Should recording the police be illegal?

[jmc]

Exactly, and to the post above yours to avoid quoting the whole thing, it's not the police officers job to worry about what happens to said junkie. It's the judge's (occasionally) and overall the systems fault for failing to have an adequate mental health/addiction rehabilitation alternative to incarceration. In fact officers in midtown manhattan who arrest people for quality of life crimes like petty theft as a result of addiction problems and prostitution get sent to the midtown community justice center which is a specialized rehabilitation court designed to get people into help programs and do community service as an alternative to incarceration.

With that said those people tend to relapse and once they do they are no longer eligible to have their case heard in that court and instead serve jail time. That still has no bearing on what police officers do. Nobody wants to walk down the street and have to shield their kids from a junkie begging for money to getting mugged, so they need to be taken off the street. It's insane to place the blame on officers when they are only enforcing social ordinances that people want. I.e clean streets. Your beef is with the way the system handles the offenders not with the officers for keeping your cities safe.

Also lol@ the implication made above that pot is a hardcore drug and that you can live life perfectly fine as a destroyed meth or heroine addict.

This ^^

Majority of the addicts I run into, and have had to lock up have gotten 2nd.....3rd.....and 4th chances from the court system. Probation, court ordered treatment (majority of it even paid by the state) and still majority of these individuals end up back at square one.

There are a ton of state funded programs to assist with drug related addictions around here, but unless the individuals actually want help...these programs do no good.

And to answer a earlier question, yes I was affected by someone on narcotics before I was in law enforcement. Which in the long run, a former girlfriend decided to kill herself after multiple failed attempts at rehab.

Also note, that my state is pretty lax on locking individuals up. Examples would be.....someone getting 3 life sentances, then getting out after serving 10ish years in prison.

Or a guy getting arrested for his 17th DUI, but keeping his license and only serving 6 months in prision.

So 10+ years for drug related offenses...just doesn't happen here.

[Acevalefor]

Where is the media shit storm? This seems to be just "Guy was shot while robbing some people." I hardly consider this a media shit storm. This is local news trying to get a scoop. Jesus Christ, lol.

It was a pretty big story in 2008 that was covered for several weeks because of the controversy over using lethal force vs. tasers/rubber bullets. But it doesn't matter that it didn't reach international news. The point still remains that the person that filmed part of the incident tried to use the video to sell to anyone that would run with a sensationalized story. In the end, the cop did the right thing, but the media screamed bad cop, etc.

Filming an incident to try to make money off of it or to set the cop up for failure should be illegal. Take the audio recording of the guy that carried a gun around Philly just to bait the cops into overreacting for example. He was only out there to cause trouble for the cops. That kind of stuff should not be admissible in court on the grounds that he solicited that response with his irresponsible actions. He knew the cops would not know about the obscure law that allowed him to carry a gun openly in certain parts of Philly.

The people that started recording the police arresting people for dancing in DC had a legitimate reason to be recording. It was a very questionable situation with the cops acting irrationally so people started recording the incident. The cops proceeded to tell them it was illegal to record them and even tried to take a few people's cameras including a licensed journalist's camera.

So I guess the whole point of that rambling is that the act of filming law enforcement officers itself should not be illegal, but the intent of that recording should have a bearing on any charges being brought against those involved.

[hey]

Not to jump into whatever other conversation is going on here but uh, that's insane. First off a junkie who has had their mind warped by meth and other hardcore drugs isn't going to all of a sudden be a fully functioning member of society now that drugs are legal. Someone on meth is hardly going to stop robbing/begging for money and get a steady job to pay for their habit.

Strange, i don't remember saying they would. I'm saying they aren't going to suddenly start stock piling money they get from robbing people if they weren't before. In fact, if they weren't already doing illegal things, they would be less likely to do other illegal things, because it can take them out of the mindset that the law is bullshit and doesn't need to be followed. Also, the less someone steals, the easier it is to get away with. If someone can pay for their drugs by stealing a a few watches, they aren't going to go rob a bank.

