 “long term negative oppressive effects” to which you refer. They’re cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
As to Van Dyke etc., it’s not the job of prosecutors to guess what a jury will find, about the mitigating circumstances which may well lead conscientious jurors to acquit him or his colleagues. It’s the job of a prosecutor to determine whether sufficient evidence warrants a jury getting the chance to make such judgments. When a prosecutor is told of a stiff riddled with 16 rounds, she must ask “WTF?” If, say, his pals’ reports told of them trying to restrain Van Dyke after McDonald hit the ground, I can see a reluctance to prosecute them.
Likewise, if none of the reports had claimed that McDonald's knife "was in the OPEN position", I can see a reluctance to prosecute them. But once Alvarez determined that the knife was found at the scene FOLDED, she ducked her job by not asking a Grand Jury to weigh charges against the liar(s). Once a would-be defendant is held to have lied on a material fact, his testimony cannot be grounds for not prosecuting him, esp. on related stuff, even if his pals backed most of his story. Unless these guys ever-so-clearly disputed his lie, we must wager that they ducked clear opportunity to do so, and are thus of similarly suspect cred.
"Whomever withheld the McDonald video needs to be charged with Obstruction of Justice, and coppers need to have their cell phones recording Roll Calls. The Feds need to hear when bosses whine about the lack of activity, or threaten you for lack of activity. In one respect, the Feds are right; there is no telling how many people were arrested, just to appease clouted bosses."
I figured that would get your attention!
I too think the knife was open (and would written so on my report). That is not a cover up. That is what I see.
It is possible A) that my eyes are lying or B) somebody in the chain of custody closed the knife, as you would, because it's a sharp blade in a thin plastic bag. I suspect B, because I like to believe my eyes (though they might be wrong). Is there any evidence the blade was closed while still on McDonald's body after he got shot?
On the folded knife, fair points.
I still think Alvarez should’ve given a Grand Jury a shot, in light of other discrepancies between the vid and the reports, e.g. about McDonald pointing the knife right at Van Dyke.
No argument from me about a grand jury. I'm not sure if a GJ would have found the required Probable Cause for the intent portion of the 1st degree charges actually, although there is no way to know. I think Alvarez charged Van Dyke out of the same fear that motivated Mosby to charge the Baltimore Six--fear. Get the charges done before people riot and burn the city down.
I also feel that there ought to be some serious consideration to charges against whoever withheld the video if it meet the definition of Obstruction.
Alvaraz sat on the video for a year. She's the one who "withheld the video."
 I don’t like Murder I on Van Dyke here, still less on any others.
There’s huge doubt that he premeditated anything.
Alvarez should’ve hit him, and all who put false stuff in reports, with Murder II, and she should bring Obstruction charges against whoever withheld the video.
Actually IL murder I laws do not require premeditation; just a deliberate killing or an action that the perpetrator KNEW could kill the victim. So if the GJ indicted, Murder I would probably be the correct charge. The only issue would be if there was "legal justification." That IS one of the Elements of the Crime which would have to be proven, and Van Dyke's only defense--probably a poor defense at least to the last few shots.
I do not see the need for an officer to need to right up a report for every stop they do, or even a simple pat down for safety. The reason I say this is because both of these actions are for keeping the citizens and officers safe. Traffic stops are one of the daily actions of a LEO, and we all know they do often lead to good arrests. The author in this letters statement regarding homicides going up with traffic stops being down, this doesn't tell society anything. The police are constantly under the microscope, which is not fair for them because they have not done anything wrong. Until you can prove their actions wrong, then I don't think they should be reporting everything they do while on the job. If this is the case, you might as well have a note-taker following these officers on shift.
I worked for the City of Chicago within their Animal Control Department as a Cruelty Investigator. I worked personally with several Chicago Police Officers, a good deal of them personal friends, and I believe I can also speak on this post.
I believe that a report on any investigative contact in the field should always be done. It gives Command an overview of where their officers went, what they did, and why. I also will provide a CYA function for these officers should a complaint arise.
However, this oversight that is going on now is to the point of being extremely overzealous. It is insanity to give a report to everyone under the sun, have it examined by a supervisor will then give it to another person and that person giving it to another to re-examine it... Where does it stop? These reports are also extremely lengthy, are on paper, and take a good deal of time. They have to be done on every stop, including those that result in "no cause".
Because of this, yes, officers are refusing to do investigative stops. They are under such a large microscope that they do not want to have every single thing they do scrutinized by people who are not even in law enforcement. There are also other considerations that you did state in previous posts, Peter, but I want to say them again. These reports are, again, lengthy. We hear all the time how crime is out of control in Chicago. President Trump commented on this several times during his campaign. In spite of that, what people fail to understand is that when officers are spending so much time writing reports that are overzealous and examine every single minute detail, officers are not in the field doing the very job they got hired for. And it is not just Chicago. New York is doing this. So is, Baltimore, and numerous other agencies big and small. All because incidents like the Van Dyke shooting, which I do agree was a bad shoot, are so blown out of proportion they villify police officers as being the enemy. Should there be oversight? Absolutely. But to this extreme? How can we expect our officers to do their job when they are stuck under a constant microscope, being buried under paperwork? It doesn't make sense.
Because of this, law enforcement departments are having trouble getting decent numbers of individuals for applicant pools. I am a student in a criminal justice program right now, and most of classmates want to go into probation rather than field policing. That's pretty compelling.
All because police officers cannot do their jobs without the proverbial leash around their necks.I am generally not a fan of jianshui. For yancha, it would be too muting for my preferences. Zhuni/hongni/porcelain are a better fit. Unless the yancha is low quality and over-roasted, in which case jianshui would be fine, but then it would be better to drink a different kind of tea: low quality yancha is really not very good, one can do better with hong kong roast tieguanyin. Buying a good yixing teapot is indeed difficult, I would suggest to either wait and study the forums for several months, or to just stick with porcelain if that sounds like too much of a hassle.

The story that the minerals match if the pot is made in the same place as the tea is a myth. Then Yixing teapots would only work for Yixing hongcha... but wait, during Ming when they started making Yixing teapots there was no hongcha, just green tea. So do Yixing teapots fit hongcha, or green tea? What about the guanyungong cakes, that are made in guangdong with similar processing to puer? They would be really difficult to distinguish from a puer for people who don't know these teas in depth. But would jianshui then not work? It's the tea's processing more than the terroir to indicate what type of pot works well.Exercise is key to healing. Sign up for a team training type program, go 3,4,5x a week and just keep showing up and putting in the work. It’ll give you an outlet to get all that added stress out. You’ll be making good chemical changes in your brain. It’s not about vanity or weight loss at this point, it’s merely about feeling better mentally. Being in a team environment will give you accountability and much needed support. Best of luck to you, breaking up over text after 2yrs is shallow. Hope you find a more mature match but take this time to work on yourself and heal.Anecdotal but I was raised without religion. Beyond being constantly bullied about it or told by friends parents I was going to go to hell, the internal effects are that I don't have a sense of spirituality. Religious or ex-religous people talk