I feel as if I’ve had to explain #TheBlackRule more in the past year than I’ve had to my entire life.
I’m almost positive I’ve even explained it on this platform before. #TheBlackRule: When mothers of Black children explain to them that they must never disobey a police officer for fear of them being hurt or killed. We’re told to make we don’t move too fast. We’re told not to seem as if we’re getting “fresh” with the police. We’re told to make sure we don’t do anything that can possibly be described as “reaching for a weapon.” These rules weren’t told to Black kids due to paranoia. It was told so that young Black kids would live to see their 18th birthday. If you don’t believe that Blacks, even in 2013, are consistently nervous about police interaction, check out this video of a 14 year old boy who was tackled and choked by officers. His crime? He didn’t jump when they said jump and looked at them with a “dehumanizing stare.”
So just in case you aren’t clear. Don’t look at a cop the wrong way or have body language that could be a problem. Then you’ll get choked out cause you deserved it.
Today on #TWiBRadio, we discuss cops tackling puppy wielding teenagers, the Supreme Court giving the okay to collect DNA upon arrest and the Zimmerman defense team continues to smear Trayvon Martin’s name – but this time they’re sorry.
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And this morning on #amTWiB, #TheMorningCrew 125 year-old HBCU St. Paul’s College to close June 30, one senator wants an entire gang arrested, and can you fight bullying through text message?
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Baud
Interesting line-up on the DNA case. Breyer and Scalia switched sides. Don’t know what Breyer was thinking.
Omnes Omnibus
The stress of living life like that every day has to be wearing. I would very quickly develop unresolved anger issues.
Wag
I have no problem with the outcome of the DNA case. DNA samples taken upon arrest resutled in the conviction of a pair of men who raped a friend a few years ago. If it hadn’t been for the DNA samples, these criminals would have been walking around free to continue to rape and pillage. Better to use a more scientific version of fingerprints to put them behind bars, and to give my friend closure.
Baud
@Wag:
Someone could make a similar argument about virtually every privacy protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment.
JPL
Zimmermann’s atty spent days saying they had a video showing Martin and friends beating up a homeless person. He spent a minute saying whoops, sorry we were wrong. Now why would he do that?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Elon, I read your posts and I appreciate what you’re trying to express. I’m a veteran of a long ago nasty war that was fought under insufferable conditions. I possess neither the vocabulary nor the wit to explain What It Was Like to someone who hadn’t been there. Rather than incidents I think that you might be advantaged by trying to express what it’s like to walk around in your own skin. We are deluged with incidents whose promulgation depends on the point of view of the agency. We have also learned to filter that sort of news depending on our own point of view.
I’d very much appreciate knowing not how these things make you feel but why they do in terms of your own experience. If that sounds dismissive, it isn’t. I appreciate your work.
JPL
@Baud: How do you feel about keeping finger prints on file?
Baud
@JPL:
Slightly less intrusive the cheek swabs used to collect DNA, but more importantly, far fewer privacy implications.
pokeyblow
I don’t even get the whole “perp walk” business. Intrinsically embarrassing, disruptive, and unpleasant, I think it’s a bit odd that the process of being arrested involves specific humiliations and punishments before guilt is established.
Curious what the legal justification is.
Ruckus
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Do you lack the vocabulary or is there really just no way to express it given the severity of the situation and that the listener has no frame of reference whatsoever? I spent a couple of months in a navy hospital filled mostly with marines recovering from that war. They were able to tell me stories that were both real(for them) and nearly unbelievable to me, because I had not been there. My only frame of reference was the events, because that was about all I could really understand.
Chyron HR
InB4 Ted & Hellen explains to us that this kid had it coming for sending unacceptable text messages.
MikeJ
@JPL: I’d feel better about it if they were only allowed to keep them on file after a conviction instead of after an arrest.
Yatsuno
@Chyron HR: QED.
Wag
@Baud:
Bullshit. Fuck the intrusion. The guys shouldn’t have raped my friend. The first mistake was theirs, not her’s. If they’d have kept their dick zipped up and left her alone, they wouln’t have been convicted of a violent crime against a gentle woman, and they’d be free men now.
See ya 20 years, fuckers! Hope they get raped in prison so they find out how my friend felt.
eclecticbrotha
You forgot to mention the black rule to always keep at least $100 in your pocket as an adult in case you have to post bail after being stopped by the police.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
There’s a reason African-Americans have persistent high blood pressure issues that can’t be entirely explained by genetics or lifestyle.
