Google Engineer bails out student in jail

http://neil.fraser.name/news/2010/12/23/

by staktrace • 16 years ago

540 191 16 years ago

neil.fraser.name

pixelcort• 16 years ago

When I've heard mention of Neil Fraser in the past I've thought of his awesome MobWrite project. But now I'll think of what he did for this kid and his family.

Makes one think about what one wants to be known for.

benatkin2• 16 years ago

I know of him because of http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/ which is best in its class by a longshot. And it's a very awesome class of a library: a powerful text diff tool with implementations in multiple languages. Haven't read TFA yet but I'm expecting I'll be even more impressed by him when I get done reading it.

Edit: read the article. What an amazing contribution to justice! I'm especially glad to hear of Google matching some legal funds. By the way, he's likely to get the bail money back.

gcb4• 16 years ago

The bail and nicely commented code. now you can't not like the guy!

shaver• 16 years ago

Neil is one of the world's quietly great people. I had the good fortune of knowing him in high school, and working with him at my first job (Ingenia Communications, running Canada's SchoolNet). He's always been an alloy of incredible intellect, diligent attention to detail, and calm kindness. Every time I come across his work and thinking, I get inspired (and humbled) anew.

I hope my daughter grows up in a world with a few more Neil Frasers.

olalonde• 16 years ago

Anyone knows what was the bail out amount?

d3fun• 16 years ago

"Christmas miracle as Bay Area Google engineer pays $50,000 to spring student from jail" http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-16/news/jeremy-marks-bailed-...

flatline• 16 years ago

~$50K that he put up of his own money. There is a longer discussion (and link to another article) at Reddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/eqj5b/redditor_b...

irons• 16 years ago

$155,000, according to the linked story. Fraser paid $50,000, which he'll get back when the kid makes his court dates. The alternative was paying 10% and not getting it back, which I didn't know was standard policy. (Most of what I know about bail bonds comes from Jackie Brown.)

ars2• 16 years ago

It's the policy of the bondsman, not the court. You basically pay the bondsman 10% of the bond in exchange for them posting the rest of it.

Some people skip the hearing, and then the bondsman is out the money, so they keep the 10% to cover their risk.

I don't know how the $50,000 number works - it seems the bond company is paying the rest of it, but I don't know what they get in return.

JimmyL2• 16 years ago

Interestingly, there are some district courts/jurisdictions that are turning against bail bondsmen for being exploitative. Some will try and outright ban them from operating (either by explicit local ordinance, or by denying them the agreements on standing credit and prisoner transfer that they need to operate), but more interesting are the courts that try and eliminate them via competition.

As of now, bail bondsmen generally charge a fee of 10% of the bond posted, and then use a standing line-of-credit they have with a local bank to pay the bond to the court. The fee covers their costs and the costs of hunting down people who skip bail, and the line-of-credit is what actually pays the bond. To out-compete them, some courts are setting a normal bail bond, but giving people the option of satisfying the bond by paying 10% in cash (which is refunded if they show up in court) as opposed to 100% on credit from somewhere.

Let's say someone is placed on bail with a bond of $100K. Option 1 is to find $10K in cash, use it to pay a bondsman (which costs $10K), and then have the bondsman put up the $100K to get them out of jail. Option 2 is to find $10K in cash, pay it to the court directly, and then get that $10K back when the person shows up in court. Either way, the person is out $10K - but if they pay it to the court directly, they'll get it back.

woodrow• 16 years ago

In case you're (like me) wondering what "attempted lynching" means in the context of the article, consider yourself enlightened by the California Penal Code:

  405a.  The taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful
  custody of any peace officer is a lynching.
  
  405b.  Every person who participates in any lynching is punishable
  by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years.

I can't imagine this is what the law was written to be used for, given the usual connotation of lynching.

gcb4• 16 years ago

“For my friends anything, for my enemies, the Law”

adamjernst• 16 years ago

The original (pre-racist) definition of "lynching" was populist punishment before a proper trial. Crowds would break into jail, remove a suspect that had yet to be given a proper trial, and hang (or otherwise punish) him.

ericflo• 16 years ago

Now companies and countries do that for us! coughWikiLeakscough

waterlesscloud• 16 years ago

The part about "attempted lynching" results from an accusation that the student yelled "Kick her (the police officer's) ass!" during the confrontation. At least that makes the charge make sense, though of course who knows if it's true or not.

