The New York Lawyer has provided a chart to show the distribution of lawyers throughout the various counties of the State of New York.  The chart shows the ratio of lawyers to human beings.  It explains a lot.

In Orleans County, there are 1461 people for every lawyer.  In Hamilton County, there are a grand total of 14 lawyers.  The local bar association has really boring parties. 

In contrast, New York City has 94,270 lawyers, with Brooklyn leading the outerboro pack at 7,050.  There are almost a million more people in Brooklyn than Manhattan.

The state capital, Albany, only has 4,317 lawyers, but the ratio of lawyers to people is 69/1.  And you wonder why the government is a mess.

No county, however, compares with New York County when it comes to a lawyer to human being ratio of 21 to 1.  For every 21 people in Manhattan, there is a lawyer.  The ratio is even higher in saloons.

There are 77,952 lawyers in Manhattan (pre-Marc Dreier).  It’s really just a tiny, little island, with a population of 1,620,867.  All but three people there are Democrats.  But throw a stone and chances are good that it will strike a lawyer.

For many lawyers, the “big fish in a small pond” aphorism applies.  Not for lawyers in Manhattan.  It’s not easy surviving, no less thriving, in an environment so lousy with lawyers.  Hesitate and some other lawyer has just jumped your potential new client.  Have your receptionist take a message and the next one (or 1000) will take the call.

To contrast the situation, Brooklyn is New York City’s most populace county, with 2,528,050 residents.  It has just 7,050 lawyers, a mere tenth of that of its neighboring borough.  And the Court Street lawyers are notorious for being vicious competitors. 

If you are wondering whether to leave Podunk to make your bones in the Big Apple, show the world that you can rise to the top in the toughest legal market in the world, where almost everybody you meet is a lawyer, especially in saloons, you might want to study these numbers first.

Queens, by the way, has only 5,534 lawyers, diverse food choices and enough diners so that there’s always an available seat.  Just think about it.

10.  Because CharonQC twits with a British accent, while Geeklawyer slurs his twits.

9.  Because the constant chirping noise from Brian Tannebaum’s twits is calming, soothing, rythmic

8.  Because you want to be a voyeur, but aren’t yet ready for nudity.

7.  Because you’ve never had an idea that required more than 140 characters anyway.

6.  Because it’s cool to be followed by 138 people you don’t know, some skimpily clad.

5.  Because you’ve always wanted to know the best wines under $7 a bottle.

4.  Because there aren’t enough opportunities in the day to learn about all the things people want to sell you.

3.  Because you now understand why Kevin O’Keefe lives in Seattle, where caffeinated coffee is an art form.

2.  Because it seems like you have people paying close attention to your every twit, even though no one is there.

And the best reason to twit…

Because there is no better way to while away the hours, and hours, and hours…

During the life of Simple Justice, I have occasionally been slightly critical of the decisions of some judges.  Not them personally, of course, as I admire each and every one enormously.  Just the occasional decision.  And only a little critical.  Maybe a smidge.

I now want to apologize if I’ve offended any judge anywhere at any time.  Yes, I know that you’re big boys and girls, and taking a little criticism of your decisions is part of the job, and you have broad shoulders and can handle it.  But still, I’m sorry.

The problem, you see, is that by posting things that don’t make some judges love me dearly, I have made a grievous error that has cost me in ways I didn’t foresee.

From Judicial Reports,

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo should investigate where Feinberg’s millions ended up, The New York Daily News suggests. The scathing editorial includes developments in the case of former Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court Judge Michael Feinberg. While the Surrogate has been professionally punished, the paper thinks Cuomo could use the 13,000 page removal proceeding as grounds to chase his money. The paper explains: “In 2002, the Daily News exposed how then-Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court Judge Michael Feinberg improperly okayed $9 million in fees for his lawyer pal Louis Rosenthal, some $2 million over and above what Rosenthal was due for his work on estates. Feinberg was charged by a state commission with misconduct and bounced from the bench in 2005. Last week, he was disbarred and Rosenthal’s law license was suspended for two years.”

The key words here are “lawyer pal.”  I want to be a lawyer pal too.  Can I be yours?

Up to now, I haven’t been a very good lawyer pal.  I have said things that might have hurt some feelings, ruffled some feathers, made a judge or two not look nearly as good as I should have.  I don’t know what came over me.  I was blinded by this inexplicable desire for integrity, a suicidal concept that likely did nothing to bring us closer together.  I want to make amends.

