11 ms·

To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity

167 points by rchaudhary 6y ago

dangoljames 6y ago
Malpractice insurance and touchy premiums, fuck up, and you can't afford to be a cop and a dept can't afford to hire you.
fosk 6y ago
I am european, and police in the US really is something else: the mindset, the culture, the engagements. There needs to be a nation-wide police reformation.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  It is a little different, we don't have a history of socialism, communism, or violent dictatorships or monarchies.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    Uhh what? The instigating event which founded our country was a monarchy. I would argue that slaves and indigenous populations experienced a violent dictatorship. I don't think it's actually too much to expect that our officers fix their own culture. I just think it won't happen because they have a toxic tradition of ignoring the cultural cues given by civilian leadership (except the ones that praise police forces no matter how bad they act).
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      In some ways, your parent hits the nail on the head. Policing in America is so brutal because we don’t acknowledge that we were a brutal apartide state for most of the 20th century, and a racial dictatorship for the first half of our history.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > There needs to be a nation-wide police reformation. I don't think you can convince a rural Montana rancher that their local Sheriff needs to be retrained because (as they likely see it) gang bangers in Chicago "force" police to be more heavy handed. I'm all for incentivizing police to improve their own culture, but I'm cynical that it won't happen. I'm all for giving police more funding and better tools to do their job more politely, but they already chew up 40% of all local government spending. I think the solution can't be "expect policing to change" and has to be something more like "change the policy and show America civilians how our policing expectations are broken". Americans call the police because a dog is off-leash in a large grassy park. Until we figure out how to tolerate small infractions or at least deal with them without involving law enforcement, there will always be a risk of violence during escalation.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    > Americans call the police because a dog is off-leash in a large grassy park. Let's get those facts straight. White americans call the police, and lie about being threatened, when a black man asks them to leash their dog in an area clearly labeled as an on-leash area.
  - mirchibajji 6y ago
    I was with you until the last point. If someone is legitimately afraid of dogs, and deliberately go to a park where dogs have to be on leash, and someone shows up with a dog running around, and just don't listen to polite requests? What are they supposed to do? Out here in the UK, I wouldn't call the police (I'm not that bothered), but I can imagine it being a legitimate concern.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      As a general guideline, you shouldn’t call the police in the US unless it is serious enough that you are willing to risk having your situation be escalated into (sometimes deadly) violence. POSIWID.
- WesternStar 6y ago
  We should start by repealing the 2nd amendment. It is a bad law. Edit: This along with arm confiscation would limit force in police interactions and thus lower aggression.
  - sumedh 6y ago
    > We should start by repealing the 2nd amendment How should people protect their houses/shops when armed criminals try to rob your place?
    - WesternStar 6y ago
      Call the police and have insurance.
      - defnotashton2 6y ago
        And what about when response rates are 40 minutes? What about the gov being oppressive? HK would be diff.
        WesternStar 6y ago
        The United States of America has an oppressive government if they wanted to use their weapons to protect against tyranny today would be that day. But they don't the 70 million gun owners of America march in support of tyranny not against it.
      - sumedh 6y ago
        What should you do till the police don't come and who will help you out till you get the insurance payout which is not a guarantee.
        WesternStar 6y ago
        Well I didn't say you couldn't fight. My proposal includes confiscation. Assume very aggressive pursuit of criminals with an unlicensed firearms. Like multi-county dragnet with blocked roads. Like we get O(100) cops for one gun. Most criminals will just probably keep it to cold arms.
seemslegit 6y ago
Or at least make it actually qualified.
claudeganon 6y ago
Verso has also made the ebook edition of Alex Vitale’s excellent “The End of Policing” free: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing TLDR: any society which refuses to provide social democratic floors to people will increasingly rely on violence to maintain its social order. You can’t expect policing to be the primary means with which we deal with things like the housing and healthcare crisis without disastrous consequences.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > You can’t expect policing to be the primary means with which we deal with things like ... I don't buy this argument because it removes agency from law enforcement officers, who -- as a class of people -- very highly buy into the concept of free will. Right now, police departments have a significant amount of moral hazard. They are expected to behave in a very legal and upright manner, but not all do and those who don't are very rarely held legally or civilly liable. I think doing something like removing qualified immunity (or at the very least just giving DAs tools and directives to prosecute more egregious use of force problems) or putting more of the police officers' wealth at risk (by tying their retirement programs to the funds which pay out for violations of civilian rights).
awillen 6y ago
