[nostromo]

I think this is just the new normal.

My car was stolen in Seattle and it was found with the person driving it when he was pulled over by police. In the car he had paperwork with his name on it, a weapon, and his work uniform in the trunk with a name badge (he was a security guard - lol) along with a neighborhood witness.

Despite a mountain of evidence, the prosecutors declined to press charges because without direct video evidence of him stealing the car, they would not get a jury to convict, because jurors in Seattle have become accustom to thinking that the only way to overcome reasonable doubt is to have it on video. And even that often isn't enough...

[runjake]

If you're wondering what is being discussed in the meetings about whether or not more surveillance should be deployed, at the city and county levels, this is it.

Crime isn't being prosecuted, the criminals know it, and this breeds more crime (and more criminals). Even when they are imprisoned and incarcerated, they're probably in jail for somewhere between 24 hours and a few weeks. They know pretty much everyone else in jail, so it's almost like going to a camp reunion for them.

There used to be BOLO "be on the look out" lists with grids of mugshots passed around various informal circles so that businesses and organizations can better protect themselves from crime. But, mugshots are no longer public, so they can't even do that anymore. It ends up creating more profiling of a person based on their appearance.

And... more surveillance.

[VohuMana]

Honest question, do we know why crime isn’t being prosecuted anymore?

I’ve noticed where I live this definitely seems to be the case and has a two fold effect, police aren’t even bothering to enforce laws because when they do the city/county refuses to prosecute and then criminals are getting wise to this and escalating their crimes. Previously where I live there would be violent crimes but generally in the early hours (2-4am) but in the last 5 years those same crimes have been happening more and more during the normal daytime hours (8am-7pm)

[runjake]

I'm not qualified to answer, but I regularly hear the following in the US:

- Not enough (LE|DA|jail) funding or staffing or space.

- "We want to focus on violent crimes". I have a whole rant about this, watching violent criminals/rapists going through revolving doors.

- Use of diversion and "restorative justice" programs, which clearly do not work for certain classes of criminals with very long rap sheets, but here we are.

[throwaway173738]

> Use of diversion and "restorative justice" programs, which clearly do not work for certain classes of criminals with very long rap sheets, but here we are.

But they clearly work on others, so they’re probably fine.

> Not enough (LE|DA|jail) funding or staffing or space

This is a solvable problem if you’re willing to pay taxes on it. I think it’s a good thing because newer facilities and more staff probably leads to more humane treatment of prone in jail. We could also stop routinely jailing people who are awaiting trial, too.

[KittenInABox]

> Not enough (LE|DA|jail) funding or staffing or space.

How is it possible that there isn't enough funding/staffing? Budgets have increased, ballooned beyond inflation in many cases they are the biggest line item in a city's budget.

[awesome_dude]

There's a lot here to unpack - and it's incredibly nuanced.

Crime in most countries is on the decline, there have been "blips" or "spikes", but the reality is that crime is decreasing.

When people talk about communities not being policed, there's also multiple things at play - partly it's perception, which is subjective, and not very reliable (back in my dayyyyyy), and partly it's about focus.

As for prosecution - most countries are realising that prosecution leading to incarceration is counter productive - as the GP touched on, prison becomes a University for criminals, as well as a record being prohibitive in getting individuals "on the right track" - that is, they become more isolated and excluded, leaving them with fewer choices when it comes to behaviour.

I'm middle aged, and for my entire life, the same drum has been beaten - crime is rising, children don't respect their elders, youth are getting away with crime, there should be harsher punishments, and so on.

But the hard facts have shown otherwise (as to /why/ crime is dropping, that's a genuine subject for debate, for example the removal of lead in petrol is now thought to be one of the key reasons that violent crime is dropping)

[runjake]

> the reality is that crime is decreasing

This is the problem with assuming stats == reality. The ground reality often does not match the overall stats.

Overall, crime seems to be decreasing. But this doesn’t help in areas like mine, where the population is growing, taxes are increasing, and crime is rising, yet budgets for adequate LE/justice resources seem to be decreasing or not keeping pace with crime growth. This seems to be fairly common in growing areas of the western US.

[nradov]

Crime statistics are on the decline. It's harder to tell whether actual crime is on the decline.

[awesome_dude]

Anecdata isn't going to get us any closer.

Statistics gathered the way the are is all we have

[nradov]

Are the statistics accurate?

