Sbforever

I think its great but I stay up all night watching.


Maybe , just maybe maybe maybe America will be less of a police state when this is all over.


Its that failed war on addicts, a cash cow for the "justice" industry that exploits sick people that created the American police state.

Simple recipe.

1. Drug charge

Profits for Courts / Lawyers , all those people.

2. Jail

Creates jobs for industry

3. Probation

With that real cleaver Idea to revoke driving license for drug charge in addition to the high relapse rate in addiction the "Justice" industry keeps the addict trapped in technicalities for years making itself a nice profit !


I know lots of members of this forum lived it or are living it. "Justice" after being caught suffering addiction. That hurts. Costly too.


I need sleep but glued to T.V !

Sbforever

Sbforever

America jails more citizens than any other country in the world. 2.3 million Americans are presently behind bars. Since 1970 the number of people incarcerated in the US has grown by 700%. Even though we are 5 percent of the world’s population, we have more than 25 percent of the prisoners in the world. Most of those incarcerated are there for minor drug offenses including possession of small amounts of marijuana.


Just wanted to put that in so my Ferguson post makes some sense, the police have gotten to brutal over all all over because of the war on drug addicts.

Addiction is not a crime.

Sbforever

It turns out that in Ferguson,"court fees and fines are the second largest source of funds for the city; $2.6 million was collected in 2013 alone."

The scenario often goes like this: a poor person is pulled over for a minor traffic offense like running a stop sign or speeding. They can't pay the fine because they haven't got the money. They get put in jail for not paying their tickets. When someone is put in jail, somehow the rest of the family manages to scrape up the money to pay the fines and get them out. So it turns out that jailing a poor person is a good way to get them to pay traffic tickets, and judges keep doing it.


-----


Cleveland’s troubles began in 2008, when a police roadblock went up in her neighborhood. She soon received several tickets for driving without insurance and without a license. “I knew it was wrong,” she told me, but she had to take her son to school and to travel to work. When she was unable to pay her fines, a judge sentenced her to two years of probation with Judicial Correction Services, a for-profit company; she would owe J.C.S. the sum of two hundred dollars a month, with forty of it going toward a “supervision” fee. Cleveland considered the arrangement a reprieve.

The first year, Cleveland regularly reported to the J.C.S. office with cash in her purse, whatever she could put together, handing it to a woman in a crisp collared shirt, who she assumed was working for the state. But she quickly fell behind on payments, in part because her weekly cash deliveries sometimes went solely to covering the company’s supervision fee. She had lost her full-time day-care job the previous winter, after the local Hyundai plant cut workers’ hours, and employees stopped dropping their kids off each morning. Cleveland was broke. Instead of hiring someone to fix the holes in her bedroom walls, caused by shifting prairie soil beneath the house’s foundation, she stuffed towels in the cracks to keep out the cold. In early 2012, she turned over nearly all her income-tax rebate—some two thousand dollars—to J.C.S. But by that summer her total court costs and fines had soared from hundreds of dollars incurred by the initial tickets to $4,713, including more than a thousand dollars in private-probation fees.


Read the entire police state nightmare Get Out of Jail, Inc. - The New Yorker


That's how the war on addicts works !! Just add addiction to the story above.


I am going to be up all night watching these protests, mania oh ya I have it.

Lenina

Sbr, darling, get some rest. I can guarantee you it's still going to be going on for years!

the best way we can fight this is to stay sober, to help other addicts and alcoholics find sobriety.

The US is in a hateful place. the wheel is turning though. We need to be sane and sober enough to do our part! So being sober is our first responsibility to ourselves and to the movement.

Love from Lenina

Sbforever

Thanks,

There is nothing going on in my area with protests but I so want to see this rotten corrupt system reformed.

alaina742

Btdt with the "justice" system. Soooo stupid to lock people up for dumb stuff and then pay $30k plus a year to keep them there! No wonder the government doesn't have any money.

Fwiw I don't agree wih the rioters. I can understand the anger, but hey are just signing themselves up to be the next victims of the system.

SoberCAH

My wife won't let me display a "Come Back with a Warrant" welcome mat for our front porch, but it pretty much summarizes my feelings.

