Crime

"WikiLeaks and Julian, as we know, have been persecuted for revealing to the world, especially to liberals, Democrats, Tories, social democrats — revealing to them the crimes against humanity perpetrated by our own elected leaders, in our name, behind our backs..."

"Under state law, a patient may pursue a civil claim against physicians or other health care providers, called medical liability or medical malpractice, if the health care provider causes injury or death to the patient through a negligent act or omission. To recover damages, the patient must establish: 1. The physician owed a duty to the patient. 2. The standard of care and that the physician violated that standard. 3. A compensable injury. 4. The violation of the standard of care caused the harm suffered by the patient."

"Medical malpractice and compensation for medical injuries are highly visible, controversial, and publicly debated topics that regularly create tension and innovation in legal systems around the world, but the analysis and debate in each country is often limited to national audiences with an assumption that the issues are unique to that location. These chapters address this subject matter in a uniquely global context that demonstrates the universal nature of the issues and the diversity of approaches currently taken around the world and reveal key areas of tension and the likely direction of future developments. Wherever possible, the analysis is supported by reference to the available empirical data, though in many countries this is unfortunately very limited."

"Mr Darnley’s lawyer, Deborah Blythe of law firm Russell Cooke, told the HSJ: “The defendants were arguing that the giving of information about the availability of medical assistance is purely a matter of courtesy. Even if they get it horribly wrong the trust shouldn’t be responsible for any consequences. That has now changed.” Today’s ruling overturned judgements made in the High Court and Court of Appeal. After its success in the Court of Appeal last year, NHS Resolution said this claim was “a novel one which we considered important to resist in the interests of the NHS” because “opening up receptionists to negligence claims of this kind would have had very serious consequences for the NHS.”"

"Overall, the German system for compensating for medical injury illustrates the imagination and freedom of the courts in developing the rules patient. As noted, the effect is over-compensation (on a corrective justice approach), but this has been seen as an aspect of permissible loss redistribution. At least in the past, in the context of the affluent conditions of German society, with costs shared between the social security system and liability insurers, this was a stable solution with broad support, which kept reform initiatives in this area largely off the political agenda. This position is now under threat in light of the ever higher sums of damages awarded in a minority of cases, as well as the increasing tendency for patients' social and private insurers to invoke their rights of subrogation. As noted above, this is beginning to produce a crisis in the medical liability insurance sector. Although some commentators have expressed the hope that patient safety initiatives, once they bear fruit, may lead to a fall in such cases, this seems unlikely: as noted, one of the findings underlying the patient safety movement is how rarely cases of medical injury lead to a compensation claim. It will at any rate be interesting to see how matters develop in the future."

"In order to prevail in a medical malpractice action, the patient must prove that an injury resulted from the substandard medical care. If the patient has other medical conditions, the patient may have to prove that a claimed injury was caused by the alleged medical negligence and not by a different medical condition. Not all incidents of medical malpractice will support a medical malpractice claim, as even a clear medical error may not result in damages to the patient. Damages are a necessary element of a medical malpractice claim. If the patient's treatment or prognosis is not affected by the negligent act or omission, the patient may not be entitled to compensation."

"A claim based upon lack of informed consent alleges that had the risks been properly disclosed to the patient, the patient would have declined treatment or sought a different course of treatment. If a healthcare professional fails to obtain informed consent, even if the care provided satisfied the governing standard of care, it may be possible for the patient to bring a medical malpractice case if the patient experiences an unexpected side-effect or complication."

"“Health courts” would “entail some huge potential increases in total system costs. …If we take health care proponents at their word, their goal is to bring…currently non-claiming people into the process.” This, however “would multiply the number of claims involving negligence by a factor between 33 and 50.”"

"The Swedish system begins, like U.S. “health court” proposals, with an insurance component. This is where the great majority of Swedish claims are settled. The insurance adjuster confers with doctors and medical advisors who are specialists in their fields and decides within a year whether to pay the victim this extra amount above what the government is already paying. Compensation is based on each victim’s specific injury. Non-economic (i.e., pain and suffering) damages, based on age and injury, are capped."

"In response to increasing costs of medical malpractice insurance and insurers withdrawing from the market in the late 1980s, Virginia and Florida both created funds to compensate families for the lifetime medical expenses they incur when their child is born severely impaired because of neurological injuries suffered during the birthing process. Infants were singled out because lawsuits associated with these cases have a relatively high success rate and successful cases tend to result in large monetary awards. The fund and claims process is an alternative to malpractice litigation. If a family that volunteered for the program is eligible for coverage, it cannot pursue a malpractice claim; if it is found ineligible for coverage, it can then litigate."

