Cleveland Kidnapping

[Broomstick]

Duchess also has this bizarre notion that every single prisoner in America is kept in 24/7 lockdown. Assuming Castro can behave himself while incarcerated he'll have at least one roommate and interaction with others on a daily basis. Which is more than his victims got.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yes, it's far more unnatural to be locked in a box until you die than to get riddled with bullets or have your head lopped off with an axe. To call a death brought about by permanent confinement in the prison box "natural" is to court absurdity, not merely in ethical terms but in literal physical ones due to the much higher rates of disease and disorder in a real physical sense brought on by long-term prison confinement. If a Norwegian style 20-year rehabilitative sentence is unacceptable, the only next humane step is to shoot the offender.

To hell with innocent people. Lets execute people and fuck the consequences for killing innocent people on death row.

Life in prison gives the chance to right a wrong for those wrongfully convicted. But no, you would increase the rate of people put on death row. Thats a recipe for disaster.

No, I'm pretty sure the crimes I consider it appropriate for are so limited in nature that there'd be 10% of the people on death row in the US in my perfect world today than there are in reality... Since I favour 20-year maximum sentences for almost all 1st degree murderers.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Duchess also has this bizarre notion that every single prisoner in America is kept in 24/7 lockdown. Assuming Castro can behave himself while incarcerated he'll have at least one roommate and interaction with others on a daily basis. Which is more than his victims got.

Not everyone, Broomstick

++http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-1 ... usual.html

But still around 81,000 people versus around 3,200 on death row.

[The Yosemite Bear]

but what your both forgetting is that one of his victims was 14 at the time of her abduction and rape. So that means he will die rather violently at the hands of prison population...

[Flagg]

Yeah this guy will live out his life in PC or a sex offender wing.

[Simon_Jester]

In this case, walling up the guys in an oubliette and shoving occasional food and water in really would fit the crime- and if we're going to the "attack on the essential principles of the state" arguement, Marina, I suspect that it would work just as well for that purpose.

That's torture, and I don't condone torture of anyone. Better a quick, clean decision of the firing squad of sixty rifles or so.

I'm not saying it's condonable in your frame of reference- I'm saying it fits the crime- as in eye for an eye. That's more or less what Castro and the others were trying to do to those three women, after all.

Personally, if we're going to do our jurisprudence decisions about how to punish criminals on the basis of "kinder to shoot a man than to lock him in a box," we should start by asking the prisoner which they want. If you want to check "firing squad please" and I want to check "locked in a box," maybe that's better than trying to dictate to both of us on the basis of which would be more cruel?

I mean hell, I'd be relatively OK with solitary as long as I kept access to the prison library (though admittedly their selection of literature I actually like would probably suck). Writing paper would also help. I'd probably take it over death, at least until I got terminally bored- it would not be cruelty to me per se.

But you might well want to check "firing squad" right away. And you have reasons for that, which I'm not going to deny. Maybe the definition of 'cruelty' simply depends on who you're talking about.

I mean, if I encountered someone who had padlocked the bedrooms in his house, I'd expect that he was running a meth lab or breeding illegal pit bulls, and a lack of endless dog barking would strongly suggest the meth lab.

This is true, but there's nothing in the rules that says you can't put padlocks on your doors, and the cops can't get a warrant on the strength of "there's a padlocked room in your house." They probably won't even try- hence the whole "cops not responding" thing.

I'm not sure we'd actually be better off if the police always paid an intrusive visit to anyone whose neighbors had some kind of vague, legally non-actionable suspicion that they were Up To Something. We'd catch more crimes, but we'd also harass a lot more people.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I think a better explanation though for why it wasn't reported was the attitude of "snitches get stitches" which is prevalent in poor urban communities because of the extreme racism and brutality of the police.

[Broomstick]

Except the neighbors claim they DID report it, but their reports were ignored by the police. Not so much "snitches get stitches" as neglect of the poor and minority.

Rather like how Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors reported odd goings-on several times, including a naked, bleeding young man in his company, but nothing was done with their reports for a long time.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Except the neighbors claim they DID report it, but their reports were ignored by the police. Not so much "snitches get stitches" as neglect of the poor and minority.

Rather like how Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors reported odd goings-on several times, including a naked, bleeding young man in his company, but nothing was done with their reports for a long time.

I mean from the people who'd actually been inside the house, like his band.

[Saxtonite]

I mean from the people who'd actually been inside the house, like his band.

The band didn't see anyhing odd either. Call the police on a friend because they have padlocks on the door?

Yeah, they called the cops on him three times. The cops never came, so we should all thank the heroic Cleveland PD for him continuing for so long.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

They did come, they just didnt break in the house.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Without further information regarding the number and frequency of these calls the neighbors put in to the police there is no way of telling if it was neglect on the part of the police or just the police respecting that persons fourth amendment rights.

