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bestworstcase · 4 years ago

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my read on RATGT is that this exact concept is the *whole point* of the episode. like:

1) rapunzel is an extremely capable person who can take care of herself.

2) cass is also an extremely capable person, and while she and rapunzel have complementary skillsets, cass is not more capable than rapunzel.

3) no matter how capable you are, you are not immune to bad luck or chaos.

4) the conflict in the great tree is a complex beast created by layers of poor judgment (adira insisting it was completely safe, cass freaking out and spiraling into paranoia, rapunzel making a snap decision to camp in the tree based on anger at cass rather than rational consideration of all the options, hector waking up the tree) and plain unpredictable circumstances (the tree is woken up and overpowers them easily!!), which ends in rapunzel being stuck in a situation with no good options: both the spear and the incantation were tremendously risky in their own ways.

5) NOBODY could have pulled everyone out of that disaster completely unscathed. not rapunzel, not cass, not adira, not eugene, not *anyone.* it was too big, and every possible way out too risky. someone getting hurt was inevitable.

6) i think rapunzel recognizes this: she did play a part in allowing the situation to reach that point (bc it was her call to camp in the tree), BUT during the fight itself she made the best she could out of a horrible situation and it’s not entirely her fault that cass was injured… that plus the guilt she obviously feels leads to her Blaming Cass in RDO, which is not an especially good or healthy way to react, but imo this is where that behavior comes from.

7) and i think CASS also recognizes this: the great tree crisis is not something she COULD HAVE protected rapunzel from. she CAN’T keep rapunzel safe better than rapunzel can keep rapunzel safe. and trying to protect rapunzel—by grabbing her when she said she couldn’t control the incantation—resulted in her being maimed. and… that’s something she needed to realize, but it’s also—because at this point her informal orders to “protect rapunzel” are the hook her entire sense of self-worth hangs on—extremely painful for her to realize that; it makes her feel useless, unneeded, and unwanted, and this is compounded by rapunzel’s failure to *hear her* when cass tries to express her underlying insecurities before the big crisis in the great tree.

so like… rapunzel brushes cass’s attempts to protect her off, because rapunzel is just as capable as cass is [and rapunzel very understandably misses the subtext of cass’s burgeoning emotional crisis, because “oh, cass feels like i don’t value her friendship” is kind of an insane conclusion to draw from cass suggesting that it is Her Job to protect rapunzel akfjsjdhaj]. cass feels hurt because she feels like if rapunzel doesn’t need/want cass to protect her, cass has no value to rapunzel as a friend… and then there’s this crisis that rubs salt in that wound by driving home to cass that RAPUNZEL WAS RIGHT when she brushed cass off in the first place, because there’s nothing cass could have done to pull a better outcome out of that fight. which is why cassandra’s final line in the episode is (paraphrasing) “It’s your call, Raps.”

[the actual PROBLEM as far as cass is concerned is that communication between her and rapunzel has so thoroughly broken down that cass can’t express her underlying insecurities or pain or anger to rapunzel, which inhibits her from being able to process any of this in a healthy way and causes those things to fester. that is a COMPLETELY separate issue from the question of cass protecting rapunzel or not, even though cass conflates them in her mind.]

the *whole point* is that cass pinning all her sense of her own value on this “protector” role is deeply unhealthy and that rapunzel doesn’t *need* cass, or anyone, to be in that role, and was correct when she asserted that. in this regard i think it is also significant that adira is basically like “good luck, see ya later” at the end of RATGT: she’s the other potential “protector” but rapunzel doesn’t need her either, and adira, not having cassandra’s MOUNTAIN of baggage, accepts that and exits.

I'll be honest I don't trust a single person who seriously argues that Rapunzel was in the wrong for telling Cassandra she could protect herself in The Great Tree... Like, it's possible to understand how Cassandra's feelings were hurt WITHOUT actually saying that Rapunzel needs someone to protect her because she's too weak to handle the real world 🙃

#rta #op coming at this as a big cass fan i 100% agree akfjskha #‘ratgt proves rapunzel did need protection’ is the worst possible takeaway here 😬#…sorry for rambling i just. YEAH #RATGT GOOD

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duaneodavila · 7 years ago

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Will Judge Weinstein End Collars For Dollars?

The most dangerous time on the street is at the end of a shift. Sure, they could do the buy and bust at the beginning of the shift and then spend the rest of their time processing the perps, filling out the reports, waiting for the prints to come back, but that’s not how they roll.

