Posted on 02/02/2010 7:12:15 AM PST by butterdezillion
The link talks about the NYPD being investigated for misreporting felonies in order to make the department look good at reducing crime rates. The whistle-blower was sent to a mental hospital for psychiatric evaluation against his will. The conclusion of that evaluation was that he's just a little naive about how government works. He thought cops were supposed to be truthful.
I'm feeling his pain. I think we all are. There are so many crooks - so many illegal activities with government that we can't give any one story the time it deserves. At this point a bigger story would be if we found a government entity that was NOT breaking the law and using dirty Chicago mob tactics.
Another example of government corruption is at http://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/red-flags-in-hawaii-2/
The people in managerial positions have the ability to smear the whistle-blowers. And then you and I have to spend all our time digging up the real story because the media generally won't.
Somebody here suggested that anybody at a supervisory level should be elected.
I wonder what would happen if laws allowed the people, by petition, to force an investigation.
What if the minority party was given control over ethics investigation?
I'm just shooting from the hip here, brainstorming. How can we clean up the corruption at every level of government? I'm tired of tsk-tsking about it. I'm sick of investigating and having it amount to nothing. I'm tired of talk and no action.
What can we do?
I really have no idea as to what to do. But I can tell you that every freaking entity in the world is now “metrics crazy”. From your local companies, local government, on up to major corporations and BigGov, everybody is stuck on constantly measuring, measuring, measuring every move anybody makes. So, don’t be surprised when the results are all lies. Everywhere I look in business, somebody is busy padding the books, padding the results, padding everything. Believe nothing anymore. It’s all B.S.
How can we clean up the corruption at every level of government?
HAHAHA... go watch “The Wire” and then realize every city is like that. Clean government happens with an angry and informed populace. We live too comfortably to get angry and most people are not that informed.
Seems like there ought to be a consequence for lying.
The free market should pretty much take care of the situation in businesses. I think the financial mess could not have happened except that Fanny May and Freddie Mac basically gave government credibility to fraudulent numbers. IOW, if the government had kept their filthy hands out of it investors would have done their own checking on how secure everything was and wouldn’t have relied on the lies of the government - and the free market would have kept itself accountable.
Am I understanding the situation correctly?
I’ve wondered why Chicago’s crime statistics seem so low.
So our complacency will kill us? Is that what you’re saying?
What’s the end of that? We all know what happened to Rome. What will finally end the USA?
How is government accountability supposed to work? What avenues are we given to demand that our government at all levels be truthful with us?
Seems like petitions, rallies, elections.... don’t make any difference.
I see how Scott Brown is sort of kissing up to Barbara Walters and I realize that once a person has power they want to use it to have friends and be popular. We send decent people to Washington and then as soon as they realize they have power they start schmoozing with the DC press corps and then they become somebody else.
I think elections are viewed too much as us giving them the Ring of Power - the one ring. The danger only began when a person possessed the ring.
I wonder what would happen if we moved the Capitol to the middle of the country in the middle of a corn field - where the trip was not too far away for anybody in the country to make a visit if they felt so moved. Where there aren’t a lot of millionaires or huge companies.
Again, I’m just throwing ideas out. What would it take?
Interesting. I know the national crime rates are down and I had heard the theory that people stocking up on guns and ammo might have had an effect. Chicago doesn’t allow guns - and the number of homicides there has received a lot of publicity. So yes - I also would question if the official records say the crime rates are down.
Sent to a mental hospital? That used to be the recourse of the super rich! The Mellon/Scaife family did the same to to “quiet” uncooperative relatives! Apparently the practice has NOT died out!
Watch yer six. Criticize the cops around here and the “law-and-order” crowd will start tagging you a Commie cop killer sympathizer before you can blink.
This is nothing new. Believe it or not, John Vliet Lindsay did something good in his time as mayor. He discovered that serious crimes were being downgraded because precinct commanders were graded on the level of serious crime in their areas. Lindsay ended that practice and the reported crime rate increased.
