Woman Whose Rape Kit DNA Led To Her Arrest Sues San Francisco (apnews.com) 188
Bruce66423 shares a report from the Associated Press: A rape victim whose DNA from her sexual assault case was used by San Francisco police to arrest her in an unrelated property crime on Monday filed a lawsuit against the city. During a search of a San Francisco Police Department crime lab database, the woman's DNA was tied to a burglary in late 2021. Her DNA had been collected and stored in the system as part of a 2016 domestic violence and sexual assault case, then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin said in February in a shocking revelation that raised privacy concerns. "This is government overreach of the highest order, using the most unique and personal thing we have -- our genetic code -- without our knowledge to try and connect us to crime," the woman's attorney, Adante Pointer, said in a statement.
The revelation prompted a national outcry from advocates, law enforcement, legal experts and lawmakers. Advocates said the practice could affect victims' willingness to come forward to law enforcement authorities. Federal law already prohibits the inclusion of victims' DNA in the national Combined DNA Index System. There is no corresponding law in California to prohibit local law enforcement databases from retaining victims' profiles and searching them years later for entirely different purposes.
Boudin said the report was found among hundreds of pages of evidence against a woman who had been recently charged with a felony property crime. After learning the source of the DNA evidence, Boudin dropped the felony property crime charges against the woman. The police department's crime lab stopped the practice shortly after receiving a complaint from the district attorney's office and formally changed its operating procedure to prevent the misuse of DNA collected from sexual assault victims, Police Chief Bill Scott said. Scott said at a police commission meeting in March that he had discovered 17 crime victim profiles, 11 of them from rape kits, that were matched as potential suspects using a crime victims database during unrelated investigations. Scott said he believes the only person arrested was the woman who filed the lawsuit Monday.
The revelation prompted a national outcry from advocates, law enforcement, legal experts and lawmakers. Advocates said the practice could affect victims' willingness to come forward to law enforcement authorities. Federal law already prohibits the inclusion of victims' DNA in the national Combined DNA Index System. There is no corresponding law in California to prohibit local law enforcement databases from retaining victims' profiles and searching them years later for entirely different purposes.
Boudin said the report was found among hundreds of pages of evidence against a woman who had been recently charged with a felony property crime. After learning the source of the DNA evidence, Boudin dropped the felony property crime charges against the woman. The police department's crime lab stopped the practice shortly after receiving a complaint from the district attorney's office and formally changed its operating procedure to prevent the misuse of DNA collected from sexual assault victims, Police Chief Bill Scott said. Scott said at a police commission meeting in March that he had discovered 17 crime victim profiles, 11 of them from rape kits, that were matched as potential suspects using a crime victims database during unrelated investigations. Scott said he believes the only person arrested was the woman who filed the lawsuit Monday.
They also use newborns blood to search (Score:5, Interesting)
Using newborn's blood gathered during birth procedures to search for suspects also: https://www.aclu.org/news/priv... [aclu.org]
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Using newborn's blood gathered during birth procedures to search for suspects also: https://www.aclu.org/news/priv... [aclu.org]
They're just getting started with this abuse, and they know any legal action against it will take years. That's years of abuse and profits. Law Enforcement will eventually start sending blanket requests to 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and any other DNA colllectors...you know for "screening" purposes.
SIx months later we'll read about police busts and chest beating like never before.
Jail's are full? This isn't about incarceration. This is about juicing profits for everyone in the entire legal system.
Re:They also use newborns blood to search (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the famously profit-driven police and prosecutors and judges are all in this conspiracy together!
Do you have any idea what you sound like? When judges violate the public's trust like you allege, they get sentences to decades in jail and hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution [msn.com]. Note that those two judges are the only case like that you'll find; the norms are so strongly against it that it's a remarkable decision from the system.
Re:They also use newborns blood to search (Score:5, Insightful)
The kids for cash scandal shows that it certainly CAN be profit driven. Before the news broke, a judge imprisoning kids in exchange for kick backs was "unthinkable". That's probably why the judge thought he would get away with it.
See also the Duke LaCrosse team scandal, the Mass. crime lab sink testing tens of thousands of drug samples, and people being jailed for possession of Krispy Kreme crumbs.
