[BDSM-LegalIssues] Re: New book -- good but disturbing
--- In BDSM-LegalIssues@
<jaywiseman@
>
> To recap a bit, the author is a former career police officer and FBI
> agent. He was active in an FBI swat team and interviewed killers
> such as Wayne Williams -- the Atlanta boy murderer. The author is
> now a criminal defense lawyer in Florida.
First off, I think your concerns are generally very well-founded.
But in this specific case, I have doubts - several other posters have
mentioned that accessing the NCIC improperly is illegal. Apparently
this author claims that it is a routine part of many background
checks. Does he explain this contradiction? If not, I would take this
book with more than a grain of salt - former police officer or not.
> He goes on at some length about how police officers are evaluated by
> their supervisors, and in particular addresses that many supervisors
> have a "many arrests = doing good police work" type of thinking in
> how they evaluate the officers under them. After all, arrests --
> and traffic tickets, and suchlike -- can be objectively graphed and
> charted. It just plain and simply looks good in reports. He also
> notes that there is *no* particular benefit to a police officer in
> doing things like helping citizens. It's all about making arrests,
> don'tcha know?
That dovetails with what a former traffic officer told me recently (in
San Diego and Orange County). He was trying to argue that there is no
quota for traffic ticket, and that a quota was illegal. But he had to
admit that officers *are* evaluated by the number of tickets they
write, and if they don't write enough, their supervisor will have a
talk with them to find out why they are unproductive.
> Further, and even more disturbing to me, is his in-depth analysis
> about how once arrests are logged into the NCIC computer network,
> they are in there essentiallly forever (he points out that local
> judges have no jurisdiction over federally maintained records), and
> how the arrest record can affect how the arrested person is dealt
> with for the rest of their lives. He also notes similarities
> regarding people who have been in contact with "social services" as
> well.
There are more insidious databases than that, actually. At least, a
background check is usually not mandated by law, so somebody with a
false arrest record at least has a bit of a chance finding a job in a
business that are less restrictive. One of my colleagues has an arrest
(and conviction) record that he is open about. As far as I can tell,
once he resolved his personal issues, he hasn't had much unemployment
since then.
Personally, I find it far more problematic that people with a
conviction (not arrest, thankfully) record are ineligible for many
professional licenses completely unrelated to their profession. For
instance, why should a thief be denied a cosmetologist license? Or why
should somebody with a DUI conviction be banned from daycare jobs?
Several databases with known incorrect data are government-mandated
Just ask Senator Ted Kennedy or former singer Cat Stevens about the No
Fly list.
And the recently, thankfully failed, immigration reform bill would
have built a No-Work list. Employers would have been required to check
for employment authorization with the Social Security database.
Trouble is that approximately three quarters of a million American
citizens would be denied work authorization due to inaccurate records.
> As to this book's relevance to BDSM-related matters, it's relevant
> because what we BDSMers do leads us to have occasional encounters
> with the police. (NCSF teaches workshops on how to act in such
> situations, doesn't it Leigha?) Given this reality, it's especially
> important for us to have some clues as to "the rules of engagement."
It's also relevant because false arrest of certain population groups
are rampant. Directly BDSM-related is the case of the San Diego Six in
1999. Also think of the arrests during the 2004 Republican Convention
in New York. Think of all the sodomy convictions pre-Lawrence v. Texas
(and even now to some extent).
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posted by Annja Sue at
8:35 PM
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