18 ms·

Not to mention whatever was in their paperwork for the warrant was a fabrication, apparently! That should be the entire story: if a raid is performed and the w

Not to mention whatever was in their paperwork for the warrant was a fabrication, apparently! That should be the entire story: if a raid is performed and the warrant doesn’t pan out the cops behind the warrant should be immediately investigated by another agency (which, they’re cops too so who knows if this would help).

sixothree 4y ago
This country was founded on checks and balances. We are missing that in regards to police nationwide.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  It's not possible to have checks and balances with cops due to qualified immunity - there is no way to hold them accountable, and they certainly don't hold themselves accountable.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    They can be fired, or at least put on unpaid leave.
    - ABeeSea 4y ago
      And then get hired one county over. So not really any accountability.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    In theory this is what the second amendment is for. Police raid you house, pump em with bullets. In practice this only works as deterrence -- you always hear of cops confronting drug dealers etc calmly in public places, where they are away from their trove of weapons, whereas no-knock raids and home invasions are for the poors.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      It's comforting to imagine applying some justice to these gangs of violent home invaders, but as the second degree murder of Breonna Taylor demonstrated, adding self defense to the equation just makes the bastards feel that their shooting sprees are even more justified. Like sure I can imagine some kind of home defense product that uses a camera and robotic gun to dispense justice in the event of a home invasion, but really we just need to get back to having the rule of law in this country (where the violent home invaders go to jail with the other bad people) rather than thinking that becoming more adversarial creates a meaningful check.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        Always remember just how utterly silent the NRA is when a legal gun owner gets shot by a cop for having a completely legal gun that the current view of American law says they have every right to own.
        mindslight 4y ago
        I'll occasionally get paper spam from the NRA. When it contains a business reply envelope, I send back a note asking when they're going to stand up for Breonna Taylor - one of the most important second amendment cases of our time. I know it's futile as they're just corrupt scammers, but their vacuous performative hypocrisy really fucking bothers me. "tHeYRE CoMInG tO tAkE yOUr gUnS!!1!"
    - mLuby 4y ago
      > A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State The second amendment protects organized armed resistance against state-level tyranny, whether external or internal. Can't have a militia of one.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
  - beebmam 4y ago
    There is. One of the best ways to do it is through your city, through Civilian Oversight Boards with the ability to suspend or fire officers that harm the public trust in the police force: https://www.nacole.org/community_oversight_paves_the_road_to_police_accountability https://www.nacole.org/community_oversight_paves_the_road_to... Individual officers benefit from this, too. It keeps the relationship between citizens and police much healthier.
    - StrangeATractor 4y ago
      I haven't heard of this working very well in practice. We need to end QI and make the police earn their keep. In general, they've cozied up too close with any potential oversight for a reasonable person to have faith in them being held accountable for misdeeds. (I say this as someone who's been grateful for police presence before)
    - cmmeur01 4y ago
      Lmao our city (Louisville, KY) got one of these a while ago and the police department just straight up refuses to cooperate. What are we gonna do arrest them?
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      Doesn’t work. Try again
  - cronix 4y ago
    It can make it more difficult, but I don't think you can say impossible or we'd never hear of people winning lawsuits for police misconduct. Here's a big one from a few days ago. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/us/philadelphia-police-misconduct-settlement/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/us/philadelphia-police-miscon...
    - whitemary 4y ago
      No police were disciplined as a result of this lawsuit. The city just payed the plaintiffs.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        You mean the taxpayers just paid the plaintiffs. No matter how badly police screw up only innocent people seem to pay for it and the burden seems to always fall on the people who can least afford it.
        athenot 4y ago
        One way to curb this is to make these fines come out of the pension plan for these officers instead of the general budget (ie. taxpayers). This would better align incentives.
        whitemary 4y ago
        Exactly
  - belorn 4y ago
    The concept of qualified immunity being a road block in this context is a bit weird to me. In my country, the local government is responsible for maintaining and operating a functional police force. While citizen can't sue the individual cops or the local police organization, they can sue the government for the actions of the police force. This also happens fairly regularly, and generally citizens do get compensation when the police makes mistakes. When a mistake is large enough (and costly), there will generally be a new regulation to address that in the future, and in some cases a local politician will have lost enough trust by voters and be forced to leave. Is this impossible to do in the US?