Then there's civil forfeiture. It's practically impossible not to see it as willful criminality on the part of law enforcement with sometimes absurd levels of conflict of interest for judges yet it's supported all the way up to the supreme court.
There are good reasons why public confidence in law enforcement and the judicial system is on the decline.
Given all that madness, tell me again how geekmux sounds crazy?
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Given all that madness, tell me again how geekmux sounds crazy?
Because of things like this (emphasis in the original):
They're just getting started with this abuse, and they know any legal action against it will take years. That's years of abuse and profits.
The problems you listed have nothing to do with a desire to "profit" or "abuse" for abuse's sake. They are failings of the system, sure, but they do not have anything to do with what geekmux claimed the problem was. The Duke lacrosse scandal was an overzealous prosecutor who wanted to show that privileged white boys did wrong. The Massachusetts crime lab involved failed oversight of two people: one person who wanted to bump her performance numbers, a
Re:They also use newborns blood to search (Score:4, Informative)
The problems you listed have nothing to do with a desire to "profit" or "abuse" for abuse's sake. one person who wanted to bump her performance numbers.
Ask yourself why someone would want to bump their numbers, promotion perhaps? That is abuse for profit my friend. I am not saying this is a systemic problem or a conspiracy but on an individual level people are "profiting" form this.
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Did she get paid any more than her honest coworkers, or are you just assuming she profited? Show your work!
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That money is often taken from people who are never arrested, let alone charged. Simply having cash is an excuse to take it. They've
Re:They also use newborns blood to search (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the famously profit-driven police and prosecutors and judges are all in this conspiracy together!
There's a lot of money to be made exploiting prisoners [prisonpolicy.org]. It's disturbing [freedomunited.org]. Really [time.com].
You must not know that Law & Order is a work of fiction.
Note that those two judges are the only case like that you'll find
Not [prisonlegalnews.org] really [ccrjustice.org] It's a problem [unodc.org]
when judges violate the public's trust like you allege, they get sentences to decades in jail
LOL! You think that all are equal in the eyes of the law! We can't even weed out bad cops [abq.news]. How often do you think corrupt judges go down?
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Worldjusticeproject.org has an "absence of corruption" index. The United States ranked 23 in 2021, indicating quite a few countries do a better job.
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Wrong. Your first three links are about an entirely different topic than what geekmux complained about. (The police in this story have nothing to do with private prisons, and public prisons have largely the same failings.)
Your fourth link is about an appeals court allowing a private attorney to be sued as a state actor -- in a case where the judge's misconduct was driven by "law-and-order" motivations rather than profit. Your fifth link is about alleged problems with federal immigration-related contractor
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The prison-industrial complex is well documented. While individual's actions may be difficult to tie to it directly, as a whole the system works to supply for-profit prisons with a supply of convicts. Criminalizing populations through oppression is a key part of it.
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California, famously home [reuters.com] to a massive private-prison industry? (That article says there were about 5,000 inmates in private prisons in the state -- and other sources say the state has over 100,000 total inmates, approximately 120,000 before COVID-related mass releases. Contrary to Gov. Newsom's claim, it seems like the state manages to over-incarcerate its people plenty without private prisons.)
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And one of the most powerful lobbies in CA is the prison guards union.
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What's more cops and prosecutors are scored on how many convictions they get and get promotions and raises based on that. So there economically incentivized to get rests and convictions. There's your profit motive right there.
This isn't about a grand conspiracy this is about perverse incentives
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Yeah, the famously profit-driven police and prosecutors and judges are all in this conspiracy together!
Do you have any idea what you sound like?
Before you go asking that last question, you might want to question what YOU sound like - naive would be my take - and educate yourself before you go defending the status quo and arguing based on a degree of systemic integrity which may not exist. Here [researchgate.net] are a [martyduren.com] few [spectatornews.com] places [prisonpolicy.org] to start [thecrimereport.org] ...and many more through a quick Google search.
Your view is very simplistic and ignores a couple of key factors. One, we're talking about an entire emergent system created by different "author
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Except that "unintended behaviors" isn't really a good description when a change causes those behaviors and is not reverted.
