randomidiocyncrazies

[randomidiocyncrazies]

vibe for the summer !! (gay despair)

[randomidiocyncrazies]

This is a summary of how court cases go. Partly inspired from posts about recent events that show me just how much the general public doesn't know about what happens after arrest and before prison (or acquittal).

Warning: Much of this is specific to my state. Not even just my country: my state! I've tried here and there to mention other ways things are done, but I have almost ten years of experience in this one and approximately zero in any other.

Part 1: How Cases Begin/"Investigation"

One question seems to come up a lot in true crime cases. That question is: why are the police so bad at this? Why didn't they canvass the scene? Why didn't they get witnesses? Why didn't they (insert incredibly basic investigative step here)?

Sorry to bust your bubble, but police rarely do any actual investigating. Cases most commonly begin in the following ways.

1: Case directly reported to police. There are several different types of this. The most common two are via 911 call and via citizen report (i.e., coming into the police station to report a crime). However, in recent years, we've seen the rise of automated reporting of certain crimes via social media companies, most famously with regards to child sex abuse material. The police will simply get a report that x IP address accessed/shared/downloaded Y image at Z time.

2: Traffic stop. The police saw a car committing a minor traffic violation (ran a red light, headlights out, failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, changed lanes without signalling, etc.) and they stopped it. They found a pretext or got "permission" to search the car from the driver (who likely did not really know they could refuse). Or they got a drug dog to run around the car. (Drug dogs are not nearly as accurate as people think they are; overwhelmingly drug dogs respond to the signals of their handler and not the presence of drugs. I can cite studies if requested.)

3: Narcotics investigation. This is a distant third, but worth mentioning because it's probably the most proactive that most police departments get on a regular basis. They will have undercover officers or informants do controlled buys of narcotics on video, meticulously documented before and after. They take a level of care with this type of investigation otherwise only really reserved for the most violent felonies.

This all isn't to say that cases can't come up any other way. Sometimes police departments really do just do long-term investigations of things. Mostly, I find, they spend so much time picking the low-hanging fruit (guy who had drugs on traffic stop, yelling drunk homeless person) that the more complex and complicated cases just get dropped.

—

What happens next?

Next, the police are supposed to investigate. Gather evidence? Talk to people?

This is going to be disappointing to many people as well, but police tend to do the absolute minimum necessary investigation to establish the case and get a conviction, then pass it over to the prosecution. This is even if there are leads and suspects they haven't cleared. They'll just leave that kind of thing out of the final report, unless the defense comes specifically nosing around.

Let me give a few specific examples.

Example 1: 911 call for assault and battery. Officers arrive to find that two brothers absolutely beat the ever-loving shit out of each other at grandma's funeral. Brother 2 has left. Brother 1 remains. The police talk to Brother 1, who has a broken nose. Brother 1 fully blames the aggression on Brother 2, claiming that Brother 2 attacked him unprovoked and broke his nose. Brother 2's wife backs him up. The police, having gotten two witnesses saying one version of events, bring a malicious wounding charge without ever having spoken to Brother 1. A different officer serves Brother 1's arrest warrant and does not interrogate him in any way.

This is not unusual. Once the officers have found enough to arrest one person, often the last thing they want to do is generate more work for themselves by then finding a reason the case isn't so simple and easy. That would mean they then have to talk to many more people, examine evidence, and make a decision as to who the "primary aggressor" was, which will require a judgment call. Meanwhile, their extra investigation has just made it easier for the defense to win at a trial later on, because now the defense has loads of helpful info. They helped the “bad guys” by doing their job better. Can y’all see why an officer wouldn’t even bother? Would just go on to the next easy case instead of staying late and tracking down another witness?

In my past assault and battery cases, it has been just about as common for officers to have spoken to both parties as it was for officers to have only spoken to one party.

Example 2: Reported Property Damage. Girlfriend walks into a police station and says "my boyfriend broke my phone." (In my jurisdiction, a person can just walk straight in front of a judge, swear that what they said was true, and the judge will issue an arrest warrant. This is not true in all jurisdictions and is in fact completely fucking buck wild.) Police ask her a couple questions, look at the phone, bring a warrant, it's done. Maybe they call the boyfriend and ask him what happened. This is most likely the extent of the investigation.

You notice both of these are incredibly low-effort cases that result in easy arrests and immediate prosecutions. Wow, could that help an officer’s statistics? Could it actually hurt his stats if he takes longer and does a better job?

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Okay, what happens now? The police have a suspect, they (in theory) know what happened.