    - dwater 4y ago
      Yes, civil suits against government are common and cost cities and other local jurisdictions millions of dollars a year: https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/wrongful-death-by-police.html https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/w... It's generally not expensive enough to create enough economic pain to break through the 2 party (or 1 party in many locales) political system.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        It cannot be expensive enough because it only ever costs taxpayers. Nobody responsible pays or loses anything.
        belorn 4y ago
        That is how it will always be when someone sue the government or a government branch. Since goverments are funded by tax money, government mistakes, mismanagement and violation of the law will be paid through the same budget as everything else. When people sue a public company, the people who in the end must hold the people responsible will be the share holders. When government are sued, it is the voters that must hold the people responsible. If a local government is found guilty in a court of law and forced to pay millions in damages, the money need to be either from raised taxes or reduced services. Both of those should be strong points for the opposition to gain votes and kick out the people who are responsible. Where I live, when the government is found guilty and forced to pay out it usually also result in the current local leader responsible for the situation being forced out. Mismanagement is not a effective way to gain votes, so if the leader don't step down volunteerly the party may just want to replace them anyway for someone without such baggage during next election. Maybe US politics and the system around political donations makes such results less common?
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    > It's not possible to have checks and balances with cops due to qualified immunity. This is a red herring. Qualified immunity only protects individual cops from civil liability, not from criminal liability. And above all, proper check for police is neither civil nor criminal liability, but independent institution for investigation of criminal and professional misconduct (like police IA division, but independent and ideally under different level of government - e.g. state or federal for checking municipal police).
    - LancerSykera 4y ago
      >Qualified immunity only protects individual cops from civil liability, not from criminal liability. Then why is literal theft protected by qualified immunity? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/09/17/federal-court-cops-accused-of-stealing-over-225000-have-legal-immunity/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibill...
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  You guys have an insanely large territory but I always found it very confusing with all the complaints about police conduct why is no one there pushing for a federal level single training institution and increased academy training. Most other places in the world cops have to train for +24 months and most of it is focused on physical conditioning, descalation/conflict psychology, and Law. I mean knowing my local government incompetence I would be pretty nervous in having people with guns being trained by a local institution. It needs to be federal, standardized, and just longer than the few months training US cops have.
  - kodah 4y ago
    They get trained by state institutions usually but the program in my state is sixteen weeks. For reference, a lot of work in Afghanistan is more policing than war fighting and we trained for a year plus. The issues around policing are somewhat complex city to city. For instance, my city is fairly large and has ~300 cops and calls that aren't actively violent typically go unanswered and crimes go unprosecuted for a litany of reasons. No matter what city you go to, it's near ubiquitous that there is some kind of major problem with policing. I say policing in the context of the DA + police.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      It's also important that we care about what kind of training. Our state requires standardized police academy training for 18 weeks but you still get pumped full of garbage like killology. My friend's husband became a cop and within a month of his training he picked up bullshit like "always sit facing the exit in public places" and literally playing with his service M4 like a damn nerf gun, sweeping their living room and "clearing" the other rooms in their apartment. Even my actual gun nut brother knows that's bad.
      - kodah 4y ago
        Yeah, if he's practicing sweeps and draws in his house that's not good gun culture. From everything I've read and heard, cops are being taught the violent parts of what we're taught in the military but they're not being trained on warrior culture and ethos, which involves a lot of restraint and regulation alongside situational awareness. Pair that with not learning basic weapon safety rules and it's a recipe for disaster.