Re: They also use newborns blood to search (Score:2)
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Yeah, the famously profit-driven police and prosecutors and judges are all in this conspiracy together!
While the past is rife with abusive legal situations where judges could and did enrich themselves at the cost of justice (for example, the second fugitive slave act, in which the justice deciding a case of whether someone was or was not a fugitive slave was paid more if their finding was that the person was a fugitive slave), in modern times that sort of thing has mostly gone away. Still, while this may vary from state to state, if you've ever argued a traffic ticket, it becomes pretty clear where the inter
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Are you high? You really think that's the only case of police, prosecutors, and judges conspiring together and railroading innocent people into a jail or prison cell? All you have to do is Google for: "conviction overturned"... actually, you'll probably want to narrow it down geographically or by date or something, because it happens A LOT... and you'll find dozens of cases which would expand to hundred off cops, prosecutors, and judges who should ALSO be spending decades in prison and paying millions in
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Profit-driven to collect everything from criminals to fines to fees to taxes.
Police and prosecutors and courts are supposed to catch criminals. That doesn't translate to profits. Taxes don't depend on the criminal justice system. And fines and fees are civil or administrative things, not criminal punishments. Again, do you have any idea what you sound like?
Remarkable indeed. A century of abuse and all you can find is ONE fucking case?
By your logic, the existence of North Korea proves that there is a deadly serious, and dangerous, International Communist Conspiracy. Hint: If you want to claim there's a pattern, you need to show it, not just loudly shout th
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I think fixation on the 'for profit' point is not really needed. I'll agree that I don't think *profit* is high in the minds of the legal system when they are doing questionable things. However it's also true that the legal system will overstep due to at beast overzealous pursuit of their mission but often because of the power, particularly among officers in the field. The disconnect from *profit* motive does not necessarily imply they are saints or anything.
Re:They also use newborns blood to search (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes a single google search to see a HUGE profit motive behind the american prison complex
"Factories with Fences” and “American Made” boasts UNICOR. Better known as the Federal Prison Industries program, UNICOR makes nearly half a billion dollars in net sales annually using prison labor, paying inmates between 23 to $1.15 per hour."
"Aside from the federal prison industry, state-run prisons generate millions in profits, making prison labor an industry worth over $1 billion."
" At its high in 2013, an approximate 220,000 inmates were held in private prisons, the two largest being CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) and GEO Group. Though CoreCivic and GEO Group constitute half of the market share of private prisons, they made a combined revenue of $3.5 billion in 2015. "
Then we get into all the systems they force on you in prison to make people who are not in prison spend more money to support you. JPay accounts that cost up to 45% in fees. Overly expensive systems that are replacing visitation and phone calls. Not to mention intake fees and daily “rent” which turn the prisoner into a debtor in days.
"Capt. William Lawhorn of the St. Lucie County sheriff’s office said that inmates are charged a $25 initial booking fee, $3 a day for “subsistence” and medical co-pays, all of which can result in a negative balance."
"Linda Dolan, 58, a manager for a defense contractor in California. Last year, when her son was sentenced to 20 days in jail in St. Lucie County, Florida, for reckless driving, Linda wanted to buy him a second pair of underwear and socks. But the county’s intake fee and daily “rent” already had put the account about $70 in the red. Linda and her husband both were out of work and couldn’t afford to pay $100 for a pair of underwear."
The american legal system is designed to extract wealth from the poor and keep them poor. When possible to turn them into slaves.
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don't forget the bail system as well CA still has (Score:2)
don't forget the bail system as well CA still has it.
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I think fixation on the 'for profit' point is not really needed. I'll agree that I don't think *profit* is high in the minds of the legal system when they are doing questionable things.
The Disease of Greed has plagued mankind for literally thousands of years. We're so addicted to it that we will continue to kill each other on this planet for more of it. It never ends. Empires come and go, but they are always infected with the same disease. Our legal system, and every millionaire it has made, is no different.
Hell, we even have law enforcement now confirming that "Protect and Serve" was nothing but a marketing line at best, and a delusional lie at worst. Kind of like Representative no
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> I think fixation on the 'for profit' point is not really
> needed.
