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Are Surveillance Cameras just for the revenue?

With all the traffic lights there are, who’s to say how many times people run red lights?  Since running red lights is a safety hazard, unattended cameras on poles have been installed: surveillance cameras.  When a car runs a red light, the camera takes a photo, and a copy of the photo along with a citation is mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle.  This should make drivers less willing to run red lights, so public safety should be the the winner. But public safety is not the reason a lot of these cameras are installed.  It’s revenue.  The cameras are installed by vendors who sell them to municipalities.  However, the cameras cost to install, so the camera vendors make this deal with the cities: let us install the cameras for free and we will split the revenues derived in a 50-50 split.  The cities thus pay nothing and get pure profit.  So profit can be the dominating motive for installation of the cameras. Some cities have allowed violators to avoid a conviction for running the red light if the drivers will complete driving school. Obviously, the idea is to better educate drivers and inspire safety in the city’s drivers.  But when the city offered that driving school option in Tempe, Arizona, the camera vendor, a company named Redflex, filed suit against the city for $1.3 million for breach of its contract. Conventional wisdom about running traffic lights is that a longer yellow light is a factor that can make things safer.  But longer yellow lights produce fewer violations and less revenue.   So Bell Gardens, California, has just agreed to a contract with Redflex that penalizes the city if it ever changes the length of the yellow lights.  Glassboro, N.J. shortened its lights as well, and, when the mayor of a neighboring municipality got a ticket for running a red light, the fact came to light that Glassboro had shortened their yellow lights to less than the 4 second minimum recommended by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The downturn in the economy has driven municipal officers to seek more revenue.  Understanding that motive does not make it okay for municipal officials to disregard the best interests of their citizens.  It may be a trend, as New York City and Washington, D.C. intend to increase the number of their surveillance cameras.  But maybe it’s not a trend, since nine states and several cities, including Houston and Los Angeles, have prohibited any of these cameras.

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Another False Confession

Posted by Edmond Geary on 03-13-2012

A confession, or what the prosecution will call a confession is usually very compelling evidence to a jury.  And when other evidence in the case is inconsistent with guilt, prosecutors hardly ever slow down on the train to conviction.  It has taken DNA evidence to prove scientifically in case after case that the confession given was false.  Of the 289 convictions that have been reversed from later presentation of DNA evidence, about a quarter of them involve false confessions.  Of course, DNA evidence is available in only a fraction of crimes, so there is no telling how many false confessions have put innocent people away – executed them.

One such case was in Oakland, California.  It arose from the death of Antonio Ramirez.  A minor named Felix was the person charged with murder. After Ramirez was shot 7 times, police arrested Felix, 16 years old at the time.   It was late, the police isolated him without a lawyer and refused his requests for his mother.  The police hammered on him until he started telling them what he thought they wanted to hear.   That is the usual and expected progression given enough time to wear down the suspect, as the police know.

When police asked for a diagram of the crime scene, Felix’s efforts were so inaccurate the police never showed his product to the jury.  He told police he went one direction to escape, but they had to correct him.  When he described his escape route without mentioning an alley located there, the police added the alley, so he adopted it into his statement.

When the police asked him about the gun, Felix said he didn’t have a gun.  The interrogators went ballistic, of course, and started yelling at him. At this point, he was definitely feeling threatened, so he made up a detail that would later help him.  He told them he gave the gun to his grandfather.  As was later proved, both his grandfathers were deceased.

Once gone through, the story was ready for the police to present.  They taped it, sure they had fashioned a winner.  But the police had forgetten to feed one critical detail to Felix.  When he read the complaint in court days later, he learned for the first time the date of the crime to which he had confessed.  On that day, the day Antonio Ramirez was shot to death, Felix had a perfect alibi.  He had been locked up in juvenile detention.

Even with that alibi, however, his criminal defense lawyer was afraid to go to trial.  That’s how powerful confessions, however trumped up, are to a jury.  Juries simply cannot believe someone would confess to a crime they did not commit.  Even judges do not want to believe someone would confess to something they did not do.  The many trumped trials during the Stalin purge trials in the Soviet Union all featured confessions.  They were all coerced, yet even those close to the events believed the condemned never would have confessed unless they were guilty.  At least they thought that until their turn came to enter the Stalin show trial machine, they confessed falsely, and were executed.

Psychological studies show they do, however.  Especially children, the mentally ill and mentally retarded do, as well as those who are drunk and high.  All such people share a vulnerability to coercion and suggestion.  Many are eager to propitiate authority figures, many are impulsive.  Just as Felix did, children often believe they will be put in jail if they continue to resist the importunities of police and believe they will get to go home if they cooperate with the police.  This is the opposite of what a mature adult would expect, so it runs counter to what jurors expect anyone else to believe.

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