Crimes should be charged more seriously, not less, when they're committed by police. This is only reasonable - any crime committed by an on-duty officer is inherently more harmful that the same crime committed by a civilian, because in addition to the damage of the actual crime, the officer's commission of it also does harm to the public trust in the police and our society. Beyond that, the police should be held to a higher standard because we as a society acknowledge that they are trained well enough to walk around with guns and the ability to deprive people of their freedom (even those who are innocent - if you're locked in a cell and later not charged, you don't get that time you spent in a cell back). We should be able to charge Chauvin with first degree murder despite a lack of premeditation, because he was trained to know not to do precisely what he did. If I kneel on a guy's neck and kill him unintentionally it's manslaughter, but if a cop does it, it should be worse because that cop should be expected to know that doing so is not an acceptable form of restraint.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > you don't get that time you spent in a cell back You also got fingerprinted (and probably DNA tested) and your mugshot was publicly distributed and those actions aren't undone.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    I agree. An arrest on its own, even without a conviction or even any charges being laid, can have an enormous negative effect on one's life. Another example is that having been ever arrested, even if not charged or convicted, can bar you from entering the US without going through an expensive, difficult, discretionary process to get a waiver, that then needs to be periodically redone. And it follows you for the rest of your life, it does not expire for example 30 or 50 years after the arrest.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      I’ve applied to companies who ask on their application whether you have ever been arrested, regardless of conviction—presumably as a way to disqualify you.
TeaDrunk 6y ago
Another suggestion: Bolster social programs that is being hamfisted through the justice system, necessitating larger police forces who don't have deescelation training and are not legally obligated to know the law they enforce. Police don't need to bust someone for drugs if we have robust social programs that adequately address poverty and addiction. Police don't need to harass homeless people if we have robust social programs that adequately address homelessness. Police don't need to deal with severely mentally ill people who are unpredictable and potentially dangerous if we have robust social programs that adequately address the mental healthcare crisis in this country.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > Bolster social programs I think you are actually talking about dismantling more than half of the existing criminal statutes. I agree that we should do it, but there's a reason it hasn't been done before: there are still a ton of citizens who believe the only way to deter crime/poverty is a bigger stick, not swapping a stick for a carrot.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Police "don't need to (bust someone for drugs|harass homeless people)" period. > and are not legally obligated to know the law they enforce. They should be. I do agree that we need better social programs, but that doesn't excuse police thuggery.
ineedasername 6y ago
I'm not sure about this. Maybe qualified immunity should be reduced in scope, but I don't know about doing away with it. A police officer that tasers a violent suspect should be immune from prosecution if that suspect falls and hits their head, or has a heart attack. I don't see a way that police could do their jobs without some version of qualified immunity. I think that at least part of solution lies in better training on use of force, massively increase training on deescalation techniques, better psychological screening and continuous followups, full-time body cams that don't turn off and are tamper resistant with appropriate logging of metadata to detect misuse-- to the extent that if a complaint is made against an officer and the camera is mysteriously not functional, the disciplinary burden should be moved to favor the complaint. And probably other things too-- this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of reforms.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  I think that might be the logical end goal: Remove police from street policing, and let communities police themselves.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    > let communities police themselves This happened in the wild west and didn't work out so well.
    - vulcan01 6y ago
      At least, we should reinstate requirements that police should come from their own communities...
      - thephyber 6y ago
        That might be an improvement in many places, but it would probably create problems for San Francisco and San Jose, where cost of living is largely unsustainable for people who make starting police salaries unless they lucked into a family house. We sometimes forget that officers get to choose where they want to work and will migrate to the best place for them. The ratio between housing costs and salary (among other quality of life factors) is pretty important to lots of officers and we may end up lowering the quality of officers by only restricting the pool of eligible employees.
codegeek 6y ago
How about focussing more on teaching police officers to learn how to be calm and composed as much as possible instead of going on the offensive too quickly. Yes, there are times when you will "fear for your life" and have to act with force but far too often our police officers are casual in going on the offense. In many cases, it is just a case of being pissed off because the guy/gal they pulled over is rude or verbally abusive or is not complying to a request. Can you take a deep breath and agree that it is part of your job to deal with idiots/crackheads/vulgar people as well and learn how to deal with them without always flashing your gun or tasers ? One thing the police do where I live is to do community get togethers to get to know the actual people. It helps to reduce anxiety and stress. Yes I live in a "nice" neighborhood so it is easy for me to say may be. But can we not try similar police and public get togethers in the "not so nice" neighborhoods ? Is it not even worth a try ? Also, be more strict in getting rid of bad apples which I believe this article touches upon a bit. This specific police officer had a history of violence and he should have been under more scrutiny that he was. Until the respect is mutually created between police and public, no law on the books can prevent these types of unfortunate incidents.