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[SalmonGod]

Baltimore Police instructed by supervisor to keep toy guns on hand to plant on people they shoot.  Among other deep corruption problems surfacing about the department.

Don't know anything about the source.  Yeah, it's not written in a neutral manner.  But a quick Google shows lots of reporting on the story.  Not going to go hunting around for the best one.

Of course, various people have come out to the public about the practice of keeping drop weapons among law enforcement and military since at least the 70's.  So it's not exactly news.  But there's always those who insist these things couldn't possibly still be happening in the present day.

[redwallzyl]

And they wonder why people don't trust them...

[Rolan7]

If all the citations are as strong as this one:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/baltimore-detective-sean-suiter-killed-day-testimony-police-corruption-case-n823656
...
No even just that one strongly suggests a desperate coverup.

Of course the article makes grand claims about cops in general, but I agree that there was a horrific miscarriage of justice here.  And good on them for having strong citations.

[JoshuaFH]

ptw

[SalmonGod]

Tennessee sheriff taped saying 'I love this shit' after ordering suspect's killing

“They said ‘we’re ramming him,’” Sheriff Oddie Shoupe of White County said on tape in the aftermath of the killing of suspect Michael Dial. “I said, ‘Don’t ram him, shoot him.’ Fuck that shit. Ain’t gonna tear up my cars.”

Shoupe arrived on the scene shortly after police had shot Dial at the conclusion of a low-speed chase, clearly upset he had missed the excitement.

“I love this shit,” Shoupe said, apparently unaware that his comments were being picked up by another deputy’s body-worn camera. “God, I tell you what, I thrive on it.

“If they don’t think I’ll give the damn order to kill that motherfucker they’re full of shit,” he added, laughing. “Take him out. I’m here on the damn wrong end of the county,” he said.

...

DeKalb County deputies, who began the pursuit before White County deputies took over, told investigators it was “more like a funeral procession” than a highway chase, with speeds topping out around 50mph.

Deputies tried using a PIT (Pursuit Intervention Technique) maneuver to slow Dial’s car, a common police tactic involving a police car nudging another vehicle to turn it sideways.

But Shoupe radioed officers to tell them to stop attempting to do that, instead ordering them to shoot the driver.

When a deputy had successfully nudged Dial off the road, Reserve Deputy Adam West, who was in pursuit in his own personal vehicle, fired three shots as the vehicle went down into a ditch. Dial died of a gunshot wound to the head.

I think it's about time for another riot if that asshole doesn't see some serious consequence.

[Frumple]

... yeah, can't say I'd disagree too strenuously on that one.

[Jopax]

Hah, they're not even trying to hide that shit anymore, that's how untouchable the fuckers feel.

[SalmonGod]

There's video out there of the chase, and interactions between police afterwards.   I scrubbed through it instead of watching in full, but it appeared to be an extremely boring chase.  Literally just driving in straight lines at normal speeds, until he was shoved off the road.  But here's the district attorney's statement...

It concludes, "It is clear from the circumstances that Mr. Dial was a dangerous and unstable subject" who posed a risk to law enforcement and to other citizens.

[Egan_BW]

Well, someone was dangerous and unstable here.

[Strife26]

The cops only shoot bad people, therefore the guy they capped was bad and everything is perfectly justified and on the up and up.

[Sheb]

Look what he did to that poor bullet!

[Doomblade187]

Hell, Fox News was negative about him. Hopefully he gets prosecuted for this.

[SalmonGod]

Talked with an uber passenger lastnight about how much money the state used to make on DUI charges, which have been significantly reduced by availability of cheap, convenient rideshare services.

Same night, I get stuck driving behind a truck that's excessively salting the road, when there is no snow or ice or forecast for such.  But it's been drizzling for hours, so the salt is dissolving and getting kicked up over everyone's vehicles.  For those who have no experience living in states that get snow, road salt is fucking disgusting.  It creates this thick film when it dissolves that ends up coating everything outdoors.  If you drive in traffic on freshly salted roads, your windshield and the bottom half of your vehicle will be thickly coated in this disgusting white film within a couple hours.

Today, an officer approaches my wife in a parking lot as she's getting into our car, and tells her that our car is too dirty (from the road salt).  Our license plate is too difficult to read, and visibility of our lights is a hazard.  He says we have to take our car through a wash, or we are likely to get pulled over and ticketed.

Yeah... yet another fucking racket...

[Reelya]

They're still around, apparently, but their funding is way down. They changed their program back in 2010 in an effort to improve effectiveness, but the wiki page doesn't list any studies since 2009, so, I have no idea if they are any more effective in their main goal. The opioid addiction crisis seems to indicate otherwise.

Without looking into it too much, my guess is that DARE took credit for the big drop in crime / deaths /drugs / gangs that occurred after 1992. But everywhere in the USA had the same drop at the same time, so like "broken windows policing" in New York, DARE cannot have been everywhere, so any credit they've taken could also just be coincidence.

NOTE: A common problem with these sorts of programs is their voluntary nature, which they then conflate as an achievement:

- Alcoholics Anonymous measures the number of members who've been sober for 1 year, which looks good, but staying for 1 year is entirely a voluntary choice, so when they do controlled studies, sending people to AA turns out to be no better than a placebo treatment.

- The Duluth program hits batterers with "male privilege" literature (e.g. they take the single-factor stance that the solution to domestic violence is to deprogram men from the patriarchy), and they report those who stuck out the whole program have lower repeat offending behavior. However again, when they do controlled studies, the benefits vanish: e.g. those who complete the program were the people less likely to re-offend in thr first place.

- the same with DARE. Signing a voluntary pledge that you won't join a gang and take drugs is meaningless. People who are going to do that shit anyway aren't the ones signing the pledge.

In all three cases, they can claim "success" by recruit only those least at risk, and that's ultimately why they fail: Those least likely to relapse into drinking tend to stick with AA better, those least likely to beat their wives do the best with the Duluth program, those least likely to join a gang are the most likely to sign the DARE pledge. In all cases, they fail to have a solution for those most likely to fall. e.g. AA completely writes off those who can't or won't stick with AA as destined for prison, mental institutions or the grave: e.g. "unhelpable". This is how they skirt their obvious failures: blaming the victim.

[NullForceOmega]

So, it is your assertion that the flat fact that incarcerations for persons who had a DARE program in place in their area decreased measurably after the program was in place is purely coincidence?

You aren't in the U.S., you haven't lived in the ghettos of the U.S., you don't know a damned thing about the program or the problems it faced and just freely admitted into not looking into it.  Sounds to me like you just want to conflate a program that actively tried to establish a meaningful dialog between communities and the police officers serving them to zero-effort piss-poor policing/interventionism.

I know people, personally, and have myself, directly benefitted from the DARE program, and nothing you say will ever change that fact.  I DID sign the pledge, I then ended up in the goddamn gangs doing shit I hated every moment anyway.  And if the DARE officers hadn't been there, I would definitely be dead right now.

I will freely admit that DARE was not successful everywhere, but a hell of a lot of that comes down to different places having different problems, and the 'one size fits all' methodology applied to DARE lacked enough granularity to have deep impact across all environs and situations.