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Police who brutally beat an innocent person like this aren't just not doing their job, they are doing the exact opposite of their job. Even if they brutally bea

Police who brutally beat an innocent person like this aren't just not doing their job, they are doing the exact opposite of their job. Even if they brutally beat a criminal, they are going far beyond incompetence. What these cops did wasn't just incompetence or a mistake, it was corruption and pure evil. Why the FUCK are we protecting these criminals? Why do we want this as a society? Giving the police qualified immunity in situations like this is unlicensed freedom for them to not only be incompetent, but be corrupt and destroy the foundations of what our society is supposed to be about. Are we really okay with allowing fucking cops to ruthlessly beat people for no reason and think that's just part of their job?

ep103 4y ago
We shouldn't be, but the majority of this Supreme Court does in fact want this, yes. They have been systematically expanding qualified immunity over the last few years
- DubiousPusher 4y ago
  Maybe it's the tone of this comment that is rubbing people the wrong way but its basic content is correct. Since the major court rulings of the mid-century which created our modern concept of protection for the accused, there has been a slow and consistent chipping away at those rulings. Various forms of immunity being expanded little by little in case after case is a big part of that.
  - ep103 4y ago
    You are correct, and this Supreme Court in particular has made large changes to the concept, furthering the degree to which qualified immunity can be applied, and have done so in a time when there is a large, popular pushback to the concept. :)
giraffe_lady 4y ago
They are doing their job, this is their job. The mistake here was who they did it to not what they did. > Why do we want this as a society? This is a very very good question to spend some time with. Understand just how routine this sort of activity is for police, understand that it is not a mistake or anomaly. Why do we want this? It's an interesting question.
- blowski 4y ago
  It’s their job to beat people senseless?
  - DubiousPusher 4y ago
    Kind of. It was pretty much the job of the proto-police forces which naturally became our modern police forces. The development of policing in America is much more crude and ad-hoc than people would like to admit. I don't think modern police generally join the force with this spirit but there's a root of violent lackiness that has maybe never been fully exercised from the system.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Police should enforce the law, they are not in the retribution business.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Tasers and chemical agents aren't as effective as they'd like, and guns are a bit too permanent (though that doesn't always stop them). The truncheon is a long-standing symbol of police for a reason.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > The case started in 2014. James, then a college student, was walking between two summer jobs in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when two men stopped him, demanded his name, and took his wallet. Thinking he was being mugged, James ran. But the men caught him, beat him to the point that his face was unrecognizable, and choked him unconscious. James only later discovered that the men were members of a police task force—one an FBI agent and the other a local detective. The officers never identified themselves as law enforcement to James, and bystanders who witnessed the beating were equally in the dark, calling 911 to report what they believed to be an attempted murder in broad daylight. Uniformed officers arrived, and, even though it was clear James was not the wanted suspect, arrested James, transported him to the hospital, and handcuffed him to his bed. > They are doing their job, this is their job. Maybe elaborate on that a little I'm not sure I understand. How exactly is what they did their job?
TylerE 4y ago
They should not only not have immunity, they should face increase penalties for any crimes committed in or off the clock.
- vincnetas 4y ago
  being a devils advocate, but who is going to enforce that?
  - Yoric 4y ago
    Isn't this what Internal Affairs are for?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - badrequest 4y ago
    Prosecutors, if they'd do their jobs.
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      The issue is prosecutors rely on police a lot for their normal criminal cases so whenever one does get the courage to seriously pursue things like this they can get sabotaged or slow walked by the rest of the department in retaliation.
  - chewbacha 4y ago
    Classic "Who watches the watchmen?"
  - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    DA's office. Its separate from the police for a reason
    - whitemary 4y ago
      It still works for a government controlled by the ruling class. The problem is not some malfunction with "police departments" as though a department with a new name could reform it. "Checks and balances" is and always was a laughably naive and probably intentionally unserious response to overtly structural problems.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Because qualified imunity and seizure of property worked so well for other areas of the planet like africa and the old robber empires of europe.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