Details were linked off the linked page-

http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-09/news/jeremy-marks-attempt...

rdl2• 16 years ago

New goal in life: if I ever have children, don't send them to LAUSD schools. Schools with armed police at the door are undesirable -- borderline tolerable if they're there to protect from outsiders, but if they're needed to control the students, something is seriously wrong.

mentat• 16 years ago

The point is that doesn't make sense. He wasn't trying to get the person who the police officer was holding to administer his own justice. That's what lynching means...

jrockway4• 16 years ago

This seems pretty weak to me.

So say you are having the shit beaten out of you. You're being beaten, and shit is coming out. Will the shout, "kick her ass" yelled by some random onlooker change your strategy for dealing with the situation? You were going to just lay there, but because of that onlooker's suggestion, now the thought to fight back occurs to you?

I kind of doubt that.

Maybe we should arrest the adrenaline that your body produces for "attempted lynching".

cd342• 16 years ago

There is a condition called 'Contempt of Cop' which is probably what fueled this. While it was happening, I can only imagine the police officer thinking, "Oh no you don't", at which point her focus changed.

One hopes logic prevails in this case. Kudos to Neil Fraser.

abailin• 16 years ago

Do you think it would still be "attempted lynching" if the students were white?

russell• 16 years ago

Back in the 90's my son got arrested for getting in the way of a campus cop trying to arrest a Berkeley protester. He was charged with Lynching. So, yes, it's real and used. He was let go because there was no provable case.

rdl2• 16 years ago

It's probably worthwhile to have some familiarity with how the arrest/jail/lawyer process works beforehand. While for most people it is a low-frequency event, it's not good to learn about the process for the first time while in jail!

The key is: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6014022229458915912#... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6014022229458915912#

gcb4• 16 years ago

In Brazil we used to have "civic classes" in highschool about that. Then it became classes on things like "how to not be racist" and then they disappeared completely.

aperiodic• 16 years ago

Disclaimer: I Am Not A Laywer

It's also good to familiarize yourself with the distinctions between detention and arrest.

In the United States, "detention" is whenever police temporarily restrict someone's rights based on an "articulable" suspicion that a crime has occurred. Police can detain anyone at any time if they have an articulable suspicion, but only for a short period of time, and they cannot search the belongings or vehicles of people in detention without consent (many cops will try to obtain consent by saying things like "let me see what's in your bag," but you are well within your rights to verbally deny consent). A good way to establish if you're being detained is to ask the officer if you're free to go. If not, you should then ask why you're being detained, and memorize the response. This is the "articulable suspicion" that the officer is supposed to have before detaining you.

"Arrest" occurs when "any reasonable person" would feel that they are not free to leave. The distinction between detainment and arrest is subtle, but if you're being handcuffed or put into a police vehicle, your belongings or vehicle are being searched after you have denied consent, or you are detained for an extended period of time, then you're under arrest. Crucially, police are not required to make any formal declaration of your arrest, nor are they required to read you your Miranda rights (though they are required to read them if they wish to question you). If you feel that you're under arrest, your best course of action is to state that you refuse to speak and wish to see an attorney. You can repeat this as often as is necessary. They're not allowed to question you after you say this, but only if don't say anything else. If you do, then you've waived your right to silence. The only exception is that you are allowed to give your name and address in order to be released with a promise to appear in court. If you do give that information, immediately follow it by repeating that you will remain silent until an attorney is present.

Again, I Am Not A Lawyer, although all of this information does come from lawyers who give talks about civil liberties. None of these talks are online, but most of the above is explained in more detail on an actual lawyer's website[1].

[1] http://www.williamweinberg.com/lawyer-attorney-1127658.html

meterplech• 16 years ago

While people sometimes knock the Reddit community on here this is an impressive example of Redditors really helping people. Great job to the founders and everyone who put Reddit together, for all the sarcasm and jokes about it it's really cool to see stories like this.

Most importantly, good luck to this kid!

gcb4• 16 years ago

or this guy's lawyer was benign or the system is really screwed up.

