2016 US Presidential Elections | Trump Wins

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Sure, here's a more recent one:
Over a million stop and search encounters have been recorded every year since 2006; 1 but only 9% of these led to an arrest in 2011/12. Statistics also showed that members of black and minority ethnic groups were stopped and searched more than white people (compared to the resident population). 2 Whilst there is strong public debate about the disproportionate use of the powers on certain groups, there is surprisingly little attention paid by either the police service or the public to how effective stop and search powers are in reducing or detecting crime.
http://www.hampshire.police.uk/internet/asset/72fda666-af89-4f8f-a3b5-29480af7ccbH/Item 6 - HMIC.pdf

9% led to an arrest? That's bleeding brilliant, and if it isn't a successful policy I don't know what is.
 
Sure, here's a more recent one:
Over a million stop and search encounters have been recorded every year since 2006; 1 but only 9% of these led to an arrest in 2011/12. Statistics also showed that members of black and minority ethnic groups were stopped and searched more than white people (compared to the resident population). 2 Whilst there is strong public debate about the disproportionate use of the powers on certain groups, there is surprisingly little attention paid by either the police service or the public to how effective stop and search powers are in reducing or detecting crime.
http://www.hampshire.police.uk/internet/asset/72fda666-af89-4f8f-a3b5-29480af7ccbH/Item 6 - HMIC.pdf

9% is in my opinion which you will probably disagree with but hey opinions are opinions - significant. In my opinion it is nothing for 9 people to be inconvenienced for a minute or two for one to be legitimately arrested for something that may have have a far more significant and lasting impact on other members of society. That's the trade off. Hardly any inconvenience vs what is achieved when the 9% are caught.

Zarlak buddy, I like you but you don't know what you are talking about. Customs, yes obviously. Walking down the street, not so much.

I don't see the difference. I'm not trying to be a dick on purpose here, I'm just stating my opinion. We're discussing a principle Eboue. Principles apply to everything. Principles are fundamental. If they are ok in one situation then they're ok in others. The reason people are stopped at customs is because whatever they are looking for may have an impact on the American people if they weren't checked out. That's no different to people in the street.
 
9% is in my opinion which you will probably disagree with but hey opinions are opinions - significant. In my opinion it is nothing for 9 people to be inconvenienced for a minute or two for one to be legitimately arrested for something that may have have a far more significant and lasting impact on other members of society.



I don't see the difference. I'm not trying to be a dick on purpose here, I'm just stating my opinion. We're discussing a principle Eboue. Principles apply to everything. Principles are fundamental. If they are ok in one situation then they're ok in others. The reason people are stopped at customs is because whatever they are looking for may have an impact on the American people if they weren't checked out. That's no different to people in the street.

I know you aren't, which is why I'm going 10 rounds with you. Yes the principle applies to everything, but you are talking about a wrong principle. The principle is that if you actively choose to engage in something, you have less rights to refuse the limitations that come with it. Here are some examples:


It is perfectly fine to hold a steak knife in your hand while in your kitchen. It is not fine to hold a steak knife in your hand when you want to get on an airplane.

It is perfectly fine to wear a Halloween mask while sitting on your front porch. It is not fine to wear a Halloween mask when you are getting your driver's license picture taken.
 
9% led to an arrest? That's bleeding brilliant, and if it isn't a successful policy I don't know what is.
9% is in my opinion which you will probably disagree with but hey opinions are opinions - significant. In my opinion it is nothing for 9 people to be inconvenienced for a minute or two for one to be legitimately arrested for something that may have have a far more significant and lasting impact on other members of society. That's the trade off. Hardly any inconvenience vs what is achieved when the 9% are caught.
9% is the quoted stat due to the fact that there is little research into the arrests. Not all 9% of the arrests are due to the reasons the people got stopped. I.e drunk people reacting angrily to a stop and search and being arrested are included in the stats. As are incidental arrests, i.e someone being wanted for unrelated reasons getting arrested as a result of a computer check. I can't find any stats on how many of those people are convicted of anything, so that could be anywhere between 0-9%. Everything else suggests it's not an effective use of police time.
 
9% is the quoted stat due to the fact that there is little research into the arrests. Not all 9% of the arrests are due to the reasons the people got arrested. I.e drunk people reacting angrily to a stop and search and being arrested are included in the stats. As are incidental arrests, i.e someone being wanted for unrelated reasons getting arrested as a result of a computer check. I can't find any stats on how many of those people are convicted of anything, so that could be anywhere between 0-9%. Everything else suggests it's not an effective use of police time.

