School Resource Officer

[Alamo]

.

Everyone claims that we can't legislate morality...

I don't say that. False dilemma. Law reflects someone's -- actually several someone's -- often conflicting -- morality.

But yes Scot Peterson should not ride off into the sunset with his pension.

 

[ATOMonkey]

I don't say that. False dilemma.

Well, it's absolutely true. Laws can't change the way a person feels, it only defines who the criminals are.

 

[Alamo]

What's absolutely true?

Or perhaps I should say "which".

 

[ATOMonkey]

What's absolutely true?

Or perhaps I should say "which".

You can't legislate morality.

 

[HoughMade]

The tail can't wag the dog. Cultural morals are put into law. Laws don't establish cultural morals.

Our "culture" such as it is, at this point, is such a hodge-podge of jibberish and "my truth" that legislating morality may very well be a thing of the past.

Every law is an expression of morality.

That people may not internalize and make this morality their own is irrelevant.

We legislate morality all the time.

The question is what morality should be legislated? Certainly not all of it.

 

[Alamo]

You can't legislate morality.

Nonsense. We can and do.

Law is way of regulating behavior. Not always wildly effective, but that's what it's for. We like to think we consciously make decisions based on morality and thinking, but most of our decisions and actions are driven from habits, which are behaviors we picked up along the way. The "Think>filter with morality>decide>/act" arrow runs both ways. When you adopt -- or are forced to adopt -- certain behaviors for long enough, your thinking on them, and hence morality, will often change. It's not a perfect mechanism, but it has long been recognized that it does work. "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Parents are usually the first law-givers AND behavior modifiers, and you picked up your initial morality from them, perhaps not intentionally on either of your parts, and maybe not what they thought they were teaching you. Requiring you do or not do certain things became ingrained. Civil and Criminal Law are just the adult versions -- perhaps not the most effective methods, but if the law can compel a certain behavior (or prevent a certain behavior) for long enough a certain portion of the population will internalize it. We see this with the 2A.

Yes you can put your own morality into law, and you can even get people to change based on that. Are other methods of changing morality better? Almost assuredly.

 

[Alamo]

#1 See post 747

#2 Again I say: “under oath”? No oath, no perjury.

Found this:

Ten of the 11 criminal charges the 56-year-old faces stem from killings and injuries that happened on the third floor. The remaining charge accuses him of perjury during a sworn statement to investigators.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/b...0190604-247rpiefs5abpjkv43jgdlayhi-story.html

Here is a scanned copy of the arrest warrant that gives some background on the incident, details a timeline, and then presents numerous sworn statements from various people, starting with Scot Peterson. The next two pages after noting they took a sworn statement from him are blank. I don't know if they redacted that or somebody screwed up scanning it in, or what.

The paragraph on Peterson is on approximately page 12 and notes that the said he understood the meaning of perjury and took an oath.

Some (all?) of his statements to the media are also included.


ETA: Ah. At the very end of the warrant:

Based on an analysis of related witness testimony, security/body worn camera footage and police radio transmissions obtained or reviewed during this investigation, it was determined that Deputy Scot Peterson knowingly made a false statement when he, while under oath, stated that he did not hear any shots fired after he arrived at the 1200 Building, except for the first two or three shots he heard when he first arrived at the 1200 Building, contrary to F.S. 837.012 [Florida Statute on perjury].

ETA2: Whoops, forgot to put in the link to the arrest warrant: http://www.trbas.com/media/media/acrobat/2019-06/69942475017560-04142558.pdf#nt=interstitial-manual

 

[jedi]

(disclaimer: only read the last 10 post)
this guy will not get a "fair" trail as the people are out for blood and he will take the fall for the system failing when he had nothing to do with it.

the supreme court has stated that the police do NOT have to protect us. (u can google it or find it here on ingo that case). so that he choose not to go in, well that was his choice either his training or he just did not want to die.
fired from his job sure, granted he retired before that occured.
remove his pension. nope. he did his time for that pension. so let it be.

ya are looking at the wrong place/person to blame for this and putting him in jail or killing him does not fix the issue.

 

[Dead Duck]

ya are looking at the wrong place/person to blame for this and putting him in jail or killing him does not fix the issue.

....but it would sure make me feel better.

 

[jedi]

....but it would sure make me feel better.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

(disclaimer: only read the last 10 post)
this guy will not get a "fair" trail as the people are out for blood and he will take the fall for the system failing when he had nothing to do with it.

the supreme court has stated that the police do NOT have to protect us. (u can google it or find it here on ingo that case). so that he choose not to go in, well that was his choice either his training or he just did not want to die.
fired from his job sure, granted he retired before that occured.
remove his pension. nope. he did his time for that pension. so let it be.

ya are looking at the wrong place/person to blame for this and putting him in jail or killing him does not fix the issue.

Well, if they won't let us just kill the guilty party outright, why not kill the ones that enabled him?

 

[ATOMonkey]

Nonsense. We can and do.

Law is way of regulating behavior. Not always wildly effective, but that's what it's for. We like to think we consciously make decisions based on morality and thinking, but most of our decisions and actions are driven from habits, which are behaviors we picked up along the way. The "Think>filter with morality>decide>/act" arrow runs both ways. When you adopt -- or are forced to adopt -- certain behaviors for long enough, your thinking on them, and hence morality, will often change. It's not a perfect mechanism, but it has long been recognized that it does work. "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Parents are usually the first law-givers AND behavior modifiers, and you picked up your initial morality from them, perhaps not intentionally on either of your parts, and maybe not what they thought they were teaching you. Requiring you do or not do certain things became ingrained. Civil and Criminal Law are just the adult versions -- perhaps not the most effective methods, but if the law can compel a certain behavior (or prevent a certain behavior) for long enough a certain portion of the population will internalize it. We see this with the 2A.

