I disagree. I dislike Apple's practices as much as anyone, but when the #2 person at the sheriff's office is the one soliciting the bribe, you have a problem with the police department that even Apple cannot be expected to fix.
You can argue that they should have gone straight to the DA, and you might even be right, but the only way for this problem to get fixed is by cleaning house at the police department, not by scolding Apple for trying to work with corrupt officials.
Keep in mind that it's incredibly rare for any DA to go against the police, so this case is already unusual. We'll have to wait and see if they actually have the evidence / wherewithal to see this one through rather than just settling out of court for a slap on the wrist.
Edit:
I actually agree with the comments suggesting that Apple and similar companies will learn from this experience and will use it as an example when trying to ensure that it doesn't happen again, and in that sense, it's important that they be punished too.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that, on a moral level, the police department comes off looking way worse than Apple here, and their punishment should be higher.
Police are given a special position in society where we essentially trust them to conduct themselves professionally and uphold the law fairly. When that trust is misplaced, the checks are slow and unreliable, and corrupt cops can cause a whole lot of mayhem while we're waiting. So if you're going to go after police corruption, you'd better hit hard. It's really, really bad for society to have police who are so comfortable asking for bribes this openly.
It's also bad for companies like Apple to feel like they can just pay the bribes to grease the wheels, but it's a different kind of bad. It's a "We should punish Apple to discourage a tragedy of the commons" kind of bad, while police openly asking for bribes is a "betraying the public trust" kind of bad.
Apple can absolutely be expected to fix it! They'll have someone trained to deal with this exact scenario, and employees will have been exposed to similar scenarios in mandatory anti-bribery training, and instructed exactly how to respond. In fact, I can guarantee this is gonna become a textbook example that all other companies are gonna be using in their training going forward. Bribery is a big deal for companies on this level, especially those teetering in the world of luxury like Apple is.
NO - these aren't workplace permits, they are personal licenses for the employees. They can already carry guns on their building grounds without a permit. The company is stepping in on behalf of their employees for to get these permits issued to them as individuals, so Apple's willingness to participate in the bribery is on the company. I do agree that the police have done the far greater crime in the abuse of their authority. No one really cared when the only permit issued by the city of Oakland was to Jerry Brown's personal assistant Jacques.
The articles frame it as the Head of Apple security acting on the behalf of 4 potential Apple security team licensees - so at least 3 of those Apple employees aren't him. He's acting on behalf of his employees, I'd say that is Apple stepping in.
Why do Apple guards need to carry guns in the first place? Those guards should just be monitoring and alerting real law enforcement if a break-in happens. If someone goes postal, then I guess there should be several normal folks at Apple already carrying and able to protect the general public.
> If someone goes postal, then I guess there should be several normal folks at Apple already carrying and able to protect the general public.
So your solution is other, probably lesser-trained, individual Apple employees should be concealed-carrying so they can respond to a workplace shooting? Let's ignore that Apple probably doesn't allow this in the first place but even if they did I would not want to work in an environment where my coworkers were walking around with guns all the time. I have no problem with guns or CCW but in the workplace is a different story for me.
Then help me understand. You have a shooting on the Apple campus, your ideal response is...? From your previous comment it sounds like you expected Apple employees who have their CCW and are carrying to handle it, was I mistaken?
In theory that could be a scalable approach. Citizens taking command and you will eventually have more armed people on Apple campus. But I tend to agree with your argument now. People just aren't trained for it.
> Sheriff Laurie Smith, who has the authority to issue CCW permits, has not been charged with a crime.
Either i. the sheriff knew about/was in on this scheme and must be put in prison or ii. the sheriff didn't know about how her number two was soliciting bribes using her authority to grant/deny licenses and must resign because that is just gross negligence.
In another incident, Sung “extracted” a promise from Chadha for $6,000 worth of luxury box suites at a San Jose Sharks game on Valentine’s Day, 2019, before issuing Chadha a CCW permit, Rosen said.
“Sheriff Laurie Smith’s family members and some of her biggest supporters held a celebration of her reelection as sheriff in Chadha’s suite,” Rosen said.
She's definitely not painted in a good light, that's for sure.
The sheriff's have been very crafty to not generate any evidence of wrongdoing. Unless one of her direct reports decides to turn against her and testify there will be no evidence that she ever directly communicated the monetary requirements to get a permit. Prior to this it has largely been indirect evidence used to probe CCW issuance, looking at the correlation of donations to permits being issued and non-donors getting denied permits. Sheriffs have even quashed that in that many won't readily give out or accept the paperwork to apply for a permit so there is never a record of a denial that is subject to sunshine laws. If you keep it verbal, there is no evidence if no one will testify.
Punishing Apple is absolutely part of the fix. It gives all future, um, victims more incentive to not play along and increases the chances that future extortion will be exposed.
California is a may issue state, the sheriff's office can decline to issue a permit for any reason. Soliciting the bribe is illegal for other reasons, but failing to issue the permit is not a rights violation under California law.
Actually, denying the permit via an illegal action (requesting a bribe) is not a lawful denial and would result in the violation of your equal protection rights.
If they solicit a bribe, one would reasonably assume that a failure to pay would result in a denial. If you have a recording of that, then you could provide probable cause that it was illegal.
If you weren't propositioned with a bribe, then true, it wouldn't be apparent why you were denied.