OzarkHillbilly
As a blue eyed white boy who has been pulled over for DWB, (I am seriously dark complected)(with kinky hair) I sympathize. I have lived in some rough neighborhoods and received more than my share of attention from the POLICE (and believe me, if I had been actually black? It would have been 2 or 3 times worse)(6 times ???? 8 times????). I long ago took to saying to the man with the badge who had a gun, “I am reaching for my drivers license. I am reaching for my proof of insurance. No, I do not have a gun in my glove box. Yes, I have a knife in my pocket.”
You know what they say to me?
“You’ve been through this before, haven’t you?”
Odie Hugh Manatee
O’Mara pulled a really sleazy act by lying (yes, lying) about the video. How in the hell can someone say that a video of two homeless guys fighting over a bike is two of Martin’s friends beating up a homeless guy while Trayvon recorded it?
Was the bike frame black and attacking one of the homeless guys? Sleazy, lying lawyer is a sleazy, lying lawyer.
@Baud:
They probably got their robes crossed.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Honestly, I’m not really sure why you feel fingerprints have fewer privacy implications than DNA when it comes to criminal investigations. Yes, the DNA should not be shared with any non-law enforcement agency (so no sending it to insurance companies for their databases), but I’m not sure what’s inherently “less private” about DNA vs. fingerprints when it comes to the same agencies using them for the same purpose. DNA has freed enough falsely convicted prisoners that I’m starting to wonder if routinely collecting it would help protect defendants against false convictions.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m a pasty old white boy and I say the same thing. And have for decades. Once did a ride along with a friend who was a deputy and saw for myself that the rule of law for cops is whatever they want it to be. You may have rights but expressing them may very well get you beat, shocked and/or dead.
Cacti
You might call it police brutality, but I would guess the suspect was genetically predisposed to a low IQ, despite his keen sense of smell, like a beagle.
Seriously though, American cops are a profession filled with brutal, racist, thugs. Do your best not to give them a reason to kill you or stomp your head into the pavement. They will look for excuses for both.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
I have the opposite concern.
With a DNA sample on hand, would it not become easier for law enforcement to plant some at the crime scene for some perp they just “know” is guilty?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti:
The easiest way to do that is to look like you might be, or be related to, someone important.
Baud
@Wag:
I’m happy that your friend received the justice she was due, but my point still holds.
@Mnemosyne:
If it’s just used to establish identity then I agree. However, the temptation will be there for wider use because DNA is so much more useful than fingerprints.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Cacti: got a case exactly like that right now, the confidence the police have in their DNA evidence despite a rock solid alibi is scary to be honest.
Maude
@Wag:
I am so glad they were convicted. with DNA. So glad. At least they aren’t around to do this again.
I hope your friend takes some comfort from this, it’s not much, but it’s something.
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
I would need a scientist to tell me for sure, but I’m pretty sure you can’t just “plant DNA” the way you can plant, well, a fingerprint. DNA is attached to something, so you would need a blood, hair, or semen sample available to “plant” at the scene. And it would need to be pretty fresh and not contain any kind of preservative that would show up when they tested it back at the lab. And you would need to have it handy in your pocket at the crime scene.
Realize that the “crime scene” where semen is retrieved from is the private parts of the victim, and you’ve got a pretty creepy scenario with detectives sneaking in to drip semen on the victim’s crotch while she’s being examined by the forensic nurse.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Yes, but useful for what? What other purpose are you picturing? Or are you just assuming that there will be other purposes found later so we shouldn’t do the collecting now, just in case?
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
So why only collect it from arrestees?
SiubhanDuinne
By a very unhappy coincidence, I came to this thread immediately after seeing, on Facebook, the video of a couple of white cops in (surprise, surprise) Jasper, Texas, slamming the shit out of a black woman who was calling her mom or someone to get money so she could pay an overdue fine. Just horrifying. I’m not sure I could stay remotely sane if I were AA and potentially subject to that kind of abuse.
(In case Jasper sounds familiar, it’s the town where some white douchescumfucks tied a black man, James Byrd, to their truck bumper and dragged him to his death. Fifteen years ago this week. Wouldn’t you think SOMEBODY might learn, just a little?)
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
I am a little uncertain about future dissemination of DNA information to insurance companies and even employers.
Maude
@Baud:
The DNA is collected for serious crimes and is for comparison with the database.
It isn’t some slap dash process.
Suffern ACE
@Baud: because we only take fingerprints from arrestees?
MikeJ
@Maude:
You have more faith in our law enforcement officials than I do.
Baud
@Maude:
That’s fine. My concern is about potential future privacy implications. Like how social security numbers have become much more sensitive now than they used to be.