I would really like to read the analysis of the judge to justify that one.

pieceofpeace• 16 years ago

[From: http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-09/news/jeremy-marks-attempt...]

The first thing to understand is that Jeremy Marks touched no one during his "attempted lynching" of LAUSD campus police officer Erin Robles.

The second is that Marks' weapon was the camera in his cell phone.

The third is that Officer Robles' own actions helped turn an exceedingly minor wrongdoing — a student smoking at a bus stop — into a state prison case.

---

Edit to add: Jeremy wasn't smoking, just recording the cop (which is legal in his state)(wo)man-handling the smoker.

patrickaljord2• 16 years ago

I don't live in the US but when I read that kind of story or how Bradley Manning is treated (regardless of whether he's guilty or not), it really looks like the US is acting like the worst kind of police state or despotism (where the despot would be a mixture of corporations and corrupt media/politicians).

paulbaumgart• 16 years ago

Keep in mind that the US is a very distributed system. You can have a local District Attorney who decides to pursue cases like this, but in the next jurisdiction over, you could very well have a DA who is an entirely reasonable person and would never allow something like this to happen.

Eventually these things usually get sorted out in some higher court, but that can take years and can really mess up a person's life in the meantime. Especially if that person is poor, unfortunately.

jrockway4• 16 years ago

Well, as long as some people aren't being abused, the system is fine and in no need of repair.

3pt14159• 16 years ago

This is why a government of law is far, far better than a government of men.

pyre3• 16 years ago

The way that Bradley Manning is being treated doesn't surprise me too much. He is suspected of "leaking classified information," so it would make sense to keep him in solitary confinement from a government/military bureaucrat's point of view. If they don't segregate him, he might leak more secrets to other people.

The other stuff (no mattress or pillow) just seems like pettiness on the part of the people in power that were embarrassed.

jrockway4• 16 years ago

Anyone can be suspected of anything. Let's have a trial, a real trial, and then worry about punishment after he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

(And by real trial, I mean a jury of Americans, not some bullshit military tribunal. Yeah, yeah, he signed some papers that said he can't have a real trial. Fuck that. This is America, not Saudi Arabia.)

patrickaljord2• 16 years ago

Read that http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/23...

tl;dr Many experts say that his punishment is torture and the US has denounced such treatment as torture not too long ago when it was done by others.

mixmax3• 16 years ago

25% of the world population in jail is American. 737 out of 100.000 Americans are in jail, that's almost one out of a hundred. As a comparison Denmark has 59 out of 100.000 people in jail. And the number of Americans in jail has been rising steadily for the last 20 years.

This is a pretty serious problem.

qq663• 16 years ago

That 25% number seems pretty hard to believe, given that compared to all countries (not developed countries) America is very low-crime and America is 5% of the world's population.

I suspect that either a) poorer countries are too cash-strapped to lock up dangerous criminals or b) that many poorer countries don't have reliable data on prisoner numbers.

_delirium• 16 years ago

Another possibility is that America is jailing a lot of people who are not really "dangerous criminals".

bad_user2• 16 years ago

You forgot (c) law enforcement gone mad in the US.

mixmax3• 16 years ago

"The United States' incarceration rate is, according to official reports, the highest in the world, at 737 persons imprisoned per 100,000 (as of 2005).[7] A report released in 2008 indicates that in the United States more than 1 in 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.[8] The United States has 4% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[9]"

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration

Confusion4• 16 years ago

The '25%' number is a red herring and not worth debating. The US has over 6 times the number of inmates (per capita) as the average Western European country[1][2]. How could that be, other than because of a seriously fubared justice system?

[1] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-pris...

[2] http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r234.pdf

zeemonkee• 16 years ago

Or a pretty serious opportunity, if you get to build/run prisons for a living. Given how corrupt US politics is, I'm sure the two are connected.

rb2k_• 16 years ago

The interesting thing is that for a lot of crimes, prison is ment as a time for rehabilitation. If the people that run the prison only make money if you come back again (or stay there), the situation changes slightly...

JonnieCache4• 16 years ago

And a massive cash cow if you're selling the products of the cheap labour that goes on in US prisons.

http://www.cio.com/article/595304/Prison_Labor_Outsourcing_s...

http://newworkerfeatures.blogspot.com/2010/02/us-prison-labo...

