My reaction to the UCSD student left by DEA to drink his own pee.

[navkat]

Look, I know most agents of the law don't intend to be total fuckwads but there are a few things wrong with trusting them to be lawful.

The first is the Stanford experiment factor. Regardless if cruelty was the intent or not, there is (and this is proven) a certain amount of groupthink-level immunity from consequences and dissociation from empathy and responsibility that happens when you hand someone a badge, a gun and grant an identically-clothed group of them a "writ de Marquis" over other human beings.

The second is, you are not requiring these men and women to hold a certificate of comprehension and a binding agreement to be educated on what the law actually is and what is or isn't constitutional, what is or isn't a lawful order and requiring them to uphold respect for a citizen's intrinsic liberties and civil entitlements outside of their initial oath to "uphold the law and follow orders with duty and honor."

Last, you're placing these men and women in a situation where they're somewhat disconnected from process of ensuring the actions they take are lawful to begin with. They're given top-down orders to "detain/arrest/confiscate/destroy/interrogate anyone/anything that's illegal/connected/suspicious." They receive some General Orders describing how to properly handle/arrest/interrogate and a list of DO NOTs (Do not undress a female, do not touch someone's privates, etc). Then they get their specific orders of the day, mission-related orders and a constant stream of briefings regarding field risks and intel. Agents, cops and servicemembers have a whoooole lot of scuttlebutt spreading around about what someone thinks is illegal activity as well. At no time is anyone on the mid-to-lower tier level ever encouraged to research or challenge the lawfulness,. Nor are they given the means to challenge if they should find themselves knowledgeable or unsure about a directive's erroneous status. This is why you have people being detained at the border or in airports for stupid shit like a tin of personal goods and letters in a suitcase ("You're not allowed to travel with things in a metal container, sir. You're going to have to throw it away before we can let you board." Yes, this happened!) and every other TSA agent will back them up on it. Why? Because they heard a rumor somewhere...or because its sounds legit. Or because some upper-e dumbass sent out a self-important email to everyone that morning stating so and no one looked it up.

The fact is, a lot of agents don't really know the law, nor are they expected to care.

What's that? Exception to the rule, you say? Due process to correct the iniquities, you say? Sure! Let's suppose best case scenario after an injustice happens. The tin my ex was carrying for me in his suitcase got thrown away. Let's say it had a personal significance to me and let's say I hired a lawyer and sued and the federal court awarded me a cash sum. Let's even say the expense and inconvenience of the suit was really no trouble to me and things went smoothly. Let's say a permanent policy went out as a result, educating agents about the lawfulness of tins (and other items) in suitcases That still does nothing to abate the long-term damage to the societal mechanism of fair dissent imposed in the form of intimidation and a feeling of powerlessness. You can not outcry. You may not argue. You must do as you are told first, even if you know it to be unlawful for fear of imprisonment and other consequences. It's like a societal PTSD: flinching and backing down despite innocence and it's a form of mind-control.

And this baseline-level of an "intimidation constant" actually acts as a further psychological feedback-loop with the "authorities" themselves and will travel allll the way up to the legislative branch. Some friends of mine had a contact who is a biochemist/pharmacology researcher who was able to synthesize a chemical called MXE which is a dissociative that people use relationally, is safer than Ketamine and is not yet illegal, even under the Analogue Act. He was sending it into the country, packed plainly but otherwise undisguised. Soon, banks stopped allowing their customers to make transfers to this person. From what I understand, some bit of pressure somewhere was placed on him and he stopped transporting the substance altogether Why? It's not illegal, right? Shouldn't he feel righteous in openly distributing a substance which is not yet illegal? And what's your knee-jerk response to this? Is it something like: "He was shipping it in for sale? HERE?  Well THAT was stupid!" WHY?

There is an undeniable current of "If you THINK you're doing something arrestable, that's because you probably are and if you aren't, it either should be or it will be soon." This attitude is infectious and is the reason why your banking institution will gladly violate the terms of their agreement with you and refuse a legal transaction. And if the banks know it's "wrong," well it must be wrong. And since the banks think it's wrong, they have a duty (Title II of the patriot act) to report it. And since it's reported, Border Agent in-charge Jones goes ahead and puts an email out to all the inspectors in his unit that packets from X address are reported to contain an illicit substance and that all such packets must be held for further investigation and all information (addressee data) must be noted in their reports. At least that. Next day, there will likely be a briefing and a change to the protocols to include a "lookout" for the aforementioned...and you can see how this could travel up the chain, right?