So what if you can’t be Learned Hand everyday.  And what’s with that name anyway?  It’s not like they are paying you what you’re worth, and we both know how true that is.  Why should you be expected to worry about the inadvertent use of logical fallacy, or maybe just reading only the headnotes instead of the whole decision.  Do the lawyers care how many of their horrendously written motions you have to read?  Sure, they get to bill them out pound for pound, but do they ever think about what all that weight does to you?  No. Of course not.  Lawyers don’t appreciate the burdens they lay on the judge, who (did I mention?) isn’t being paid enough to put up with their inability to structure a basic sentence.

See, I’m trying here.  I appreciate you.  I understand you.  I’m your lawyer pal.  At least, I could be.

I’m not hoping for much.  Not like that Rosenthal guy.  I mean seriously, how good a lawyer pal do you have to be to get an extra $2,000,000 above and beyond the $7,000,000 he (theoretically) was due.  Nobody is that good a lawyer pal.  I think.

I won’t be greedy, I promise.  And whenever you need a lawyer pal to talk to, to hang out with, whatever, I’ll be there for you.  And from now on, mums the word on any bone-headed decisions.  In fact, I might even come up with a few decent excuses, not to mention change my position on “harmless error” and (dare I say it?) lack of preservation.

No need to thank me.  These are the sort of things that one should expect from a lawyer pal.  So when can I expect the check?

As the era of Kaye comes to a close, Chief Judge Judith Kaye (don’t call her Judy) is eulogized by Jeffry Toobin in the New Yorker, the magazine for people from New Jersey who want to be cosmopolitan.  Despite having served as Chief Judge longer than anyone before her, her legacy is summed up in two words: Jury Duty.

One day in 1993, shortly after Judith S. Kaye became chief judge of New York’s highest court, she received a call from her daughter, who was on jury duty at the State Supreme Court, in Foley Square. “You know, Mom,” she said, “this is a great place to meet guys.” Strolling around that jury-assembly room the other day, Kaye paused, and deadpanned, “That’s when I immediately decided to upgrade the jury pool.”

While it’s not entirely clear, it would appear that the impetus for Judge Kaye’s focus was to improve the quality of people her daughter might meet, date, even marry, while on jury duty.  What mother doesn’t want the best for her child?

Back then, lawyers were exempt from jury duty, as were judges.  This may have taken a particularly tasty bite out of the jury pool, thus limiting the professional flavor of the men to be met. 

When Kaye became chief judge, New York granted exemptions from jury service to people in twenty-two different occupations—from doctors and lawyers to embalmers and the makers and users of prosthetic devices.

The end of exemptions was a very egalitarian move.  No longer were there swathes of New Yorkers who didn’t have to suffer the chairs and vending machines of the jury room.  Judge Kaye’s point was well intended, that there were no New Yorkers who were above the call of jury duty, so that the handful who lacked an Albany lobbyist to get them an exemption would no longer be second class citizens.  It was a very fair notion.

Kaye led a successful fight to abolish all exemptions; now everyone serves. As a result, a total of about six hundred and fifty thousand prospective jurors file, semi-voluntarily, into courtrooms around the state each year. With so many more jurors in the pool, citizens usually serve for a few days, rather than the two weeks that was common in the old days. Kaye’s reasons for promoting jury service range from the pragmatic (“We needed to show people, including the media, that the courts actually did work”) to the romantic (“The opportunity to sit in judgment of others is one of the great privileges of citizenship”).

At the time Judge Kaye began her quest, I thought it pointless.  Who, I wondered, would put a lawyer (no less a judge) on a jury?  As it turned out, over time lawyers found their way onto juries, and turned out not to be bad jurors in many cases.  Sure, their education and experience tended to be problematic, but there were lawyers, on juries, and the world continued to spin.  I can’t speak to the experience with embalmers.

Jury duty, or jury service as those who think it tastes better without the word “duty” attached, is a critical part of the court system.  I have no doubt that Judge Kaye’s focus improved the public perception to some extent, and certainly helped shorten it, at least in some parts of the state.  But what’s remarkable about Toobin’s article is that the legacy ends there.  Judge Kaye was deeply involved in trying to get pay raises for judges, but that never happened.  Even if it had, it would still fall under the heading of housekeeping, and hardly reflect much of a judicial legacy.

Judge Kaye, in person, is a every bit the dowager at age 70.  She carries herself with an air of great dignity, and is no doubt quite a remarkable woman.  She could win an argument with her stare alone.

