5 ms·

Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. You'd need to go after the individuals. In a circumstance like that described in the article, it

Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. You'd need to go after the individuals. In a circumstance like that described in the article, it would not be unreasonable to investigate the police officers' actions, specially the question of whether he truly had reasonable grounds for suspicion that the straw was truly drug paraphernalia. If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. I know it's never going to happen but one can dream...

outworlder 11y ago
> If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. Can one do that? Why doesn't it seem to happen more often?
- nickff 11y ago
  Government prosecutors are generally unwilling to charge police with crimes because they see themselves as being on the same 'team', and the 'blue wall' will stop them. In addition, we should remember that police officers are an arm of the state, not a charitable organization out to help people. There is simply no reason for anyone in the bureaucracy (including the prosecutors' offices) to care about or want to fix these problems.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    Precisely. Unless an officer's actions are both shockingly egregious and clearly documented, prosecutors usually won't do anything. After that cop is gone, the prosecutor still must work with his friend and colleagues to present cases for trial.
function_seven 11y ago
> Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. Sure it will. If the cost of arresting someone was potentially a few hundred thousand dollars each time, the police would have to be a lot more careful about whom they arrest. Cities and counties would literally be unable to afford to arrest everyone. As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, full agreement here, even regarding the pipe-shapedness of the dream :(
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > the police would have to be a lot more careful about whom they arrest. Cities and counties would literally be unable to afford to arrest everyone. Let's just hope it won't result in a spike in number of people shot to death in self-defense.
jcromartie 11y ago
I disagree. As soon as the justice system has to pay for its mistakes, the mistakes will go away.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  The "justice system," like the rest of the government, doesn't pay for anything under any circumstances. We, the taxpayer, do. Never forget that.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    This is the start of a common argument against, but it is essentially saying that a jurisdiction's taxpayers should be fund groups that harm people while simultaneously washing their hands of responsibility for that harm. Currently, the damages caused by law enforcement are effectively funded by an obscure reverse-lottery. This makes them seem free for the majority of people who don't "win" the lottery, yet they can be life-crushing if you do. Quantifying the damage would allow to those taxpayers to see exactly how their money is being spent, and making the damage legible to the justice system is the only way they can possibly optimize it away.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > The "justice system," like the rest of the government, doesn't pay for anything under any circumstances. We, the taxpayer, do. Which is how it causes the mistakes to go away. Politicians want to get reelected. They want tax dollars to go to things that help get them reelected by generating votes or campaign contributions. The problem right now is that the defendant gets screwed but there is no cost for that to the police, politicians or voters. Make the voters pay for it and they will immediately want it to stop.
mindslight 11y ago
Our two proposals aren't mutually exclusive, but are essentially quite similar. For any criminal case there is a corresponding civil action to make the injured party whole. These perps are acting against the law, and as such it's obvious they should be subject to both avenues of justice. IMHO the civil approach is just a lot easier to adjudicate - when the victim is found innocent, they should be immediately compensated for any and all damages resulting from arrest, imprisonment, and trial. If the department wants to recoup losses from specific individuals who went against policy, they can settle that much thornier argument on their own time. Proving that a specific individual acted criminally outside their mandate is an even higher burden to meet. When this is warranted, it would be fantastic. But we can envision many cases where an individual cop is following a reasonable policy, yet it still results in an innocent being held in jail for a day and losing their job as a result.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  In the US, defendants are not found innocent. They are found "not guilty". OJ Simpson is all likelihood the killer of his ex and her friend. The court did not find him innocent of that, but rather found that the standard of proof had not been met to find him guilty, ergo they find him "not guilty" but they certainly did not submit a finding of "innocent". The standard of proof in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt". The standard of proof in a civil trial is "by a preponderance of the evidence". It's roughly the difference between "overwhelmingly likely to be guilty" vs "more likely than not to be the case". I don't think you can turn every finding of "not guilty" into a successful civil standard of loss for the defendant. Suppose it's 95% likely that I was guilty of a crime. That's likely to not meet the standard to convict, but turn that around into a civil suit for false arrest or malicious prosecution and I'm going to lose the case against the civil standards.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    > I don't think you can turn every finding of "not guilty" into a successful civil standard of loss for the defendant The civil standard would not be applied to the facts of the original case, but to the result of the criminal trial. The "preponderance of the evidence" you refer to is that the defendant was found not guilty in the criminal case, which is the sole indication of whether the criminal prosecution was correct or not. Yes, there will be close cases where the defendant seems awfully guilty, yet is acquitted of the criminal charges. But arrest and imprisonment while awaiting trial is not supposed to be extrajudicial punishment! It would be perfectly reasonable for a defendant to lose the civil trial and have to make the original victim whole, yet be reimbursed for his criminal defense attorney fees etc.
mcherm 11y ago
That doesn't work. There are decisions about which reasonable people can disagree. If every such decision risked going to jail for assault, kidnapping, or false imprisonment then no police would be willing perform arrests. We use (or should use) criminal prosecution for extreme cases (a police officer who shoots an unarmed suspect for no good reason) but use the normal processes of workplace discipline (for which the worst that can happen is that you lose your job) for questionable arrests (like arresting someone for "drug paraphernalia" for having a straw).
tsotha 11y ago
What would actually happen is the cops would turn off their radios and just have a bull session at the donut shop. Someone rapes your daughter? File a report at the station. Nobody is going to get arrested if cops face that kind of personal liability. We're already seeing a taste of it lately in NYC and Baltimore. The cops think they're being unfairly scapegoated so they're hunkering down. Somehow people are surprised crime rates are going up.
- mdpopescu 11y ago
  Like this? http://thefreethoughtproject.com/acapulco-police-strike-backfired/ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/acapulco-police-strike-back... (Yes, I know it's not about Baltimore / NYC.)