Jeff Bezos said, "I have a saying, which is when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right."

https://lexfridman.com/jeff-bezos-transcript/#chapter6_amazo...

[verisimi]

But.... you can get statistics on anything you like, if you are prepared to fund (or defund) them. If you pay to see the relation between crime and how many cats there are in a neighbourhood, you can get that! Ie statistics themselves are part of the game.

[philwelch]

It's intentional on the part of the prosecutors, and the billionaire who funds their campaigns. I don't know what their actual motivations are--probably some combination of ideological derangement and ulterior motive. They just don't believe in prosecuting most ordinary criminals.

[fragmede]

The popularity of the ACAB meme did not exactly endear the local populace with the local police in more liberal cities.

[komali2]

Perhaps the police should not have earned the label if they didn't want it applied.

The problem is the police and the State are allies in the end, and the State under liberal democracy is supposed to be the mechanism by which the police are reformed / reigned in. Now you get insanities like governors sending in police and national guard to support a federal invasion force to defend a concentration camp the locals are protesting against.

https://truthout.org/articles/new-jersey-governor-acquiesces...

[verisimi]

So you're saying that the government engineers the situation (more crime) in order to justify the solution (more surveillance) that they already intended. Once the surveillance is in place, they would then clear the blockage (start prosecuting crime again) which will be a big win for their solution (more surveillance).

So the whole thing is actually about greater control of the law-abiding (not decreasing crime), and how to engineer the circumstances to get the public to accept the unacceptable.

[gwbas1c]

> because jurors in Seattle have become accustom to thinking that the only way to overcome reasonable doubt is to have it on video.

Who serves on a jury frequently enough to become accustomed to anything? I've only been mailed for jury duty a few times, and every time when I check the night before I'm waived out.

[dhosek]

I think a more accurate way to phrase this is that potential jurors in Seattle have grown to believe etc.

How does that happen? Television. They see the police pulling up surveillance videos or using high tech lab technologies on television shows and assume that these fictional techniques are the norm. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect

[LeifCarrotson]

Television courtrooms are half of it, the other is social media. Tiktok and Youtube and Facebook will show you videos all day long with notable events that were pulled from security cameras, or uploaded by bystanders with cell phones, or found in the background of videos that were intended to capture something else.

The other side of the equation is that surveillance infrastructure is already nigh omnipresent, as described by the attached article. A juror who gets alerts every day from their Ring doorbell, who drives a Tesla with an integrated dashcam, and parks in a lot covered by their apartment's security cameras, can be easily persuaded that camera surveillance should be the standard of proof.

[malwrar]

I don’t understand how video evidence from a mass surveillance network would have helped here. They found your car without it! Shouldn’t your issue be with the prosecutor, and thus your ineffective local government?

Otherwise, what’s to stop them from just telling you video evidence isn’t enough, because jurors have become accustom to thinking that video evidence can be faked by vindictive cops?

[emodendroket]

I rather doubt the point of all this stuff is that kind of crime.

[victor9000]

It was just a little baby GTA

[ProllyInfamous]

My state recently passed a law (similar to Texas') which allows people to defend with lethal force certain property (beyond just their vehicle, which was already allowed).

Tennessee-wide, it goes into effect July 1st – and is long-overdue. I live in a working-class neighborhood and we do whatever we can to keep the trouble elsewhere (i.e. not here). Wish guns didn't exist, but until they don't stay safe thugz.

[jeffbee]

What's your hypothesis on why Texas has a much higher auto theft rate than Tennessee, given that they long had the policy you seem to believe is a remedy?

[cucumber3732842]

After adjusting for socioeconomic factors auto theft in the US is pretty much a straight gradient based on "how quickly can it be in mexico"

Arizona, New Mexico and Socal have pretty high auto theft rates as well.

[ProllyInfamous]

This would be my answer, having grown up in Texas just hours from the border.

----

Now that I live 1,000+ miles-more, inland, I definitely keep more of these opinions to myself – but decades of Texceptionalism (indoctrination, the Tejas way) definitely affects one's opinion on proximity to Mexico.

[emodendroket]

So do Washington, DC and Colorado but those don't really seem to fit your theory.

[tsss]

Well, for one Texas has a port and a border with Mexico. Car theft is almost exclusively for export to other countries, particularly South America and Africa.