California is a two-party consent state. It's safe to assume a LEO soliciting a bribe would not also consent to having that solicitation recorded. So the only way you are getting that recording is illegally. Depending on how you record them, you could be facing several charges yourself and there's no guarantee that anything will come of it for a variety of reasons. You might even be caught doing it, which could be disastrous. In short, it's a pretty big gamble.
Two party consent doesn't matter here. The federal courts have consistently upheld that it is one's first ammendment right to record public officials in the performance of their duties. As a member of the public, you are permitted to record your interactions with police.
Now, could it still end badly? Sure. If they are willing to break the law for a bribe, then why not take it further if they find out you are recording.
Local police have been noticeably resistant to rules allowing recording. A large fraction of the civil rights violations documented by Amnesty International against BLM protestors were exactly against people who were only recording what was going on.
Therefore no matter how much you might be within the right, I would personally not be willing to record the police unless it was under the direction of another police force that was ready to barge in.
Secret recording protip: get the target to identify themselves in a unique manner. Such as affirmative responses when called by their name and nickname. A certain action others can corroborate such as a triple high pitched sneeze. Or sounds that are unique to them such as a cell phone text message chime. Combine the above for maximum impact.
Present this to a lawyer and watch them work their magic.
I currently have a case where a trooper lied to a judge to conceal exculpatory evidence and it is documented. I emailed a few firms for a free consultation. So far I have not found a civil lawyer willing to take it. Decided to email the ACLU too, so we'll see if we hear back from them.
You should listen to the reason why all of those civil lawyers are not willing to take it. Listen very carefully. I would advise you to believe the word of several people telling you why it’s not possible...
No one has told me it's not possible. I have a trooper and a lawyer from a other area of law telling me it sounds like a good case. The lawyers that I have contacted only a few days ago simply haven't responded yet.
And do you think it's likely they'll be 'on duty' when this discussion occurs?
You're really trying very hard to downplay the risk of gathering this evidence. If you are discovered and you gathered evidence, you might have that evidence confiscated or you might just be dead. If you are discovered but didn't manage to get the evidence, you might be charged with wiretapping. (Or they might just kill you anyway.) Even if all works out in the end, you're looking at a legal battle. (Most people don't want to be the one fighting a case that sets precedence even if federal courts largely seem to rule in their favor.) And all that struggle is for evidence that might not even convince anyone to start an investigation and/or may not be admitted to court.
Keep in mind that it's incredibly rare for any DA to go against the police, so this case is already unusual. We'll have to wait and see if they actually have the evidence / wherewithal to see this one through rather than just settling out of court for a slap on the wrist.
Which raises the question, why did it happen this time?
My best guess is that the Santa Clara DA did the math, said, "I'm in a liberal part of a liberal state where people overwhelmingly support BLM and distrust the police. How can I best generate some positive publicity for myself?"
The concealed permits mess has been well-known for ages. So it wasn't a question of the DA having just learned about it and becoming shocked. And going to the Feds wouldn't have helped much since they don't care too much (else they would have acted ages ago). The question is why the DA decided to make an issue of it.
Honestly, I think it is because of the high level of the payments it could no longer be ignored, and the sheriff pissed off someone more powerful than them. Usually this stuff would entail a couple of thousand per individual, the whole process was based on insider networking/understanding, no explicit quid pro quo, and the money was slated to an organization that was set up to receive funds for other legitimate purposes so there is some level of transparency. Based on the article, Santa Clara had taken this to a whole new level with what was being demanded and the demands were explicit.
Baloney. The whole reason that laws exist to punish the person paying the bribe, even if the bribe was originally solicited by an official, is to force that person to bring it to higher authorities, i.e. the FBI.
This type of corruption is even more endemic in other countries and I'm sure many companies would find it easier to just pay the bribe than comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but that's why the act was written in the first place.
Agree. Also Apple security are in a long term beneficiary position with any given law enforcement entity, especially one which effectively controls the limits of Apple's personal security measures wrt firearms.
To me this seems it would make the "or else" really difficult to think past. What can they do? If they detonate the leadership structure of some department by going on the offense, what is the likelihood they hurt their own ability to work with LEO types in the future? That would be a really hard position. But maybe there are details we just don't have here.
You can argue that they should have gone straight to the DA, and you might even be right, but the only way for this problem to get fixed is by cleaning house at the police department, not by scolding Apple for trying to work with corrupt officials.
Keep in mind that it's incredibly rare for any DA to go against the police, so this case is already unusual. We'll have to wait and see if they actually have the evidence / wherewithal to see this one through rather than just settling out of court for a slap on the wrist.
Edit:
I actually agree with the comments suggesting that Apple and similar companies will learn from this experience and will use it as an example when trying to ensure that it doesn't happen again, and in that sense, it's important that they be punished too.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that, on a moral level, the police department comes off looking way worse than Apple here, and their punishment should be higher.
Police are given a special position in society where we essentially trust them to conduct themselves professionally and uphold the law fairly. When that trust is misplaced, the checks are slow and unreliable, and corrupt cops can cause a whole lot of mayhem while we're waiting. So if you're going to go after police corruption, you'd better hit hard. It's really, really bad for society to have police who are so comfortable asking for bribes this openly.
It's also bad for companies like Apple to feel like they can just pay the bribes to grease the wheels, but it's a different kind of bad. It's a "We should punish Apple to discourage a tragedy of the commons" kind of bad, while police openly asking for bribes is a "betraying the public trust" kind of bad.