As an aside, I was born in East St. Louis. There isn't much left of it.

I am actaully going to St. Louis this weekend to visit family.

I hope that things have settled down.

CAPTAINZING2000

You need another hobby brother!
I was a couple years sober when, 9/11 hit. I sat glued to the tv after I'd leave my office each day. Thankful everytine they pulled someone out alive from the ruble.
I peacefully protested the Iraq war while my son was serving in the gulf region.

The looting and burning of buildings and police cars isn't the way to bring about justice.

desypete

having been sent to prison a few times for my drunken behaviour and i have run aa meetings inside a prison
just what on earth do people expect anyone to do with people like me ? if you let me off with it i will just carry on doing it
if they treat me like i am some sort of victim i will bleed them dry as i am very good at playing a victim in life

i have 2 choices carry on doing what i am doing and dont moan if i am caught and end up in jail
or not do what i do and enjoy being free

1 thing is cast iron i will not get sent to jail sober unless of course i do something wrong sober that is against the law

i got beaten to a pulp one night by a few people who needed money for there drugs and they knew i had money as i had my booze

i was an easy target and they never ended up in jail over it as i couldnt grass them up as i would of been done in worse in the hostel i ended up in that housed all types of people who had come out of prison.

the victims are the innocent who suffer not the people who take drugs or drink.

we have to learn to be responcable for our actions in life and not expect others to want to nanny us because we end up with a drink or drug problem

they dont end up with that type of problem so they can not understand why other do and who can blame them

why should somoene who takes drugs or drink and commit a crime expect to get treated any different

they answer is simple do something about your problem or risk going to jail if you commit crime
you are no victim in it all i know it sounds hard but this is the way i had to get that idea right out of my head i am no victim i brought it all about myself

Sbforever

Mine too, It was not always like that.


Ever hear of "poverty violations" ? Check this out.


On March 20 in the St. Louis County town of Florissant, someone made an illegal U-turn in front of Nicole Bolden. The 32-year-old single mother hit her brakes but couldn’t avoid a collision. Bolden wasn’t at fault for the accident and wanted to continue on her way. The other motorist insisted on calling the police, as per the law. When the officer showed up, Bolden filled with dread.

“He was really nice and polite at first,” Bolden says.“But once he ran my name, he got real mean with me. He told me I was going to jail. I had my 3-year-old and my one-and-a-half-year-old with me. I asked him about my kids. He said I had better find someone to come and get them, because he was taking me in.” The Florissant officer arrested and cuffed Bolden in front of her children. Her kids remained with another officer until Bolden’s mother and sister could come pick them up.

The officer found that Bolden had four arrest warrants in three separate jurisdictions: the towns of Florissant and Hazelwood in St. Louis County and the town of Foristell in St. Charles County. All of the warrants were for failure to appear in court for traffic violations. Bolden hadn’t appeared in court because she didn’t have the money. A couple of those fines were for speeding, one was for failure to wear her seatbelt and most of the rest were for what defense attorneys in the St. Louis area have come to call “poverty violations”— driving with a suspended license, expired plates, expired registration and a failure to provide proof of insurance.

The story gets even worse.... skipping ahead.

By the time Bolden got to St. Charles County, it had been well over 36 hours since the accident. “I hadn’t slept,” she says. “I was still in my same clothes. I was starting to lose my mind.” That’s when she says a police officer told her that if she couldn’t post bond, they’d keep her in jail until May. “I just freaked out,” she says. “I said, ‘What about my babies? Who is going to take care of my babies?’” She says the officer just shrugged.


Read the rest of the story How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty - The Washington Post


I lived the almost never ending nightmare of this crap too for a very LONG time and I know at least a dozen people in recovery who also are still living this nightmare. It's just wrong how these sociopaths in the "justice" industry abuse so many people and ruin so many lives over victimless "crimes" to enrich themselves.


I think I figured it out, the system is run by sociopaths. No way me as a person with feelings like guilt and empathy for others could I ever do the jobs that subspecies posing as humans do.