"In 1978 the Pearson Commission in the United Kingdom rejected a no-fault system in dealing with clinical negligence. While declaring the existing tort system as costly, cumbersome, prone to delay, and too capricious in its operation to be defensible, the commission rejected no-fault compensation on grounds of the difficulty in overhauling the tort liability system and the perceived difficulties in causation judgments. A general conservatism in the legal profession and opposition from the insurance industry were other factors. Much has changed in the NHS since then."

"For years, proponents of wiping out the right to jury trials in U.S. medical malpractice cases have pointed to two countries with “no-fault” systems – Sweden and New Zealand – maintaining that if such systems work in those countries, they can also work here. This contention has become part of the case for so-called “health courts,” a U.S. proposal that would force all medical malpractice cases into a system based on workers’ compensation “no-fault” models."

"In Canada, as in the United States, there is a perception that the country is in the throes of a malpractice "crisis" involving both liability and insurance issues-health care providers perceive an increased exposure to or risk of legal availability for ever larger amounts of money. However, claims data from the two countries vary widely, in part because of procedural and doctrinal difference between the two legal systems."

"As is the problem in other countries, there has been an increasing recognition in Germany of the prevalence of avoidable patient injury in the course of medical treatment. In 2007 an expert committee charged with monitoring developments presented statistics (compiled on the basis of 184 studies) suggesting an annual rate of preventable adverse events (vermeidbare unerwiinschte Ereignisse) of 2-4% in hospital care, and a PAE-related mortality rate of 0.1%.6 Given that some 17 million in-patient treatments take place each year, this corresponds to half-a-million injuries and 17,000 preventable deaths."

"Overall, 32 reports examining the association between doctors’ sex and medico-legal action were included in the systematic review (n=4,054,551), of which 27 found that male doctors were more likely to have experienced medico-legal action. 19 reports were included in the meta-analysis (n=3,794,486, including 20,666 cases). Results showed male doctors had nearly two and a half times the odds of being subject to medico-legal action than female doctors. Heterogeneity was present in all meta-analyses. Male doctors are more likely to have had experienced medico-legal actions compared to female doctors. This finding is robust internationally, across outcomes of varying severity, and over time."

"There can be no political prisoners in a democracy, nor detention without trial in a state of law."

"Political prisoners, detention without trial and unlimited imprisonment define tyranny."

"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors."

"Work—work—work Till the brain begins to swim! Work—work—work Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam,— Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream! O Men, with sisters dear! O Men, with mothers and wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch—stitch—stitch In poverty, hunger, and dirt,— Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt."

"It has not been a great week. I know that I should have handled this better, I could have handled this better... I know there are lessons to learn and I will learn them... Don't blame Number 10 Downing Street or nameless advisers, blame me... I want to be open... I was obviously very angry about what people were saying about my dad. I loved my dad, I miss him every day... He was a wonderful father and I'm very proud of everything he did. But I mustn't let that cloud the picture. The facts are these: I bought shares in a unit trust, shares that are like any other sorts of shares and I paid taxes on them in exactly the same way... I sold those shares. In fact, I sold all the shares that I owned, on becoming prime minister... Later on I will be publishing the information that goes into my tax return, not just for this year but the years gone past because I want to be completely open and transparent about these things... I will be the first prime minister, the first leader of a major political party, to do that and I think it is the right thing to do."

"Everything I’m doing is legal, it’s a perfectly legitimate structure."

"In tax havens, boundaries between what’s legal and illegal become very blurred. The recent leak on the Panama Papers revealed how international leaders, celebrities and businessmen from all over the world were using offshore companies to avoid making their assets public and, in some cases, potentially to dodge tax or hide illegal activities. Panama is where criminal capitalism and legal capitalism become one."

"The cat's out of the bag... So now we have to deal with the aftermath."

"John Doe: Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data? Süddeutsche Zeitung: We're very interested. John Doe: There are a couple of conditions. My life is in danger. We will only chat over encrypted files. No meeting, ever. The choice of stories is obviously up to you. Süddeutsche Zeitung: Why are you doing this? John Doe: I want to make these crimes public. Süddeutsche Zeitung: How much data are we talking about? John Doe: More than anything you have ever seen."