- sneak 4y ago
  The country was founded by the largest landowner in the colonies. It's always been a farce in service of the landowning class. The system is working as designed.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    The entire endeavor was a power grab by wealthy people. Even if some of them had high ideals about democracy and such, that clearly did not make it into the ratified constitution, as only wealthy people could vote.
- eru 4y ago
  It was also founded on slavery.. Institutions change over time.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    "Founded on slavery" is quite a stretch. That was not the main issue that led to the rebellion.
    - x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
      Which rebellion? The Civil War? Yes, that was THE main issue that led to the Civil War, fullstop. >Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
      - concordDance 4y ago
        No, the rebellion against Britain.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      We literally had to enshrine the RIGHT to slavery into law during the creation of the constitution just to get southern state support, and that was before the cotton gin made slavery significantly more profitable. Then we gave those same states extra voting power based on how many human beings they could afford to own. Then the very institution of policing itself in America started as a way to catch runaway slaves, often in OTHER STATES that had OUTLAWED SLAVERY. But sure, this system that obviously had a huge impact on how the country developed, how power structures were purposely designed, and how freedom even worked, TECHNICALLY wasn't the primary reason for rebelling, maybe.
      - concordDance 4y ago
busterarm 4y ago
And completely retaliation for Afroman nagging them about the status of a case where he was previously the _victim_ of a burglary. As far as I'm concerned, the Ohio state government should step in and entirely dismantle this county's police department and replace everyone.
- 49erfangoniners 4y ago
  Yeah I'm sure new replacement cops will be awesome at respecting civil rights
  - busterarm 4y ago
    Losing your job is disrupting to anyone. Having the entire previous department fired as an example should be a deterrent. Anyone taking the job knows that they're under a microscope. All we can do is try.
    - hjek 4y ago
      We can try to abolish police.
      - ungamedplayer 4y ago
        I'm sure thats going to work.
        mordae 4y ago
        As long as we also make sure people aren't driven to violent crime under threat of starvation and loss of home, I am all for it. Police won't protect us from the pathologic thiefs and murderers anyway. Those have installed it. Last time I had to call cops was when two drunk people started brawling in a bus. One fell asleep and the second, driven to desperate acts by prolonged homelessness tried to steal his phone. In the end, the victim decided that the best course of action after reclaiming his phone was to kick now lying down thief until satisfied. I and another passenger have stepped in, restrained the aggressive phone owner. We have gotten 4 of us out of the bus. We told the phone owner repeatedly to verify that his phone is OK, in order for him to realize that no harm has been done. We have talked him down. He was still inclined to (way less fervently) take revenge. I had to choose between getting confrontational and sending him home to sleep it off "or else" and calling the cops. Since the first option would put me at risk of being caught breaking the law, I had to call cops. Cops came in sirens blazing, 3 cars, acting all high and mighty. "Your IDs" and shit. In the end, the phone owner has not even been told not to kick other people. The homeless person has not been checked by a medical professional. He was drunk, might have had some ribs broken, but none of those 7 "public servants" bothered to check. I asked if they were at least giving him a lift to wherever he was residing. "We are not taxi." Fucking useless.
autoexec 4y ago
> if a raid is performed and the warrant doesn’t pan out the cops behind the warrant should be immediately investigated by another agency (which, they’re cops too so who knows if this would help). As long as we're talking about shoulds, we should have an independent body reviewing police misconduct and major screw ups. There should be very little "police policing themselves". Police can police themselves when it comes to the kinds of things any other workplace handles themselves, like people showing up late for their shifts, or stealing office supplies. When police end up violate the rights of Americans though, let police handle that however they want internally, but that should always be in addition to what an outside body decides. Honestly, the police should welcome the idea too. I'm sure there are plenty of officers who would rather be doing their job than spending time busting down the doors of innocent people and searching for fake kidnapping victims they'll never find.
- numpad0 4y ago
  Independent body(s) correctly incentivized to review misconduct and major screw ups. The court and prosecutor’s office currently exists and are working as ill-incentivized, clueless, codependent body that mostly post-hoc justify actions. I believe this is an unsolved problem, not inherent to US or any country.