“I said, ‘What about my babies? Who is going to take care of my babies?’” She says the officer just shrugged.

Of course that officer just shrugged, true sociopaths don't feel or care.

Before I got into this mental heath stuff and read about sociopathy I did not get how someone could justify hurting there fellow man with "I am just doing my job" Now I get it.

I hope these protests I see on TV accomplish something.

alaina742

Some people are actually mistreated by the justice system. I was one of them. Doesn't matter if I was drunk or sober, I should have gotten a fair chance to defend myself instead of being railroaded.

desypete

The officer found that Bolden had four arrest warrants in three separate jurisdictions


what do you exepct will happen to anyone who has been given chances to appear in court and who doesnt show up

4 warrants in 3 different areas ? and you call the cop who arrested her for doing the job of locking her up

how about looking at it this way
had she of shown up in the courts there would not of been any warrants out for her arrest and she wouldn't of got arrested and wouldnt of had to cry out what about her babies.

your turning a story around trying to black list a cop for doing his job by calling him a sociopath for doing his job and locking up people who do not obay the law and who think they can pick and choose when to go to court or not

sorry real life does not work that way, if people break the law please dont expect to get away with it

when i lost my kids to social workers and the police shown up with them and the kids were screaming not to be taken begging both me and there mum to not let the people take them away
i hated the police, i hated social workers for years as it was there fault and the system is so unfair blah blah in fact it was so cruel an action i needed to drink on it as i couldnt cope with the cruel world how dare they do this to me and my kids

today i can see the truth of it all and i don't hate the social workers at all nor the police for all my arrests and being locked up etc i had plenty of warnings before the action was taken, i just didnt listen to them and thought they would never take my kids away i thought i was bigger than the law

all i had to do was get off the drink and these things would never of happened to me, thats all they all wanted me to do

when i got off the drink and turned my life around i got my kids back and i have never again been back to a prison or in court or had any sort of police action again as i simple do not break the law or do anything wrong

i live the right way today and that is the only way to live.
this is why i thank aa so much as they had the hard part of listening to me rant about police and social workers and then be brave enough to try to get me to point the finger at myself rather than point the finger at everything else.

i stopped living the life of a victim and had to come face to face with the truth its all down to me and my own actions

Sbforever

Respectfully disagree.

This is what happens when people DO show up for court:

Cleveland’s troubles began in 2008, when a police roadblock went up in her neighborhood. She soon received several tickets for driving without insurance and without a license. “I knew it was wrong,” she told me, but she had to take her son to school and to travel to work. When she was unable to pay her fines, a judge sentenced her to two years of probation with Judicial Correction Services, a for-profit company; she would owe J.C.S. the sum of two hundred dollars a month, with forty of it going toward a “supervision” fee. Cleveland considered the arrangement a reprieve.

The first year, Cleveland regularly reported to the J.C.S. office with cash in her purse, whatever she could put together, handing it to a woman in a crisp collared shirt, who she assumed was working for the state. But she quickly fell behind on payments, in part because her weekly cash deliveries sometimes went solely to covering the company’s supervision fee. She had lost her full-time day-care job the previous winter, after the local Hyundai plant cut workers’ hours, and employees stopped dropping their kids off each morning. Cleveland was broke. Instead of hiring someone to fix the holes in her bedroom walls, caused by shifting prairie soil beneath the house’s foundation, she stuffed towels in the cracks to keep out the cold. In early 2012, she turned over nearly all her income-tax rebate—some two thousand dollars—to J.C.S. But by that summer her total court costs and fines had soared from hundreds of dollars incurred by the initial tickets to $4,713, including more than a thousand dollars in private-probation fees.


Cleveland told me that when she was first assigned to J.C.S. her probation officer had taken down the names and phone numbers of her family members. As she fell behind on her payments, the company began calling Cleveland’s relatives—her daughter, her estranged mother, her daughter’s paternal grandmother—to tell them that if she couldn’t come up with the money she would be sent to “sit out” her probation debts in jail.

more Get Out of Jail, Inc. - The New Yorker


I just can't see anything else going on but those sociopathic profiteers setting up the system to entrap people as long as possible .