If you want to rein in behavior of police officers, then (a) don't allow offenses to be time-barred against retirement, and (b) pay victims out of their pension funds. I think you'll find that this entire "protect the blue" bullshit that cops have to cover for each other will go out the window when their material interests are in jeopardy.
- eli 4y ago
  You don't need to make complicated special rules for going after police. You just need to remove some of the existing special rules that protect them. If you can sue a doctor for malpractice you should be able to sue a police officer too.
- vimax 4y ago
  I don’t think (b) will work. The Dallas police pension fund is currently $3b in the red, how will they pay anything?
  - SauciestGNU 4y ago
    Presumably "in the red" here means it's underfunded with respect to meeting existing pension obligations, not that the fund has a literal negative balance. If I'm wrong then please disregard the second part of this comment. The idea is collective punishment. Settlements would make the pension fund deeper in the red, meaning cops wouldn't get their promised pensions due to the actions of the abusive cops who caused the settlement payouts. The hope is that the threat of losing your retirement security because your coworker fucks up is enough to break the thin blue line and cause cops to police themselves.
whitemary 4y ago
> Why the FUCK are we protecting these criminals? Why do we want this as a society? The police are the foot soldiers of the ruling class. Insofar as the police may serve certain interests of working people, the aggregate sum of the police's influence on our society serves to protect the interests of the rich, which are usually at odds with the interests of working people.
- Delento 4y ago
  They are not. The criminals who do this like doing this and get protection from them.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >The police are the foot soldiers of the ruling class. While they will certainly side with the "rulers" over anyone else when there is a conflict on the day to day the are also the foot soldiers of you the hypothetical average HNer reading this comment. The people with real power DGAF about the sort of petty "annoyance or minor risk to the public" behavior that the police spend the bulk of their time enforcing. You think Musk is worried about fentanyl in his weed? You think Gates cares if you are drunk and disorderly alcohol in public? You think the Kochs give a crap about some kid doing a burnout at a stop light? You think Murdoch cares whether some restaurant is staying open in defiance of a health department? Of course not. They're above that kind of stuff. Ditto for any list of powerful politicians you feel like coming up with. When the police initiate an interaction they are almost always doing it to enforcing the laws that you the average "well enough paid to give a crap about issues not related to your economic survival in the short/medium term" American want them to enforce (revenue policing notwithstanding).
  - yunwal 4y ago
    I’d rather not arrest people for marijuana possession, but owners of private prisons and the alcohol lobbies sure as hell would like that
- rayiner 4y ago
  Incorrect. As we are seeing all over the country, the "ruling class" has been voting to reduce policing--because what the f--k do they care? They have private security, or live in exclusive enclaves. The bulwark of support for the police is middle class parents and property owners. They're the people who, unlike the wealthy, can't rely on private security and geographic barriers to protect themselves from criminals. Look at who voted for Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa in New York City, who both ran on a pro-police platform.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Because the people who support them think: 1) It will never happen to them. 2) The victim "must" have done some thing wrong.
felipelemos 4y ago
> Even if they brutally beat a criminal, they are going far beyond incompetence. It is actually worse than that. The police cannot be the judge, jury and executor. The Judge Dredd is an anti-hero for a reason.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  It's double-worse-than-that, because all these dudes loooove The Punisher and like to post his logo on everything, which is a solid, full step worse than them thinking they're Judge Dredd. It's as if they don't understand the core point of their job. See that great season 3 scene from The Wire with the older officer telling the younger one what police work used to be like before the drug war—far less adversarial, a lot more about building ties with the community. "You call something a war, you're gonna get soldiers", I think one line goes.
krapp 4y ago
>Are we really okay with allowing fucking cops to ruthlessly beat people for no reason and think that's just part of their job? I mean, the truth is a lot of us are. If James King had been black, this wouldn't even be news.
csomar 4y ago
> Why the FUCK are we protecting these criminals? Why do we want this as a society? The system (or a corrupt one) will encourage these kind of policeman and provide them with coverage (whether immunity or else). These guys will come in handy when you need them for a dirty job.
AdrianB1 4y ago
Giving anyone qualified immunity is a bad idea, giving it to cops is just a part of it.

