Police State: How America's Cops Get Away with Murder

[ballscout1]

How does America, founded on the promise of freedom for all, find itself poised to become a police state? In Police State, legendary "country lawyer" Gerry Spence reveals the unnerving truth of our criminal justice system. In his more than sixty years in the courtroom, Spence has never represented a person charged with a crime in which the police hadn't themselves violated the law. Whether by hiding, tampering with, or manufacturing evidence; by gratuitous violence and even murder, those who are charged with upholding the law too often break it. Spence points to the explosion of brutality leading up to the murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, insisting that this is the way it has always been: cops get away with murder. Nothing changes. Police State narrates the shocking account of the Madrid train bombings - how the FBI accused an innocent man of treasonous acts they knew he hadn't committed. It details the rampant racism within Chicago's police department, which landed teenager Dennis Williams on death row. It unveils the deliberately coercive efforts of two cops to extract a false murder confession from frightened and mentally fragile Albert Hancock, along with other appalling evidence from eight of Spence's most famous cases. We all want to feel safe. But how can we be safe when the very police we pay to protect us instead kill us, maim us, and falsify the evidence against us? Can we accept the argument that cops may occasionally overstep their boundaries, but only when handling guilty criminals and never with us? Can we expect them to investigate and prosecute themselves when faced with allegations of misconduct? Can we believe that they are acting for our own good? Too many innocent are convicted; too many are wrongly executed. The cost has become too high for a free people to bear. In Police State, Spence issues a stinging indictment of the American justice system. Demonstrating that the way we select and train our police guarantees fatal abuses of justice, he also prescribes a challenging cure that stands to restore America's promise of liberty and justice for all.

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[durham]

VERY good book imo

 

[ballscout1]

bump

 

[yureeka9]

Thanks!

 

[dagoon121]

Last week these niggaz had me in a interrogation room but denied me a phone call to my lawyer
Smh
Can't wait for my lawyer to get the case thrown out

 

[aldoogie]

Last week these niggaz had me in a interrogation room but denied me a phone call to my lawyer
Smh
Can't wait for my lawyer to get the case thrown out

Messed up fam. How long did they hold you?

 

[ballscout1]

Last week these niggaz had me in a interrogation room but denied me a phone call to my lawyer
Smh
Can't wait for my lawyer to get the case thrown out

They can delay giving you a phone call but once you tell them you want your lawyer they have to stop asking you anything.

If they kept asking you shit after you lawyered up then you can get them and I hope you do

 

[crackheadlou]

Meh

 

[BDR]

Last week these niggaz had me in a interrogation room but denied me a phone call to my lawyer
Smh
Can't wait for my lawyer to get the case thrown out

Man stop lying your bitch ass was at the airport yesterday in a fuckin gray checkered sweat suit at departures with head phones on...

 

[aldoogie]

Thanks for the book fam.

 

[aldoogie]

Man stop lying your bitch ass was at the airport yesterday in a fuckin gray checkered sweat suit at departures with head phones on...

Haha!

 

[bigjayler]

Thanks

 

[dagoon121]

They can delay giving you a phone call but once you tell them you want your lawyer they have to stop asking you anything.

If they kept asking you shit after you lawyered up then you can get them and I hope you do

I told them I want my lawyer
They kept threatening me with proBation violation and a 100,000 bail
They Said they go make sure I don't get out
My lawyer say these are serious allegations but there's no witnesses

 

[dagoon121]

Messed up fam. How long did they hold you?

6 hrs
I got one of the top lawyers in the city
He said we go get them on the illegal search but it a serious case for the fact somebody died so we just gotta see how the ball roll

 

[ballscout1]

I told them I want my lawyer
They kept threatening me with proBation violation and a 100,000 bail
They Said they go make sure I don't get out
My lawyer say these are serious allegations but there's no witnesses

yeah they could have held you on a probation violation...

but still don't talk to them....

police are dirty and will try to use the fear of being locked up to get people to say shit when they shouldn't.

everybody always talking about the right to free speech but more should understand the right to remain silent.

 

[aldoogie]

yeah they could have held you on a probation violation...

but still don't talk to them....

police are dirty and will try to use the fear of being locked up to get people to say shit when they shouldn't.

everybody always talking about the right to free speech but more should understand the right to remain silent.

A deceased uncle of mine who was a cop used to say, people talk to interrogators like they're trying their case. And he'd remind us "the only one you need to consider speaking before is a judge".

 

[geechiedan]

I posted it in other topics but its most apropos here..

You can draw a direct line from police brutality and cops who abuse their authority today right back to the LE of the 1800s post slavery. LE has ALWAYS been used as a force to keep the black community under thumb and LE agents have always had wide discretion in how they uphold the law as long as they upheld the law be it codified or defacto.

In the United States, the Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. As the war ended, the US Army implemented Black Codes to regulate the behavior of Black people in general society. A central element of the Black Codes were vagrancy laws. States criminalized men who were out of work, or who were not working at a job whites recognized. Failure to pay a certain tax, or to comply with other laws, could also be construed as vagrancy.

Nine southern states updated their vagrancy laws in 1865–1866. Of these, eight allowed convict leasing (a system in which state prison hired out convicts for labor) and five allowed prisoner labor for public works projects. This created a system that established incentives to arrest black men, as convicts were supplied to local governments and planters as workers.

Jim Crow laws came after and lasted from 1870s to the 1960s just like with Black Codes Law Enforcement was given wide discretion on how to enforce and uphold the law where minorities were concerned.

In the late 20st century...you see this again with the war on drugs and privatization of the prison system. Again LE exercised wide discretion in jailing, profiling and killing blacks based on the laws and attitudes of today.

Just LAST YEAR the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT released a report that found that LE was still operating on some system that was used to enforce Jim Crow laws. Ronald Davis, Community Oriented Policing Services director for the Department of Justice, said at an event at the Center for American Progress. “These are operational systems and policies and practices that exist today.”

Its the legacy of those laws that fill jails with black men in disproportionate numbers since they've been keeping stats on it. Its the legacy of those laws thats shaped the perception of "black on black crime".