I can’t help but think, however, how much better the State of New York would have been had her daughter been falsely accused or misidentified as a criminal, rather than called for jury duty in 1993.  Then, perhaps, Judge Kaye’s legacy would have been the continued development of New York’s independent constitutional jurisprudence extending the protection of individual civil rights and liberties in the face of collapsing federal law.  And Jeffrey Toobin might have written a longer eulogy.

The Conspirator in Chief at Volokh raises a fascinating conundrum from the Magistrate Judge’s denial of bond in  U.S. v. Rubashkin out of the Northern District of Iowa.  The defendant there was detained in a bank fraud case, at least in large part, due to the fact that he is Jewish.  From Eugene’s analysis:

“Under Israel’s ‘Law of Return,’ any Jew and members of his family who have expressed their desire to settle in Israel will be granted citizenship.” 

Nor does the opinion point to other factors that closely link Rubashkin to Israel, the way that any defendant could be closely linked to a foreign country in which he has lived a long time; the focus is on Rubashkin’s ethnicity and the legal consequence that it has in Israeli law, not on his citizenship or his past life history.

The argument proffered by the defense against detention addressed the obvious ramification of the Magistrate Judge’s rationale, that all Jews would be subject to detention if this reasoning was valid.

 [T]here are clearly narrower, tailored measures, that would be effective rather than subjecting Jews to a different set of standards. Rather than locking Jews up with greater frequency, the United States could rely on the general array of bail conditions, and then utilize the valid, streamlined, regularly-invoked extradition treaty with Israel in those few cases where the defendant actually flees. Certainly it is better to have the government on rare occasion be forced to resort to this streamlined extradition treaty than to brand over five million Americans as bail risks.

This argument failed to persuade the magistrate.

Aside from various arguments concerning the operation of the “Law of Return” and extradition, is it constitutional to paint all adherents of a particular religion with being a per se flight risk?  Notably, this comes from the Northern District of Iowa, where I would think there are fewer Jews then one could find on any block in Brooklyn, and may reflect a lack of appreciation that being Jewish may not be quite as odd as some judges think, or that Jews are not particularly likely to abscond and run off to Israel simply because they are Jewish. 

The magistrate concluded that there is no combination of conditions that could assure that the defendant will not flee to Israel.  The fact that he could, if he so wanted, may be true, but it is similarly true of all Jews.  That said, in the absence of any specific basis to contend that this particular defendant would be inclined to do so, it is a rationale for the detention of all Jews.

Of course, the ease with which a defendant can flee the jurisdiction is a consideration at a detention hearing, though it’s usually tempered by some showing of inclination specific to the individual defendant.  There was some additional information that suggested that a potential co-defendant might have fled, and that this defendant might be inclined to flee, though without any basis for the Israeli connection.

Thus, the issue is squarely framed whether it is constitutional to detain Rubashkin for, in essence, being Jewish.  At first blush, it seems that it must be.  How could an individual, based on his being a member of a religion, be denied reasonable bail, as promised by the 8th Amendment?

The government has yet to respond to the defendant’s argument. 

Update:  Numerous comments were posted to the effect that a few people read the Mag’s decision as finding that there was a substantial factual basis to believe that Rubashkin might flee to Israel.  While I totally disagree with this reading of the decision, my problem with these comments is that this wasn’t the gravamen of the issue raised by the post, and I, being the prickly sort of person that I am, was not interested in having what I considered to be a worthless discussion of a non-issue rather than a discussion of the issue raised by the post. Similarly, just because someone raises a tangential argument doesn’t mean I have to explain why they are wrong before asking that the discussion be placed back on track.  For the commenters who disagree with my position, have any discussion you want, just not here. 

For future reference, I will simply ban commenters who insist, and persist, on going onto their own topic.  I know you are all fascinated by your own thoughts, but this is my blawg.  Remember, nobody forces you to come here.   Have I been unclear about this?

By the way, I’m not the only blawger who is getting tired of having commenters assume that they run the show. 

Remember when gas was at over $4 a gallon and $150 a barrel, with no end in sight?  Wasn’t that back in ’72?  Or was it mid-October, just a couple months ago?  It’s hard to remember today, now that gas is selling under $2 a gallon.