Yup. "For profit" is, at its very worst, jus the proverbial icing on the cake when it comes to abuses on the part of our "justice" system. Jailing someone who has not, in fact, committed the crime in question... or, really, even just arresting or dragging them into "the system" for any time and in any capacity... is just about the worst abuse a public servant can commit. It should, at a minimum, be a career-ending (and all pension,
Where is the problem? (Score:2)
If you don't want to be arrested for a crime then don't do the crime. Whining because you got caught isn't an option.
Re:Where is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that doing this reduces the likelihood that other crimes get reported in the first place, and that is widely considered worse than letting some small number of criminals (in this case, apparently it would have been just one) escape identification.
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Re:Where is the problem? (Score:4, Informative)
It is assumed that it reduces the likelihood of victims reporting crimes, but has that been proven?
You can think of this as a subset of, "broke window theory". Which some argue has a chilling effect. Citizens are less willing to interact with police because they are concerned about getting in trouble over petty crimes. Therefore major crimes go unsolved. There is some research on it here. [petermoskos.com]
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All you need is 1 person not reporting a crime if they fear their DNA will be misused. Depending on the crime, I would take this into consideration.
Do you honestly think this wouldn't keep some people from fearing this to be an issue?
Hypothetical (Score:2)
What if she was involved in a murder instead of a property crime?
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If you don't want to be arrested for a crime then don't do the crime. Whining because you got caught isn't an option.
Bitching and whining because you found abuse and corruption severely impacting your life, won't be an option soon either.
Let me know how you feel when we start seeing retaliation against corruption resulting in whistleblowers being framed for crimes, because every-fucking-one has your damn DNA now.
Stop thinking so shallow.
Re:Where is the problem? (Score:4, Informative)
And there was no illegal behavior by the State, the only governmental wrongdoing was the DA's non-feasance. How can I say it wasn't illegal? Because I read the summary - "There is no corresponding law in California to prohibit local law enforcement databases from retaining victims' profiles and searching them years later for entirely different purposes." Therefore, not illegal.
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Since when is circumstantial evidence a problem? The answer to that, by the way, is, "never".
If the only evidence in a case is circumstantial, that is a problem. "He was seen in the victim's neighborhood around the time of the murder" and "He was observed arguing loudly with the victim in the weeks leading up to the murder" and "his criminal history shows a pattern of violence" might sway a jury, but it's hardly conclusive.
The police cannot limit itself (Score:5, Insightful)
That is why you need strong laws in place that prevent this sort of thing. The police just has the wrong mind-set. When your primary focus is solving crime, the idea that some means are not acceptable (as in the case here) is often alien to the people doing it. Hence the police must be carefully limited in what it is allowed to do and carefully monitored. Not doing this leads to a surveillance-state and then then a police-state. Solving all crime is very much not desirable. Reducing crime is something the police and the criminal justice system is generally bad at and has between none and a negative effect on, and hence should only be used as a last line of defense.
Fortunately, in this case the person in charge did see how fundamentally unacceptable the use of the DNA was here, but that will not always be the case.
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Personally I hope her case is tossed. She is not being prosecuted for some petty crime here - the charge is "burglary" which isn't 'just a property crime' its a serious property crime because of the enormous potential for serious injuries and fatalities, as well as the very fundamental right of all persons in society to feel secure in their own residence. Burglary is not a joke and its not the same thing as simple B&E, theft of vandalism matter. - Hint the police don't send techs out to collect DNA evid
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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The thing you need to ask is if the right to privacy means anything to you or not. For me the right to privacy is so fundamental that without it all the other rights you have become obsolete.
I agree on that. Without privacy, you stop being a person.
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The problem is FUD. If a woman does not look at the very details of this case, she may well assume giving DNA is generally bad and hence not report a rape. A rapist may also use this to instill fear in a victim, along the time-honored "who will believe you anyways". And who says this stays limited to crime that is hard to commit unintentionally? And _that_ is why this use of DNA must be made reliably illegal.
As t this specific person, remember that in order to defend freedom and rights for everybody, you ha
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Privacy rights which enjoy not specific constitutional protection, don't eclipse property rights. They also don't negate the very explicit right to face your accuser we have in the US.