[warumdarum]

Eh, texas gets all that borderly goodness the liberal north dishes out so freely, but avoids for itself ?

[jeffbee]

I'm just wondering why this Wild West stuff seems to be neither effective, since Texas has auto theft rates well above national averages, nor necessary, considering that Florida lacks the statute and has auto theft rates well below national averages.

[emodendroket]

You can see how seriously stopping that crime is being taken by the anecdote I'm replying to, can't you?

[bonoboTP]

Then which kind? If you mean political resistance, that's easier to surveil from phones and chat apps and gps, not cameras.

[emodendroket]

It would be easier not to build Prism but they did that didn't they

[titzer]

Why not all of them?

[fny]

Your forgetting the nonsense a defense attorney will conjure.

How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief?

We had a similar issue with the hit and run of my grandfather: even though video evidence found the car and later saw the suspect leave the car, the detectives worried a defence attorney would argue someone else may have been driving at the time the accident (e.g his wife), and therefore "beyond reasonable doubt" might be questioned.

In the end, the detectives managed to collect enough evidence to seek a conviction, and the experience taught me a lot of "unreasonable" doubts are often considered "reasonable."

[bmitch3020]

> How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief?

If you're caught with stolen property, particularly a vehicle that has a title, I think the burden is on you to prove you thought you bought the car legitimately. Show a bill-of-sale, signed title, or any other evidence of a transaction. Particularly when that evidence includes identifying information of the seller.

[rafram]

This is a misunderstanding of the American justice system at the most basic level. The burden is never on the defendant to prove their innocence. If the prosecution can’t prove that you stole it or knew it was stolen when you bought it, you aren’t guilty.

[philwelch]

> The burden is never on the defendant to prove their innocence.

False. Look up "affirmative defense".

[rafram]

That's separate and has no bearing on the burden of proof, which is ALWAYS on the prosecution. It is legitimately shocking that educated Americans can be ignorant of the most basic tenet of our justice system, the presumption of innocence.

[philwelch]

The prosecution has the burden of proof to establish the basic accusation, and the defendant is always entitled to offer the negative defense of "I didn't do it". For instance, if I'm accused of killing Paul, I can always say "I didn't kill Paul" and the prosecution has the burden of proof to say that I did. On the other hand, if my defense is that I killed Paul in self defense, the burden of proof is on me to show that my actions satisfied the legal definition of self defense in my state.

[chadgpt3]

I guess no crime can ever occur then, since you can never prove it wasn't consensual?

Oh you were caught in 4k walking down the street smashing every windshield with a crowbar. But how can they prove all the car owners didn't pay you to do that for a film project?

[ImPostingOnHN]

The property is subject to forfeit ('caveat emptor' in law), but you have to be proven criminal beyond any reasonable doubt.

[toast0]

My brother bought a stolen motorcycle once. He checked with California DMV before purchasing it, and IIRC, the DMV issued him a title. Several months later, the local PD came over, asked him a lot of questions, took the motorcycle and let him go. Of course, he couldn't get in touch with the seller again, so he was just out the money.

Stolen property doesn't come with a sticker indicating it's stolen.

[BobbyTables2]

How did that happen?

The thieves stole the car, got a replacement title, and then officially transferred it to your brother?

I’ve bought and sold a couple of cars when I was younger and more foolish. Not even sure had contracts, just remember an exchange of cashier check and signed title, followed with a form to the state that the vehicle was purchased.

Man, never going to do that again!

[toast0]

I guess yeah. I never heard about it again, after the PD picked up the bike.

Maybe there's a stolen vehicle registry to check now... If it wasn't stolen recently, anyway.

[Schiendelman]

Doesn't carfax help with this? Ensuring the person it's registered to is the one who's selling it?

[toast0]

Checking with the title registration agency (California DMV) would have seemed to help, but it didn't. Not sure engaging a 3rd party service would help either.

Carfax on an old enough car seems pretty silly too, I dunno.

[mixmastamyk]

Bank records are readily available, large cash transactions as well.

[butlike]

Need a subpoena/warrant for those records. Don't know the intricacies of that, but I doubt a judge would grant the warrant unless they had the person dead-to-rights and were going after a bigger fish higher up on the chain.

[mixmastamyk]

Warrants were never hard to get for a good-faith case and increasingly ignored for others.

