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> the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. There's about half a million people in jail right now who haven't been convicted of

> the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. There's about half a million people in jail right now who haven't been convicted of a crime. Some of them are innocent, for sure.

kevviiinn 3y ago
Considering how often police lie and plant evidence, I would say a hefty number are innocent
- roamerz 3y ago
  > Considering how often police lie and plant evidence How often is that, exactly?
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Interesting question, though difficult to answer. Here's one attempt: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilying.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilyin... > This tendency to lie pervades all police work, not just high-profile violence, and it has the power to ruin lives. Law enforcement officers lie so frequently—in affidavits, on post-incident paperwork, on the witness stand—that officers have coined a word for it: testilying. Judges and juries generally trust police officers, especially in the absence of footage disproving their testimony. As courts reopen and convene juries, many of the same officers now confronting protesters in the street will get back on the stand. > Defense attorneys around the country believe the practice is ubiquitous; while that belief might seem self-serving, it is borne out by footage captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras. Yet those best positioned to crack down on testilying, police chiefs and prosecutors, have done little or nothing to stop it in most of the country. Prosecutors rely on officer testimony, true or not, to secure convictions, and merely acknowledging the problem would require the government to admit that there is almost never real punishment for police perjury. Police and DAs, the parties who do most of the investigating of police perjury, are not exactly eager to share their internal findings for reasons we can probably guess, but the article does offer one striking anecdote: > One NYPD officer, David Grieco—commonly known as Bullethead—has been sued at least 32 times, costing the city $343,252, for civil rights violations, including excessive force and fabrication of evidence. Yet Grieco was promoted and prosecutors continued to call him to the stand long after a slew of his victims blew the whistle on his violent and lawless behavior. Judges continued to rely on his word to lock up defendants. And Grieco’s name did not appear on Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s long-secret list of officers with known credibility problems.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    They have been found to lie 6.3% on reports but those only include lies that were caught. Planting evidence would be rarer. Police lie during questioning as a tactic. Selectively enforcing crimes is very common
alphanullmeric 3y ago
[flagged]
- loeg 3y ago
  The whole conceit of pre-trial detention is that we do not know if the detainees are guilty.
  - alphanullmeric 3y ago
    Which does not disprove the implication I made, since you assumed the hypothesis to be false. Given that they are guilty, would you still support them? There sure seems to be a lot of “we should be nicer to thieves” in this thread, so I think we already know the answer.
    - loeg 3y ago
      I don't support thieves. This hypothetical where we know guilt before trial is not especially interesting or enlightening.
- dang 3y ago
  Personal attacks are not allowed here, so please don't do that. Also, please don't use HN for ideological battle, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It looks like you've been doing that a lot, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

kevviiinn 3y ago

Considering how often police lie and plant evidence, I would say a hefty number are innocent

roamerz 3y ago
> Considering how often police lie and plant evidence How often is that, exactly?
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Interesting question, though difficult to answer. Here's one attempt: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilying.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilyin... > This tendency to lie pervades all police work, not just high-profile violence, and it has the power to ruin lives. Law enforcement officers lie so frequently—in affidavits, on post-incident paperwork, on the witness stand—that officers have coined a word for it: testilying. Judges and juries generally trust police officers, especially in the absence of footage disproving their testimony. As courts reopen and convene juries, many of the same officers now confronting protesters in the street will get back on the stand. > Defense attorneys around the country believe the practice is ubiquitous; while that belief might seem self-serving, it is borne out by footage captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras. Yet those best positioned to crack down on testilying, police chiefs and prosecutors, have done little or nothing to stop it in most of the country. Prosecutors rely on officer testimony, true or not, to secure convictions, and merely acknowledging the problem would require the government to admit that there is almost never real punishment for police perjury. Police and DAs, the parties who do most of the investigating of police perjury, are not exactly eager to share their internal findings for reasons we can probably guess, but the article does offer one striking anecdote: > One NYPD officer, David Grieco—commonly known as Bullethead—has been sued at least 32 times, costing the city $343,252, for civil rights violations, including excessive force and fabrication of evidence. Yet Grieco was promoted and prosecutors continued to call him to the stand long after a slew of his victims blew the whistle on his violent and lawless behavior. Judges continued to rely on his word to lock up defendants. And Grieco’s name did not appear on Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s long-secret list of officers with known credibility problems.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  They have been found to lie 6.3% on reports but those only include lies that were caught. Planting evidence would be rarer. Police lie during questioning as a tactic. Selectively enforcing crimes is very common

alphanullmeric 3y ago

[flagged]

loeg 3y ago
The whole conceit of pre-trial detention is that we do not know if the detainees are guilty.
- alphanullmeric 3y ago
  Which does not disprove the implication I made, since you assumed the hypothesis to be false. Given that they are guilty, would you still support them? There sure seems to be a lot of “we should be nicer to thieves” in this thread, so I think we already know the answer.
  - loeg 3y ago
    I don't support thieves. This hypothetical where we know guilt before trial is not especially interesting or enlightening.
dang 3y ago
Personal attacks are not allowed here, so please don't do that. Also, please don't use HN for ideological battle, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It looks like you've been doing that a lot, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.