I am dealing with my anger and it was great help reading about what psychopathy/ sociopathy is. They are a subspecies of humans that lack the ability to feel guilt remorse empathy ect. They walk and talk but like have no soul.

If anyone wants to read something interesting its called Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, a book by industrial psychologist Paul Babiak and psychopathy expert Robert D. Hare. Snakes in Suits is a compelling, frightening, and scientifically sound look at exactly how psychopaths work in the corporate environment. http://marucha.files.wordpress.com/2...ts-at-work.pdf


I think its a good read for anyone dealing with the negative emotions often involved with going through the make a profit 'justice' system.

It really helped me understand how so many of those court - probation people are so cold and uncaring and more importantly understand it was not personal. They are just doing there jobs and lack the ability to care. They are not refusing to care.

Sbforever

The mania settling down, up all night T.V news not good for me.

Michael Brown poses with a young relative for a picture in January 2013.

Lenina

I'm glad the mania is settling down. the best things we can do, as I said, as sober alcoholics/addicts is help others. do not disable yourself with alcoho and/or drugs. take your stable recovery to the streets. volunteer at the shelters and downtown Missions. VOTE responsibly. Donate to food banks, to shelters your time and money/food/used clothes/blankets. VOTE responsibly. Support after school activities. support the teachers. VOTE responsibly. Show up and pay attention at City Council meetings. fight social injustice. Fight Economic injustice. don't cross picket lines. Don't support Hate.

but the biggest and best thing you need to do is get and STAY Sober.

love from Lenina

Hammer

cute.

And here he is robbing a store, all grown up.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7WIju-nAoQ

Sbforever

Ferguson, Missouri (CNN) -- The Ferguson police officer who shot Michael Brown didn't stop him because he was suspected in a convenience-store robbery, but because he was "walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic," the city's police chief said Friday.

Ferguson chief: Officer didn't stop Brown as rob suspect - CNN.com

I support these protests for the simple reason I don't think 18 year old kids not even old enough to buy beer should be shot in the street over petty crimes.


Police charged into a darkened field trying to arrest teenagers for consuming alcohol without government permission, and killed a young woman in the process. Deputy faces no charges after shooting girl 4 times.






Samantha Ramsey - Google Search

I feel fear when I get pulled over by police, passenger IDs now , get out - vehicle search , everyone is a drug suspect in war on addicts.

Its traumatizing to me. I am good person who obey law.

I would rather live with more crime around me than more teen dead body's in streets.

Its frightening.

Hammer

The cop was not so oddly enough responding to the call regarding Robber Brown . . . who had been, as may be observed in the video, attending to his Robbing Bidness. Robber Brown then proceeded to walk down the middle of the street, where he assaulted the arriving cop. Things went downhill from there.

[hint -- Brown was neither an "innocent" nor a "good guy."]

As far as your own fears of "Death by Cop." In most cases the only folks who find that go looking for it or invite it. Here are some proportions regarding likelihoods from that or other rarer causes:

[yunno looking at this, I think drunks are a LOT more dangerous than cops.]

=================================

Some US numbers . . . .

---------------------------------

Death by Drunk Drivers:

Around 10,000 [1]

-----------------------------------

Death by Cop:

"Several independent trackers, primarily journalists and academics who study criminal justice, insist the accurate number of people shot and killed by police officers each year is consistently upwards of 1,000 each year." [2]

----------------------------------

Death by Lightning:

"In the United States, the average annual death toll from lightning is 51 deaths per year." [3]


=============================

[1] MADD - 2012 Drunk Driving Fatalities by State

[2] How many police shootings a year? No one knows - The Washington Post

[3] Lightning strike - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

OklaBH

I believe we have to many less than qualified police. I believe the " throw the book at them" mentality is more about money than safety/ rehabilitation.

If u was a business owner there, I would sue the carp out of that city. They announced the verdict at night and didn't invoke a curfew. They knew what would happen. One guy had just re- opened from his shop being destroyed from the last riot. Burning, vandalizing , and looting won't change our justice system. Now the innocent citizens have rebuilding to go (again) and a police department that us scared to do their jobs