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  unfortunate incidents WTF? Srsly, now?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  > How about focussing more on teaching police officers to learn how to be calm and composed as much as possible instead of going on the offensive too quickly. Most police departments do. In the area I work as a paramedic, they certainly are trained in de-escalation. I also know that some of them just... don't... care. I've been dealing with mental health patients, got them calmed down, got a plan for dealing with their issues. And then had a cop march back over (who was on scene, saw the initial incident, the de-escalation), and start shouting at the patient over the destruction of property. The patient's property. "Who the fuck do you expect to clean up that broken glass? Selfish asshole. I should make _you_ get on your knees and clean it". End result? The patient who was compliant and willing to go for evaluation in the back of my ambulance needed to be sedated and narrowly avoided being tased. In the grand scheme of things, worse things have happened. But this was a situation actively under control. And a situation this officer, and only this officer, actively worked to make worse. That incident resulted in a complaint, though I have no idea what the resolution was.
howmayiannoyyou 6y ago
We ask cops to be part social worker, part solider, part lawyer, part investigator, part paramedic - and we pay them a salary for just one of those professions at best. Law enforcement is a small part of the job many days. It's time to create mission specialist in large police forces with depth in these areas and to deploy them as teams of 2-4. Yes, there will be shortages in coverage and that is okay.
- seemslegit 6y ago
  "We" didn't ask them to be any of these things, especially soldiers - this is power that they actively pushed for, there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police began in full swing - just a post-9/11 power opportunism and the need to find jobs for discharged soldiers. Mission specialists always existed, they're called detectives.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    > there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police began I would argue we started the militarization of police in the 1970s-1980s when NYC was a festering hotbed of crime and when Miami drug dealers were shooting automatic weapons during turf wars (which was when we started Civil Asset Forfeiture... which allowed police/prosecutors to essentially steal assets from civilians without a criminal conviction). We gave surplus DoD weapons to police for cheap after 9/11 and judges started rubber-stamping no-knock warrants around 2001, but I don't think that was the only inflection point.
    - seemslegit 6y ago
      Not the only, but 1970s-1980s had a real crime emergency, the 2000s didn't nearly as much.
throwawaygh 6y ago
The textualism of the conservative justices is primarily just a rational instrument for unwinding the liberal reforms of the Warren court.
mnm1 6y ago
Police officers, given that they have the power of life or death over others' lives, should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one. Apparently, this is still extremely controversial in America, where our culture insists that it be the opposite way: hold police to a lower standard, let them steal, beat, rape, and murder almost at will. In a sick society like this, one shouldn't wonder why the masses are cheering on the burning of police stations and courthouses. In a society like this, police are just the biggest gang and frankly, any action against them is defensible ethically, if not legally.
blackrock 6y ago
The root problem is not the cops. Well, the abusive cops seriously aggravate the problem. And the police is the enforcement arm of the system. But the root cause is the economic system on which America is built, and which it enforces throughout the world with its military, and enforces domestically with its militarized police. Predatory capitalism has run its course for the past 500 years. It’s all about extracting from the poor, and feeding it to the rich, the well connected, and the powerful. In this case, the rich are the white wealthy Americans, and they have been at the top of the ladder for the past 300 years in America. America needs a new economic system. What’s the point of making $15/hour, or $30,000/year, when your rent costs you $15,000/year, or 50% of your gross income? You barely have any money left over for other mandatory necessities. Meanwhile, the oligarchs that owns the stock market and Wall Street, and Fortune 1000 companies, lives lofty lives, and Bezos is about to become the world’s first Trillionaire. And if they fail, and screw up the economy for everyone else, then well, they’ll just get another bailout. The poor ends up paying for it, since costs go up for everyone. But in an alternate universe, Floyd was arrested because he was suspected of using a fake $20 bill. But somehow, he drives a Mercedes Benz SUV, which is a rather fancy vehicle for someone to be driving, who’s suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill. The rents are too high. The cost of living is too high. The wealth distribution is not even. And what we have right now in America, is run-away capitalism, where the rich takes all the money. And the poor, the destitute, and especially the minorities continue to suffer. This fosters a society where poor people are destitute, And they resort to unlawful things, and the larger society mandates tougher cops and tougher predatory criminal laws. Which feeds ever more on itself, in a vicious cycle, until something finally breaks. And that’s what we have this week, with the death of Floyd, and the nationwide protests. If you can solve the economic system, then maybe, you can get cops who are not afraid of minorities. But to be honest, I have little hope of either issues ever being solved.
jacobush 6y ago
Was there a higher voted story about the same thing which just disappeared? Or should we discuss some Javascript framework instead?
- catsdanxe 6y ago
  Cops will continue to murder people. And there will always be a new js framework.

