Today's Headlines that caught my eye

(H/T TPM)
Vote by Mail, Go to Jail
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott prosecutes Democrats who help seniors vote by mail while ignoring Republican ballot-box stuffing.
Steven Rosenfeld | April 18, 2008 | Features

...“It’s the equivalent of when a gang moves into a neighborhood and spray-paints their graffiti or their marker; it’s not to deface one building. It is to send a message,” Turner said. “You have agents of the attorney general walking through a neighborhood, walking past three crack houses, to go talk to a voter. Think about that. What does that say their priorities are? It’s about holding on to the levers of power.”...

Which led to learning for the firsme about this:

Weary of living with justice bias

BY LEONARD PITTS JR. • KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS • May 17, 2008

A 2000 Justice Department study finds the justice system to be racially biased.

Live with it.

Scandal erupts when L.A. police plant evidence on black and Latino suspects.

Live with it.

Police in New York sodomize a black man named Abner Louima with a broom handle.

Live with it.

A racist cop in Tulia, Texas, lies three dozen people, most of them black, into prison.

Live with it.

An 18-year-old black kid in Atlanta gets 15 years for having sex with a white girl.

Live with it.

More than a dozen Philadelphia cops beat the stuffing out of three unresisting black men.

Live with it.

And the sad thing is, I don't even believe there was malice in those words. I believe this was advice honestly meant to be helpful.

Accept it. You can't change it. Live with it.

And then to this:

Grits for Breakfast

Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.

Monday, July 03, 2006
Dallas fake drug case shows why many distrust informants

It's easy to understand why police don't want "snitch" defined more narrowly than just a synonym for "witness" - often today's informant practices aren't a pretty sight viewed from up close. Take the immediate example of the Dallas fake drug scandal, fallout from which continues to envelope the Dallas Police Department. In that case a crooked cop, Mark Delapaz teamed up with lying infomants to frame dozens of innocent people with fake drugs ("Delapaz gets two 5-year terms in fake drug case," Dallas Morning News, June 30). Last week Delapaz was convicted of stealing money and falsifying documents. Reported the News:

Prosecutors charged that Mr. Delapaz, 37, was motivated to steal money because he had $60,000 in credit card debt and presented evidence that he forged paperwork and skimmed some of the more than $400,000 in police money that passed through his hands in 2001.

"This trial was especially important because we finally in an open courtroom got to have the evidence of theft and forgery," prosecutor Toby Shook said.

Witnesses testified that even after Mr. Delapaz received several warnings that some of his large drug seizures did not contain real drugs, he defied orders by two supervisors and continued using a discredited informant.

In the weeks before an investigation mounted and he was placed on desk duty, Mr. Delapaz's work became erratic, testimony indicated. In October and November 2001, Mr. Delapaz checked out more than $46,000 in police money to make drug deals, but never made any arrests and arranged to have the large quantities of drugs he purchased immediately destroyed, according to court testimony.

Mr. Shook told jurors in closing arguments that Mr. Delapaz ordered the evidence destroyed because he knew at that point that the drugs were fake but wanted to keep stealing money.

At the same time, Mr. Delapaz did not alert his superiors or prosecutors when he learned that lab tests had come back negative on one large seizure, causing an innocent man to stay in jail several months longer, Mr. Shook said.

Funny how Delapaz was sentenced in Dallas last week, but a Sunday article on "snitching" never mentioned how badly informants have been misused by Dallas police. That's emblematic of the problem with criticizing wholesale such "Stop Snitching" sentiments - it ignores the extent to which the system of informant use in the criminal justice system has become corrupt, problematic and crime-producing in its own right. Plus it minimizes legitimate values of loyalty, trustworthiness and reliability that many Americans think are important.