I was smacked upside the head yesterday with a harsh reminder of how we manage to find ourselves in these predicaments.  First, a bit of history.  In early October, Mrs. SJ decided it was time to get a new Prius to replace the old Prius.  She drives a Prius, just like Ted Frank, because she thinks it makes her look sporty.  It’s really not a bad little car at all.  We call it the “pod”.

So we went to the Toyota dealer, where we were informed they had no Priuses available.  Plenty of other cars, but not a Prius to be found.  Of course, we were told (as if we needed to be told) that this was because of gas prices.  It was the only car anyone wanted.  Certainly understandable, given Americans sudden recognition that we might have an oil problem.

Still, while we were there, they urged us to allow them to appraise our old Prius for trade-in, and when a Prius became available, we would be given the trade-in value against the new one.  So we did.

The dealer was supposed to call us when a Prius became available.  We never received a phone call, but Mrs. SJ raised the Prius issue again, and I decided to make some inquiries.  It seems that all the local Toyota dealers now have Priuses in stock.  Not one, in a particularly ugly color, but plenty of them.  It seems that they are no longer flying out the door.  A couple of months have passed, and all is forgotten.  We have no oil crisis.  What were we thinking?

So I spoke with the dealer by phone, negotiated my a deal on a new Prius in the color Mrs. SJ preferred, (dark gray) which was my sole criteria for selecting the particular Prius, and made an appointment later in the day to come in and purchase it.  I thought it was a done deal. 

When I arrived, the lovely young woman I spoke with was preoccupied with something more important, so I was handed off to another salesperson who was unfamiliar with my deal.  He wanted to start from scratch, explaining to me all the wonderful features a Prius had to offer. I explained that we were already familiar with the car, were on a short time frame and really just needed to get the deal done.  I am so naive.

The salesman, after speaking with someone outside our view, returned to explain that the Prius in the color we selected, had just been sold.  But he had another Prius, in another color, that we could have.  Mrs. SJ was not pleased, but has little tolerance for car salespeople and gave me the look to proceed despite her misgivings.

So we shifted toward the completing the deal.  After informing my new salesman, who was actually a very nice guy who looked terribly uncomfortable selling cars and probably was a nuclear physicist six months ago, the “manager” came over to tell me that the price for the new Prius, the one posted on the dealer’s website, was for a mythical non-existent car with no special package.  This car had package number 2 (which included floor mats and tires, I believe) and would cost about a grand more.  I sat there silently.

The manager then informed me that the trade-in value of the old Prius was when everybody wanted Priuses, and that it was impossible for them to take the Prius at that price.  He wanted to explain it to me.  I told him that I wasn’t interested in the explanation.  I was, however, interested in them honoring the value they gave me.

The manager then asked how much I was willing to pay for the car.  I told him I would pay the price advertised.  He said, “no way,” and walked away.  I shrugged and did the same.  Before we could get very far, another manager came over to “explain” to Mrs. SJ, who is less tolerant than me, why they could not sell her the car at the advertised price and take her trade-in at their appraised value. 

Mrs. SJ was not in the mood to be lectured.  While she has never been in the mood to be lectured as long as I have known her, she was particularly unhappy with being lectured by a Toyota manager about why they can’t honor their word and why she should have to pay thousands of dollars more than agreed upon.  I might have intervened at this point, but Mrs. SJ was building up a head of steam and I feared being injured in the cross-fire.  I can tell from the throbbing veins in her temple when Mrs. SJ is best left alone.

Following a few choice words, we left the dealership without purchasing one of the many Prius they had sitting silently on their lot. 
Not only is there no oil crisis, but apparently there’s no economic crisis either at the Toyota dealer.  We were, however, the only customers in the dealership.  When we walked out, there were none.

Gideon at A Public Defender, fresh off his international podcast with Charon QC, posits a very interesting concern coming out of the O.J. Simpson conviction. 

One interesting piece of information in this OJ Simpson brouhaha is the revelation that he may have rejected a plea offer for a sentence as low as 3 years. The first word came from a friend of The Juice and it was later confirmed by his lawyer.

The fallen idol’s pal Thomas Scotto said prosecutors made the offer in the last stages of his trial for armed robbery.

But Scotto added: “OJ and his sister told me the prosecution offered him a deal but he and his lawyers turned it down.” Scotto said that Simpson had been adamant he would not serve time and made that point clear to his lawyers.

He added: “He may have given it more serious consideration if he’d known what was coming.”

