4 ms·
> You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is, even if they're cops. As much as I want to agree with this statement, I can't help
by joatmon-snoo 9y ago
> You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is, even if they're cops.
As much as I want to agree with this statement, I can't help but feel that it's highly problematic in some sense.
When it comes to court cases (IANAL, but this is my understanding), law enforcement officials' testimony is treated with a certain measure of elevated credibility (there's SCOTUS precedent for this, but I can't seem to find the cases). Violation of that trust - as in this case - should be penalized, but I don't know what kind of remedy would be appropriate.
- wholinator 9y agoPreface: i am not a lawyer either and i welcome criticism as this is just an idea. I think the solution wouldn't be to charge robbery twice as hard for cops, but to have an additional charge. Something like 'abuse of federal trusted power' or something like that which would carry its own penalties. This, i think, wouldn't cause the strict separation of penalties that could be problematic, but it would address the problem of people entrusted with federal power abusing it.
- unabst 9y agoYes this. Hate crime is a crime that adds penalties to what otherwise would be the same act. The problem with hate crime is it assumes we can know someone's thoughts, but with a "violation of trust" crime, being in a superior position of elevated responsibility would be enough.