Paying someone who you have in complete physical bondage under $1 an hour is slave labour as far as I'm concerned, even if it is nominally voluntary. At best its unconscionably exploitative. Add to that the fact that the US govt. is legally bound to prefer prison labour over any other for the production of body armour, weapons etc. for the security agencies.

EDIT: Here's another fun stat: america has more black people in prison than in college: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2223709.stm

Although we in the UK are definitely doing pretty well at emulating uncle sam: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/uk_prisons_...

marklabedz• 16 years ago

Unfortunately, its not just those building and running the prisons. In 2009, a pair of judges outside of Philly pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6M in kickbacks from private detention centers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/14judge.html

Alex3917• 16 years ago

"Given how corrupt US politics is, I'm sure the two are connected."

Prisons get to extend the sentences of inmates if they test positive for drugs while in prison. Guess whether it's public or private prisons where inmates are on average 8 times more likely to test positive for drug use.

http://www.bop.gov/news/research_projects/published_reports/...

philwelch13• 16 years ago

And yet, somehow, over the last 20 years the crime rate in the US has dropped tremendously. Every single one of those prisoners was convicted of some crime or another by a comparatively just court system.

The underlying problem--criminality in some American cultures--is difficult and rather unique to the United States. Other rich countries are more culturally homogenous and hence suffer less criminality, though that's changing if you look, for instance, at Scandinavia, where the rate of rapes has risen dramatically as more and more Muslims immigrate there.

Groxx2• 16 years ago

>Every single one of those prisoners was convicted of some crime or another by a comparatively just court system.

Like this one?

Confusion4• 16 years ago

  And yet, somehow, over the last 20 years the crime rate in 
  the US has dropped tremendously.

Crime rates in all Western countries have dropped over the last 20 years. More interestingly, the crime rate in the US does not significantly differ from that in other countries[1]. Even taking the statistics from [1] at face value (they are probably skewed by various different definitions for 'crime'), The Netherlands has the same crime rate as the US, yet the prison population is six times smaller (per capita)[2]. Considering the various other Western countries doesn't make that better. Your assertion that the US suffers from --criminality in some American cultures-- seems unfounded.

[1] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-t...

[2] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-pris...

dtf• 16 years ago

You seem to be saying that if we got rid of all the blacks and muslims we'd have far less crime. Did I misread you?

nostrademons• 16 years ago

Many of those crimes are drug crimes, which are only a crime because we've chosen to make them so. It's not all that hard to change a law to make a certain group of people whose habits you dislike criminals.

joelmichael• 16 years ago

You got downvoted because people disagreed with you, not because you didn't elegantly state a perfectly valid perspective.

baltcode• 16 years ago

Or, there is a problem with the "justice system" and how it deals with minorities, non-white people, immigrants or members of some other less powerful group. One glaring example: http://www.theworld.org/2010/12/06/missouri-court-guatemalan...

pinchyfingers• 16 years ago

"Comparatively just court system" !? Dude pull your head out of your ass, you're drinking some really dangerous Kool Aid. How was this 17 year old kid treated with any justice? The cops destroyed his private property and ruined his family's life to protect their own power-tripping asses.

The core of being American should be to question and challenge authority at every opportunity. It's why we have the First and Second Amendments. It makes me sick that so many Americans are spineless slaves to this dying corrupt government.

xenophanes• 16 years ago

Stupid war on drugs :(

jules2• 16 years ago

That's merely a symptom, not a cause. The cause is that US prisons are for profit organisations, and that laws are written by lobbyists and passed by bribes. This shows how effective market forces are.

yters2• 16 years ago

Is there a good example of a country with legalized drugs? Afghanistan is one I know of. It does not reflect well on legalizing drugs.

smokinn• 16 years ago

This clip from the british TV show IQ goes into those kinds of numbers. It's staggering. Especially for black men.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE

PanMan• 16 years ago

I love this quote, why he did this: "One of the things I learned was that bad things can only happen if good people do nothing. I consider myself to be a good person, so I had no choice but to act when I saw something like this happening."

nightlifelover• 16 years ago

lol at the US! Sounds like the police in a third world state.

cookiecaper• 16 years ago

Yeah, I've never heard of charges being maliciously fabricated against a perceived enemy of the local authoritarians anywhere else. Not even in Sweden.

mrcharles• 16 years ago

Yeah, it's so funny to see a kid's life ruined. Ha ha. Good comedy all around.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, I hope you enjoy your perch.

dschobel• 16 years ago

You can talk about the privatization of the penal system as yielding degenerate incentives but ultimately it's up to the police on the streets to get them into the system.