"In 1953, a U.S. Senate subcommittee was formed to investigate the causes of juvenile delinquency in America and to assess the effectiveness of current laws designed to combat what the public was told had become a national epidemic. Statistically, juvenile crime was on the rise in post–World War II America, but as historian James Gilbert suggests, the increase may have been due to the lack of a uniform definition of juvenile delinquency by the FBI and state and local law enforcement agencies. For example, whether an underage teen caught drinking and/or breaking curfew was branded a “JD” depended on the state and county where he or she lived."

"No California gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the east. Only the scum of the population do it; they and their children. They, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America."

"Avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."

"We are trying to help; we are trying to help reduce the violence in Baltimore city. It is a hard, hard game. Hard game. People get hurt who shouldn't, all the time. Citizens, police, family members, everybody. Okay? Even somebody who may be doing something wrong, that's petty, ends up getting hurt beyond a scope that shouldn't ever happen. ... If we didn't care, we wouldn't come out in the street every day."

"Time and time again, Americans are reminded of the fact that the people who become police officers in the United States are often absolutely incapable of problem solving. There are famous examples of parents calling the police to “scare” their children, and the children ending up being murdered by the police. In cases of Conflict, calling the police is the last thing any of us should be doing unless our only objective is to cause more pain."

"Due to the lack of federal record-keeping, we can’t even tell you precisely how many people are killed by police in the US in any given year, let alone how many of them are disabled. But we do know it’s a lot: A report from the Ruderman Family Foundation earlier this year found wildly varying estimates of the number of disabled people killed by police, from 25 percent to more than 40 percent of police shooting victims. For perspective, census data puts the overall incidence of disability at about 20 percent of the population."

"Collecting data in and of itself is a good mechanism to hold police agencies accountable."

"In a world where young blacks, especially, are bombarded with claims that they are being unfairly targeted by police, and where a general attitude of belligerence is being promoted literally in word and song, it is hard not to wonder whether some people's responses to policemen do not have something to do with the policemen's responses to them. Neither the police nor people in any other occupation always do what is right but automatic belligerence is not the answer."

"There's a lot of dealings with police officers right now. I don’t think all cops are bad. You know, I think there’s some great cops out there, who do everything in their power to uphold the badge and uphold the honor and protect the people in society. But there are bad cops, and I think that also needs to be addressed. I think the police officers we have right now, you know, some of it is being brought to light, because of video cameras, everybody has a camera phone. But these are things a lot of us have dealt with our whole lives. And I think right now is a perfect time to deal with it. The climate we're in, everybody's being more accepting, you know, so I think the ignorance should stop. I think people realize that, at the end of the day, we're all human beings. So, you know, before we're black, white, Asian, Polynesian, Latino. We're humans. So, it's up to us to stop it."

"We do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have."

"The police are often the source of violence, especially in the lives of women, people of color, trans women, sex workers, and the poor. And the police enforce the laws of the United States of America, which is one of the greatest sources of violence in the world. US foreign policy is enforced by the military who are a global police, and domestic order is enforced by the federal, state, and city structures of policing. The law is designed to protect the state, not the people who are victimized by the state."

"The number-one cause that prevents , that promotes , that protects police lawlessness, is a culprit called the Fraternal Order of Police. They're the organized guardians of continuous police lawlessness, of police murder and police brutality. The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police is the most rabid, racist body of criminal lawlessness by police in the land. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the Ku Klux Klan then and the Ku Klux Klan now."

"In the United States, police officers fatally shoot about three people per day on average, a number that’s close to the yearly totals for other wealthy nations. But data on these deadly encounters have been hard to come by."

"What was even more distracting and confusing was that the job of punishing the expressions of patriarchy, racism, and poverty was assigned to the police, who also cause violence. This responsibility, in some cases, produced additional acts of violence on the part of the government, like “,” and that committed violence in the name of claiming to fight violence. These laws also produced more access for the state into the homes and families of the poor, and more incarceration of Black and other poor men. Instead of empowering women and the poor, the fate of the traumatized was increasingly in the hands of the power of the police acting as a group to represent oppressive systems."