  - lrem 4y ago
    Quite a few European countries seem to have much less issues with their police forces. But you can’t just copy-paste solutions. “Weapon discharged - automatic suspension until proven innocent” just wouldn’t fit the way the US is.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      You aren’t going to change the problems with the way the US is with “solutions” that fit the way the US is.
    - numpad0 4y ago
      The United States is basically the single largest country on Earth, surely the US representation of a problem must be among the most expressed.
jmpman 4y ago
And lose their pension. That’s the only thing which motivates cops. There should be a citizen review board that has the power to hand down the verdict. I’m primarily thinking of the Daniel Shaver incident in Mesa AZ, where Daniel was effectively murdered by a Mesa police officer. The officer had to leave the force, but he’s still collecting his pension. Effectively an early retirement plan.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  I have watched that video. It's incredible that officer is not inside a jail cell right now.
  - anonymousiam 4y ago
    The jury will watch it too. This could backfire on the officers (and hopefully will).
    - wlesieutre 4y ago
      He was already acquitted (in 2017), and then briefly hired back to the department which reimbursed PTSD related medical expenses and allowed him to retire on medical grounds with a $2500/month pension. I'm of a mind that police officers should have to carry malpractice insurance like doctors and other professions do, and repeated incidents would jack their rates up and if they're out of control would be priced out of the profession, instead of moving to the next town over and continue dumping the lawsuit costs on taxpayers. But in this case even that wouldn't have done anything. There are bigger training and accountability problems.
      - anonymousiam 4y ago
        He was acquitted of criminal charges. This will be a civil case.
        wlesieutre 4y ago
rossdavidh 4y ago
That was more or less my first thought, but most likely the result would be that it would never happen, because it is not so difficult for someone with a warrant to search your house, to "find" something there. Right now, there's no motive, but if you knew that coming up empty would be, not embarrassing, but legally dangerous, the temptation to make sure you always bring backup evidence to be "found", would be large. I think it would make things worse, not better.
- lolc 4y ago
  Well, planting evidence would also risk your pension in this scenario. It's not risk-free.
bandito11 4y ago
I have been saying this for a long time, as in, why are other police departments investigating the police departments. This is one of the few agencies where the agency investigate themselves, and the government just let it happen.

sixothree 4y ago

This country was founded on checks and balances. We are missing that in regards to police nationwide.

Zurrrrr 4y ago
It's not possible to have checks and balances with cops due to qualified immunity - there is no way to hold them accountable, and they certainly don't hold themselves accountable.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  They can be fired, or at least put on unpaid leave.
  - ABeeSea 4y ago
    And then get hired one county over. So not really any accountability.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  In theory this is what the second amendment is for. Police raid you house, pump em with bullets. In practice this only works as deterrence -- you always hear of cops confronting drug dealers etc calmly in public places, where they are away from their trove of weapons, whereas no-knock raids and home invasions are for the poors.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    It's comforting to imagine applying some justice to these gangs of violent home invaders, but as the second degree murder of Breonna Taylor demonstrated, adding self defense to the equation just makes the bastards feel that their shooting sprees are even more justified. Like sure I can imagine some kind of home defense product that uses a camera and robotic gun to dispense justice in the event of a home invasion, but really we just need to get back to having the rule of law in this country (where the violent home invaders go to jail with the other bad people) rather than thinking that becoming more adversarial creates a meaningful check.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      Always remember just how utterly silent the NRA is when a legal gun owner gets shot by a cop for having a completely legal gun that the current view of American law says they have every right to own.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        I'll occasionally get paper spam from the NRA. When it contains a business reply envelope, I send back a note asking when they're going to stand up for Breonna Taylor - one of the most important second amendment cases of our time. I know it's futile as they're just corrupt scammers, but their vacuous performative hypocrisy really fucking bothers me. "tHeYRE CoMInG tO tAkE yOUr gUnS!!1!"