[dmitrygr]

This is why you also charge possession of stolen property, and not only theft

[sleepybrett]

Well then he's in possession of stolen property, which is also a crime.

[rightbyte]

> Your forgetting the nonsense a defense attorney will conjure.

> How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief?

How is that nonsense? Possessing stolen property doesn't prove you stole it. That would among other issues ruin the 2nd hand market.

[lovich]

Because most people can’t map their idea of obvious to the various levels of proof different courts have, and “beyond reasonable doubt” is a much higher standard than the colloquial English means.

[neutronicus]

My wife was on a murder jury in Baltimore that convicted on the strength of video evidence. She was surprised at just how much of it there was.

[bombcar]

The amount of resources brought to bear on a murder is way above what will be brought for a stolen car.

For those they likely won’t even have a cop call the local businesses.

[senderista]

Same, my stolen car was full of PII when it was pulled over (driver fled), and the cops couldn't have cared less. I found the thief and his girlfriend on Facebook, but decided to drop it there.

[philwelch]

Wise decision. If you did anything to the thief, odds are the cops would have cared.

[patsplat]

The stolen property in the story in the above comment was recovered. I don’t see how this justifies more surveillance that is likely to be abused.

[loeg]

Do you think if stolen property is eventually recovered, in some condition, it's "no harm, no foul?" Or, maybe it would be beneficial for society if theft didn't happen in the first place?

[georgeven]

I wonder if you can sue him in civic court, could teach him a lesson.

[daveshistory]

The lesson would be that you spend a great deal of money upfront, go through a tremendous amount of stress, end up with a judgment against someone who doesn't have the money to pay it anyways?

[orthecreedence]

Small claims maybe to recoup towing/recovery fees, but a civil case? No way. That shit will make you go gray quick.

[sudokatsu]

How do you know it was a Honda?

[RIMR]

This is such a strange reactionary take to blame Seattle jurors for this.

I agree that this should have resulted in charges, but every cop in Seattle wears a body camera. Even if your theory was correct (it isn't), they would actually have video evidence of this person driving your car without an explanation after you reported it stolen.

I suspect that there is more to this story that either you don't know, or you aren't telling us, because your logic here is very flawed.

[SauntSolaire]

That's footage of them driving it, not footage of them stealing it.

[downrightmike]

so cameras are useless, but everywhere

[ryanisnan]

Right, just the worst of all possible worlds. Computer generated video is going to make this mess a whole lot worse too.

[mannanj]

Ever think about whether maybe he bought it from someone who stole it and sold it with fake paperwork?

Not saying you don't deserve to get your vehicle back, and I'm sorry that happened to you.

[smithoc]

This anecdote may be true, but is certainly not representative of current life in America.

Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.

If jurors in Seattle have become skeptical of the claims that police and prosecutors make without evidence, the blame should fall squarely on decades of innocent people being sent to jail and minor infractions sending people to prison for years due to police lying, fabricating evidence, destroying evidence and prosecutors filing charges for far more severe crimes than what really occurred.

You're fortunate that your only experience of the failure of policing in America is in the most recent awakening against the unreliability of police and prosecutors. For many families, their lives have been destroyed after watching their loved ones be brutalized in prisons because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were victimized by the police and prosecutors.

[daedrdev]

The majority of people in prisons in the US are incarcerated for violent crime. 64% of violent criminals are rearrested compared to 40% of nonviolent criminals. It really looks like the US is being somewhat efficient here and just has a lot of crime.

[ProllyInfamous]

In my hope that violent criminals serve longer sentences than nonviolent criminals, perhaps there is a correlation between time-served and recidivism..?

Living in a workingclass neighborhood, many of my most-favorite neighbors are felons of the nonviolent variety – nobody wants back in to their old prisonplanet – just keep looking forwards.

[daedrdev]

Theres obviously going to be a correlation, but it may be because the state effectively gives more evil criminals longer sentences

[esikich]

Yeah, the longer you're in, the less employable you are, and are more likely to reoffend. Our prison systems do fuckall for rehabilitation because in general, the public sentiment is "lock them up and throw away the key, I hope they get raped, prison isn't supposed to be fun". Our prison systems are basically set up amplify crime. It's good for the for profit owners, and conservatives eat up the dehumanization of it all.

[daedrdev]

Very few US prisons are for profit.

