Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.
Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.
Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.
Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.
I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.
Of course. Questioning their authority is a status challenge, and they're accustomed to having their status go unchallenged. Hence, punitive punishment.
One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason.
Yea it’s as simple and stupid as that. This (black) peasant isn’t respecting our authority and higher status. If we let one slide then everyone is going to think we are equal to them. In their logic, they have to fight in court.
This is a common archetype when people get challenged (escalation of commitment), they effectively double down. I don't necessarily think it was racially motivated (but also don't doubt that it could have been).
> don't necessarily think it was racially motivated
Growing up Adams county myself, I'll go ahead and be the one to tell you that it was absolutely racially motivated. You do not want to be a minority out there. Hell, you don't want to be perceived as being left leaning at all out there. This is the same area where a ~15 year old girl was assaulted on camera, in front of a police officer for participating in a protest (IIRC, BLM, but I could be wrong). This made the front page of reddit when it happeend.
And this is very likely, corruption motivated as well. I have enough family and friends left out there who have first hand experience with the politics and policing of the area to know. In fact, I have a late friend who had this exact thing happen (though, one county over), on video and everything. He's just not a D list celebrity with money, so nobody cared.
If someone wrote a documentary about this area and tried to pass it off as fiction, people wouldn't believe it, as it would be considered too absurd to be believable.
American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated. Explicit references have been removed, but a lot of the structural elements that supported those explicit references remain. I know many people recoil at the idea, because it seems like an affront to their personal self-image and the national ethos (or at least its marketing), but I generally hold that if an institution acts in a way that's consistent with historically-aligned racial prejudice, it's actually on the institution to show that it wasn't a racially-motivated outcome, not the other way around.
> American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated
the history of the United States is a collection of States and territories, forming under very different legal conditions over 100+ years or so.. that blanket statement is without context or detail aka insufficient.
ok - then most 9th graders would know that slavery was explicitly illegal in many US States from the day before they were founded.. Race-based slavery is not at all unique to the USA. Only people who do not know history think otherwise.. So this commentor a)does not know 9th grade level US history, and b) does not know high school level world history.
yes agree - education is an exercise for the reader.. you have to actually read something to learn from books.
You had a week to deliberate and digest this thread, and your retort shows you do not know what prima facie is.
And yes, slavery is not an American invention. But this topic is about American culture in regards to police and how they harass people (with a bias towards minorities) in "legal ways".
Again, hard to cover all the subtleties in HN. Research Jim Crow laws as a starting point for research.
Yeah, the only reason I'm not quite sure SLAPP is right is that he's a fairly prominent and well-off figure and they're a pretty small department. So I guess it's an attempted SLAPP suit, but they aimed too high (poor aim not being unfamiliar to cops).
Cops only know how to do one thing: escalate the situation.
Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless.
That was what I was thinking at first too, but if I was sitting on their side, my mind would still go for "Wait, if we sue him, won't this make the news and make things better for him?" immediately, rather than "Yeah, this will suck for him". I'm not sure how they thought this would be bad for him, legal costs?
You're assuming a rational, reasoned process, rather than an instinctive punishment of a perceived status challenge.
When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests.
This is an event that took course over 3 years! I could understand the initial actions, statements and whatnot from the department to maybe be instinctual and emotional reaction to events/messages, but during these 3 years, at least one of them must have had some still time to reflect on what they're doing.
It's very easy to double down and reinforce your own past thinking rather than re-examining it. It's also very easy to "play a role", even as consequences play out; "reasoning" like "I will do X, then they will do Y which I don't want", rather than stepping back and thinking "if I do X, Y is likely to happen, I don't want Y to happen, so what should I do differently".
They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them have already spent money in anticipation of a favorable judgement. Cops are largely immune from facing negative consequences so it was probably an incredible shock to lose.
Which is funny because they still don't get negative consequences. Outside of thr continuation of social shaming. This happened before ANTI SLAPP laws were passed in Ohio, so they just don't get rewards for their deserved shaming.
They thought they were going to get a payday at the end. That tells you how d much they actually cared about their privacy/the privacy of their families, they were willing to sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted").
If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected.
I don't think this is "better" for him really. He didn't win any money afaik. He spent a lot of time defending himself against something that could have easily gone in a different direction given a different jury.
In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine.
If the police possessed the self-control and critical thinking to not drag this whole thing into a lawsuit, I think the raid would likely have never happened in the first place.
I suspect that either this was some confidential informant who just reported false claims about Afroman and the police used it to get a warrant. Or the whole department is just corrupt and make up stuff to get a warrant in order to raid his house hoping to forfeiture his money.