If there's no dead body, damaged/missing property or even an aggrieved person (as in this case) what problem are the police trying to solve by capriciously jailing people?

What's the incentive here?

billswift2• 16 years ago

Since the real crime he committed was obviously "contempt of cop", the incentive for the cop is to encourage people to kowtow properly, by showing them what happens when you don't.

matwood2• 16 years ago

There are just so many WTF moments in this story.

1) Why are police involved with a kid smoking at school? Kids caught smoking when I was in HS got after school detention.

2) There seems to be zero respect for the police officer. At what point did kids quit respecting police and did the police lose that respect?

3) The DA actually bringing charges against someone who just looks to have been idly filming the event. Where are charges against the more rowdy people?

4) The judge letting this case go forward.

e40• 16 years ago

People in the US lost respect for police officers when they became bullies. Either they're giving law-abiding citizens tickets or they are killing and injuring suspects in their custody. Yes, I know, it's not all cops. But, there are too many of these stories in the news. Young people, especially those that hang out on reddit, will definitely have the sense that cops are just bad.

I live in Oakland, CA. Lots of crime here, but the beat cops spend most of their time generating revenue and hassling people unlikely to be dangerous (to them). It is pretty pathetic.

EDIT: an example (from the 80's)

I was in a bad part of Oakland one day, driving down a one-way street (2 lanes). A couple of blocks in front of me was a cop waving everyone on the street over to the side. Each one of us (20+ people) got a ticket. Mine was for "straddling the lanes", even though I protested that I was changing lanes because I saw him standing in my lane. I realized that he was just making something up.

I contested the ticket and he didn't show up. He knew he had no leg to stand on.

How many of the people in that poor neighborhood did that? How many just ignored the ticket and were later arrested on a bench warrant? Really pathetic. That's the day I lost respect for them. (And, this happened in the early 80's.)

lkrubner• 16 years ago

Mike Konczal has posted an interesting chart suggesting a link between economic freedom and prison:

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/the-conservative-w...

Natsu2• 16 years ago

Honestly, I think we're going to need a constitutional right to videotape on-duty cops or something one of these days.

That, and more people who refuse to convict anyone for "resisting arrest", especially when that's the only charge and none of the cops are injured. Doubly so if only the suspect is injured.

I realize they charged them with "attempted lynching" here, but "resisting arrest" is by far the more common charge. Mind you, I'm not saying that one can't resist arrest or that it shouldn't be a crime, only that I wish more people were wise to the abuse of that charge and that they knew to look for warning signs that it's being used abusively. Specifically, I would consider it to be a warning sign if: no cops are injured, there's heavily injured suspect especially when they're disproportionately injured compared to the hypothetical threat they might pose to an officer (two large cops shouldn't be very threatened by a small, unarmed kid), no weapons are found or alleged to have been seen, officer say-so is the only evidence of the crime, suspect is charged with no crime except resisting, contradictory or non-existent testimony about what they were arresting for to begin with and any other contradictions in the evidence.

abraham• 16 years ago

This is why you use a livestream tool like Ustream or JustinTV so your video evidence can't be destroyed.

GrandMasterBirt• 16 years ago

We need tiny spy camera attachments which work on bluetooth with your cellphone. These should be cheap to make (a couple of bucks) and everyone should have one with their phones. This way we can record without police knowing.

nickfromseattle• 16 years ago

I wonder how the situation will evolve as cameras that can stream to the cloud are introduced into the marketplace. I imagine it cant be more then 10 years away.

webuiarchitect• 16 years ago

I liked the statement he made, "Bad things can only happen if good people do nothing".

pixelbeat• 16 years ago

I'd already noted Neil Fraser as an open source star http://www.pixelbeat.org/misc/google_stars.html but now see he's an all around great guy

Google Engineer bails out student in jail

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