PIGL
@Wag: So fuck every one else’ civil liberties until the end of time, and yeah extra-judicial punishment, because something bad happened to a friend of yours. That is the kind of talk I expect from right wing authoritarians, who are intellectually incapable of basing judgement on anything but how they personally feel about their personal experiences. It’s OK to be upset and angry and even to wish evil on the evildoers. It is not OK to expect that society rearrange laws and customs to validate your emotions.
Baud
@Suffern ACE:
We actually take fingerprints from a whole lot more people than arrestees.
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: While I am very pleased by the work that groups like the Innocence Project have with DNA to free wrongly convicted people, I am very uncomfortable with the concept of a national DNA database. Too many Gattacca like things are possible.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Because they are the ones suspected of crimes that they could be convicted of or exonerated of by DNA. This is probably exactly what I’m not supposed to be thinking of, Constitution-wise, but it seems like we could head off a whole lot of wrongful convictions by DNA testing the accused much earlier in the process and eliminating the innocent up front.
It should be illegal to share any DNA information that is collected during an arrest with a non-law enforcement agency. Now what?
Suffern ACE
@Baud: yes, but do the police? That’s what the issue is. Whether the police can gather that. The police gather fingerprints now. I don’t think the police gather fingerprints otherwise.
MomSense
Just in the last couple of weeks I had two friends of mine tell me about having the talk with their sons. Hearing the anguish in their voices and feeling so helpless. I wish I had words of comfort to offer.
Mnemosyne
@PIGL:
Uh, you realize that you just invalidated 30 years of rape law, right? After all, we changed both laws and customs when we made marital rape illegal (in most states) because a lot of women felt emotional about the idea of being legally raped by anyone.
We change our laws and customs in response to emotions all the time. Why do you think we have anti-animal cruelty laws?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Ruckus:
The difficulty, I think, is that beyond a certain point, the writer and the reader are unable to have enough in common for the one to convey How It Was to the other. The estimable Jorge Luis Borges, himself no slouch in exploring the possibilities of writing, wrote an essay that pondered whether or not an alphabet of 26 characters was capable of expressing all of the shades of human experience.
I’ve been working on this for years and I’ve concluded that the surrealist approach, an example is Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato may be the best. To me, recounting incidents is not enough, it is reportage and it does little to convey the How It Was of the actors. I have written thousands of words that will never see the light of day because I feel that they are inadequate. So when I prod someone like Elon James White I am being selfish in that I want to see if we can all do better.
I reserve the right to steal from him unashamedly.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: the DNA will be run against a database of the DNA of unsolved crimes, I suppose. Just the way fingerprints are run against that database.
rikyrah
Every Black parent has had ‘ that talk’ with their young Black male.
It could be the difference between picking your child up at the police station…
and going to the morgue.
period.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
In terms of exoneration, obviously the arrestee can volunteer a DNA sample if he thinks it will help him.
Baud
@Suffern ACE:
The police probably fingerprint their employees. Don’t know if they gather DNA of employees yet.
Ruckus
We live in an ever smaller world where eyewitness testimony is very unreliable, where cops tend to jump to conclusions at least a noticeable percentage of the time. Our current WoT has summarily convicted many of us as terrorist suspects. DNA info gives police the ability to do what? Much better identify the actual perpetrators of a crime. Without this we will revert back to eyewitness testimony, and to convincing juries that someone did something with no conclusive evidence. Is your privacy violated? Do you think that no one can identify you now? Do you think you have any actual privacy other than having your curtains closed? Think again. Many entities have a whole lot of information about you. All of your credit history, all of your driving history, your phone records, your job history, your criminal past, if any, your email history can be retrieved easily, your web viewing habits. Need I go on?
We live in a world where your privacy is going to be less and less as time goes on. If you look at the world of say 300 yrs ago and compare it to today, you already have zero privacy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: I used to walk around with a bag over my head so that I would be anonymous, but then everyone knew me as “that kook with the bag over his head.” Sometimes shit backfires.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Is that sample automatically entered into evidence and tested, or does the suspect have to have it privately tested? Do the police automatically drop the charges, or do they insist that the DNA must have been faked somehow, or that the suspect assisted the real suspect in the crime and just happened not to leave any DNA?
I would feel more comfortable having everyone get swabbed at arrest the same way everyone gets fingerprinted now, because many cases have turned into the kind of battles above, particularly post-conviction. The police should not be releasing your DNA markers to outside agencies like insurance companies or employers any more than they should be releasing your fingerprints to outside agencies.
Ruckus
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Exactly my point.
We can share experiences but how can we share the emotions in any effective way? Each of us responds to trauma in different ways and feels through the same emotions many different reactions. The genetics, the upbringing, the training, the trauma itself, our view of the trauma, even our reactions have differing affects.