Next, police seek an arrest warrant.

This involves going before a judge and swearing that there's probable cause to believe that their suspect committed their crime as alleged.

1: The Affidavit. There are very few rules for what they can and can't say in these affidavits to get their search warrants. Police officers can attest/swear to things that other police officers saw, because of "imputed knowledge." They can quote witnesses. They can decline to identify informants, as long as they say that their informant has a history of being reliable. (They do not have to provide any evidence of that history.)

They don't have to include all the facts. They don't have to include facts that contradict their version of events. They're not supposed to lie, but sometimes these affidavits are not provided to defense counsel and are sealed, so the defense can't even find out later what they said. And they can shop around for judges who are the most friendly. If one judge says "no," they can try another.

On top of that, all they have to show is "probable cause." Nobody is willing to put a percentage likelihood on "probable cause," but places tend to agree to things like: if there are four guys in a car and you find drugs where all four could reach it, you have probable cause for all four. It's not that you probably did it. It's more than a suspicion that you did it. In my experience, "probable cause" means that there's literally any reason to believe that this person might have actually done this thing.

2: No-Knock Warrants. The media has made a big deal these days of no-knock warrants and nighttime "warrant service." These are when the police bust into someone's house without announcing themselves, at night, in order to take everyone by surprise. This is horrendously dangerous! And yet, police seem to crave it. They get really, really mad when anyone tries to take it away.

My jurisdiction banned arrest warrants after dark, but didn't do the same for search warrants. Guess when all search warrants seem to get served? Goddamn midnight, that's when.

Furthermore, police seem to be able to request exceptions to the no-knock, daytime only rules. Recently, I saw a case where that exception was granted for the following reason: "drugs can be consumed or sold with great speed so might not be there in the morning." Okay, cool, if that's a good enough reason to dispense with the knock-in-the-daytime requirement for one case, that means that literally every other drug case qualifies for dispensing with that requirement too.

3: When to serve the warrant? After business hours on a Friday, obviously. That means that the person they arrest will be in holding over the whole weekend before getting to see a judge on Monday. That's like forty-eight extra hours of jail time, in which they won't have a lawyer, for police to visit them and try and pressure them into confessing, or just intimidate them into feeling like shit.

4: What happens when warrant is served? The suspect is arrested in whatever they were wearing, sometimes allowed to grab phone and wallet but sometimes not for reasons I can't even attempt to explain, they are driven to the jail, and they are processed in. They then wait until they can see a judicial officer to hear about the question of bond. But that's the subject of the next post!

See tomorrow for information on bail, bond, pretrial supervision, counsel at first appearance, and why it all matters. Edit: Bail and pretrial post here.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

[randomidiocyncrazies]

reposting from bsky, but heres a cheat sheet for how to properly send a message to payment processing companies over the recent highly conservative shift in where youre allowed to legally spend your money

more info here!

[randomidiocyncrazies]

ive been reading garbage romantasy lately and it's truly truly awful but i've figured out a huge symptom of fantasy worlds that i know i won't like: i cannot imagine old women or children existing in them.

everyone is late teens-early thirties. these are worlds flattened in their demographics to the coveting of sexually available youth. there are no mothers with young children, no sons caring for older mothers, no elderly people who aren't evil and no children that aren't cardboard cutouts instead of developing people.

i knowww this is a symptom of me not being the target audience for this, and i understand that people don't come to these books for complex worlds but for erotica and romance, i know! so this is my caveat before i rant more that i'm not being super serious i'm just discussing something i've noticed i appreciate in more complex worlds

it especially stings in medieval fantasy (and by that i mean largely Western medieval fantasy) settings. it reeks of an inability or refusal to conceptualize a society and communities (or lack thereof) isolated from modern capitalist ideals, particularly the nuclear family. you don't know the kind of labor elderly women did to keep the world running in the premodern era.

who taught your nondescript background serfs to embroider the belts they're wearing? who made their 'roughspun tunics?' who weaved their blankets? who cares for the children while the parents are working in the fields? who brews their ale? who passes on their stories, medical knowledge, songs? why aren't there any older women in your clergy, helping manage your estates, present in your royal court? who are your midwives? who does your teenaged protagonist learn from and look up to?

beyond that, how do you treat your old women? are they all evil witches, all tradition-obsessed backward fossils, all smothering female relatives, all background extras? are they and their bodies cheap punchlines and jumpscares? where do your women go when they're too old for you to imagine them with sexual appetites and complex personalities beyond grandmothers and jealous evil hags?