Sorry the system isn't 100% perfectly fair at all time but its still sooo much better than the alternatives. Given the other options I am alright with:
1) People who are unwilling to be identified not enjoying the full protection of the law and/or the satisfaction of seeing justice being done. Its for the victim to decide whic
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From the article, she is not being prosecuted at all. At least not anymore, the charges were already dropped.
"Boudin said the report was found among hundreds of pages of evidence against a woman who had been recently charged with a felony property crime. After learning the source of the DNA evidence, Boudin dropped the felony property crime charges against the woman."
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If she is a burglar than she is someone a sane society wants off the streets.
A sane society wants rapists off the streets.
In order to get rapists off the streets you need people willing to report the crimes. If we start arresting people because of evidence collected incidentally from reporting a crime then we discourage crime reporting. This includes the "small ball stuff" and the felonies, that is because the victims of a crime aren't going to know which is which.
This is not letting people off the hook for their crimes. This is saying that we can't use evidence collected as a vi
Scale of crime (Score:5, Interesting)
There is also the issue of scale of crime and subjectiveness at play here.
There is a public outcry right now because the DNA was tied to a property crime.
What if it was a murder?
What if it was child sexual abuse?
Would people still be as outraged?
Re:Scale of crime (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is the DNA from the rape kit should never have been preserved in the first place.
Or it could have been preserved solely as evidence in the rape case, sealed from all other possible search.
You cannot go around collecting information (DNA, communication...) about people "just in case" they commit a crime in the future. That is called a police state.
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Evidence is always preserved, it is not destroyed.
If you are suggesting that after a trial takes place that all evidence used in that trial should be destroyed, it makes it impossible to properly appeal cases in the future.
Re:Scale of crime (Score:4, Insightful)
You concentrated so much on the first sentence you missed the second. "Or it could have been preserved solely as evidence in the rape case, sealed from all other possible search." There is no reason, technical or otherwise, why this VICTIM's evidence couldn't be preserved in a way that prevents it being used against her by law enforcement in future cases. I can't fathom a woman having to spend even a nanosecond considering whether she should report a rape because it may tie her to prior criminal acts. I don't care if she was a murderer.
Hear me out on that last part... Scenario 1, she reports the rape. The rapist gets caught and the murderer gets away. Not ideal, but we're still 50%. Senario2, she doesn't report the rape. Now we're batting zeros, you have a rapist and a murder unprosecuted.
Re: Scale of crime (Score:2)
I'd rather police know about a connection to another crime and decide not to prosecute than not know at all. Baring this evidence from being admissible would accomplish that, or voting for district attorneys that have a conscience, might be a good general thing to do.
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The point is the DNA from the rape kit should never have been preserved in the first place. Or it could have been preserved solely as evidence in the rape case, sealed from all other possible search.
You cannot go around collecting information (DNA, communication...) about people "just in case" they commit a crime in the future. That is called a police state.
Also, even if you are keeping information about people (whether its DNA or name and address) it should be transparent what that data is being captured for, and when it will be removed.
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I have to agree with this. It should be permissible for felonies.
I disagree. Allow it for anything and it can be used for everything and after a while it will. There is no crime serious enough that an ordinary citizen can do to justify that.
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As for your claim that solving all crime is undesirable, that'
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Of course it is desirable to solve all crime
No it isn't, because the only way to do that is an oppressive police state beyond anything that's even been practiced before. A state where no one can have any secrets from the government.
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It shouldn't be the only thing desired
It doesn't matter how many other things are also desired, I maintain that that particular desire cannot be satisfied in a manner consistent with the principles of personal liberty and privacy. So we should not desire it, and certainly should not strive for it.
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There is a vast gap between "solving all crime is desirable" and having an oppressive police state.
Nope, there actually is not. At least not in actual reality.
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The DA has human decency, something you obviously lack, as evidenced by
As for your claim that solving all crime is undesirable, that's just plain dumb.
Alternatively you have no clue about the history and mechanisms of totalitarianism or you think it is a pretty neat idea. That would make you total scum.