The bigger point I think hey is making is that it's simply not sustainable.

That's part of it, but no, my main point is that society would be better off if recreational drugs were legal, and regulated similar to alcohol, or tobacco.

Other drugs do immediate and irreversible damage to your brain (kind of a negative safety factor, like Ecstasy).

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...0.03252.x/full

Are ecstasy users going to be more likely to suffer from Parkinson's disease, for instance?

No.

I wonder what the stats are for the cost of addict medical bills/treatment vs. the cost of incarceration. If we were to legalize heroin/cocaine/ecstasy, I think we'd pay more taxes in the long run due to the created medical problems.

What created medical problem? While usage may go up (or it could go down for various reasons, such as better education, etc), it definitely would not skyrocket as many people seem to believe.

All legalizing drugs would do, more over legalizing weed since that's what people mostly harp on, removes gray/black market sales from the equation and scope of criminal enforcement. It does not have anything to do with the people involved.

Actually it has a direct affect on every single person involved. And an indirect affect on those that are not. It would change quite a bit.

[*Shinzon*]

Strange, i don't remember saying they would. I'm saying they aren't going to suddenly start stock piling money they get from robbing people if they weren't before. In fact, if they weren't already doing illegal things, they would be less likely to do other illegal things, because it can take them out of the mindset that the law is bullshit and doesn't need to be followed. Also, the less someone steals, the easier it is to get away with. If someone can pay for their drugs by stealing a a few watches, they aren't going to go rob a bank.

Holy fucking shit, no. Your streets are filled with drug dealers, because they can't open up a store. Drug prohibition INCREASES crime. It does not in any way decrease it. That junkie won't need to rob your kids when he can buy his drugs at a tenth of the price they cost now. Those junkies could easily pay for those dirt cheap drugs by working at...i dunno, maybe one of those fancy new jobs making/selling/transporting drugs. Every single thing in that paragraph is not only completely false, it is far worse under prohibition than it would be after legalization.

Actually that's exactly what you said and implied right there. You're saying that a junkie wont rob your kids because getting his fix will be cheaper, well meth is already dirt cheap because it's synthetic and the high lasts like 4 times as long as any drug derived from a natural source. You're also saying they'd be able to get a steady job to pay for their fix by now working at would be a now legal place selling/transporting said drugs, implying that they would some how now be trustworthy functioning members of society to hold said job.

So now I'm confused.

[aurik]

Filming an incident to try to make money off of it ... should be illegal.

Dumb.

[Byrthnoth]

I know it's wikipedia, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects...dverse_effects
Read the citations. There's a difference between "no noticeable long term cognitive deficit" and "you didn't fuck up your brain somehow."

Also, under what authority do you say that we are definitely not going to see some kind of geriatric problem in ecstasy users, heroin users, etc.? Almost every drug has a lovely host of geriatric problems associated with it. Think about how healthy old Tobacco and Alcohol users are.

There's no way to tell how many users wouldn't try things like heroin or ecstasy once if the option existed. How many of these "I'll just try it once" kids would end up in the hospital driving up insurance premiums if it was more easily accessible? How many would turn into habitual users and make their hospital visits on a more monthly basis? You're stupid as hell if you think usage and medical costs associated with drugs wouldn't go up after legalization.

[Kuya]

Portugal doesn't have American health care costs (very high) or American health care standards. Also, many of the drugs could have long-term effects that we don't know about because they haven't been popular long enough. Are ecstasy users going to be more likely to suffer from Parkinson's disease, for instance? A massive amount of the health care costs incurred by people are within their last few decades of life, and we just don't know how badly drug use in youth is going to affect those last few decades.

What does the high cost of american health care have to do with decriminalizing drugs? I see you used that as a point, but i don't see the relevant connection. I especially don't get the point since lowering health care costs and decriminalizing drugs have different goals in mind. And i think your point about how certain drugs might have effects we're not aware of is stupid because:

1. I would much rather take an empirically proven policy over speculation over the long term effects of drugs.

2. It's awfully clear that you've never heard of this policy Portugal used, because if you had, you'd know that compiled statistics do not show any appreciable increase in drug use after having implemented said decriminilization policy.