So yes, there was an informant who was cited as the reason for the warrant, but the credibility is questionable. The informant referenced a basement that county records would show should not have existed - presumably the SWAT-like team doing the raid didn't bother to consult building plans for any planning, because that would have cast all the testimony into doubt.
This part I've heard from social media sources and haven't seen in reputable documents, but some of Afroman's claims about the police officers and their history of sexual abuse is apparently based on claims from the same informant that were never investigated.
The whole thing stinks and I'm glad attention has been thrown on that department.
They also claimed that they're received hundreds of calls one day, with violent threats from some anonymous individual, and when they tried to track the number, it didn't work, "the numbers didn't actually exists" or something like that, and there is no way of proving the calls actually happened, except for the call log at their police station.
> don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not?
Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing.
Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives.
Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence.
I have no evidence besides my own experience, but I think that the "back the blue" mentality might skew their support staff's objectivity a bit. Especially in smaller cities and towns where cops aren't just law enforcement, they are foundational pillars of morality and governance. The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
> The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons.
Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality.
This. The cops don't care if they "look bad" because looking bad doesn't cost them anything. They don't lose any money. The populace is no more entitled to resist them so their jobs are no harder, their KPIs are not imperiled. Etc. etc. At best the municipality will scold them because the municipality cares very little, but not zero about police optics because it impacts their ability to do things that are unpopular.
This has curbed somewhat in small cities because of the insurance industry. Turns out that small towns need insurance to cover police malpractice, and those insurers don't like high-risk or overly aggressive police tactics. Turns out the police can be reasonable, if only they are even slightly accountable.
AIUI they sued him in their personal capacities, not as the police department. Any taxpayer funded lawyer to defend the PD from such a thing would presumably not be authorized to work a civil suit for a person who happened to be employed by his client.
Not only aren't they known for being smart, but they're known for explicitly filtering out smart people.
The 2nd court of appeals ruled in favor of a city (New London, Connecticut) which rejects police applicants for having too high a score on intelligence tests.
They would have individually gotten lots of money in compensation if they would have won. So maybe the motives on their side are a bit more materialistic.
I had never even heard of Afroman until 3 days ago when I saw some lawyers livestream the trial on YouTube. The whole thing seemed so bizarre and I was surprised why the case wasn't even summary dismissed by the judge in the first place.
Now Afroman has even more material to make YouTube videos of and humiliate these cops for eternity.
You forgot that they stole his money. When he went to get the cash, it was $400 short. They blamed a counting error, but it was supposedly in a sealed evidence bag, so how did it escape?
That generated a whole slew of extra stories, because it elevated the whole thing to a deliberate crime.
In my view it's because the city or locality which those cops protect has been remiss, the community has been remiss in making sure that their police actually police in the way that the community wants them to police.
So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees.
An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight.
Tin foil hat version is that they’re looking for a payday where they can and if this didn’t work they can always check whether the police department failed them as an employer.
> Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.
It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low.
US Police are trained such that their first impression in any situation is to see how people are reacting to their authority, and if it's not acquiesced to go on high alert.
It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does.
Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these.
If I were in a gang such that I routinely committed theft and violence without consequence from the government, I'd probably have internalized that I am superior to the plebs. So I would expect what is obviously SLAPP to actually come out in my favor.
> Not very smart itself. How sad to reduce the whole thing to ignorant stereotypes
It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.
There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype.
People keep saying this and this case from 2000 is the one instance anybody has been able to cite. Most police agencies use standardized domain-specific written exams --- the PELLETB, NTN, IOS --- that are both not general cognitive exams and have no ceiling score.
This really seems like one of those too-perfect Internet myths that just isn't ever going to die. I think the balance of evidence is that if you picked any police department in the US out at random, it would have the opposite of the incentive claimed in your comment, and no ceiling on general cognitive ability whatsoever.
Sure, you can argue that despite being allowed to, most police departments do not discriminate in that way, but the legal precedent provides credence and legitimacy to the stereotype, regardless of its truthfulness, which is what I pointed out. I don't think any real data on this would be available, though, so I think most people (you and I included) just go by vibe, so in the absence of evidence one way or the other, the stereotypes will prevail, regardless of accuracy.
apparently, the deputy in question has a brother who was a deputy as well but was fired and charged with a sexual misdemeanor against minors.
Afroman also said he steals money during traffic stops and he was accused of that multiple times.
