4 ms·

It is surreal to see this in a country where the police and “justice” system is extremely trigger happy and wants to lock everyone up for any reason they can ge

It is surreal to see this in a country where the police and “justice” system is extremely trigger happy and wants to lock everyone up for any reason they can get away with.

gruez 5y ago
US is a big place. That means it's possible to get a steady stream of stories of innocent people getting arrested/killed by the police, and have jurisdictions that turn a blind eye to property crime.
- rakejake 5y ago
  It is funny to see comments like these in this thread. After the events of the last few years, I guess Americans are finding out what it is like to be Indian on the internet and having to defend every piece of crazy news about the country. Note, I am not advocating for news like this to not be published, just remember that countries without even a semblance of a free press are going to report a lot fewer of these.
mindslight 5y ago
They're two aspects of the exact same problem. Stopping and prosecuting real crime, while preserving the rights of the innocent, is a very difficult job. When police are criticized for failure in one aspect, they respond by closing ranks and doing even less of the other aspect. Criticize the level of crime and they respond by finding some easy targets to round up and pin charges on. Criticize their overreach, and they respond with a working strike and lawless police riots. Succumbing to individual incentives, it's easier to focus on easier-to-handle perps and conduct organized militaryesque "operations"... just like it's easier to run roughshod over the rights of the accused by assuming they're guilty and doling out extrajudicial punishment. Neither one means doing their job better. Ultimately it's a complete failure of accountability. Accountability of police organizations to their employers, the community, to effectively do what they are deputized to do. As well as the failure to bind police under the overarching law, both civil and criminal, like everyone else. The problem is not deep set and everywhere, but rather distributed because we're only seeing the cherry picked worst examples of both sides. But we need to seriously up our systems of accountability if anybody is going to have any faith in our institutions going forward.
ramoz 5y ago
This is in LA.
- nosequel 5y ago
  Having lived in LA once and escaped, I can fully support this comment with "no further explanation needed"

It is surreal to see this in a country where the police and “justice” system is extremely trigger happy and wants to lock everyone up for any reason they can get away with.

gruez 5y ago

US is a big place. That means it's possible to get a steady stream of stories of innocent people getting arrested/killed by the police, and have jurisdictions that turn a blind eye to property crime.

rakejake 5y ago
It is funny to see comments like these in this thread. After the events of the last few years, I guess Americans are finding out what it is like to be Indian on the internet and having to defend every piece of crazy news about the country. Note, I am not advocating for news like this to not be published, just remember that countries without even a semblance of a free press are going to report a lot fewer of these.

mindslight 5y ago

They're two aspects of the exact same problem. Stopping and prosecuting real crime, while preserving the rights of the innocent, is a very difficult job. When police are criticized for failure in one aspect, they respond by closing ranks and doing even less of the other aspect. Criticize the level of crime and they respond by finding some easy targets to round up and pin charges on. Criticize their overreach, and they respond with a working strike and lawless police riots. Succumbing to individual incentives, it's easier to focus on easier-to-handle perps and conduct organized militaryesque "operations"... just like it's easier to run roughshod over the rights of the accused by assuming they're guilty and doling out extrajudicial punishment. Neither one means doing their job better. Ultimately it's a complete failure of accountability. Accountability of police organizations to their employers, the community, to effectively do what they are deputized to do. As well as the failure to bind police under the overarching law, both civil and criminal, like everyone else. The problem is not deep set and everywhere, but rather distributed because we're only seeing the cherry picked worst examples of both sides. But we need to seriously up our systems of accountability if anybody is going to have any faith in our institutions going forward.

ramoz 5y ago

This is in LA.

nosequel 5y ago
Having lived in LA once and escaped, I can fully support this comment with "no further explanation needed"