You buried the lede (Score:5, Funny)
The bigger news is SF actually arrested someone for a property crime.
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Not that I want to defend the police, but is there much they can really do about property crime?
We have a similar situation in the UK, where the police show little interest in most theft and vandalism cases. Unless there is CCTV evidence, it's probably not going to result in an arrest.
About 20 years ago by mar was broken into. They actually came to take fingerprints, but because they couldn't find any inside the car they didn't bother following up the ones on the outside. They said it was because it wouldn'
Bratton's NYPD (Score:5, Insightful)
Allegedly, the police in New York City started sending CSI to the homes and apartments where burglaries were reported. Yes, they were not going to "catch the guy" who did that one break-in. And even if they did charge someone, the chances of a conviction were low.
What the police did is they built up a database of the break-ins they investigated. The story goes that if someone's "life of crime" is breaking, entering and taking people's stuff, they don't just do this one time. The people doing this are "career criminals."
If they finally catch someone doing this, they have a have a mountain of evidence connecting that person to many other break-ins. If they are able to convict that person, that person is facing a very long prison sentence.
Story goes this had a deterrent effect. Or maybe the comparatively small number of people responsible for all the break-ins ended up in prison.
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>"Not that I want to defend the police, but is there much they can really do about property crime?"
AFTER the fact with no witnesses and no video? No.
BEFORE the fact, by patrolling, confronting, and arresting people (and the justice system actually holding and prosecuting them)? Absolutely yes.
We have entered an age where there is almost no deterrence anymore (and don't even get me started on this whole "equity" nonsense). And that has huge ramifications. Small crimes, unpunished very likely lead to l
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The police did try stepping up the use of stop & search powers in London, and generally harassing people they thought were suspicious. It did not end well, to say the least.
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>"The police did try stepping up the use of stop & search powers in London, and generally harassing people they thought were suspicious. It did not end well, to say the least."
I am not a fan of "stop and frisk", it is going too far and not based on actual criminal behavior. But that doesn't mean that is the only function of patrolling. Just presence will deter. Questioning will deter. And the more presence, the more likely crime will be caught in the act and/or that a response is fast enough to d
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BEFORE the fact, by patrolling, confronting, and arresting people (and the justice system actually holding and prosecuting them)? Absolutely yes.
You want police to arrest people who haven't committed any crimes?
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Not that I want to defend the police, but is there much they can really do about property crime?
We have a similar situation in the UK, where the police show little interest in most theft and vandalism cases. Unless there is CCTV evidence, it's probably not going to result in an arrest.
About 20 years ago by mar was broken into. They actually came to take fingerprints, but because they couldn't find any inside the car they didn't bother following up the ones on the outside. They said it was because it wouldn't stand up in court, the thief would just say they must have been drunk and stumbled into it or something.
Over the years there have been calls for more police to patrol areas, but stats show that patrolling doesn't really help. I don't know what the solution is, since installing CCTV everywhere brings its own issues. It looks like CCTV is where we are headed though, with everyone having it for their own home.
The UK police have been defunded by successive conservative governments whilst populations have increased and urban areas have gotten bigger. Basically we're asking them to do more with less. The whole idea of PCSOs (Police community support officer) was to make up for the shortfall in actual officers by farming off the simple jobs to untrained and volunteers (and this hasn't really been a huge success, it's really just managing to stop the situation getting even more worse than it is). Add to this that loa
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The legislature said, "use this to find and prosecute criminals", she said, "Screw you and the people of San Francisco, I know best and I don't want to."
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No, the legislature said "" before. They're fixing this now, but it was silent on the matter. This is absolutely NOT what you're describing.
The prosecutors sworn duty is to seek justice (Score:4, Informative)
You've posted that at least three times, in slightly different wording each time.
I like to learn something new each day. Here's something new for you. The duty of a prosecutor, as defined by the American Bar Association:
--
a) The prosecutor is an administrator of justice, a zealous advocate, and an officer of the court. The prosecutorâ(TM)s office should exercise sound discretion and independent judgment in the performance of the prosecution function.
(b) The primary duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice within the bounds of the law, not merely to convict.