To be honest I suspect a mis-read or a typo somewhere. If it really is true then, your additional comments notwithstanding, it really is brilliant.

If it's not an effective use of police time I would expect the chief constable or whatever to instruct and manage his officers accordingly.
That's a quite separate point from whether they should have the ability to stop or not, if required.
 
To be honest I suspect a mis-read or a typo somewhere. If it really is true then, your additional comments notwithstanding, it really is brilliant.

If it's not an effective use of police time I would expect the chief constable or whatever to instruct and manage his officers accordingly.
That's a quite separate point from whether they should have the ability to stop or not, if required.
You have to remember though, the police here has a slightly higher threshold for stop and search than what Zarlak is suggesting should happen. It's not always a case of "that guy looks iffy" it's usually a "we have reason to suspect you are in possession of Drugs Mr. 712" and they explain the procedure to you and give you their full information. A senior officer would have to approve a stop and search that's as random as Zarlak's threshold. And I still don't think they're the most effective use of police time, they stop a small fraction (less than 1%) of the types of crimes a stop and search would discover and they usually catch people at the very bottom of crime chains. I don't think that's great for a system that targets over a million people each year. Police resources would be better used catching people higher on the crime ladder, but that of course doesn't have any of the instant gratification that politicians usually look for.
 
I've only been stopped and searched once, as a teenager, and by some miracle I'd spotted there were more police about than usual and shoved my cannabis down my sock. The first time I had ever done so as well. Anyway, sorry to bore you but yes, I would expect an officer to have reason for suspicion, and if stops were being done for no reason then I would expect the senior officers to know and act appropriately.
 
They have, there was a story recently about loads of illegal searches and they're trying to change that (which would make it more effective and hopefully less racist) but I hardly see how they're a good thing in the long term. Should the police be trying to convict a teenage you or going after the people who run crime organisations? Because I know what I'd rather have them do.
 
Fortunately the attitude to a bit of cannabis has changed somewhat over 40 years, but carrying knives, guns or crack to sell? I'd see reducing those as part of the police remit, yeah.
 
One of the studies I posted in reply to Zarlak noted that most stop and searches were in relation to cannabis. And frankly, I would hope the police has better ways of finding the kind of violent criminals that would carry knifes and guns.
 
I know you aren't, which is why I'm going 10 rounds with you. Yes the principle applies to everything, but you are talking about a wrong principle. The principle is that if you actively choose to engage in something, you have less rights to refuse the limitations that come with it. Here are some examples:


It is perfectly fine to hold a steak knife in your hand while in your kitchen. It is not fine to hold a steak knife in your hand when you want to get on an airplane.

It is perfectly fine to wear a Halloween mask while sitting on your front porch. It is not fine to wear a Halloween mask when you are getting your driver's license picture taken.

I would say to be honest that this is something where the choice just has to be made for us. We can't choose to live in a society without police, they're required and as such there are limitations that naturally come with it. To me, it's a simple case of the positives outweighing the negatives. I just can't get on board with an idea that officers should be barred from searching someone they believe to be dangerous so that person can go on to murder somebody. It seems like policy for policies sake. I understand you saying that people died for these rights, but I don't believe that certain rights are absolute, unwavering and the be all and end all. We use that argument regularly when discussing Religion for example in that things can and do change over time. Nothing should be exempt from being judged on its own merits as and when required. People did not die so that officers could not search people in the street for weapons and drugs. They died for a whole lot of things put together. Some of which absolutely remain to this day.

One thing I'd like to say, is that you pointed out to Raoul above how it's no consolation to the families of innocent deaths due to drones that they are the causality of war. I'd say the same for the families of those who may suffer at the hands of others be it violent crime with weapons, or heroin/crack cocaine sales when the police may have had a chance to act and couldn't because of this limitation.

I do completely agree with you and Silva when discussing how this is applied. But I see it as a separate issue from the idea itself. I am not for one moment proposing that a police officer should just stop and search somebody for shits and giggles, or target black people because they want to. Suspicious behaviour is often clear, and it's not always suspicious. Sometimes it's just not and a misunderstanding. In my opinion, that's no problem and life goes on. There is literally no harm caused. Where it goes wrong, is abuse of power and application which again, is a separate subject. If I for example was hanging about on a corner dressed in intimidating clothes and a police car went past and I started to act fidgety almost nervous and motioned as if to hide something then a police officer should be within their rights to search me should I be hiding drugs or a weapon. Yes, it may mean nothing at all and it may turn out I was just putting my phone away and just quite like dressing in all black and keeping my hood up at all times. I'd expect at the least an apology and no harm done. It's a million times better than me actually stashing a knife when I saw a police car and them doing nothing.