ep103 4y ago

We shouldn't be, but the majority of this Supreme Court does in fact want this, yes. They have been systematically expanding qualified immunity over the last few years

DubiousPusher 4y ago
Maybe it's the tone of this comment that is rubbing people the wrong way but its basic content is correct. Since the major court rulings of the mid-century which created our modern concept of protection for the accused, there has been a slow and consistent chipping away at those rulings. Various forms of immunity being expanded little by little in case after case is a big part of that.
- ep103 4y ago
  You are correct, and this Supreme Court in particular has made large changes to the concept, furthering the degree to which qualified immunity can be applied, and have done so in a time when there is a large, popular pushback to the concept. :)

giraffe_lady 4y ago

They are doing their job, this is their job. The mistake here was who they did it to not what they did. > Why do we want this as a society? This is a very very good question to spend some time with. Understand just how routine this sort of activity is for police, understand that it is not a mistake or anomaly. Why do we want this? It's an interesting question.

blowski 4y ago
It’s their job to beat people senseless?
- DubiousPusher 4y ago
  Kind of. It was pretty much the job of the proto-police forces which naturally became our modern police forces. The development of policing in America is much more crude and ad-hoc than people would like to admit. I don't think modern police generally join the force with this spirit but there's a root of violent lackiness that has maybe never been fully exercised from the system.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Police should enforce the law, they are not in the retribution business.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Tasers and chemical agents aren't as effective as they'd like, and guns are a bit too permanent (though that doesn't always stop them). The truncheon is a long-standing symbol of police for a reason.
barbazoo 4y ago
> The case started in 2014. James, then a college student, was walking between two summer jobs in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when two men stopped him, demanded his name, and took his wallet. Thinking he was being mugged, James ran. But the men caught him, beat him to the point that his face was unrecognizable, and choked him unconscious. James only later discovered that the men were members of a police task force—one an FBI agent and the other a local detective. The officers never identified themselves as law enforcement to James, and bystanders who witnessed the beating were equally in the dark, calling 911 to report what they believed to be an attempted murder in broad daylight. Uniformed officers arrived, and, even though it was clear James was not the wanted suspect, arrested James, transported him to the hospital, and handcuffed him to his bed. > They are doing their job, this is their job. Maybe elaborate on that a little I'm not sure I understand. How exactly is what they did their job?

TylerE 4y ago

They should not only not have immunity, they should face increase penalties for any crimes committed in or off the clock.

vincnetas 4y ago
being a devils advocate, but who is going to enforce that?
- Yoric 4y ago
  Isn't this what Internal Affairs are for?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- badrequest 4y ago
  Prosecutors, if they'd do their jobs.
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    The issue is prosecutors rely on police a lot for their normal criminal cases so whenever one does get the courage to seriously pursue things like this they can get sabotaged or slow walked by the rest of the department in retaliation.
- chewbacha 4y ago
  Classic "Who watches the watchmen?"
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  DA's office. Its separate from the police for a reason
  - whitemary 4y ago
    It still works for a government controlled by the ruling class. The problem is not some malfunction with "police departments" as though a department with a new name could reform it. "Checks and balances" is and always was a laughably naive and probably intentionally unserious response to overtly structural problems.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

Because qualified imunity and seizure of property worked so well for other areas of the planet like africa and the old robber empires of europe.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

If you want to rein in behavior of police officers, then (a) don't allow offenses to be time-barred against retirement, and (b) pay victims out of their pension funds. I think you'll find that this entire "protect the blue" bullshit that cops have to cover for each other will go out the window when their material interests are in jeopardy.