167 points by rchaudhary 6y ago

Malpractice insurance and touchy premiums, fuck up, and you can't afford to be a cop and a dept can't afford to hire you.

fosk 6y ago

I am european, and police in the US really is something else: the mindset, the culture, the engagements. There needs to be a nation-wide police reformation.

Simulacra 6y ago
It is a little different, we don't have a history of socialism, communism, or violent dictatorships or monarchies.
- thephyber 6y ago
  Uhh what? The instigating event which founded our country was a monarchy. I would argue that slaves and indigenous populations experienced a violent dictatorship. I don't think it's actually too much to expect that our officers fix their own culture. I just think it won't happen because they have a toxic tradition of ignoring the cultural cues given by civilian leadership (except the ones that praise police forces no matter how bad they act).
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    In some ways, your parent hits the nail on the head. Policing in America is so brutal because we don’t acknowledge that we were a brutal apartide state for most of the 20th century, and a racial dictatorship for the first half of our history.
thephyber 6y ago
> There needs to be a nation-wide police reformation. I don't think you can convince a rural Montana rancher that their local Sheriff needs to be retrained because (as they likely see it) gang bangers in Chicago "force" police to be more heavy handed. I'm all for incentivizing police to improve their own culture, but I'm cynical that it won't happen. I'm all for giving police more funding and better tools to do their job more politely, but they already chew up 40% of all local government spending. I think the solution can't be "expect policing to change" and has to be something more like "change the policy and show America civilians how our policing expectations are broken". Americans call the police because a dog is off-leash in a large grassy park. Until we figure out how to tolerate small infractions or at least deal with them without involving law enforcement, there will always be a risk of violence during escalation.
- klyrs 6y ago
  > Americans call the police because a dog is off-leash in a large grassy park. Let's get those facts straight. White americans call the police, and lie about being threatened, when a black man asks them to leash their dog in an area clearly labeled as an on-leash area.
- mirchibajji 6y ago
  I was with you until the last point. If someone is legitimately afraid of dogs, and deliberately go to a park where dogs have to be on leash, and someone shows up with a dog running around, and just don't listen to polite requests? What are they supposed to do? Out here in the UK, I wouldn't call the police (I'm not that bothered), but I can imagine it being a legitimate concern.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    As a general guideline, you shouldn’t call the police in the US unless it is serious enough that you are willing to risk having your situation be escalated into (sometimes deadly) violence. POSIWID.
WesternStar 6y ago
We should start by repealing the 2nd amendment. It is a bad law. Edit: This along with arm confiscation would limit force in police interactions and thus lower aggression.
- sumedh 6y ago
  > We should start by repealing the 2nd amendment How should people protect their houses/shops when armed criminals try to rob your place?
  - WesternStar 6y ago
    Call the police and have insurance.
    - defnotashton2 6y ago
      And what about when response rates are 40 minutes? What about the gov being oppressive? HK would be diff.
      - WesternStar 6y ago
        The United States of America has an oppressive government if they wanted to use their weapons to protect against tyranny today would be that day. But they don't the 70 million gun owners of America march in support of tyranny not against it.
    - sumedh 6y ago
      What should you do till the police don't come and who will help you out till you get the insurance payout which is not a guarantee.
      - WesternStar 6y ago
        Well I didn't say you couldn't fight. My proposal includes confiscation. Assume very aggressive pursuit of criminals with an unlicensed firearms. Like multi-county dragnet with blocked roads. Like we get O(100) cops for one gun. Most criminals will just probably keep it to cold arms.

