@eliotn: That’s just the ‘standard playbook’. When you get into the drug-war and anti-terrorism stuff, it will just stand your hair on end. There’s no limits to what they can do and they’re doing it every day. One major source of their power is jailhouse informants, responsible for many a botched SWAT raid, not to mention untold convictions of innocents. They are an ample source of counter-testimony - remember the law professor says it doesn’t even matter if the counter-testimony is false and yours is true… the jury’s going to go by the numbers… one man saying no I didn’t do it versus two others saying yes, he did.
Perhaps the best part of that lecture is the last part with Officer Bruch… it’s worth watching more than once to really absorb the level at which they operate. It’s like street magic, they don’t have to be brainiacs to trip you up, they just prey on your weaknesses. The good guys feel justified because they’re getting bad guys to confess to the bad things they did. But the more self-seeking, asshole-types just want promotions and they figure it’s not their problem if an innocent man incriminates himself for whatever reason.
Three-strikes laws and amped-up, mandatory sentencing for minor, first-time offenses (e.g. DUIs) play right into the hands of the prosecutorial complex who hangs over your head the constant, vague threat of much more serious charges if you don’t just fold and plead right away to whatever they’re offering, innocent or not. Things get even dirtier when you take into account that they know which prisons and holding facilities are rougher than which and they can have you sent here or there. Sometimes, they just turn off the camera and assault you.
By far the scuzziest and most disgusting part of the Leviathan meat-grinder is the family-law industrial complex: child protective services, domestic violence, etc. I’ll start with the disclaimer that human beings are pretty horrible to each other in the family setting. There is no doubt about that. But what the government does with this is the lowest, most disgusting form of extortion combined with “divide-and-conquer”/prisoner’s-dilemma tactics that only take bad situations and make them worse.
For example, during a divorce, if one party falsely accuses the other of being a “danger to the children” (a common, hyperbolic accusation in the wild, flailing attempt to make the other party out to be Evil Incarnate), the child protection services may try to intrude with the following strategy. Mom accuses Dad of being a danger to the children, “He gets angry and yells at them and I fear for them!” On the next exchange, she drops off the children to see their Dad anyway. Now, child-services is going to try to build a case against Mom. Sound crazy? Listen closely. She dropped the children off with their Dad knowing that he’s a danger to them, so she’s the real danger to the children. So, child services will contact Dad and try to befriend him in order to begin building their case against her. If he’s stupid, he’ll cooperate, not realizing that that’s just the first step in a one-two punch. Once Mom has been deprived of custody by child services because she lacks parental judgment, they will then befriend her and double back on Dad with her original accusations.
We can go on and on all day with this, there’s literally no end to it. But, as Carlin said, “Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.” Until they get put into the meat-grinder, that is. But then it’s too late.
Clayton -