We're just far too comfortable with a system that does make these grave mistakes, is given the levity to variate both interpretation/perception and execution of the law and serves only to further the perception-becomes-reality mechanism of moving locus of control further and further away from the individual and more and more towards representation of the collective.

Fucked if I know what to do about it though. Bring a cath-bag and a Brita-bottle everywhere I go?

Or kill me.

[Doktor Howl]

Anyone who trusts a cop - any cop - is an idiot.  We do need cops, but as some old spag said, "who watches the watchmen"?  Authority figures of any kind automatically need to be distrusted, not just because power corrupts, but because of the damage that can be done by sheer stupidity.

Though you'll never convince me that this particular case wasn't intentional.  Authority figures know how much the American public will put up with, and that amount is - as can be told by anyone familiar with Sheriff Joe - anything.

So there you have it:  You can't trust the cops, and you can't trust your fellow citizens to watch the cops.  And I'm reasonably certain that's one definition of a police state.

[Forsooth]

The second is, you are not requiring these men and women to hold a certificate of comprehension and a binding agreement to be educated on what the law actually is and what is or isn't constitutional, what is or isn't a lawful order and requiring them to uphold respect for a citizen's intrinsic liberties and civil entitlements outside of their initial oath to "uphold the law and follow orders with duty and honor."

Last, you're placing these men and women in a situation where they're somewhat disconnected from process of ensuring the actions they take are lawful to begin with. They're given top-down orders to "detain/arrest/confiscate/destroy/interrogate anyone/anything that's illegal/connected/suspicious." They receive some General Orders describing how to properly handle/arrest/interrogate and a list of DO NOTs (Do not undress a female, do not touch someone's privates, etc). Then they get their specific orders of the day, mission-related orders and a constant stream of briefings regarding field risks and intel. Agents, cops and servicemembers have a whoooole lot of scuttlebutt spreading around about what someone thinks is illegal activity as well. At no time is anyone on the mid-to-lower tier level ever encouraged to research or challenge the lawfulness,. Nor are they given the means to challenge if they should find themselves knowledgeable or unsure about a directive's erroneous status. This is why you have people being detained at the border or in airports for stupid shit like a tin of personal goods and letters in a suitcase ("You're not allowed to travel with things in a metal container, sir. You're going to have to throw it away before we can let you board." Yes, this happened!) and every other TSA agent will back them up on it. Why? Because they heard a rumor somewhere...or because its sounds legit. Or because some upper-e dumbass sent out a self-important email to everyone that morning stating so and no one looked it up.

The fact is, a lot of agents don't really know the law, nor are they expected to care.

is this known just from your incident, or from additional research as well?

[navkat]

Yes.

[LizKing531]

And in a related current event - Which came first the "anarchists" or the FBI agent with the bomb plot?

[Reginald Ret]

What's that? Exception to the rule, you say? Due process to correct the iniquities, you say? Sure! Let's suppose best case scenario after an injustice happens. The tin my ex was carrying for me in his suitcase got thrown away. Let's say it had a personal significance to me and let's say I hired a lawyer and sued and the federal court awarded me a cash sum. Let's even say the expense and inconvenience of the suit was really no trouble to me and things went smoothly. Let's say a permanent policy went out as a result, educating agents about the lawfulness of tins (and other items) in suitcases That still does nothing to abate the long-term damage to the societal mechanism of fair dissent imposed in the form of intimidation and a feeling of powerlessness. You can not outcry. You may not argue. You must do as you are told first, even if you know it to be unlawful for fear of imprisonment and other consequences. It's like a societal PTSD: flinching and backing down despite innocence and it's a form of mind-control.

Excellent argument!


May i copy/paste? with credit as desired.
(I mean the entire thing, not just this paragraph)

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Raging hopelessness seems to be the order of the day.