[KirinDave]

Um, if it wasn't drugs it'd be something else. Stolen firearms, maybe? This is a racist domestic terror group using their position of power to target a minority.

Please don't shift the focus of this to some other vaguely related issue. The important part: a racist cabal formed a conspiracy to put young black men in jail. Because they hate them.

[jMyles]

It's not "vaguely related" - drug laws are, simply put, the current form of jim crow.

Drug laws were made for this purpose, and openly so.

And it's ludicrous to say that "if it wasn't for drugs it'd be something else." So then abolish all criminal laws which prohibit common, consensual, adult behavior. But drug laws are the whale here, not anything else.

[simoncion]

> And it's ludicrous to say that "if it wasn't for drugs it'd be something else."

When you've a police force that's planting evidence on marks, that knows about the planted evidence and chooses to cover it up, that has a DA that knows about the planted evidence and chooses to prosecute these cases anyway, and a system that chooses to promote those involved in the conspiracy to high office, then yes... if it wasn't drugs being planted, it's very, very, very likely that it would be almost anything else.

[jMyles]

You are missing the central point here:

You can't have "something else" unless there are "crimes" which don't require victims. That's the only reason that planting evidence is even possible in most cases.

[KirinDave]

Well, I guess if you're hell bent on erasing the victims of this horrible conspiracy so as to make an argument for greater latitude in recreational pharmaceutical use... Congratulations.

This is like "all lives matter." The idea that black people were victimized because there exists a crime to pin to them seems to me like you're changing the subject away from the humans whose lives are stolen by long term prison time, or from the terrifying treason against the American people this agency committed.

[jMyles]

They aren't two different things.

The "war on drugs" is, and was created precisely to be, a way to legally oppress people of color, especially black, latino, and Chinese people.

And it's not just this iteration of the "war on drugs." Prohibition generally, as a policy, has throughout history been first and foremost a tool to legally oppress people who have managed to win a modicum of legal protection otherwise.

You are the one diverting the argument by talking about "greater latitude in recreational pharmaceutical use," which, again in concert with every instance of prohibition throughout history, has not been interrupted by this policy and was never the impetus for its imposition to begin with.

[KirinDave]

I absolutely agree the "war on drugs" and racial bias in enforcement disproportionately hurts people of color. No one disagrees with that in this conversation.

What we disagree with is your decision to blame the law in this specific case rather than a racist conspiracy.

The reason your actions are scary here is that they follow a pattern of dehumanizing the crime and divorcing the responsibility for said disgusting actions from the people who did them (people who deserve life in prison many times over) and instead saying it is the law itself that did this. I mentioned "all lives matter" intentionally. You're following a very similar pattern here, but ignoring the perpetrators instead of the victims.

People did this. Cops and judges. They were not following a racist law.

[simoncion]

> That's the only reason that planting evidence is even possible in most cases.

Are you honestly saying that -given everything we probably know about this case and the extent to which people in power were involved and actively worked to support it, cover it up, and promote those involved to even higher positions of power- fabrication of complaints and testimony would be impossible?

[jMyles]

You are moving the goal posts now.

Fabrication of complaints and testimony is, of course, possible, but it's not the same thing, nor is it in the same category of ease for a corrupt state official, as merely planting evidence.

The main benefit of prohibition, from the standpoint of the state, is that planting evidence against anybody is suddenly possible, and in fact in many communities the evidence is already planted.

In this particular case, we happen to have evidence of the former, but it is not evidence that fabrication of complaints and testimony, which require a far more elaborate corruption superstructure, are possible in this community.

[simoncion]

> You are moving the goal posts now.

I absolutely am not.

Officials shut down a police IA investigation into the years-long scheme. The folks who were complicit in this scheme SHUT DOWN an active investigation into the scheme.

Why on earth do you think that fabrication of (or paid production of) testimony wouldn't be possible?

An internal investigation was shut down by those involved in the conspiracy!