Accusations about the practice — known as “collars for dollars” — have dogged the department for decades. The Mollen Commission’s 1994 report about police corruption, which used the term, detailed the various and devious overtime schemes that have been used.

There are myriad ways in which cops game the system for overtime. The problem is that it means money in their pockets, but it lacks the sizzle of a dead body of an innocent person caught on video.

In one, the police would involve additional officers in making an arrest, maximizing the number of people eligible for overtime. In a typical arrangement, those extra officers might claim to have discovered evidence that the defendant had tried to hide, or in some other way they would enter the case as peripheral witnesses. They would need to be on hand to handle paperwork or be available to testify — so they too would get overtime pay.

In another practice, known as “trading collars,” officers sometimes directed arrests to the member of their team who stood to get the most overtime. Felony arrests are often presented to a grand jury about five days after the incident; but if an officer who took part was scheduled to work on the anticipated grand jury date, he or she might defer to a colleague who was not.

But the most common game is to make the bust at the end of the shift, thus requiring the officers to spend the next eight or so hours on overtime doing their cop duty. It’s not a complicated scheme, as it’s easily explainable. You make the bust after the crime occurs. Is it the cops’ fault the deal went down at 3:45 in the afternoon?

But when they get too greedy, and can’t find someone even arguably engaged in a crime such that they just have to make it up to score the OT, the ugliness comes to the surface.

The notion that police officers have financial incentives in making arrests also emerged at the trial last month of a Queens detective convicted of perjury. The detective, Kevin Desormeau, had arrested a man on drug charges after claiming, falsely it turned out, to have witnessed the suspect dealing drugs. In arguing the case, prosecutors noted that Detective Desormeau had filed for four hours and 24 minutes of overtime for “an arrest that was illegal.”

Big deal, you say. What’s four hours plus for the sake of our boys in blue? Certainly the piss away far more than that regularly, and nobody goes all “corruption” on them, right? Well, that’s usually the case, but Hector Cordero decided not to let it slide when he was the patsy in the scheme.

On Tuesday, four of the officers involved in the arrests will appear in Federal District Court in Brooklyn for the start of an unusual civil-rights trial, facing accusations that they detained one of the men, Hector Cordero, simply to increase their income.

If any of the officers are found liable, another trial will be scheduled, one that could represent the biggest challenge to New York policing practices since stop-and-frisk. The second trial would examine the broader question of whether the city’s police officers habitually use false arrests to bolster their pay.

As unlucky as Cordero was when he was fingered as a drug dealer for the sake of 20 hours of collective overtime, he caught a huge break in having his case assigned to Judge Jack Weinstein.

The lawsuit has accused the officers of concocting the basis of Mr. Cordero’s arrest “in order to obtain overtime for completing the attendant paperwork,” court filings state. The officers, who are being defended by lawyers for the city, have denied the charges. The city’s Law Department said that the arrest was “supported by probable cause.”

The first trial will be about Cordero, whether his constitutional rights were violated by the cops who falsely arrested him. The City’s defense isn’t hard to grasp: so they made a mistake, identified the wrong guy. It happens. Big deal. But if Cordero prevails, what comes next could be huge.

In October, Judge Weinstein issued an order saying that if any officer was found liable, a second trial would explore Mr. Harvis’s theory that “the Police Department has long been aware of a widespread practice of false arrests at the end of tours of duty.” The second trial would be likely to rely on Police Department records about overtime abuse, which the city has filed under seal as part of Mr. Cordero’s case but could become public.

The argument is that there is a pattern and practice of officers manipulating the system for the sake of generating overtime pay. The argument is that the City knows all about this. The argument is that the City, despite knowing all about this, lacks the will to stop it because it will make the cops angry. The City doesn’t want angry cops. Judge Weinstein doesn’t care.

“A reasonable jury may find that this practice is not isolated to a few ‘bad’ police officers,” Judge Weinstein wrote, “but is endemic, that N.Y.P.D. officials are aware this pattern exists and that they have failed to intervene and properly supervise.”

Is there a way to distinguish between legitimate busts that happen during the last hour of a shift? Is there a way to tell when the collar is handed off to the cop who has to come in on his RDO to testify before the grand jury? The explanations for this conduct write themselves, but the amount paid out in overtime, not to mention padding pensions, has to be paid by someone.

The irony is that this isn’t a big secret. It’s nothing new. Everybody knew how the game was played. But it took a greedy cop who couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bust an innocent guy to bring this scheme to the surface. It took Hector Cordero to decide he wasn’t going to let it slide. And it took Judge Weinstein to be willing to open this huge can of worms that will piss off every cop and politician in the City.

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