"Although the databases are still imperfect, they make it clear that police officers’ use of lethal force is much more common than previously thought, and that it varies significantly across the country, including the two locations where Brown and Garner lost their lives. St Louis (of which Ferguson is a suburb) has one of the highest rates of police shooting civilians per capita in the United States, whereas New York City consistently has one of the lowest, according to one database. Deciphering what practices and policies drive such differences could identify opportunities to reduce the number of shootings and deaths for both civilians and police officers, scientists say."

"A hundred years ago they used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes. Today they've taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms, they've traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs, and they're still doing the same thing."

"In America, black people are treated very much as the Vietnamese people or any other colonized people because we’re used, we’re brutalized. The police in our community occupy our area, our community, as a foreign troop occupies territory, and the police are there in our community not to promote our welfare, or for our security and our safety, but they’re there to contain us, to brutalize us and murder us, because they have their orders to do so, just as the soldiers in Vietnam have their orders to destroy the Vietnamese people. The police in our community couldn’t possibly be there to protect our property because we own no property. They couldn’t possibly be there to see that we receive the due process of law for the simple reason that the police themselves deny us the due process of law. And so it’s very apparent that the police are only in our community, not for our security, but the security of the business owners in the community and also to see that the status quo is kept intact."

"Always, the rulers of an order, consistent with their own interests and solely of their own design, have employed what to them seemed to be the most optimal and efficient means of maintaining unquestioned social and economic advantage. Clear-cut superiority in things social and economic—by whatever means—has been a scruples-free premise of American ruling class authority from the society's inception to the present. The initial socioeconomic advantage, begotten by chattel slavery, was enforced by undaunted violence and the constant threat of more violence."

"Modern policing did not evolve into an organized institution until the 1830s and '40s when northern cities decided they needed better control over quickly growing populations. The first American police department was established in Boston in 1838. The communities most targeted by harsh tactics were recent European immigrants. But, as African-Americans fled the horrors of the Jim Crow south, they too became the victims of brutal and punitive policing in the northern cities where they sought refuge. In 1929, the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice published the Illinois Crime Survey. Conducted between 1927 and 1928, the survey sought to analyze causes of high crime rates in Chicago and Cook County, especially among criminals associated with Al Capone. But also the survey provided data on police activity—although African-Americans made up just five percent of the area's population, they constituted 30 percent of the victims of police killings, the survey revealed. "There was a lot of one-on-one conflict between police and citizens and a lot of it was initiated by the police," says Malcolm D. Holmes, a sociology professor at the University of Wyoming, who has researched and written about the topic of police brutality extensively. That same year, President Herbert Hoover established the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement to investigate crime related to prohibition in addition to policing tactics. Between 1931 and 1932, the commission published the findings of its investigation in 14 volumes, one of which was titled “Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement.” The realities of police brutality came to light, even though the commission did not address racial disparities outright."

"All suspects are innocent until proven guilty, in a court of law."

"It is an open secret long shared by prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges that perjury is widespread among law enforcement officers."

"Every single U.S. attorney around the country works for them and with them. So, it is very important that we get this role right, and that they’re actually focused on diminishing crime in America and making sure we’re getting good prosecutions"

"Fuck the police comin' straight from the underground A young nigga got it bad 'cause I'm brown And not the other color so police think They have the authority to kill a minority."

"Oh, no! Look in the mirror! It's a five-oh! I shouldn't have smoked so much weed, I shouldn't have done so much blow."

"I'm convinced that it is the psychopathic personality that searches out a uniform. There's little doubt of what's going on in that man's head who will voluntarily don any uniform"

"America entered 2023 with two big problems and two leading theories about what was causing them. Over the preceding three years, the murder rate had reached levels not seen since the mid-1990s, which was widely attributed to reductions in policing following the protests over the murder of George Floyd. The inflation rate was even worse, by historical standards, peaking in 2022 at 9 percent, the highest number since 1981. This, in turn, was believed to be the result of Congress and the Biden administration pumping too much money into the economy. Each theory implied a solution to its respective crisis. To bring crime back down, America’s cities would have to empower their depleted and demoralized police forces. To tame inflation, the Federal Reserve would have to crush consumer spending by triggering a recession. Both theories now appear to have been wrong. Over the course of 2023, police forces kept shrinking, yet overall violent-crime rates plummeted to their lowest levels since the 1960s. And the economy boomed even as inflation came just about all the way down to the Fed’s 2 percent target. In surveys, most Americans say that crime and inflation are still rising, but they’re wrong. Call it the Great Normalization: The twin crises largely evaporated, and no one is totally sure why."