seemslegit 6y ago

Or at least make it actually qualified.

claudeganon 6y ago

Verso has also made the ebook edition of Alex Vitale’s excellent “The End of Policing” free: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing TLDR: any society which refuses to provide social democratic floors to people will increasingly rely on violence to maintain its social order. You can’t expect policing to be the primary means with which we deal with things like the housing and healthcare crisis without disastrous consequences.

thephyber 6y ago
> You can’t expect policing to be the primary means with which we deal with things like ... I don't buy this argument because it removes agency from law enforcement officers, who -- as a class of people -- very highly buy into the concept of free will. Right now, police departments have a significant amount of moral hazard. They are expected to behave in a very legal and upright manner, but not all do and those who don't are very rarely held legally or civilly liable. I think doing something like removing qualified immunity (or at the very least just giving DAs tools and directives to prosecute more egregious use of force problems) or putting more of the police officers' wealth at risk (by tying their retirement programs to the funds which pay out for violations of civilian rights).

awillen 6y ago

Crimes should be charged more seriously, not less, when they're committed by police. This is only reasonable - any crime committed by an on-duty officer is inherently more harmful that the same crime committed by a civilian, because in addition to the damage of the actual crime, the officer's commission of it also does harm to the public trust in the police and our society. Beyond that, the police should be held to a higher standard because we as a society acknowledge that they are trained well enough to walk around with guns and the ability to deprive people of their freedom (even those who are innocent - if you're locked in a cell and later not charged, you don't get that time you spent in a cell back). We should be able to charge Chauvin with first degree murder despite a lack of premeditation, because he was trained to know not to do precisely what he did. If I kneel on a guy's neck and kill him unintentionally it's manslaughter, but if a cop does it, it should be worse because that cop should be expected to know that doing so is not an acceptable form of restraint.

thephyber 6y ago
> you don't get that time you spent in a cell back You also got fingerprinted (and probably DNA tested) and your mugshot was publicly distributed and those actions aren't undone.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  I agree. An arrest on its own, even without a conviction or even any charges being laid, can have an enormous negative effect on one's life. Another example is that having been ever arrested, even if not charged or convicted, can bar you from entering the US without going through an expensive, difficult, discretionary process to get a waiver, that then needs to be periodically redone. And it follows you for the rest of your life, it does not expire for example 30 or 50 years after the arrest.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    I’ve applied to companies who ask on their application whether you have ever been arrested, regardless of conviction—presumably as a way to disqualify you.