Why are we talking about drugs again?

[Byrthnoth]

1 and 2) How do you control for the obvious and significant difference in social factors and drug enforcement efficacy between Portugal and the United States when making your comparisons?

[*Shinzon*]

What does the high cost of american health care have to do with decriminalizing drugs? I see you used that as a point, but i don't see the relevant connection. I especially don't get the point since lowering health care costs and decriminalizing drugs have different goals in mind. And i think your point about how certain drugs might have effects we're not aware of is stupid because:

1. I would much rather take an empirically proven policy over speculation over the long term effects of drugs.

2. It's awfully clear that you've never heard of this policy Portugal used, because if you had, you'd know that compiled statistics do not show any appreciable increase in drug use after having implemented said decriminilization policy.

Why are we talking about drugs again?

I wish I knew why we were, it's a silly topic to begin with and I'm kinda sorry I now got involved in the derail :/

[Kuya]

1 and 2) How do you control for the obvious and significant difference in social factors and drug enforcement efficacy between Portugal and the United States when making your comparisons?

I don't know, but if that's the only criticism you can make, then your argument is weaker. For starters, you haven't nor are you capable of proving that these differences would offer significantly different results, with no consideration for how policy might be modified to fit the specific needs of the US.

If there's statistics on how effective or at the very least unthreatening a policy is, and your rebuttal is that Portugal and the US are different, people aren't going to listen to you for very long, because you have nothing concrete to offer. The criticism you're making is valid, but valid only in so far it may be used to modify policy to suit the US, it does not, however, as you seem to want to believe, disqualify the policy outright.

[Byrthnoth]

I don't know, but if that's the only criticism you can make, then your argument is weaker. For starters, you haven't nor are you capable of proving that these differences would offer significantly different results, with no consideration for how policy might be modified to fit the specific needs of the US.

If there's statistics on how effective or at the very least unthreatening a policy is, and your rebuttal is that Portugal and the US are different, people aren't going to listen to you for very long, because you have nothing concrete to offer. The criticism you're making is valid, but valid only in so far it may be used to modify policy to suit the US, it does not, however, as you seem to want to believe, disqualify the policy outright.

I'll put it another way:
1 and 2) How do you show that findings in Portugal have even the tiniest hope of generalizing to the United States?

[archibaldcrane]

What is this 1 and 2) shit?

[jmc]

What is this 1 and 2) shit?

1 and 2) why are we still talking about drugs?

[hey]

Actually that's exactly what you said and implied right there. You're saying that a junkie wont rob your kids because getting his fix will be cheaper, well meth is already dirt cheap because it's synthetic and the high lasts like 4 times as long as any drug derived from a natural source. You're also saying they'd be able to get a steady job to pay for their fix by now working at would be a now legal place selling/transporting said drugs, implying that they would some how now be trustworthy functioning members of society to hold said job.

So now I'm confused.

I said they could. Not that they would. Some would, many wouldn't. Regardless, those that steal would not need to steal nearly as much as they do now. And many that do have a job (not all junkies are jobless, btw), but still steal because they don't get paid enough to afford their drug habit would no longer need to.

I know it's wikipedia, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_MDMA_on_the_human_body#Long-term_adverse_effects
Read the citations. There's a difference between "no noticeable long term cognitive deficit" and "you didn't fuck up your brain somehow."

Wha specifically am i looking at? And has that been updated since the study i linked above?

Also, under what authority do you say that we are definitely not going to see some kind of geriatric problem in ecstasy users, heroin users, etc.? Almost every drug has a lovely host of geriatric problems associated with it. Think about how healthy old Tobacco and Alcohol users are.