outworlder 11y ago

> If not, prosecute him for assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. Can one do that? Why doesn't it seem to happen more often?

nickff 11y ago
Government prosecutors are generally unwilling to charge police with crimes because they see themselves as being on the same 'team', and the 'blue wall' will stop them. In addition, we should remember that police officers are an arm of the state, not a charitable organization out to help people. There is simply no reason for anyone in the bureaucracy (including the prosecutors' offices) to care about or want to fix these problems.
- LordKano 11y ago
  Precisely. Unless an officer's actions are both shockingly egregious and clearly documented, prosecutors usually won't do anything. After that cop is gone, the prosecutor still must work with his friend and colleagues to present cases for trial.

function_seven 11y ago

> Going after budgets won't really bring about meaningful change. Sure it will. If the cost of arresting someone was potentially a few hundred thousand dollars each time, the police would have to be a lot more careful about whom they arrest. Cities and counties would literally be unable to afford to arrest everyone. As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, full agreement here, even regarding the pipe-shapedness of the dream :(

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> the police would have to be a lot more careful about whom they arrest. Cities and counties would literally be unable to afford to arrest everyone. Let's just hope it won't result in a spike in number of people shot to death in self-defense.

jcromartie 11y ago

I disagree. As soon as the justice system has to pay for its mistakes, the mistakes will go away.

CamperBob2 11y ago
The "justice system," like the rest of the government, doesn't pay for anything under any circumstances. We, the taxpayer, do. Never forget that.
- mindslight 11y ago
  This is the start of a common argument against, but it is essentially saying that a jurisdiction's taxpayers should be fund groups that harm people while simultaneously washing their hands of responsibility for that harm. Currently, the damages caused by law enforcement are effectively funded by an obscure reverse-lottery. This makes them seem free for the majority of people who don't "win" the lottery, yet they can be life-crushing if you do. Quantifying the damage would allow to those taxpayers to see exactly how their money is being spent, and making the damage legible to the justice system is the only way they can possibly optimize it away.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > The "justice system," like the rest of the government, doesn't pay for anything under any circumstances. We, the taxpayer, do. Which is how it causes the mistakes to go away. Politicians want to get reelected. They want tax dollars to go to things that help get them reelected by generating votes or campaign contributions. The problem right now is that the defendant gets screwed but there is no cost for that to the police, politicians or voters. Make the voters pay for it and they will immediately want it to stop.

mindslight 11y ago

Our two proposals aren't mutually exclusive, but are essentially quite similar. For any criminal case there is a corresponding civil action to make the injured party whole. These perps are acting against the law, and as such it's obvious they should be subject to both avenues of justice. IMHO the civil approach is just a lot easier to adjudicate - when the victim is found innocent, they should be immediately compensated for any and all damages resulting from arrest, imprisonment, and trial. If the department wants to recoup losses from specific individuals who went against policy, they can settle that much thornier argument on their own time. Proving that a specific individual acted criminally outside their mandate is an even higher burden to meet. When this is warranted, it would be fantastic. But we can envision many cases where an individual cop is following a reasonable policy, yet it still results in an innocent being held in jail for a day and losing their job as a result.

sokoloff 11y ago
In the US, defendants are not found innocent. They are found "not guilty". OJ Simpson is all likelihood the killer of his ex and her friend. The court did not find him innocent of that, but rather found that the standard of proof had not been met to find him guilty, ergo they find him "not guilty" but they certainly did not submit a finding of "innocent". The standard of proof in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt". The standard of proof in a civil trial is "by a preponderance of the evidence". It's roughly the difference between "overwhelmingly likely to be guilty" vs "more likely than not to be the case". I don't think you can turn every finding of "not guilty" into a successful civil standard of loss for the defendant. Suppose it's 95% likely that I was guilty of a crime. That's likely to not meet the standard to convict, but turn that around into a civil suit for false arrest or malicious prosecution and I'm going to lose the case against the civil standards.
- mindslight 11y ago
  > I don't think you can turn every finding of "not guilty" into a successful civil standard of loss for the defendant The civil standard would not be applied to the facts of the original case, but to the result of the criminal trial. The "preponderance of the evidence" you refer to is that the defendant was found not guilty in the criminal case, which is the sole indication of whether the criminal prosecution was correct or not. Yes, there will be close cases where the defendant seems awfully guilty, yet is acquitted of the criminal charges. But arrest and imprisonment while awaiting trial is not supposed to be extrajudicial punishment! It would be perfectly reasonable for a defendant to lose the civil trial and have to make the original victim whole, yet be reimbursed for his criminal defense attorney fees etc.

mcherm 11y ago

That doesn't work. There are decisions about which reasonable people can disagree. If every such decision risked going to jail for assault, kidnapping, or false imprisonment then no police would be willing perform arrests. We use (or should use) criminal prosecution for extreme cases (a police officer who shoots an unarmed suspect for no good reason) but use the normal processes of workplace discipline (for which the worst that can happen is that you lose your job) for questionable arrests (like arresting someone for "drug paraphernalia" for having a straw).

tsotha 11y ago

What would actually happen is the cops would turn off their radios and just have a bull session at the donut shop. Someone rapes your daughter? File a report at the station. Nobody is going to get arrested if cops face that kind of personal liability. We're already seeing a taste of it lately in NYC and Baltimore. The cops think they're being unfairly scapegoated so they're hunkering down. Somehow people are surprised crime rates are going up.

mdpopescu 11y ago
Like this? http://thefreethoughtproject.com/acapulco-police-strike-backfired/ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/acapulco-police-strike-back... (Yes, I know it's not about Baltimore / NYC.)