In my experience I have never seen a judge issue a warrant based off one person allegations without corroborating evidence. Does that mean it is impossible? No. However, you'd need something more than a call from neighbors every once and a while regarding suspicious activity. A judge would probably issue one if the police had multiple witnesses willing to testify.

However, this case does bring into light several lapses in their policy regarding missing adults.

[Broomstick]

Lapses such as...?

[Simon_Jester]

I mean from the people who'd actually been inside the house, like his band.

It depends what they actually saw and heard. It's one thing if you're hearing screams of "Help! Let me out!" through a door and doing nothing. It's another matter if you're wondering why this guy has a padlock on a door that no noise is coming through because Castro threatened to kill the women if they made any noise while guests were over.

At that point, it's very unlikely that someone would deduce enough of the truth to know what to report to the police, and certainly they wouldn't be able to present more than circumstantial evidence.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Lapses such as...?

In some cases of reported missing adults the Cleveland PD did not write up any kind of paper work and failed to list that adult on National Criminal Information Center (NCIC) as missing. They also inferred that the adult must have gone missing intentionally. In their defense adults sometimes do go missing intentionally because they don't want to be around their "loved" ones. However, it isn't our job to make that determination without actually speaking to the missing individual but that's what the Cleveland PD did do wrong and they did that way because I guess it isn't policy that they have to write a report on missing adults without aggravating circumstances.

Not that filing a report and listing a person on NCIC would have helped these three or many other missing adults that turn out to have been kidnapped. What might help is a door to door search for these individuals but it isn't practical to conduct a door to door search each time a person comes up missing.

[Broomstick]

Re: padlocks.

There are legitimate reasons to padlock a door inside a house. Two examples that come to mind are padlocking a basement door as many older basements are potential break-in points, and a friend I had who had converted a closet into a gunsafe. So even if a guest noted a padlock he or she might have been diverted with such an explanation. While it's not typical, my first thought probably wouldn't be "OMG! Kidnap victims!" Well, wouldn't have been - now I might think differently, at least until the memory of this incident fades.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Or there's ongoing construction/rehabilitation going on, Old family houses need repairs some of which make them structurally unsafe for visitors.

[Dominus Atheos]

Didn't see these details posted:

Neighbors Detail Horrors and Police Negligence at Ohio Kidnapping Home

As police sift through the ramshackle Cleveland home where three women who'd been missing for almost a decade were recovered yesterday afternoon, neighbors of the three brothers arrested for the kidnappings are coming forward with terrifying tales of brutality that went overlooked by police for years.
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In a USA Today article published this evening, people who lived near Ariel Castro, Onil Castro, and Pedro Castro at their home on Cleveland's Seymour Avenue claim that they witnessed a cavalcade of creepy incidents over the years, including women on leashes crawling around naked in the Castros' backyard and women desperately banging on windows:

* "Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter once saw a naked woman crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard several years ago and called police."

* "Israel Lugo said he, his family and neighbors called police three times between 2011 and 2012 after seeing disturbing things at the home of Ariel Castro. Lugo lives two houses down from Castro and grew suspicious after neighbors reported seeing naked women on leashes crawling on all fours behind Castro's house."

* "Lugo said about two years ago his sister told him she heard a woman pounding on a window at Castro's home as if she needed help. When his sister looked up, she saw a woman and a baby standing in a window half covered with a wooden plank."

* "A third call came from neighborhood women who lived in an apartment building. Those women told Lugo they called police because they saw three young girls crawling on all fours naked with dog leashes around their necks. Three men were controlling them in the backyard."

Sources tell Cleveland's WKYC-TV that what was happening to the captive women inside the house was even worse than what neighbors saw. Citing "several police sources," the station reported that the three kidnapees were repeatedly raped over the years, resulting in up to five pregnancies. A a 6-year-old girl discovered in the Castro home is believed to be one of the kidnapped women's daughter, but at this time it's unclear what happened with the other pregnancies.

Exacerbating the fact that the three women were apparently tortured for years and years is that neighbors say they frequently called police to the Castro home only to have the cops ignore them. One woman said that officers "didn't take it seriously" when she called 911 to complain about a woman crawling naked in the Castro backyard. Another person said a call about women being led around by leashes yielded no action whatsoever: "[T]hey waited two hours but police never responded to the calls."

In response to these allegations, the Cleveland Police Department is saying it never received calls about naked women at the Castro house:

Micah Grimes @MicahGrimes

Police spokesperson: There are no such calls or response involving a naked woman seen at the home, despite "rumors" - CNN

[Terralthra]

I've no idea where to come down on that one. In the aftermath of such a tragedy, it must be very tempting to tell one's self that one tried to do something, but the police didn't do anything. Remembering seeing something odd and maintaining the pretense that one did something about it could be very psychologically helpful, compared to knowing that you saw something and never did anything, with such horrors going on.

On the other hand, the police have a (self-serving) reason to cover up any such calls if they did receive them.

So, I don't know who to believe.