children exist as infants or late teens only, ironing out the uncomfortable ugly years of a person becoming a person, teens without acne and without social awkwardness and fully developed in their competencies and personalities without the difficult part of growing up and learning included. babies are allowed because they're cute, they're basically props, a goalpost for the main romance of the book to satisfy heteropatriarchal expectations of couples instead of the main characters subverting any expectations. not to mention that most of these protagonists i can't imagine being 12, 13 years old. they sprung up fully formed at 19 before being whisked away by a love interest so overtly sexual he circles around to being sexless and utterly unappealing.

don't get me STARTED on how i hate seeing characters propping up relationships of main characters instead of being complex on their own.

this post is about ACOTAR.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

bro... where the hell did they go????

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Little Johnny: “I’ve spent nearly two decades stuck in a dead end career where I will only ever be known for who I was at 9 years old, desperately hoping I can still somehow discover the truth behind who in the industry had my father murdered despite my only lead dying in a freak accident years ago”

The actual idiot who did the murder: “Sorry I don’t read so I don’t even know why I killed him. My bad. He seemed like a cool guy. Bet he deserved it. Also you were really annoying in the car ride here”

The audience(me): What do you MEAN you’re TWENTY EIGHT?!?!?

[randomidiocyncrazies]

TBHX ep 18 spoilers

updated the timeline of tbhx (up to ep 18)

i knew Vortex was the next on the list to get killed, though i am curious about the power plays in the background regarding that; why did the Commission/the agencies need to take him and Sheng out...? on the surface it's related to the 2nd ranked hero (forgot their name, sorry) but it seems deeper than that? and even if getting the 2nd ranked hero to be X is the sole motive, why? also i assume Vortex was off duty and traveling on the plane with friends and family (since in Lucky Cyan's final ep it sounded like the plane was sabotaged), because otherwise he'd could probably have flown with his powers and didn't have to take a plane (unless his TV dropped so much that he lost his flight powers? how did he even get his powerset in the first place.......... questions to ponder on.) another possibility is the mastermind knew Vortex was gonna get killed in the area and sabotaged a plane to divert attention/make it look like Vortex died in the crash

also we lowkey kinda knew Liu Zhen is the Spotlight Org guy, so it's nice they finally outright confirmed it lol... I wonder how much of his involvement was willing and how much was pressured. Before the reveal I assumed Queen signing on with DOS was because of Liu Zhen's connections with Mikey, but after the reveal I wonder if Liu Zhen didn't actually want Queen to sign with DOS but was forced to persuade her to sign with DOS...?

[randomidiocyncrazies]

[randomidiocyncrazies]

[randomidiocyncrazies]

my opinion on the current porn ban is that it benefits the state to have its people filled with shame. they want you to be ashamed of yourself and they want you to hurt others who aren't ashamed of themselves. these changes will not benefit the marginalized

[randomidiocyncrazies]

give your characters exes.

give them a variety of exes. give them relationships that shaped who they are but did not last. give them people they tried very hard to love but it didn't work out. give them situationships that taught them things. give them something deep that was real but could not endure. things that hurt. things that ended amicably. people with whom hot passion cooled to warm affection and became undying friendship.

no more first and only. give me the context of what made them know the next or one after was final and right.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

okay here's some actual life advice for new parents

go to the library.

those toddler reading times are actually community-building events where you can meet fellow new parents with children the same age as your kid. you know how it's hard to socialize with all your friends, especially if they don't have young children? well here's a group of people that are far more likely to understand your situation and have free time that isn't after 9 pm on a school night. plus your kids can learn how to socialize with their own peer group. AND it's free

do NOT show up and scroll thru ur phone the entire time, the library isnt daycare, you need to be present too

[randomidiocyncrazies]

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/12/29/the-japanese-micro-forest-method-is-transforming-cities

The Japanese ‘micro-forest’ method is transforming cities

[randomidiocyncrazies]

Thank god soulmates (one person destined for you that you will never be happy without) aren't real but soulmates (people you understand and connect with on a special level, multiple, some of which you havent met yet) are real

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The fact that Hikaru compares feeling this good to a 'head pat' is funny at first but then u realize it's because, out of all the human experiences he's had, the one that feels the best to him is Yoshiki patting his head…which he does all the time

[randomidiocyncrazies]

Jake takes Nog to an earth seafood restaurant to have him try it and they order crab and Jake eats it the normal way but nog picks the whole thing up and eats it like a hamburger