Tuesday, November 10, 2009

rags to riches

Reading the letters of recommendation written by my professors seriously is making me tear up, or maybe that's the birth control talking since I just started up on that again for the first time in two and a half years. I'm officially finished with the GREs, I'm supposed to get a 1100-1200 and I scored just below an 1100. Its an acceptable score. I'm glad one part of this is complete.

Every monday night is me getting into a debate with my criminal justice professor who is one of the heads of the NYPD. Everything he says I disagree with and its baffling, depressing, and infuriating that all of the criminal justice majors in that class with me (its only my minor) are on the side of law enforcement instead of the defending the actual "justice" part of the system. I'm learning so much insider bullshit on the way cops are allowed to lie, manipulate, and profile people. I'm alone in that class fighting for what the constitutional law is supposed to do, and that is protect the people from the government, not the other way around. My professor sent out this email after a heated arguement we got in about pretext stops (pretext stops are when a cop can follow you bc he "thinks" you're going to do something bad, and he will follow you until you do the tiniest traffic violation and pull you over) its a TOTAL abuse of power and labels someone a criminal before they even commit a crime. Once again I feel alone in fighting for people that society immediately judges as "bad" and less than deserving of basic rights and general fairness with the law. I hate the law, is this how it's going to be my whole career? Am I going to be surrounded by people that are power obsessed and forget that criminals are human beings? MAD!!!! THIS IS THE EMAIL::::


"I was thinking about last night’s class and specifically NicoleAshton’s objection to pretext stops and their use by an undercover police investigator to identify someone who may (or may not) be involved in criminal activity. I was wondering if Ms. Ashton’s objection was the inconvenience caused to the individual by the stop or thefact that a record may be made in police controlled databases of the individual’s identity as a result of the stop.
I’d like to hear all of your views on that thought in nextweek’s class.
Prof. Rob Messner"


Dude was NOT listening because my objection to the to the pretext stop was neither of those reasons....

anyway. Everything else is coming together.


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Also: my burn is healing. Today I washed my hair without help for the first time in a week and a half!! Kathleen and Kim painted the living room and hall way, isnt it beautiful??!!!

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my palm is still fucked up but omgod i can move my hand!! HEALING IS MIRACULOUSSSSS

Everything is sooo good. Time to have a margarita with Kathleen. Havent done something like that in so long. School is taking over my life. I'm so thankful for it though.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Nikki--I think you'd like last week's This American Life. The first act deals with the issue of the cops setting people up for crimes they didn't commit:

A couple in Texas find a seemingly abandoned car and think they've stumbled across a crime scene. And they're right...but not in the way they imagined. Michael May tells the story.

http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=394

--Courtney