I can on an intellectual level understand Elon’s black rule. As a pasty white male I have no frame of reference to understanding the emotional trauma anywhere near it’s true effect. I can sympathize and understand that it is real and horrible but I have no real frame of understanding.
I can’t live in that world. I am just not capable.
ruemara
I just found out what my new duties will be. Copy tech and courier. From a highly technical and creative position-broadcast engineer, videographer, editor, motion graphics-to this. And at the same rate of pay. I feel exactly how I did when a doofus account exec told a new clerk that she could totally work her way into my job-print production manager-because it certainly didn’t require a degree or any special training. I’m not saying it’s strictly racial, but I find it fascinating how common it is that it is presumed whatever skills I have are so common, worthless and easily replaced, yet my boss’ distinctly similar skills have him paid in the tech scale. I get the message. This may seem OT, but it’s all part of the same message of worth that society is sending AAs.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Also, would a middle ground be to swab every person after they are charged/arraigned rather than simply arrested, or would that also be a bridge too far?
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL
I wasn’t trying to say that it’s a conspiracy to steal our privacy. Just the facts. Many, many people have access to our information that we tend to think of a private. It hasn’t been all that secret for years and will be less so as time goes on. The world moves forward even if we don’t like it and this is the direction it is moving.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Weirdly, I was just thinking about that in regards to you yesterday. (Obviously, I need to get away from this site more often.) But it does often seem that, as a white person, I receive automatic “competence” points just for existing. A few less than a white man in the same position would get, but a few more than a black man or woman would get. And that’s a huge safety net that I think people who’ve never worked temporary or short-term jobs don’t realize is there — when I would show up at an office as a temp, there was a certain feeling that I would have some clue what I was doing, and I would have to be actively incompetent to dispel that first impression. You, I suspect, don’t get to start with that automatic (and usually unconscious) handicap.
Cassidy
@PIGL: It’s easy to be pure when you aren’t personally affected.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
I don’t think the police can ignore evidence simply because it comes for a voluntary DNA sample. And if the police did not collect DNA at arrest, they would have to get a warrant upon showing probable cause, which should be easy to do if the arrestee is arraigned.
AHH onna Droid
@ruemara: youre not going crazy. Ot is racial with a nice, smelly side of gender bias. Plus you don’t have, never had and never will have access to the social networks that get these guys the tech wage scale.
Reminds me of the time a male ‘friend’ wouldn’t recommend me for a warehouse job even though I was young and strong. He didn’t see me in that kind of job. Thank god for municipal jobs with non discriminatory hiring and unions.
Ruckus
@AHH onna Droid:
I can remember when some unions were all but impossible for a female to get into. Was a long time ago but has that changed?
Wapiti
When I was in the service, they began taking DNA swabs of everyone, for identifying remains (they used to use dental records, which had to be updated frequently.) We were told at the time that it would *only* be used for identifying remains.
And it was, until there was an unresolved string of rapes at Fort Carson, CO. Then they unlocked the DNA and found the guy – who had no prior record that would have captured his DNA.
I’m of mixed feelings. I think I tend towards everyone having to give up the swab (since every GI’s data will probably be stored forever). If the DNA database were kept strictly at the Federal level, it would make it a bit difficult for local and state agencies to fudge the crime scene samples.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: Thank you. I swear to god, I hear far too many people who just can’t acknowledge it. My creative endeavors that have saved thousands is about the same skill level as double sided, collated on cardstock. FML.
@AHH onna Droid: unfortunately, those guys are now running municipal jobs and doing according to Jack Welch “Outsource All The Things” handbook. I have maybe a year, maybe a few months to find something else.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Omnes Omnibus:
I thought someone would have called you “Russ”, short for Russet Potatoes.
PIGL
@CassidyThat road leads to vigilantes and special case laws and trial ordeal an public torture. My view on criminal justice is old fashioned and based on common law. Criminals are punished for breaking the King’s Peace, not for the specific injury to the victim. Baud is quite ready to have her friends violators raped to death prison. I undertsand her feelings but I do nothing we can base a system of justice on that. It worries me that I seem to be in a minority here on that score.
PIGL
@Mnemosyne: marital rape is rape, so I don’t see the issue. Women’s emotional responses to this crime may have helped others to recognise spousal rape for the rape that it is, but the emotions of the victims as such do not define the crime. Most people disagree with me about crimes against animals..it’s not simply my emotion that counts, is the thing. Baud is ready to those criminals tortured to death, by the sound of it, and her emotions are all we are allowed to go by then why the hell not?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
This has been my MO for at least a decade even though I’m an old bald fat white guy. If you’re pulled over, take your license and registration out as soon as you stop so you don’t have to put a hand in your pocket or open the glove compartment when he’s standing there. Keep your hands on the wheel until the cop shines his light on you. Speak politely. Say sir.