Of course that's not bulletproof evidence but a reasonable person might assume these rumours are not completely unfounded
EDIT: also the deputy of course didn't steal the money. He miscounted - when seizing the money he put 4630$ in the envelope but wrote 5000$ on it (which is the amount Afroman thought he had there)
> but a reasonable person might assume these rumours to be true
From all the claims Afroman made, it seems the cop sued because of the whole "He claimed he had sex with my wife, which reflects poorly on me", presumably because he only has a chance to win the suit if there is actual lies. The same video seems to have texts about how he crashed into civilians, stealing pills/money and more, but none of that was brought up in the suit, only the cheating part.
Although funnily enough, when one of the questioned about if his wife had an affair with afroman he was like "I dunno". If he doesn't know it's a lie, kinda defeats the point of the defamation suit
To be fair, this raises an interesting question of epistemology. Can any man know for sure that his wife has never had sex with Afroman? It's almost always possible, however unlikely. One can and probably should trust that his wife hasn't had sex with Afroman, but it's rarely possible to be absolutely certain.
We are, of course, not privy to the jury's reasoning unless they choose to divulge it.
Which is unfortunate, because we may never know if they concluded "Given who you've demonstrated yourself to be, your wife is justified in seeking other lovers whether or not this allegation is true" or if there were other factors involved.
No, no way they could have known stealing money and destroying evidence is illegal. So the Post-It note on the old court case gives them qualified (absolute) immunity.
Almost too good to be true. They didn't find large quantities of weed, and afroman had cameras set up and caught it on camera. I mean, talk about landing with your bum in the butter. His career just caught a major reboot.
Germany at its best, instead of keeping its 20GW+ nuclear power running and get district heating pipes installed to them, they engineer this solution at x times the cost. In this case a 30km pipe from Philippsburg NPP would have done the trick.
It's the year 2135. Discussions about energy anywhere in Europe begin with the customary lament for Germany's shortsighted decision to cease nuclear energy production sometime in the 20th century. Nobody knows where this tradition originates from but it is rigorously upheld.
At this rate by 2135 Europe will have returned to feudal society, most people will be living without electricity, and the primary source of heating will be wood and coal.
Guess who supplies all the nuclear fuel? Russia, and we don't want to buy from them anymore.
The same is true for pretty much all nuclear power plants.
Even Germany had Uranium mines in the Erzgebirge. They just were closed due to environmental concerns and the iron curtain falling, which is also why there are no more "official" reserves. There was no exploration done after 1990, so known exploitable reserves in Germany are low. But that's just because nobody went looking.
Uranium isn't rare and it isn't really expensive. We just need so little of it that there are not a lot of running mines.
And no Uranium ore does not stem from Russia, they might still produce some of the UF6, but this can be much more easily shifted because unclear fuel cost are only a small fraction of the total cost!
They not only developed it, but actually built it to completion, with the liquid Natrium circulating. It was ultimately stopped for political reasons by the SPD state government, and the usual cowardice of CDU/FDP.
Well Norway (Hydro), Sweden (hydro and nuclear) and Finland (Nuclear Wind Hydro) all have cheap electricity which seems to be the main driver for adoption.
Well in the south you might need to factor the gas cost in (vs Germany) and also the network effects of heat pump being the main form of heating in sweden.
The south of Sweden is expensive because Sweden did away with the previous single energy market and split into zones with sales abroad. Often Swedish producers sell to Germany at the same time Swedish consumers are forced to buy from German producers. It was a big thing about 'free market' and iirc Denmark was upset that Danish manufacturing could not compete with the price of energy across the straights in Sweden. The solution was to make energy more expensive in Sweden.
I know I paid about 1000EUR for an air-air heat-pump with install in Sweden, but that was a decade ago and they cost 1500-2000EUR total these days. I also have a fancy big ground-source heat-pump bigger than most residential ones and that cost under 10000EUR total. So not sure what makes them so expensive in other countries; you'd hope competition kept prices competitive.
In Germany you have very strict laws for construction of water heating. For example the need to install thermostat on any heater even for floor heating. But this implies a lot of complexity for the heat pump installation. Cheap DIY community basically removes all the thermostats and soley controls heating through water temp and flow control to the radiators.
Sweden used to have very cheap electricity. That's why there are so many houses with electric radiators. Far more expensive now.
That is why so many houses here now have air-to-air heat pumps. That is by far the cheapest way to improve heating in an old house with only electric radiators and no existing water heat pipes.
Not really, my old microwave has 500 Watts, this should be also enough for slow resistive cooking while being insulated.You will find 12V/24V 2.8L/5L Dc Electric Pressures Cookers with 250W-300W on AliExpress. (1l needs roughly 0.1kwh of energy to go from 20 to 100°C) Additionally, you might save a lot of energy by using a hay box after it starts to boil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haybox
This is the video in question, police again falling trap to the Streisand effect.
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