[ale] OT:Atlanta Police make comp.risks!

[ChangingLINKS.com]

A police officer walks into a neighborhood where his partner has recently been 
killed on duty.
The killer is on the run, and has not been found. 
A family member lets the police officer into the home of the partner's killer.
He sees the killer's mother standing across the room.
She is holding a butter knife.
She is upset that police have been hard on her family and her people.
She wants the police officer to leave and threatens him with a plastic butter 
knife.
The officer draws his weapon . . . and points it at the mother.
He is an officer of the law - and it is against the law to threaten him.
He says "Ma'am, put down the knife," and she doesn't.
She keeps yelling at him and swinging the plastic knife around from across the 
room.

The officer opens fire.

                      Is the officer justified?

The United States is the police officer - somehow Americans believe that it is 
"above other nations."
The United States has the most advanced weapons on the planet.
The mother is Iraq. She did NOT kill the officer's partner, 
supports her son(Iraq allegedly harbors terrorists), and has LIMITED weapons.

Thus, the Officer/United States is not justified in killing the mother/Iraq.
The irony is that we use weapons to threaten another nation to disarm.


On Friday 07 March 2003 2:44 pm, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> Maybe we should move the meetings to somewhere safer -- maybe Australia.
>
> -- CHS
>
> (comp.risks 22:61)
> **
>
> Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 19:21:38 -0500
> From: "Fuzzy Gorilla" <fuzzygorilla at euroseek.com>
> Subject: Wrongly jailed woman blames system
>
> Excerpts, FG-highlights and PGN-ed summarization of a long item
> from 11Alive News, Jennifer Leslie, 30 Jan, 10 Feb, 24 Feb 2003:
>   http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.asp?storyid=27020
>   http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.asp?storyid=28128
>
>   "In the first part of this report, 11Alive News Investigative Reporter
>   Jennifer Leslie focused on problems with some information in the
> National
>   Criminal Information Computer System that led to as many as 25 percent
> of
>   all arrest warrants in Metro Atlanta being inaccurate and incomplete
> or
>   invalid.  In the second part, Leslie's report focuses on what happens
> when
>   police officers arrest the wrong person because of problems in the
>   system."
>
> Highlights (FG):
>  * As many as 25 percent of all arrest warrants in Metro Atlanta
>    are inaccurate, and incomplete or invalid.  This average is eight
> times
>    the national average.
>  * It is easy to confuse two people that share part of a name in common.
>  * It is easy to have cascading errors -- once the name was wrong,
>    someone else added a wrong SSN.
>  * Guilty until proven innocent -- if you lose your receipt, you can
>    spend a long time trying to correct a mistake.
>  * It is hard to justify success/failure rates if no records are kept.
>
> Mistaken identity (PGN-ed):
>  * Melissa Long (8.5 months pregnant) and her husband were stopped by
> police
>    for a missing license plate.  After an NCIC check, she was handcuffed
>    and jailed for 10 hours in a 6x8 cell with five other women,
> supposedly
>    for an outstanding warrant for domestic violence.  It was eventually
>    realized that the warrant was for someone else with the same name,
> but
>    different middle names and birth dates.  The Sheriff's office had
> added
>    to the confusion by putting the wrong SSN on the NCIC warrant and
> leaving
>    other information unspecified.  Because she was already in the county
>    computer as a witness in an unrelated case, the police used THAT info
>    to fill out her arrest warrant!
>
> Expired warrants (PGN-ed):
>  * Innocent people across Metro Atlanta are going to jail because their
> old
>    arrest warrants were never taken out of a statewide computer system.
>  * Nicole Thomas needed a criminal background check to apply for a job
> as
>    a teacher at her son's daycare center in August 2001,  As a result,
> she
>    was jailed -- because of a warrant for an expired tag.  But that
> warrant
>    should have been withdrawn because she had already paid the fine.
> (She
>    was not allowed the customary phone call.)
>  * One other similar case discussed in detail.
>  * Procedures to prevent this kind of abuse are not followed.
>
> Error rates for the 11 metro departments:
>
> Atlanta Police Dept.
> 2001 18%
> 1999 1.8%
>
> Cherokee County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2002 16%
> 2000 22%
>
> Clayton County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2001 21.6%
> 1998 16%
>
> Cobb County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2001 22%
> 1998 22%
>
> Dekalb County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2000 57%
> 1998 40%
>
> Douglas County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2001 7%
> 2000 22%
>
> Fayette County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2000 0%
> 2002 0%
>
> Fulton County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2000 80% (more recent audit shows 5%)
> 1998 28%
>
> Gwinnett County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2001 28% (more recent audit shows 6.6%)
> 1999 31%
>
> Henry County Sheriff's Dept.
> 2002 20%
> 2000 30%
>
> Smyrna Police Dept.
> 2001  16%
> 1998  16%
> **
>
>
> -- CHS
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
http://www.ChangingLINKS.com
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