which position would you choose to be and why?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jul/5/nyc-crime-wave-triggers-rethink-racial-justice-pol/
NEW YORK — Stray bullets in Times Square and widespread violence in the city are evoking New York’s bleakest days, forcing leaders to fine-tune recent changes to policing and rethink revolving-door policies that send prisoners back to the ZIP codes where they committed crimes.
The debate is playing out amid a mayoral race that could pit a retired police captain against a GOP nominee who’s been a public safety advocate for decades.
The New York Police Benevolent Association and other lobbies say anti-police rhetoric is driving cops and detectives to quit or seek early retirement, weakening their ability to fight the crime wave. But a reversal of New York bail reforms tops their wish list.
They say the bail reforms, enacted at the state level in January 2020 to help defendants who cannot afford release pending trial, are handcuffing judges who want to keep dangerous suspects locked up.
“No one is being held in jail and there’s a tremendous amount of guns on the street,” said Paul DiGiacomo, president of the New York City Detectives’ Endowment Association. “They’ve enacted laws and now they’re not man enough to change them back [to] the way they should be. They made a mistake.”
Brooklyn resident Carmen Lane said she thinks the courts need to get tough again so dangerous people aren’t released onto the streets.
“I think the courts should go back to being the strict people they’re supposed to be. There are too many people dying on the streets,” Ms. Lane told The Washington Times while strolling along Seventh Avenue in Chelsea on a recent weekday.
She said too many felons are being let out on technicalities, citing a convict who was released three times and ended up killing his mother.
“Hold them accountable,” she said.
There have been 826 shooting victims in 718 shooting incidents in New York City since the start of the year, a 36% rise in victims over the same time last year, according to NYPD statistics. Burglary is down 24%, making it a bit of an anomaly, but grand larceny of automobiles is up 25%.
The statistics aren’t as bad as the dark days that spanned the 1970s to 1990s. For example, the 212 murders to date are worse than the 189 recorded in the same period last year, but nowhere near the pace that led to 2,260 murders in 1990 or the nearly 650 in 2001.
Still, police and residents say conditions are deteriorating. ..
https://youtu.be/9vz06QO3UkQ
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz | full movie (2014)
>>14063926 PB PB PB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
In 1936, the E. H. Crump political machine based in Memphis, which controlled much of Tennessee, extended to McMinn County with the introduction of Paul Cantrell as the Democratic candidate for sheriff.[1]:115 Cantrell, who came from a wealthy and influential family in nearby Etowah, tied his campaign closely to the popularity of the Roosevelt administration. Cantrell rode FDR's coattails to victory over his Republican opponent in what came to be known as the "vote grab of 1936", which delivered McMinn County to Tennessee's Crump Machine.[1]:115 Paul Cantrell was reelected sheriff in the 1938 and 1940 elections, and was elected to the state senate in 1942 and 1944, while his former deputy, Pat Mansfield, a transplanted Georgian, was elected sheriff those years.[1]:115 A state law enacted in 1941 reduced local political opposition to Crump's officials by reducing the number of voting precincts from 23 to 12 and reducing the number of justices of the peace from fourteen to seven (including four "Cantrell men").[2] The sheriff and his deputies were paid under a fee system whereby they received money for every person they booked, incarcerated, and released.[2] Because of this fee system, there was extensive "fee grabbing" from tourists and travelers.[1]:116 Buses passing through the county were often pulled over and the passengers were randomly ticketed for drunkenness, regardless of their intoxication or lack thereof.[2] Between 1936 and 1946, these fees amounted to almost $300,000.[1]:116
Cantrell engaged in electoral fraud, both by intimidating voters who voted against him, and by allowing ineligible people to vote.[3] The U.S. Department of Justice had investigated allegations of electoral fraud[where?] in 1940, 1942, and 1944, but had not taken action.[2] Voter fraud and vote control perpetuated McMinn County's political problems.[need quotation to verify] Manipulation of the poll tax and vote counting were the primary methods, but it was common for dead voters' votes to be counted in McMinn County elections.[1]:116 The political problems were further entrenched by economic corruption of political figures, who enabled gambling, bootlegging, and other illegal activity.[3] Most of McMinn County's young men were off fighting World War II, allowing appointment of some ex-convicts as deputies.[1]:116 These deputies furthered the political machine's goals and exerted control over the citizens of the county.[1]:116 While the machine controlled law enforcement, its control also extended to the newspapers and schools. When asked if the local newspaper, The Daily Post Athenian, supported the GIs, veteran Bill White replied: "No, they didn't help us none." White elaborated: "Mansfield had complete control of everything, schools and everything else. You couldn't even get hired as a schoolteacher without their okay, or any other job."[4]:26
During the war, two servicemen on leave were shot and killed by Cantrell supporters.[1]:116 The servicemen of McMinn County heard of what was going on and were anxious to return home and do something about it.[5] According to a contemporaneous article by Theodore H. White in Harper's Magazine, one veteran, Ralph Duggan, who had served in the Pacific in the navy and became a leading lawyer postwar, "thought a lot more about McMinn County than he did about the Japs. If democracy was good enough to put on the Germans and the Japs, it was good enough for McMinn County, too!"[1]:116 The scene was ripe for a confrontation when McMinn County's GIs were demobilized. When they arrived home and the deputies targeted the returning GIs, one reported: "A lot of boys getting discharged [were] getting the mustering out pay. Well, deputies running around four or five at a time grapping [sic] up every GI they could find and trying to get that money off of them, they were fee grabbers, they wasn't on a salary back then."[4]:18–19[non-primary source needed] ..