Like I said in my other comment, some are more likely to reoffend because their prison time, but other were already more likely to reoffend, especially multiple felons who commit an extremely high percent of all crimes.

[ProllyInfamous]

>Very few US prisons are for profit.

Just under 10% – which is certainly a minority, but still enough value that Michael Bury (Big Short investorguy) once had an entire fiscal quarter where his only net-increase positions were in for-profit prison operators.

Lots of money and facilities in private prisons, particularly in This South.

[gottorf]

> conservatives eat up the dehumanization of it all

One could argue that's really dehumanizing is the callous disregard the system displays for the victims of such repeat violent offenders.

[ProllyInfamous]

One such violent repeat offender wrote a book about his experience helping build Leavenworth Fed while serving time at Leavenworth State – he would eventually serve additional time at this newly-constructed facility.

Warning, I am not linking to the book (it's on Amazon) because no amount of #TriggerWarning can prepare you for the mind of P - A - N - Z - R - A - M [the name of the non-fiction collection of this prisoner's personal letters].

When Mr. P was asked what made him such a monster, he wrote honestly and practically about the upbringing of a serial-killing rapist. Mr. P's EVIL puts JWGacey in the safehouse.

[neutronicus]

> This anecdote may be true, but is certainly not representative of current life in America.

I live in Baltimore, where people have very negative attitudes towards police because of everything you describe.

Nevertheless, the perception here is that it's impossible to get police to act on nuisance crime, or really anything short of murder, even with video evidence. There's also a perception that it that this is a recent shift and represents the police retaliating after being prosecuted for the murder of Freddie Gray.

[sellmesoap]

It's a large country with subtle differencies across the states but this story came to mind immediately https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48249747

[rootusrootus]

> Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.

I recall a comparison that was done between incarceration in the US versus the UK, and the defining difference was length of sentences. The rates were otherwise similar, but the US justice system gives out sentences something like twice as long on average.

[dylan604]

You know, sometimes, you just gotta get to work and the busses just aren't going to get you there in time. /s

I was in a jury pool not in Seattle for a guy that already pled guilty for GTA, so it was just the sentencing part. The defense attorney asked if I thought it might be possible to sentence the minimum. I said yes. The prosecutor asked if I thought I could give the the maximum sentence of 99 years. I said for stealing a car? I was bounced from the pool. So maybe juries in Seattle have had their fair share of prosecutorial shenanigans as well???

[bonoboTP]

I thought jurors don't decide the sentence length, just the (not) guilty verdict.

Are you implying they were testing whether you're willing to let the judge use the entire span of sentencing available in law? Otherwise I'm not sure what you mean that you were bounced from the jury because the defense lawyer wanted you to be fine with 99 years in prison for his client.

[dylan604]

Nope. The jury was to give the sentence. This depends on jurisdiction when the jury does the sentencing. Capital murder cases are a famous example. I guess I was lucky that my local jurisdiction said GTA was worth of a jury sentencing??

The defense attorney was looking for jurors sympathetic to giving his client the least time possible. The prosecutor was looking for people to throw the book at the defendant and be open to maximum sentencing. Because I was not, he struck me.

[bonoboTP]

It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate. If you appear very reflective and capable of complex thought, you're a risk.

You could've said, you're open to whatever sentence, you make no prior commitment and will decide for whatever sentence is appropriate based on the court proceedings and the law as given by the judge. But they would have called bullshit on that too, they are good at seeing who is a difficult person to work with from their POV.

It's a very broken system and I'm glad to live in a civil law country. The power imbalance is huge. The lawyers are incredibly well prepared regarding tricks around jury psychology but the jury are selected for being the most naive people possible. If you seem too much of a smartass to them who knows their tricks, you're out.

[lovich]

> It seems that the selection process optimizes for either liars or dumb people who are easiest to emotionally manipulate.

It does. Having expert knowledge is a deal breaker too. I actually want to serve on a jury but because I am unwilling to lie to a judge I’ve been bounced everytime when I am asked if I would believe the police testimony and I reply with “that would depend on if they were a Brady cop”

[bonoboTP]

I once saw the livestream of jury selection in a big trial and read up on the whole thing and it seemed like such an obviously weak point of the whole process. The whole language around the concepts that underpin it seem totally ignorant of human psychology and pretend that humans are great at self reflection, won't hide their motivations etc. Like asking whether you're able to put aside X and Y from influencing your judgment, and if you say yes, that's good, if no, you're out.