I’m sure it’s 10x worse for you, but we should all be wary of the cops these days.
Wag
@PIGL:
If we’re going full bore civil liberty, let’s do away with all fingerprint registries, as well.m God only knows what the government will do with that information.
And as far as the whole”King’s Peace” thing is concerned, we don’t have a king in these parts, haven’t had one for well nigh on 230 years. we do, however, have a system of justice, and DNA is a source of surety in a world of poor recollection, DA misconduct, lousy defense attorneys, and general ignorance. DNA can exonerate the innocent and can convict the guilty. I support both uses fully.
Mnemosyne
@PIGL:
Except that, until recently (the last 100 years), rape was a property crime, not a violent crime. The crime was that you had damaged another man’s property, not that you had injured the woman herself.
So, yes, the very definition of the crime changed in response to societal changes that meant women gained more autonomy and could be crime victims in their own right instead of damaged goods that their owners needed to be compensated for.
karen
@JPL:
Can he be sued for slander?
karen
@ruemara:
As someone who just got laid off because the company thought that the data entry person cut to twice a week could skip trace, I totally feel you. I’m not saying there are or aren’t racial elements but it seems like the powers that be think that if a woman does a job, it’s got to be purely clerical and any moron can do it.
mclaren
One slight bit of good news? Now that America’s post-9/11 police state has run completely amok and turned into a stasi-style East German armed garrison camp, middle class white people are now getting treated by police the way only inner-city blacks used to be.
You can bet your ass this will wake the fuck up out of the middle class white voters in this country. When granny in her SUV gets tased and beaten for “looking with a dehumanizing stare” at a police officer, white voters are going to start getting angry about this shite in a big way.
MikeJ
@karen:
Can’t slander the dead.
Jake Nelson
Worth noting I had the “Black Rule” instilled thoroughly in me by my parents from a young age, and I’m so white I glow in the dark. Watched what happened to people I knew in high school (and even some co-workers now) who didn’t have that lesson, was always amazed at their surprise when swearing at a cop and calling him an idiot while failing to answer his questions got them a night in jail and some extra fines… (obviously, if they were in a different neighborhood, they could have gotten worse, like what you’re talking about. It wasn’t a great neighborhood, but it was still suburban Minnesota, so…)
It seemed like it had something to do with separating ideas about how things should be and how they are… the idiots were always saying things like “I had every right to walk there, he was just hassling me”, etc., while I was saying “Yes, you did, but that has nothing to do with anything. When a guy with a gun and a lot of other ways to make you miserable asks you some simple questions, you answer clearly and respectfully and give him no reason to get pissed off at you. Nothing to do with right or wrong, it’s about survival.”
cvstoner
Having been in an interracial relationship for a number of years, I can attest to this first hand. What I will say, though, is that it increasingly becoming a rule less exclusive to blacks.
kerFuFFler
Police have very stressful jobs and that can make them overreact. Citizens of all races should be taught the “Yes sir, nor sir, yes sir…” script to take tension out of as many situations as possible. My husband and his friends interacted with cops a few times over thirty years ago, but one of his friends was routinely disrespectful and mouthy—–things always went worse for him. We taught our (white) kids to behave in a very deferential manner with cops “just in case” they ever met one on the edge. I am sure it is worse for minorities, but everyone can benefit from such advice.
ThresherK
It’s just such a hoot* to contrast The Black Rule with the coverage and concern given to “persecuted” white males, typically of some means, who can pass for straight and Christian.
And I’m a white suburban lifer who still gets the heebyjeebys when a police car is behind me, not because I think I’ll get assaulted, but because I think I’ll get pulled over for driving with less than “drivers license exam” precision.
(*It’s a “laugh lest ye cry” kind of thing.)
Pococurante
@Ruckus: This.
My (white) parents told me the same things. The one time I (age 15) sauced off to a (Houston) cop I got a twelve inch flashlight jammed in my stomach. After that I’ve always been pretty respectful. I’ve raised my kids the same way, respect the badge and recognize all cops have a very tough job that erodes the patient humanity of even the strongest character.
Baiting the bear is a dumb game anyway…
Stentor
What a cute puppy! More video of the puppy!
On an unrelated topic, Fuck the Motherfucking Police, especially the Motherfucking Cocksucking Sonofabitching Police in Dade County & the rest of Florida, too. I’m going to go listen to some NWA now.
But seriously, we need more video of that puppy.