eli 4y ago
You don't need to make complicated special rules for going after police. You just need to remove some of the existing special rules that protect them. If you can sue a doctor for malpractice you should be able to sue a police officer too.
vimax 4y ago
I don’t think (b) will work. The Dallas police pension fund is currently $3b in the red, how will they pay anything?
- SauciestGNU 4y ago
  Presumably "in the red" here means it's underfunded with respect to meeting existing pension obligations, not that the fund has a literal negative balance. If I'm wrong then please disregard the second part of this comment. The idea is collective punishment. Settlements would make the pension fund deeper in the red, meaning cops wouldn't get their promised pensions due to the actions of the abusive cops who caused the settlement payouts. The hope is that the threat of losing your retirement security because your coworker fucks up is enough to break the thin blue line and cause cops to police themselves.

whitemary 4y ago

> Why the FUCK are we protecting these criminals? Why do we want this as a society? The police are the foot soldiers of the ruling class. Insofar as the police may serve certain interests of working people, the aggregate sum of the police's influence on our society serves to protect the interests of the rich, which are usually at odds with the interests of working people.

Delento 4y ago
They are not. The criminals who do this like doing this and get protection from them.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>The police are the foot soldiers of the ruling class. While they will certainly side with the "rulers" over anyone else when there is a conflict on the day to day the are also the foot soldiers of you the hypothetical average HNer reading this comment. The people with real power DGAF about the sort of petty "annoyance or minor risk to the public" behavior that the police spend the bulk of their time enforcing. You think Musk is worried about fentanyl in his weed? You think Gates cares if you are drunk and disorderly alcohol in public? You think the Kochs give a crap about some kid doing a burnout at a stop light? You think Murdoch cares whether some restaurant is staying open in defiance of a health department? Of course not. They're above that kind of stuff. Ditto for any list of powerful politicians you feel like coming up with. When the police initiate an interaction they are almost always doing it to enforcing the laws that you the average "well enough paid to give a crap about issues not related to your economic survival in the short/medium term" American want them to enforce (revenue policing notwithstanding).
- yunwal 4y ago
  I’d rather not arrest people for marijuana possession, but owners of private prisons and the alcohol lobbies sure as hell would like that
rayiner 4y ago
Incorrect. As we are seeing all over the country, the "ruling class" has been voting to reduce policing--because what the f--k do they care? They have private security, or live in exclusive enclaves. The bulwark of support for the police is middle class parents and property owners. They're the people who, unlike the wealthy, can't rely on private security and geographic barriers to protect themselves from criminals. Look at who voted for Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa in New York City, who both ran on a pro-police platform.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

Because the people who support them think: 1) It will never happen to them. 2) The victim "must" have done some thing wrong.

felipelemos 4y ago

> Even if they brutally beat a criminal, they are going far beyond incompetence. It is actually worse than that. The police cannot be the judge, jury and executor. The Judge Dredd is an anti-hero for a reason.

yamtaddle 4y ago
It's double-worse-than-that, because all these dudes loooove The Punisher and like to post his logo on everything, which is a solid, full step worse than them thinking they're Judge Dredd. It's as if they don't understand the core point of their job. See that great season 3 scene from The Wire with the older officer telling the younger one what police work used to be like before the drug war—far less adversarial, a lot more about building ties with the community. "You call something a war, you're gonna get soldiers", I think one line goes.

krapp 4y ago

>Are we really okay with allowing fucking cops to ruthlessly beat people for no reason and think that's just part of their job? I mean, the truth is a lot of us are. If James King had been black, this wouldn't even be news.

csomar 4y ago

> Why the FUCK are we protecting these criminals? Why do we want this as a society? The system (or a corrupt one) will encourage these kind of policeman and provide them with coverage (whether immunity or else). These guys will come in handy when you need them for a dirty job.

AdrianB1 4y ago

Giving anyone qualified immunity is a bad idea, giving it to cops is just a part of it.