TeaDrunk 6y ago

Another suggestion: Bolster social programs that is being hamfisted through the justice system, necessitating larger police forces who don't have deescelation training and are not legally obligated to know the law they enforce. Police don't need to bust someone for drugs if we have robust social programs that adequately address poverty and addiction. Police don't need to harass homeless people if we have robust social programs that adequately address homelessness. Police don't need to deal with severely mentally ill people who are unpredictable and potentially dangerous if we have robust social programs that adequately address the mental healthcare crisis in this country.

thephyber 6y ago
> Bolster social programs I think you are actually talking about dismantling more than half of the existing criminal statutes. I agree that we should do it, but there's a reason it hasn't been done before: there are still a ton of citizens who believe the only way to deter crime/poverty is a bigger stick, not swapping a stick for a carrot.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
yellowapple 6y ago
Police "don't need to (bust someone for drugs|harass homeless people)" period. > and are not legally obligated to know the law they enforce. They should be. I do agree that we need better social programs, but that doesn't excuse police thuggery.

ineedasername 6y ago

I'm not sure about this. Maybe qualified immunity should be reduced in scope, but I don't know about doing away with it. A police officer that tasers a violent suspect should be immune from prosecution if that suspect falls and hits their head, or has a heart attack. I don't see a way that police could do their jobs without some version of qualified immunity. I think that at least part of solution lies in better training on use of force, massively increase training on deescalation techniques, better psychological screening and continuous followups, full-time body cams that don't turn off and are tamper resistant with appropriate logging of metadata to detect misuse-- to the extent that if a complaint is made against an officer and the camera is mysteriously not functional, the disciplinary burden should be moved to favor the complaint. And probably other things too-- this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of reforms.

Simulacra 6y ago
I think that might be the logical end goal: Remove police from street policing, and let communities police themselves.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > let communities police themselves This happened in the wild west and didn't work out so well.
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    At least, we should reinstate requirements that police should come from their own communities...
    - thephyber 6y ago
      That might be an improvement in many places, but it would probably create problems for San Francisco and San Jose, where cost of living is largely unsustainable for people who make starting police salaries unless they lucked into a family house. We sometimes forget that officers get to choose where they want to work and will migrate to the best place for them. The ratio between housing costs and salary (among other quality of life factors) is pretty important to lots of officers and we may end up lowering the quality of officers by only restricting the pool of eligible employees.

codegeek 6y ago

How about focussing more on teaching police officers to learn how to be calm and composed as much as possible instead of going on the offensive too quickly. Yes, there are times when you will "fear for your life" and have to act with force but far too often our police officers are casual in going on the offense. In many cases, it is just a case of being pissed off because the guy/gal they pulled over is rude or verbally abusive or is not complying to a request. Can you take a deep breath and agree that it is part of your job to deal with idiots/crackheads/vulgar people as well and learn how to deal with them without always flashing your gun or tasers ? One thing the police do where I live is to do community get togethers to get to know the actual people. It helps to reduce anxiety and stress. Yes I live in a "nice" neighborhood so it is easy for me to say may be. But can we not try similar police and public get togethers in the "not so nice" neighborhoods ? Is it not even worth a try ? Also, be more strict in getting rid of bad apples which I believe this article touches upon a bit. This specific police officer had a history of violence and he should have been under more scrutiny that he was. Until the respect is mutually created between police and public, no law on the books can prevent these types of unfortunate incidents.

HarryHirsch 6y ago
unfortunate incidents WTF? Srsly, now?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
FireBeyond 6y ago
> How about focussing more on teaching police officers to learn how to be calm and composed as much as possible instead of going on the offensive too quickly. Most police departments do. In the area I work as a paramedic, they certainly are trained in de-escalation. I also know that some of them just... don't... care. I've been dealing with mental health patients, got them calmed down, got a plan for dealing with their issues. And then had a cop march back over (who was on scene, saw the initial incident, the de-escalation), and start shouting at the patient over the destruction of property. The patient's property. "Who the fuck do you expect to clean up that broken glass? Selfish asshole. I should make _you_ get on your knees and clean it". End result? The patient who was compliant and willing to go for evaluation in the back of my ambulance needed to be sedated and narrowly avoided being tased. In the grand scheme of things, worse things have happened. But this was a situation actively under control. And a situation this officer, and only this officer, actively worked to make worse. That incident resulted in a complaint, though I have no idea what the resolution was.