  - mLuby 4y ago
    > A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State The second amendment protects organized armed resistance against state-level tyranny, whether external or internal. Can't have a militia of one.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
- beebmam 4y ago
  There is. One of the best ways to do it is through your city, through Civilian Oversight Boards with the ability to suspend or fire officers that harm the public trust in the police force: https://www.nacole.org/community_oversight_paves_the_road_to_police_accountability https://www.nacole.org/community_oversight_paves_the_road_to... Individual officers benefit from this, too. It keeps the relationship between citizens and police much healthier.
  - StrangeATractor 4y ago
    I haven't heard of this working very well in practice. We need to end QI and make the police earn their keep. In general, they've cozied up too close with any potential oversight for a reasonable person to have faith in them being held accountable for misdeeds. (I say this as someone who's been grateful for police presence before)
  - cmmeur01 4y ago
    Lmao our city (Louisville, KY) got one of these a while ago and the police department just straight up refuses to cooperate. What are we gonna do arrest them?
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Doesn’t work. Try again
- cronix 4y ago
  It can make it more difficult, but I don't think you can say impossible or we'd never hear of people winning lawsuits for police misconduct. Here's a big one from a few days ago. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/us/philadelphia-police-misconduct-settlement/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/us/philadelphia-police-miscon...
  - whitemary 4y ago
    No police were disciplined as a result of this lawsuit. The city just payed the plaintiffs.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      You mean the taxpayers just paid the plaintiffs. No matter how badly police screw up only innocent people seem to pay for it and the burden seems to always fall on the people who can least afford it.
      - athenot 4y ago
        One way to curb this is to make these fines come out of the pension plan for these officers instead of the general budget (ie. taxpayers). This would better align incentives.
      - whitemary 4y ago
        Exactly
- belorn 4y ago
  The concept of qualified immunity being a road block in this context is a bit weird to me. In my country, the local government is responsible for maintaining and operating a functional police force. While citizen can't sue the individual cops or the local police organization, they can sue the government for the actions of the police force. This also happens fairly regularly, and generally citizens do get compensation when the police makes mistakes. When a mistake is large enough (and costly), there will generally be a new regulation to address that in the future, and in some cases a local politician will have lost enough trust by voters and be forced to leave. Is this impossible to do in the US?
  - dwater 4y ago
    Yes, civil suits against government are common and cost cities and other local jurisdictions millions of dollars a year: https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/wrongful-death-by-police.html https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/w... It's generally not expensive enough to create enough economic pain to break through the 2 party (or 1 party in many locales) political system.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      It cannot be expensive enough because it only ever costs taxpayers. Nobody responsible pays or loses anything.
      - belorn 4y ago
        That is how it will always be when someone sue the government or a government branch. Since goverments are funded by tax money, government mistakes, mismanagement and violation of the law will be paid through the same budget as everything else. When people sue a public company, the people who in the end must hold the people responsible will be the share holders. When government are sued, it is the voters that must hold the people responsible. If a local government is found guilty in a court of law and forced to pay millions in damages, the money need to be either from raised taxes or reduced services. Both of those should be strong points for the opposition to gain votes and kick out the people who are responsible. Where I live, when the government is found guilty and forced to pay out it usually also result in the current local leader responsible for the situation being forced out. Mismanagement is not a effective way to gain votes, so if the leader don't step down volunteerly the party may just want to replace them anyway for someone without such baggage during next election. Maybe US politics and the system around political donations makes such results less common?
- zajio1am 4y ago
  > It's not possible to have checks and balances with cops due to qualified immunity. This is a red herring. Qualified immunity only protects individual cops from civil liability, not from criminal liability. And above all, proper check for police is neither civil nor criminal liability, but independent institution for investigation of criminal and professional misconduct (like police IA division, but independent and ideally under different level of government - e.g. state or federal for checking municipal police).