Yes you can put your own morality into law, and you can even get people to change based on that. Are other methods of changing morality better? Almost assuredly.

Maybe we're saying the same thing. Culture determines morality. Culture is the rules and norms that you grow up with. For example... In our culture it is immoral to have sexual relations with a child. Therefore, we pass laws that specify punishments for having sex with children. In other cultures, this is seen as acceptable.

There are some things in our culture that are completely acceptable, that are considered immoral in other cultures. For example, in the 1920s, there was a culture war, in the US, regarding the consumption of alcohol. Did changing the constitution make people stop drinking? No. Did it make people feel bad about drinking? No. Did it turn them into criminals? Yes.

If I could magic up a law that said all food must be Halal, would you stop eating bacon? Would you suddenly feel bad about eating bacon? No. Would you be a criminal if you ate bacon? Yes.

Laws can not and will not ever drive the culture. It's always the other way 'round, but it's easy to say it doesn't. I could say that police cause crime, because there is always more police in high crime areas. That is obviously stupid, but I think you get what I mean.

 

[jamil]

ATOMonkey. No, I don’t think you guys are saying the same thing. It sounds more to me like Alamo is saying laws drive culture. You’re saying culture drives laws. I would say that at least in a free society, and to some extent in tyranny, culture does drive the laws.

You can legislate morality, but it’s not the laws that drive society. it’s more accurate to say it this way. You can legislate morality proportionally to the predominant world view of a society. You have to respect Overton’s Window. Prohibition, as you pointed out, exemplifies this perfectly. Prohibition was not successful because a minority of people tried to go against what was culturally normal, what was beyond Overton’s Window.

Another point is that, more specifically than it being culture which drives morality, it is world view that drives morality. Within the same culture the same world view may be common. But it doesn’t have to be. People within a given culture may have widely differing worldviews.

To take this a little further, Jonathan Haidt’s research has identified what he calls 6 moral foundations. What he explains, I visualize as 6 moral firmware subroutines through which input is evaluated against one’s world view, and the outcome of that is intuition about the input. Also, worldview can prioritize some of those foundations.

For example. This explains the behavior of both sides when Kaepernick knelt during the national Anthem. Two moral foundations are involved in that. Loyalty and Sanctity, which are the two moral foundations that progressives tend to prioritize as unimportant. Okay, so if your worldview prioritizes loyalty and sanctity, when you pump the input of seeing someone kneel during the NA through your loyalty and sanctity moral subroutines, the output is you’re appalled by that.

Okay, but progressives don’t prioritize the loyalty or sanctity subroutines very high. They care way more about care/harm and fairness/equity. When they see Kaepernick kneeling, they pump that input through those moral subroutines and evaluate it against their worldview and they don’t see care/harm being violated, and they see it as righteous in the cause of fairness/equity.

But when they see the reaction of conservatives, they go ape**** because conservatives are violating care and equity. Meanwhile conservatives see their reaction and interpret that through their moral foundations and world view and conclude, “these people are ****ing nuts!”

 

[jedi]

^...
my desth star fund would solve this problem.

 

[Alamo]

... It sounds more to me like Alamo is saying laws drive culture.

No. I'm saying while it's true that if nothing existed, you could start with adopting a morality, create a culture, and adopt laws to support that -- but that is not a one-way street. It works in the other direction as well. Laws are part culture. Influence flows in both...or many directions. And laws are certainly a way to enforce, "to legislate" if you will, morality.

 

[Alamo]

(disclaimer: only read the last 10 post)
this guy will not get a "fair" trail as the people are out for blood and he will take the fall for the system failing when he had nothing to do with it.

the supreme court has stated that the police do NOT have to protect us. (u can google it or find it here on ingo that case). so that he choose not to go in, well that was his choice either his training or he just did not want to die.
fired from his job sure, granted he retired before that occured.
remove his pension. nope. he did his time for that pension. so let it be.

ya are looking at the wrong place/person to blame for this and putting him in jail or killing him does not fix the issue.

But that's not the only point, is it? Or we might just as well not prosecute any crime. That there are other people responsible for the situation does not reduce his responsibility. People did put him in place and pay him to specifically protect school children and he failed miserably. Did the level of failure amount to a criminal act? If any failure to protect does, this is the one. I am certainly comfortable in this case with at least jerking his pension for cowardice in the face of the criminal.

BTW, the SCOTUS has ruled on the CIVIL liability of the government with respect to protecting a specific individual, and found there is generally none outside a special relationship like a prisoner in custody. This is criminal case, and if he had a duty under Florida's child neglect laws to act to protect those school children at the risk of his life, then he may have a criminal liability. And then there's the perjury charge.

 

[Doug]

But that's not the only point, is it? Or we might just as well not prosecute any crime. That there are other people responsible for the situation does not reduce his responsibility. People did put him in place and pay him to specifically protect school children and he failed miserably. Did the level of failure amount to a criminal act? If any failure to protect does, this is the one. I am certainly comfortable in this case with at least jerking his pension for cowardice in the face of the criminal.

BTW, the SCOTUS has ruled on the CIVIL liability of the government with respect to protecting a specific individual, and found there is generally none outside a special relationship like a prisoner in custody. This is criminal case, and if he had a duty under Florida's child neglect laws to act to protect those school children at the risk of his life, then he may have a criminal liability. And then there's the perjury charge.

So, would that apply to a parent who did not effectively stop his/her child being bullied if the child became depressed and harmed him/her self?