What to do? Make sure the incentives are to do the right thing.
I guess it could happen to anyone.
Unless you’re a Muslim military officer in contact with Al Qaeda, have “Soldier for Allah” on your business card, and lead seminars where you say that infidels should be killed.
Then there’s no danger of you being sent to a mental hospital - except possibly to be the DOCTOR for wounded US vets so you can talk them into feeling guilty for fighting terrorists so they will instead do jihad with you.
If there are people in law enforcement I especially would like to talk with them. They may have the best insights of all.
I think it’s the higher-ups who are screwing things up. Just like the NCIS screwed up the Haditha scenario - probably because John Murtha holds the purse strings. And just like Eric Holder screwed up the New Black Panther Party case. And Jamie Gorelick screwed up the investigation of Atta a year before the 9-11 attacks. Etc. Etc.
It’s when people get power that they become somebody different. Our form of government has always been about finding a way to hold corruptible people accountable.
A couple different times some cops tried to do a background check on Obama. THEY got into trouble. How can any person be held outside the reach of law enforcement? This is asinine. It’s unconstitutional.
I fear we are too apathetic to do anything about it. We’re going to become Mexico, where the drug lords sewed their rival’s face to a soccer ball. By the time America wakes up it will be too late.
I think you’re right about that. How can you and I change the incentives?
“Watch yer six. Criticize the cops around here and the “law-and-order” crowd will start tagging you a Commie cop killer sympathizer before you can blink.”
Don’t know - I’ve posted twice in recent months about the growing citizen outrage in my locale towards the clear shift in local police tactics from “protect and serve” to that of revenue agents padding the locale coffers with “cite and collect”, at the expense of preventing and solving real crimes. And neither time has there been a single response taking me to task here at FR.
Maybe even the “law-and-order” crowd here are having some doubts, perhaps questioning the selective use and enforcement of questionable laws, or asking, “what price order?”
One would think. I've known a major corporation to ask me to place a large order (we were a dealer for them), and tell me that we could send it back after theo fiscal quarter was ended. They just wanted numbers on their books to report to Wall Street. This was just one individual's action, due to the pressure he was under to report "numbers". I refused, but this person is now comfortably retired from that corporation. No telling how many others in my position accepted his request. I no longer work in that industry, in no small part because I was pretty much drummed out of it.
Same kind of thing goes on all day, everyday. Business does have a better chance than government of self correcting, and the house of cards eventually falls regardless. But the culprits are almost never punished, and they know it.
But my main point to begin with was that management nowadays has people so busy reporting metrics on their every move, they have no time to actually do their jobs. They are too busy covering their @sses.
I can't. I wish you the very best of luck.
Maybe this is the best we can do. Keep talking about it and maybe others will listen.
To prevent duplication, please do not alter the title. Thanks.
Houston (Harris County) has similarly downgraded car theft to “unauthorized use of a motor vehicle”. An unauthorized user of my car stripped $4000 worth of parts from it recently. The unconcerned cop writing the report suggested that I get used to it, as it was becoming more common all the time.
If your summary of the article at the link is an example of your investigative ability, I'd advise you to find another hobby.
The story is about one Brooklyn precinct under investigation -- not the entire NYPD.
Nowhere does the reporter "note that the whistle-blower has been called crazy by...(his boss)." The exact, and only quote from his boss is as follows: "Mauriello, the precinct's commanding officer since 2008, called Schoolcraft's allegations 'atrocious' before referring all inquires to the NYPD's press office."
The reporter does, however, make a personal observation that "Schoolcraft has big problems of his own." Those "problems" include being on suspension since Halloween for walking off the job without permission.
That’s the complaint that teachers have about “No Child Left Behind”. Whenever you try to force accountability you end up with lots of statistics, and keeping track of the statistics can actually hinder the mission you’re after.
I know that statistics drive the money. If you want to prove that you’re doing something so you can get funding you’ve got to drive up the numbers. Do you think the push for more (and higher) numbers comes from accountability measures, or from government requirements, or something else?
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