howmayiannoyyou 6y ago

We ask cops to be part social worker, part solider, part lawyer, part investigator, part paramedic - and we pay them a salary for just one of those professions at best. Law enforcement is a small part of the job many days. It's time to create mission specialist in large police forces with depth in these areas and to deploy them as teams of 2-4. Yes, there will be shortages in coverage and that is okay.

seemslegit 6y ago
"We" didn't ask them to be any of these things, especially soldiers - this is power that they actively pushed for, there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police began in full swing - just a post-9/11 power opportunism and the need to find jobs for discharged soldiers. Mission specialists always existed, they're called detectives.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police began I would argue we started the militarization of police in the 1970s-1980s when NYC was a festering hotbed of crime and when Miami drug dealers were shooting automatic weapons during turf wars (which was when we started Civil Asset Forfeiture... which allowed police/prosecutors to essentially steal assets from civilians without a criminal conviction). We gave surplus DoD weapons to police for cheap after 9/11 and judges started rubber-stamping no-knock warrants around 2001, but I don't think that was the only inflection point.
  - seemslegit 6y ago
    Not the only, but 1970s-1980s had a real crime emergency, the 2000s didn't nearly as much.

throwawaygh 6y ago

The textualism of the conservative justices is primarily just a rational instrument for unwinding the liberal reforms of the Warren court.

mnm1 6y ago

Police officers, given that they have the power of life or death over others' lives, should be held to a higher standard, not a lower one. Apparently, this is still extremely controversial in America, where our culture insists that it be the opposite way: hold police to a lower standard, let them steal, beat, rape, and murder almost at will. In a sick society like this, one shouldn't wonder why the masses are cheering on the burning of police stations and courthouses. In a society like this, police are just the biggest gang and frankly, any action against them is defensible ethically, if not legally.

blackrock 6y ago

The root problem is not the cops. Well, the abusive cops seriously aggravate the problem. And the police is the enforcement arm of the system. But the root cause is the economic system on which America is built, and which it enforces throughout the world with its military, and enforces domestically with its militarized police. Predatory capitalism has run its course for the past 500 years. It’s all about extracting from the poor, and feeding it to the rich, the well connected, and the powerful. In this case, the rich are the white wealthy Americans, and they have been at the top of the ladder for the past 300 years in America. America needs a new economic system. What’s the point of making $15/hour, or $30,000/year, when your rent costs you $15,000/year, or 50% of your gross income? You barely have any money left over for other mandatory necessities. Meanwhile, the oligarchs that owns the stock market and Wall Street, and Fortune 1000 companies, lives lofty lives, and Bezos is about to become the world’s first Trillionaire. And if they fail, and screw up the economy for everyone else, then well, they’ll just get another bailout. The poor ends up paying for it, since costs go up for everyone. But in an alternate universe, Floyd was arrested because he was suspected of using a fake $20 bill. But somehow, he drives a Mercedes Benz SUV, which is a rather fancy vehicle for someone to be driving, who’s suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill. The rents are too high. The cost of living is too high. The wealth distribution is not even. And what we have right now in America, is run-away capitalism, where the rich takes all the money. And the poor, the destitute, and especially the minorities continue to suffer. This fosters a society where poor people are destitute, And they resort to unlawful things, and the larger society mandates tougher cops and tougher predatory criminal laws. Which feeds ever more on itself, in a vicious cycle, until something finally breaks. And that’s what we have this week, with the death of Floyd, and the nationwide protests. If you can solve the economic system, then maybe, you can get cops who are not afraid of minorities. But to be honest, I have little hope of either issues ever being solved.

jacobush 6y ago

Was there a higher voted story about the same thing which just disappeared? Or should we discuss some Javascript framework instead?

catsdanxe 6y ago
Cops will continue to murder people. And there will always be a new js framework.