As Gid notes, it is incumbent upon defense counsel to convey any plea offer to a defendant.  But the duty, under a 1996 Second Circuit decision: Boria v. Keane (with its analog in Connecticut) requires counsel to not merely convey the offer, but to explain to the defendant the significance of the offer, good, bad and otherwise. 

There are only a few decisions left to the defendant in the course of a criminal prosecution.  One such decision is whether to accept a plea offer.  Theoretically, the choices belongs entirely to the defendant.  I say theoretically because it is unbelievably simple for defense counsel to manipulate the information to compel the defendant to make the choice that defense counsel believes is right, whether that means right for the defendant or right for counsel.

Coercion can be as subtle as voice inflection or a raised eyebrow, or as flagrant as telling the defendant to cop out.  Granted, there are times that a case is so bad, or a plea offer so good, that it would be insane not to take it, and that needs to be made clear as well.  But there are also times when it’s nothing more than a matter of risk tolerance, and the decision to go to prison must reside exclusively with the defendant.  After all, the lawyer goes home after a hard day in court.  If the defendant is going to put himself in prison, it has to be his choice.

But the scenario that Gideon considers is hardly unusual.  The defendant, full of bluff and swagger as he stares the indictment down, insists with absolute certainty that he’s going to fight, he’s not going to prison, he’s not going to take a plea.  This is when it becomes critical that the defense lawyer make it painfully clear that there is no guarantees and that prison may be unavoidable.  It’s crunch time, when lawyer and client have the most brutally honest conversation possible, and the very harsh, very real consequences of rolling the dice are made absolutely clear.

It’ my practice to do everything in my power to avoid influencing this decision, when there is a reasonable choice to be made.  Sure, clients ask for advice (meaning, tell me what to do), but I refuse to be lured by the opportunity to substitute my judgment for my client’s.  It’s not that I don’t have a sense of what I think ought to happen, but that I do not believe my level of risk tolerance to be a substitute for my client’s.  It must be the client’s choice, and the client must make that decision based upon a full understanding of all relevant information.  Clients hate this.

In some instances, one that happened quite recently to me, the client makes what would be considered a surprisingly ill-considered decision to accept a plea offer that is inadequate.  The fear of trial, of conviction, coupled with the burning desire to be done with the prosecution, a factor that should never be underestimated, drove the defendant to take what I considered to be a mediocre deal.  I really believed that we could do better, and that he failed to give adequate weight to some serious consequences of the plea. 

The defendant had time to decide whether to cop out or not.  This wasn’t one of those pleas coerced in front of the judge, with a two minute lifespan as good old Judge Harold Rothwax loved to do.  As it turned out, within 48 hours after taking the plea, the defendant began to have misgivings.  Some elements of the plea, which he had poo-pooed before when he felt the unbearable weight of his fear of risk, suddenly rose up to bite him in the butt.  The defendant began to sour on the deal, feeling a bit bolder now that he had been saved from years in a cell next to Bubba, and recognizing that he gave back some things that would prove as burdensome as I had explained.

I understood his displeasure well.  This was precisely why I took great pains to explain to him, clearly and using very small words, the many considerations that he should take into account in reaching his decision.  But he made his call, and there was no question that he knew exactly what he was facing and that the choice was entirely his.

If O.J. didn’t have that option as well, then he was entitled to better counsel.

From Colin Miller at EvidenceProf Blog, via Grits for Breakfast, a spectacular example of how two words, harmless error, can be used to make all the rules designed to provide a fair trial disappear in a snap.  The case comes from the Beneficent Republic of Texas, as does so many of our most interesting appellate rulings, in Aguilar v. State from the 14th Court of Appeals  in Houston.  I note Houston, because when things happen in Dallas, Texans respond, “Well, sure, that’s Dallas.  What do you expect?”

Though a series of rather bizarre evidentiary twists and turns, the prosecution is permitted to call a witness, Mancias, who they claim heard the defendant confess and provided that information to police, but claimed at a hearing outside the presence of the jury that he had no recollection of it ever happening, for the sole purpose of impeaching him and using him to introduce hearsay evidence of the third hand confession.  It was an evidentiary mess.

After sorting it out (do they know about Crawford in Texas?), and concluding that this should never have been permitted, the Court held that the State should free Aguilar immediately, apologize to him profusely, and consider placing a statue of him outside the courthouse get a free pass for this farcical trial.  Why?  Well, he did confess, didn’t he?

No, it wasn’t done so overtly.  Instead, the Court employed one of the two weapons it keeps hidden away in its bag of tricks to be pulled out when all else fails:  Harmless error.