Of course it's impossible to look into people's minds, but it's clear that the kludge is a result of historical push and pull of interests and a kind of truce and compromise they could arrive at that people still find convincing enough in the end, but also practical for the lawyers. Like, I understand this isn't easy, you don't one one highly qualified person dominate everyone else, even if just subconsciously. You want to encourage all jurors to feel that they have an equal input into the process. It's certainly not a system that's engineered for finding truth, and much more concerned with pretense in favor of the appearance of truth. A realist retort would be that pursuing a truth-finding system is only possible in utopia idealized situations, so going with the adversarial system is the best bet we have for getting some acceptable balanced compromise.

[brendoelfrendo]

Ok, so, what was the evidence he was the one who stole the car?

[Trias11]

We should let the thieves off the hooks so they'd vote for us again and again.

-- politicians

[slowhadoken]

It’s political. The same thing is happening with marijuana. A state legalizes it and then functional junkies show up from conservative states to smoke it in doors. Places like Colorado have laws to regulate it but they don’t. Police and judges follow suit because mayors don’t want to create a precedent that would scare potheads. This keeps the drug money coming in and crime stats low. It’s crazy because regulation is a liberal practice but they’re just not being enforced and no new explicate regulations are being written which is a conservative tactic. All of this emboldens criminal use of marijuana under the pretense of preventing persecution of drug addicts by dressing them up as medication recipients.

[lovich]

If the state legalized it then it’s not a crime as far as the state is concerned. The feds still have it illegal but states are not required to enforce or even help federal law enforcement to enforce their own laws. They can choose to do so but it’s not an obligation.

Your comment is coming from the perspective that they are criminals because you don’t like the activity, not because they broke the law. Lobby your state representatives and run an activist campaign to make it illegal again if that’s how you feel.

[slowhadoken]

Even if a state legalized marijuana it’s still illegal to possess a lot of it, to sell it without a license, and can violate tort, municipal, state and federal laws about drug smoke outdoors or indoors. It’s not my opinion, it’s regulation based on scientific evidence to protect public health. A lot of this is understood in California but cash poor states with huge budge problems look the other way. Potheads know this, they use these facts to pressure cities and states to take their dirty money. Since the revenue from taxing marijuana isn’t going to K-12 schools a lot of locals are getting tired of the bad money coming from pot. It’s a trade off like legalizing gambling but with no benefits. Smokers make up a fraction of the total population so you’re going to see pushback very soon.

[lovich]

Then have pushback, that’s how democracy is supposed to work. If your complaint is that enforcement isn’t 100% perfect then you’ll find most laws are lacking.

I say this as someone who also hates public pot smokers but I’m not talking about them like they are “dirty money”. People commonly want to do something with negative externalities. Enforcing regulation against that is a tradeoff between cost and benefit.

[slowhadoken]

Right, not enforcing laws is criminal. It’s like you’re agreeing with me but you’re depressed and apathetic about it. It’s not just me, you see it all over social media. People are grossed out by potheads. I grew up with hippies and didn’t have a problem with it until normies started abusing it. Legalizing drugs or gambling is a trade off, it’s dirty money. Politicians know this, they have meetings about how high crime will go up afterwards. Again It’s just a fact, it’s not my “feelings” or “opinions”. I’ve studied political science. My observations easily fit within an Isaiah Berlin‘s concept of liberty.

[lovich]

Not enforcing the laws isn’t criminal in the United States, although I wish it was. The police in various jurisdictions have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to confirm that[1][2]

> It’s not just me, you see it all over social media. People are grossed out by potheads.

Cool, but you or anyone else being grossed out by someone’s activity doesn’t automatically rise to the level of criminality. I, and many others, am grossed out by devoutly religious people, do you think they are criminals based on that fact?

> Again It’s just a fact, it’s not my “feelings” or “opinions”.

Your comment included people being “grossed out” by others activity. That is literally your feelings and not objective fact.

> I’ve studied political science.

Oh hey, me too, even got a degree in it. Several of my classmates who studied it failed. Studying the topic doesn’t make you correct, only more likely to be well informed. Since I also have studied it we can remove that as a common denominator between us and stick to arguing our differences.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...