There obviously needs to be some kind of standard as to what constitutes suspicious behaviour, but it wouldn't be 'because I felt like it' or 'because he was black' and if it was, then again we have a problem of application and misuse of power.

One of the studies I posted in reply to Zarlak noted that most stop and searches were in relation to cannabis. And frankly, I would hope the police has better ways of finding the kind of violent criminals that would carry knifes and guns.

One of which, should be stop and searches IMO. Inconveniencing a few people on the street with nothing to hide before moving on is so so so so so much better than not being able to because of some ticker tape that means a violent criminal then shoots or stabs somebody. The positives far outweigh the negatives, in my opinion.

I completely understand your point about how the police target the people that they target, but that is a completely separate issue with regards to application, rather than the principle.
 
I would say to be honest that this is something where the choice just has to be made for us. We can't choose to live in a society without police, they're required and as such there are limitations that naturally come with it. To me, it's a simple case of the positives outweighing the negatives. I just can't get on board with an idea that officers should be barred from searching someone they believe to be dangerous so that person can go on to murder somebody. It seems like policy for policies sake. I understand you saying that people died for these rights, but I don't believe that certain rights are absolute, unwavering and the be all and end all. We use that argument regularly when discussing Religion for example in that things can and do change over time. Nothing should be exempt from being judged on its own merits as and when required. People did not die so that officers could not search people in the street for weapons and drugs. They died for a whole lot of things put together. Some of which absolutely remain to this day.

Police officers can search people. They just need probable cause to do so, not just the vague thought of "that guy looks suspicious".
 
Police officers can search people. They just need probable cause to do so, not just the vague thought of "that guy looks suspicious".

Then are we agreeing this whole time? In my view 'looks suspicious' isn't an on the spot made up thought. It obviously has to be based on something observed. That's what I've been trying to argue. I was under the impression you were dead against this, arguing that an officer should go away and get a warrant which to me seems ludicrous and a waste of time. Maybe I'm just getting it across poorly. I'm typing away at light speed in between working and ironically, carrying out fraud checks.
 
Then are we agreeing this whole time? In my view 'looks suspicious' isn't an on the spot made up thought. It obviously has to be based on something observed. That's what I've been trying to argue. I was under the impression you were dead against this, arguing that an officer should go away and get a warrant which to me seems ludicrous and a waste of time.

Well I tried to explain that probable cause isn't just a group of words with a sliding definition, it is established throughout centuries of law. I also said you should look it up. Or at least I think I did. I may not have done that since I was typing while watching Mourinho play 19th century football.
 
It happens on the street when somebody thinks that you're acting suspiciously, changing eye contact, trying to hide something, changing your behaviours etc. It happens everywhere.
This isn't enough of a reason to stop someone Zarlak. The police must have reasonable suspicious a specific crime is being committed. Like you know, the need to have reasons to think someone is carrying a gun in order to search them for a gun. They can't say "you might be doing something wrong".
 
This isn't enough of a reason to stop someone Zarlak.

I don't agree. It could be anything. It could be someone just going about their business and equally it could be someone actively trying to hide something from law enforcement which absolutely is reason to stop someone. It could be one or the other and you can't argue that. In my opinion though and where it obviously differs from yours, is that the presence of that second option brings up the justification for searching just to be safe because the potential negative outcome is far more damaging than the stop and search. I'm not sure if I'm wrong on your opinion, but it seems to me that your opinion is should that guy be carrying a knife and displaying behaviours like the above (potentially trying to hide something from police) that he should be left alone and allowed to attack somebody later on. That's an idea that I just can't get behind.
 
I don't agree. It could be anything. It could be someone just going about their business and equally it could be someone actively trying to hide something from law enforcement which absolutely is reason to stop someone. It could be one or the other and you can't argue that. In my opinion though and where it obviously differs from yours, is that the presence of that second option brings up the justification for searching just to be safe because the potential negative outcome is far more damaging than the stop and search.
Well, thankfully our government agrees.
 
Does it? I get stopped and searched on occasion. I see others getting it too. I see people at the park getting stopped and searched. There are videos on YouTube of it happening. There are TV series following police as they do exactly this.
Not on the grounds you're suggesting, because if they are then those are illegal searches. They need reasonable suspicion of a specific offence.
 