So, Aguilar won his appeal, right?  Well, actually, the Court of Appeals found the trial court’s error to be harmless.  And how did it reach this conclusion?  

“At trial, Luhan testified that [Aguilar] shot him. Further, Officer David Wiese, an officer who responded to the scene of the shooting, testified that he asked Luhan who shot him and Luhan identified [Aguilar]. Therefore, the court admitted the only damaging evidence from Mancias’ statement, that appellant shot Luhan, through other sources. Because the same evidence was admitted without objection, the error is harmless.”

So there’s no confusion, as law students sometimes read these posts and demonstrate by their comments that they were not paying attention in first year evidence, the relative weight of a confession surpasses everything else at trial.  There is nothing, nothing, more damning.  Eyewitness identifications are hard to attack, but it can be done.  Declarations to police officers are of the same caliber, if not a bit easier.  But a confession is conclusive.  A confession can’t be attacked, except by the testimony of the defendant himself, which means that he must give up his right not to testify, usually a very unwise choice under normal circumstances.

To compare the introduction of a confession to the victim’s account is, in real trial terms, utterly ludicrous.  But with the invocation of those two most nasty and despicable words, harmless error, the appeals court can rule in Wonderland where a blink and a phrase makes everything bad go away.  This wasn’t the “same evidence,” unless the judges of the court have never tried a case and exist in some theoretical world where all evidence carries the same weight and impact.

Or perhaps we can just chalk up this decision to an instance of an appellate court deciding that, although the trial deeply flawed, the defendant was guilty and needed to be put away.  We don’t need no stinkin’ rules.

The allegations of Michael Mineo, that he was anally raped by police officers, who caught him smoking a joint outside a subway station in Prospect Park, seemed shocking to me.  Echoes of Abner Louima rang in my ears.  Not in yours?  Not in a lot of people’s.  We have apparently reached the age when a police officer shoving an object up someone’s rectum is…ordinary.

According to MSNBC, two, and maybe three, of New York’s Finest will be arraigned today, after a Transit Police officer flipped and testified against them in the grand jury.

Prosecutors have asked two patrolmen to turn themselves in to face charges in the case of a tattoo parlor worker who claims he was sodomized with police equipment during an arrest on a Brooklyn subway platform, the officers’ lawyers said Monday.

Officers Richard Kern and Alex Cruz were to be arraigned Tuesday on charges contained in a sealed indictment, the lawyers said. A third officer also was expected to surrender.

This should be the sort of crime that sends shockwaves through the city.  Instead, it barely makes the news at all.  The New York Times has a short piece on it, with a primary focus on how Richard Kern is described by fellow officers as a “conscientious and fair” cop.

Going forward, much of the focus of the case will fall on Officer Kern because of the allegation that it was his baton that was reported to have come in contact with Mr. Mineo’s rectum. In recent days, the officer’s colleagues stepped forward to say that those accounts are at odds with the conscientious, responsible man they knew.

“He just wanted to be a good cop,” recalled Kevin Clark, a retired officer who worked with Officer Kern for about a year in the 71st Precinct.

Twice previously, Officer Kern was accused of using excessive force. but his lawyer said he was cleared in both cases by the Civilian Complaint Review Board. One of the incidents, in 2007, prompted two lawsuits that the city agreed to settle for a total of $50,000.

Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Some think that every exposure of police corruption or abuse is another nail in the coffin of the cop culture that enables conduct like this.  My fear is that we become increasingly inured to it.  When something like this happens and it barely causes an eye to blink, we are in deep trouble.  What will it take to make people sit up and take notice.  What will it take to make Joe Six-Pack care?

Greybear left a comment that summed things up better than I could:

Just as abused children will retain their attachment to the abusive parent because of their own needs, the vast majority of the population will continue to ignore the abuses by their “protectors.” That denial makes it possible for them to maintain the illusion that they are being kept safe and secure, even when the evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that they are in more danger from the “protectors” than they are from the bogeymen they are threatened with. I’m afraid I don’t see this changing anytime soon.

If this story makes you yawn, I don’t know what will get your juices flowing.  If anal rape falls into the category of everyday police abuse, we have become too jaded for explanation.  And if anybody comments that if Mineo didn’t want to be “bothered” by the police, he shouldn’t have smoked a joint at the Prospect Park subway station, I’m going to go off on it.  Be warned.