--
https://www.americanbar.org/gr... [americanbar.org]
The prosecutors job, and sworn duty, is to "seek justice", emphatically not to convict as many people as possible. They are *required* to "exercise sound discretion and independent judgment", not do any crap they might could get away with because the legislature didn't think to outlaw that specific thing, or because they allow something that could be appropriate in some cases.
Yes, of course sometimes people fail in their duty - including prosecutors. Still, that's their sworn duty.
One can disagree regarding what is just in this situation; one can in good good faith have different viewpoints on how discretion should be applied in a particular case. To think the prosecutor isn't supposed to use their discretion is simply mistaken. Just not true to think they are a robot, required to jail as many people as they legally can.
This actually goes directly the fundamental structure of our government - what the three branches of government are supposed to do.
You mentioned in another post that the legislature sets public policy. That's absolutely right, the legislature decides the policy. Merriam Webster defines policy:
"a high-level overall plan embracing the general goals"
The task for the court is to apply the policies, the high-level overall plan and general goals, to each specific case. They are supposed to make *judgements* regarding balancing the different goals. Hence why they are headed by judges, and their decisions are literally called "judgements" - you can get a judgement against someone. Because the courts are supposed to apply the judgement, their discretion, based on the facts of a particular case (vs setting general overall policy as the legislature does). The prosecutor is an officer of the court.
Then of course we have the executive, which actually executes the decisions, with less discretion. Legislature says "in general, certain types of assets can be seized in certain situations". Court says "in this particular case, that should be applied to this particular asset". Executive drives over and seizes the asset.
wtf?? (Score:2)
"During a search of a San Francisco Police Department crime lab database, the woman's DNA was tied to a burglary in late 2021."
then:
"Scott said he believes the only person arrested was the woman who filed the lawsuit Monday."
WTF? The woman who FILED the lawsuit was arrested? Why?
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Re:wtf?? (Score:4, Informative)
She was arrested because her rape kit caused her to be identified as a suspect in that 2021 burglary. She later sued because she was arrested on that basis.
Someone's out for a payday (Score:2)
Arrested. Charges dropped, not prosecuted. Give her a $100 Starbucks voucher and send her on her way. She doesn't deserve a paycheck for being temporarily inconvenienced... for what I remind you was her allegedly committing a crime.
But knowing how broken the legal system is no doubt she'll get herself a huge paycheck.
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It was up to the legislature and Constitution to say what evidence is legally allowed, and up to the judge to decide what is admitted. Her job wa
Did she do the crime, or not? (Score:3)
Yeah, because the evidence was (Score:2)
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She still did it. She's still the culprit. Only a weird kink in the US justice system doesn't allow that evidence to be used.
How the hell is this justice?
Soon states won't need or want to use rape kit DNA (Score:3)
Nearly every baby in the US is now DNA tested, and the DNA data is stored for future use. They won't need to use rape kit DNA, because they'll have DNA collected when you were born.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH... [cnn.com]
Won't matter in the future (Score:4, Informative)
Fingerprinted for Volunteering (Score:2)
I was fingerprinted in order to volunteer at an elementary school. If I burgle a jewelry store and they catch me using my fingerprints is that an injustice? I mean in that case, I was fingerprinted, not just to receive government help/services, but actually to do good. Are people going to stop volunteering with kids because it will make it harder to commit crimes later?
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NOT SAME.
Stigmatizing the DNA test is clearly going in the wrong direction on something that is a big problem already.
Rapists are hardly pursued and caught; this is a severe crime that doesn't even get the just treatment it deserves - women have to suffer the DNA test which historically gets mishandled, not processed, or unused. We already have a huge number of rapes not even get reported to the point a DNA test is performed.
As far as your privacy, your finger prints are not your property it's constantly p
Can someone clue me in? (Score:2)
Why is there even "unpermissive evidence" in the US? If something shows that you're a culprit in a criminal case, why does it matter where that evidence comes from, as long as it ain't planted or incited?
Good question (Score:2)
The American system has gone down the 'black and white' route; only evidence that is obtained without any abuse of rights or slightly dubious behaviour by the state / police / prosecutor may be offered in court to prove facts. The advantage of this approach is that it discourages state actors from behaving in dubious ways. The disadvantage is that criminals get off on technicalities with monotonous regularity.