Sure, but Parkinson's is not caused by mdma. Obviously drugs are not safe, i have never said otherwise. In fact, i've said they are not, and that anyone using them is retarded in most of my posts here.

There's no way to tell how many users wouldn't try things like heroin or ecstasy once if the option existed. How many of these "I'll just try it once" kids would end up in the hospital driving up insurance premiums if it was more easily accessible? How many would turn into habitual users and make their hospital visits on a more monthly basis? You're stupid as hell if you think usage and medical costs associated with drugs wouldn't go up after legalization.

The option exists now. As far as kids go, they have more access to drugs now then they would if they were legal. Medical costs would likely go up, but that's more because people would be more willing to go for treatment. Whatever though, it can be payed for with the extra 90 billion per year in taxes+savings from enforcement.

http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3383

Read that. It mainly applies to marijuana specifically, but it is still more than relevant, complete with links to sources for every single claim.


http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/67
Drug usage in the netherlands is far, far lower than in the US. Which is interesting because punishment for it is virtually nonexistent there.gl

[Kuya]

I'll put it another way:
1 and 2) How do you show that findings in Portugal have even the tiniest hope of generalizing to the United States?

You're asking the same question again, and that question can only be answered with either research into how it would turn out or implementation of the policy outright and observing the results afterwards. The policy has not been implemented nor has there been research into how it should be implemented in the US (that i'm aware of) or whether it would be practical at all to implement it.

Meaning, the same damn answer i gave you at the start of my first sentence: i don't know.

Now stop talking about drugs since it's not the thread for it.

[Byrthnoth]

Sorry, your "it works in Portugal, it'll work here" argument may work in a political setting but it reeks of bullshit to me and anyone else who has a hand in any cross-cultural behavioral research, so I felt I had to reply.

For instance, Columbia decriminalized pot, heroin, and cocaine in 1994 and enjoys substantially lower use levels than in the states. Should we, therefore, expect usage levels to drop in the states if we decriminalize?

It's the same kind of data, just a little more extreme. We have a lot more disposable income than Columbians or the Portugese, therefore citing them in comparisons to the US doesn't make much sense. At the same time, look at some drug use stats for Mexico. They sure don't have the same disposable income as us, but they're catching up to us in terms of drug use. Until you can explain why there's such a large variability in drug use between nations, there's no point in trying to claim that you know what's going to happen to drug use in the states if you decriminalize.


PS. hey, you're looking at the section I linked, which notes that there are substantial and potentially long-term changes in the seratonin system after MDMA usage. Your meta-analysis article aside, things change in your brain after a single MDMA hit. Also, why do you figure kids would have more access to drugs now than if they were legal? Are underage drinking and smoking not an issue?

[Kuya]

Anyway, has anyone seen being people arrested for recording the police on tv news? If there's concensus that people shouldn't be arrested over it, i'd think there'd be outrage over it and therefore the news would cover it.

[Acevalefor]

Dumb.

How? The intent is to make the cop look bad and profit off of it. It's called slander and is already illegal. Even if you remove the profit part.

[archibaldcrane]

wut

[hey]

Also, why do you figure kids would have more access to drugs now than if they were legal? Are underage drinking and smoking not an issue?

Because they could not directly buy it themselves. It is incredibly easy for kids to get drugs right now, whereas under legalization they would need an adult to purchase it for them. While that wouldn't be hard for drugs such as marijuana, which is quite safe, it would be far harder for most people for drugs like heroin, which absolutely no one thinks is safe. Obviously kids would still find a way to buy drugs, but it would still be more difficult. Presumably selling to minors would also be a felony, which is likely to deter people from doing it, since they get little to no benefit from it.

But yes, it would still be a problem, just like it is now. I am not claiming that legalization would be some perfect solution, that solves every single drug related problem. I'm simply saying things would be, overall, better. Some things might see a huge improvement, somethings would be worse, and some would be roughly the same. In this case, i don't believe there would be a major difference in availability of drugs to minors, but it seems obvious that they would be at least a little harder to buy.