it will happen. When it does, things will change drastically.

Yeah that's more likely to produce evidence and indeed in this previous Meta post
we see how somebody taped a San Bernardino Sheriff's Deputy shooting an unarmed man who later turned out to be an Airforce iraq
veteran. As a follow up , on Feb 10th still no charges against the sheriff We also learn that

The man who shot the video the shooting was in court today in Florida, Jose Luis Valdes, on a warrant that he assaulted someone with a firearm. And if my memory serves there were allegations of Valdes being harrassed by others police officiers.

Maybe permanent video cameras in private housing could deter some criminals from committing crimes, but there should be limitations on who should use the video and how it could be used. For instance, we could see a person taking an object from a cabinet ..we can infer that it was taken, some will advance it was stolen , others that it was just taken. One shouldn't be able to infer from video more then what the audio/video shows.

Yet alteration of video or production of false video is no longer rocket science, so proof that the video wasn't manipulated should also be offered..probably the burden of proof should rest on whoever wants to advance the video as evidence.

Lawyerfites may have some link to already existing jurisprudence on the subject ?
posted by elpapacito at 3:08 AM on February 18, 2006

the whole "truth lies somewhere in the middle" argument disturbs me also, as it would be practically impossible to get a murder conviction on someone, were juries to follow it ... the victim, after all, can't be half-dead

the account the woman gives is detailed ... she has officers' names, times and places ... perhaps the cops have a more detailed story aside from "we weren't there" ... but it seems to me that a statement indicating where they actually were at the time would help their case considerably

have they made such a statement? ... if they weren't there, how did the woman get their names? ... in the second incident, 911 was called and an ambulance was dispatched ... in the fourth incident, she again recieved medical attention ... this is collaborating evidence

do the police have anything better than "we weren't there"?

But he is explicitly not using the freedom of the press defense, making whether or not he is a reporter irrelevant to his refusal to release his recordings.

solid one love, you haven't been at these proceedings, nor, at least according to what i read in the chicago reader article, has there been a formal hearing on this matter, so you have no way of knowing what his legal defence is in this matter
posted by pyramid termite at 5:47 AM on February 18, 2006

Nice script. Sam Jackson will play the lead investigating cop, or maybe even a big-time drug-dealer who hired three white thugs to start a race war. Mid-movie Sam discovers the woman is actually al Qaeda and Ed Norton appears on the scene from A Government Agency That Doesn't Really Exist.
posted by mischief at 6:43 AM on February 18, 2006

This would have helped.
posted by mischief at 7:19 AM on February 18, 2006

Excellent post. I hope for the sake of justice that Diane Bond previals in court against the trash who claim to represent the law.
posted by moonbird at 7:36 AM on February 18, 2006

solid one love, you haven't been at these proceedings, nor, at least according to what i read in the chicago reader article, has there been a formal hearing on this matter, so you have no way of knowing what his legal defence is in this matter

Except for his reported statements in the Chicago Reader article, which I paraphrased and which it looks like you missed.
posted by solid-one-love at 10:11 AM on February 18, 2006

melissa may writes "The injustice is clear: if I filed a claim about a brutal police act that occurred in my home, it would be taken seriously. I am middle-class, white, professionally employed, educated, and live in a low-crime area. "


Well, sure, but these were poor Negroes. And our "guts" tell us that poor Negroes are criminals and drug addicts who always lie to hassle good upstanding public serving white cops.

Just like your "gut" tells you that American soldiers never torture Iraqis and those pictures, according to your "gut" are just a few low-level grunts playing at being "frat boys".

Your "gut" just tells you that these shiftless watermelon-loving welfare queen porch monkeys are always scheming to destroy good white cops with their baseless lies.

Just like your "gut" tells you that the Jews control the banks and Hollywood and plotted to kill our Lord Jesus Christ and make matzos with the blood of Christian babies. Just like your "gut" tells you that's it's impossible that a civilized nation like Germany killed six million Jews and burn the bodies in ovens, so your "gut" tells you that must have been made up by those devious elder of Zion.

Here's to "guts"!
posted by orthogonality at 11:11 AM on February 18, 2006

Except for his reported statements in the Chicago Reader article, which I paraphrased and which it looks like you missed.

which were made in a letter and not in a formal court setting and therefore don't constitute a legal defence ... i.e. an argument made in front of a judge who is about to rule on whether he must turn over his tapes

he's not obligated to use the same reasoning in front of a judge that he uses in a letter to an opposing attorney ... and he's yet to make an actual defense
posted by pyramid termite at 4:10 PM on February 18, 2006

which were made in a letter and not in a formal court setting and therefore don't constitute a legal defence

Respectfully, you said that I "have no way of knowing". A personal statement by the person of his intentions is a way of knowing. Sure, he could change his mind; that is irrelevant to the fact that he has made his intentions clear now.
posted by solid-one-love at 4:49 PM on February 18, 2006

Chicago cops do have a long way to go in cleaning up the force, whether the story is true or not.
Part of the problem is, once some cops start beating on folks it taints the entire operation and makes any sort of justice suspect.
There is no excuse for any lack of professionalism much less this, if of course it’s true.
Which, given the past performance of the CPD, I wish I could say I’d be surprised if it were.
posted by Smedleyman at 6:21 AM on February 20, 2006

[cameras in the house] would have helped.

That assumes that the guy whose job it is to label the tapes wasn't too busy masturbating to your wife, or gathering extortion material on your father.
posted by sonofsamiam at 6:44 AM on February 20, 2006

they were immediately recognizable by their postures, body language, and bulletproof vests as police officers.

I guess your "gut" just tells you that from the way a guy is standing, he must be a police officer. It's impossible for your "gut" to be mistaken, I've heard, especially if the person has a bulletproof vest.
posted by booksandlibretti at 3:19 PM on February 20, 2006