The UK is less picky about dubiously obtained evidence - and also allows majority verdicts from jur
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I prefer our system. Our justice system allows any kind of evidence, however gathered, but we have judges that would rather let you go if they smell a rat from the police than convict you.
Law Enforcement is Broken (Score:2)
Loss of trust is a very deep wound (Score:3)
Over a decade since Osama bin Laden, and still kids in Pakistan are dying because their parents stopped trusting vaccinations. Speaking of which, it was much harder to get Black people to vaccinate, generations after Tuskegee.
Good to hear that everybody dropped what they were doing when the outcry came out. The damage to trust could be hugely destructive to the justice system.
Re: "Police stopped the practice after complaint" (Score:4, Insightful)
They didnt they ran her dna through the database as well as that of her rapist.
A rape kit collects dna you end up with at least 2 different types. The victim and the suspect. They run both through the databases as a double blind. This way it maintains scientific and statiscial significance.
They then compare their samples to identify them later.
I cant believe slashdot idiots have become so stupid. No wait yes i can belive it they are the majority of what is left
Re: (Score:2)
None of that, at any point, requires any of that to be stored indefinitely in a database.
Re: "Police stopped the practice after complaint" (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, but it's totally Hanlon's razor. For several decades I've worked on countless applications across various industries, and there's a recurring pattern of not even getting as far as asking "how/when do we purge this data?" Shit piles up without a plan to ever delete anything. Yeah, maybe we shouldn't do that, but it happens all the time.
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Why did they ever start? What made them think this was a good idea?
These are not (only) rhetorical questions: I want to know in fine detail why this is so hard for police to get. What are they missing in their moral makeup? What laws do they need to keep them in line?
The primary problem is that police often think (and often correctly) that someone is guilty but getting away with it due to some technicality so they push the envelope trying to pin the criminal down and lose sight of the fact that it's not their job to determine guilt, just reasonable suspicion and then hand it up the chain to be dealt with legally. In many cases it's a sense of genuine frustration from wanting to do their job well. They just lose the sense of perspective. And, of course, some are just bas
Re: (Score:2)
it's not their job to determine guilt, just reasonable suspicion
You'd think so, but prosecutors often push law enforcement to dig for inescapably conclusive evidence to make the results of prosecution certain. Prosecutors don't like to take on cases that might negatively affect their win/loss ratio. And really, you don't want innocent people dragged into court based on flimsy evidence; that's a great way to destroy lives.
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The parsimonious answer is that she's just another record in the same table as suspects and anyone else for which they have gotten DNA. This is probably only an analogy (though it could theoretically be literally true) but they just need another AND yaddayadda in their WHERE when they run look-for-matches searches. Or maybe they don't even have a convenient field to exclude records for situations like hers.
I think someone simply did what was easiest, instead of what was right.
Re: (Score:2)
But what if her rapist, collected her DNA, then amplified it using PCR, then sprinkled her DNA on the crime scene
She is clearly a good girl and dindu nuffin, otherwise how could she sue for false arrest?
Re: lame (Score:2)
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That's rather "typical US justice system".
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My brain is stuck in a loop about the sig and the bill of rights and . . . I knew I shoulda had this thing liquid cooled.
Felony is loose concept for people to say "something terrible" and for the state(s) to represent anything that they want it to.
We need to apply the bill of rights to ALL circumstances where people could be guilty, because if we don't it's not a bill of rights, now is it?
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No, she's arguing that having chosen to undergo an invasive medical procedure colloquially known as a rape kit [time.com], the DNA collected from her as a byproduct of that should not then be used for other purposes.
Re: (Score:2)
And that logically impacts her guilt of the burglary charge how? Her claim relates to the current charge how and with what outcome?
At present law enforcement can gather DNA evidence via any method except for unlawful search, including any voluntary procedure in relation to a law enforcement matter (it need not and rarely is gathered in a related procedure). The same is true of fingerprints. If she were printed in relation to her sexual assault charge so they could rule out her prints, her prints would still