Not on the grounds you're suggesting, because if they are then those are illegal searches. They need reasonable suspicion of a specific offence.

Which I've been advocating in this thread. Your opinion on what is suspicious differs from mine that's all, but my opinion has obviously tallied with those who have searched me and I can't say I blame any of them. I'm comfortable in my belief that preventing violent crime by chasing suspicion is more important than me being inconvenienced for a minute or so. You might disagree and you're entitled to that opinion.
 
No matter who wins we will have a Prez backed by and beholden to big money donors.
Captain%20Obvious.jpg
 
Jeb Bush, the establishment guy, will not do well at all in what is a fringe Bible-thumping state.

He may not do well in any state at this point. If Walker steals the early momentum, Jeb will look like a softball has been and it could be all over by the time they reach South Carolina.
 
He may not do well in any state at this point. If Walker steals the early momentum, Jeb will look like a softball has been and it could be all over by the time they reach South Carolina.

Under the anything-can-happen theory, you're absolutley right.

Take a look at Ted Cruz. He's perfectly capable of winning in Iowa, whose Republicans are the nuttiest in the country. Ted takes that momentum to New Hampshire, who Reps are less religious but are still pretty conservative -- "Live Free or Die" -- and maybe takes one of the top two spots. South Carolina Reps are something of a hybrid of Iowa and NH Reps. Ted's nomination path is not all that insane, though he himself is.

Jeb has a heavy lift, like everyone else. But he can pull off wins in NH and SC if he follows the game plan of focusing on economic issues and steering clear of stupid causes like creationism religious freedom which just aren't real issues in the U.S. in any way. But whoever wins the Rep nomination has to find the right bone to throw the religious nutters to drive them out to the polls while bringing home middle class Reps and, ultimately, independents.
 
Perfect example of how corporations move to take over American legislation. This Atlanta investigative news totally busts the douchebag party in bed with corporate America and how tax payers give it police protection. There´s your "democracy" and "free press" for you.

https://www.facebook.com/Mediamatters/videos/vb.26595441166/10152915206376167/

Jesus, if the mainstream media could be half as curious we might get somewhere with cleaning up this democracy.
 
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Perfect example of how corporations move to take over American legislation. This Atlanta investigative news totally busts the douchebag party in bed with corporate America and how tax payers give it police protection. There´s your "democracy" and "free press" for you.

https://www.facebook.com/Mediamatters/videos/vb.26595441166/10152915206376167/

Jesus, if the mainstream media could be half as curious we might get somewhere with cleaning up this democracy.
dunno why but people simply dont care. It happens on all levels and with both parties.

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foun...als-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
 
Agreed. The Clintons just reek of douche as well.

If only Bernie Sanders can get some traction I think Hillary would fall from the disgusting weight of her Clinton-ness. Then again, anything is favorable to what the Republican party has become. What a shame that the choice will probably become the less douche of two evils.
 
Agreed. The Clintons just reek of douche as well.

If only Bernie Sanders can get some traction I think Hillary would fall from the disgusting weight of her Clinton-ness. Then again, anything is favorable to what the Republican party has become. What a shame that the choice will probably become the less douche of two evils.

Sanders has about as much chance as Ben Carson.
 
Sanders is a non-factor, sadly. He´ll raise awareness for (economic) inequality for a couple of month without affecting any policy. I disagree with your second sentence. I don´t think that either of the two candidates will be viable.
 
Is Jeb Bush even remotely electable?

I figured the left and even moderates would consider him a taint because of his surname, whereas the right seem to be rallying around anti-establishment crazy types.
 
Is Jeb Bush even remotely electable?

I figured the left and even moderates would consider him a taint because of his surname, whereas the right seem to be rallying around anti-establishment crazy types.

Not at the moment he isn't. He's made a mess of nearly every event he's done, and looks likely disinterested. At this moment, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio probably have a better chance of the nomination to face Hillary.
 
Not at the moment he isn't. He's made a mess of nearly every event he's done, and looks likely disinterested. At this moment, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio probably have a better chance of the nomination to face Hillary.

What's Rand Paul's traction looking like? I figured he'd be a popular bet for garnering the moderate vote while I suspect crazy Tea Party types might like him too.
 
What's Rand Paul's traction looking like? I figured he'd be a popular bet for garnering the moderate vote while I suspect crazy Tea Party types might like him too.

He says some of the "right" things to fire up the tea party base, but also has limited appeal because he's perceived as an isolationist. Highly doubt he will make the cutoff.
 
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