Perp walk

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M. Henri Day
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Perp walk

Postby M. Henri Day » Sun Apr 03, 2005 9:08 am

I came across the above word (OK, formally a noun phrase rather than a word, but it seems to be used as a word and in more agglutinating languages than English would certainly be written as one) in the New York Times leader which I take the liberty of reproducing below. I had never seen or heard it before, but given the context had an inkling as to what it might refer. Interestingly enough, when I checked the OneLook Dictionary Search, only one source was given which listed the term. It would seem that once again, practice (and certain practices) is (are) way ahead of theory....

Henri
April 3, 2005

EDITORIAL

Viva Los Regulators


We have seen one corporate chieftain after another, the likes of Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom and John Rigas of Adelphia, doing the perp walk recently through the morass of business scandals. Federal regulators are in striking distance of Maurice Greenberg of the American International Group, an icon of American business. And many shareholders of Enron are licking their lips in anticipation of the trials of its former chief executives, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.

So it's no surprise that these high-profile cases have spawned a backlash from Wall Street about overzealous prosecutors and federal regulations that have run amok. Some defenders of business have even gone so far as to suggest the conviction of Mr. Ebbers shows that America does not need the Sarbanes-Oxley law, passed in 2002 as a response to corporate fraud.

This makes no sense. The very fact that corporate chieftains are falling left and right shows that more needs to be done. These cases are symptoms of endemic business corruption, and this is no time to start talking about backtracking.

Interestingly, much of this talk about overzealous enforcement is brought on by the behavior of big business itself, yet another sign that corporate America still does not get it. Instead of self-policing their accounting practices, many companies appear to be focusing on issues of personal behavior by employees that are of little concern to shareholders or the public. This goes beyond the forced resignation of the chief executive of Boeing, Harry Stonecipher, for having a consensual affair with an employee. Early this year, Bank of America, which has paid nearly $1 billion in fines over the last year for various transgressions, fired a highly regarded bond analyst, Andrew Susser, for his stab at humor in a research report on the casino and lodging industry. On its cover, which carried the title "Checking In," Mr. Susser's face was superimposed over the body of a woman in a cocktail party dress and heels who was being carried over the threshold by a man, as reported by Landon Thomas Jr. in The Times. This is sophomoric behavior, certainly, but not grounds for dismissal; at least it was not back in the days before the business sections of newspapers started reading like rap sheets.

Instead of singling out low- and middle-level executives, big business would better spend its time going after the top-tier people for overstating earnings and sliding expenses around. After paying a $300 million fine to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it overstated advertising revenue, Time Warner did not dismiss the executives, including the chief financial officer, who approved the accounting.

What this shows is not that law enforcement is overzealous, but that upholding the public interest is still too much at the whim of individual officials. The decision by the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, to take on the finance industry was a good thing, but the public should not have to depend on one individual's deciding to take up such a cause.

Still, as long as we are in this pattern, it is a good sign that some of these eager officials are turning their attention from shareholder protection to consumer protection. Minnesota's attorney general recently sued two subsidiaries of the Capital One Financial Corporation, alleging that their supposed "low" and "fixed" interest rates on credit cards are actually neither. The suit alleges that for many consumers, the rates went up - as high as 25.9 percent - if they were just a day late in paying their bills.

That kind of action is what the American middle class - on whose shoulders rests so much of the world economy - needs.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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Slava
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Postby Slava » Tue May 18, 2010 10:55 pm

Well, One Look is up to 8 citations now. This does seem a particularly nasty little form of humiliation, with little use in justice. Unless I were given major concessions, I'd refuse and fight it, physically if need be.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

skinem
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Postby skinem » Wed May 19, 2010 9:04 am

Well, One Look is up to 8 citations now. This does seem a particularly nasty little form of humiliation, with little use in justice. Unless I were given major concessions, I'd refuse and fight it, physically if need be.
Good luck with that. Then you'd just do your perp walk with messed up hair and the crazy look in your eyes that seems to accompany many of the walkers.

The police don't owe you a private shielded walk from car to jail from jail to car to courthouse...

The perp walk is taken by nearly everyone arrested for a crime, it's just that unless the person is well known or the crime is large the press doesn't care so it is then made in relative anonymity.

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Slava
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Postby Slava » Wed May 19, 2010 10:04 am

It's not the getting arrested bit, but the fake staging that gets me:
Investopedia Commentary

Short for "perpetrator walk," this is a practice with which many people disagree, considering these re-staged arrests to be merely media spectacles that violate the suspects' rights. Both former head of Adelphia, 78-year-old John Rigas, and ex-WorldCom CFO Scott Sullivan turned themselves in when they were being investigated. Despite their requests, law enforcement still invited the media to watch the former executives being handcuffed and hauled in.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.


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