  - LancerSykera 4y ago
    >Qualified immunity only protects individual cops from civil liability, not from criminal liability. Then why is literal theft protected by qualified immunity? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/09/17/federal-court-cops-accused-of-stealing-over-225000-have-legal-immunity/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibill...
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
You guys have an insanely large territory but I always found it very confusing with all the complaints about police conduct why is no one there pushing for a federal level single training institution and increased academy training. Most other places in the world cops have to train for +24 months and most of it is focused on physical conditioning, descalation/conflict psychology, and Law. I mean knowing my local government incompetence I would be pretty nervous in having people with guns being trained by a local institution. It needs to be federal, standardized, and just longer than the few months training US cops have.
- kodah 4y ago
  They get trained by state institutions usually but the program in my state is sixteen weeks. For reference, a lot of work in Afghanistan is more policing than war fighting and we trained for a year plus. The issues around policing are somewhat complex city to city. For instance, my city is fairly large and has ~300 cops and calls that aren't actively violent typically go unanswered and crimes go unprosecuted for a litany of reasons. No matter what city you go to, it's near ubiquitous that there is some kind of major problem with policing. I say policing in the context of the DA + police.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    It's also important that we care about what kind of training. Our state requires standardized police academy training for 18 weeks but you still get pumped full of garbage like killology. My friend's husband became a cop and within a month of his training he picked up bullshit like "always sit facing the exit in public places" and literally playing with his service M4 like a damn nerf gun, sweeping their living room and "clearing" the other rooms in their apartment. Even my actual gun nut brother knows that's bad.
    - kodah 4y ago
      Yeah, if he's practicing sweeps and draws in his house that's not good gun culture. From everything I've read and heard, cops are being taught the violent parts of what we're taught in the military but they're not being trained on warrior culture and ethos, which involves a lot of restraint and regulation alongside situational awareness. Pair that with not learning basic weapon safety rules and it's a recipe for disaster.
sneak 4y ago
The country was founded by the largest landowner in the colonies. It's always been a farce in service of the landowning class. The system is working as designed.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  The entire endeavor was a power grab by wealthy people. Even if some of them had high ideals about democracy and such, that clearly did not make it into the ratified constitution, as only wealthy people could vote.
eru 4y ago
It was also founded on slavery.. Institutions change over time.
- concordDance 4y ago
  "Founded on slavery" is quite a stretch. That was not the main issue that led to the rebellion.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    Which rebellion? The Civil War? Yes, that was THE main issue that led to the Civil War, fullstop. >Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      No, the rebellion against Britain.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    We literally had to enshrine the RIGHT to slavery into law during the creation of the constitution just to get southern state support, and that was before the cotton gin made slavery significantly more profitable. Then we gave those same states extra voting power based on how many human beings they could afford to own. Then the very institution of policing itself in America started as a way to catch runaway slaves, often in OTHER STATES that had OUTLAWED SLAVERY. But sure, this system that obviously had a huge impact on how the country developed, how power structures were purposely designed, and how freedom even worked, TECHNICALLY wasn't the primary reason for rebelling, maybe.
    - concordDance 4y ago

busterarm 4y ago

And completely retaliation for Afroman nagging them about the status of a case where he was previously the _victim_ of a burglary. As far as I'm concerned, the Ohio state government should step in and entirely dismantle this county's police department and replace everyone.

49erfangoniners 4y ago
Yeah I'm sure new replacement cops will be awesome at respecting civil rights
- busterarm 4y ago
  Losing your job is disrupting to anyone. Having the entire previous department fired as an example should be a deterrent. Anyone taking the job knows that they're under a microscope. All we can do is try.
  - hjek 4y ago
    We can try to abolish police.
    - ungamedplayer 4y ago
      I'm sure thats going to work.
      - mordae 4y ago
        As long as we also make sure people aren't driven to violent crime under threat of starvation and loss of home, I am all for it. Police won't protect us from the pathologic thiefs and murderers anyway. Those have installed it. Last time I had to call cops was when two drunk people started brawling in a bus. One fell asleep and the second, driven to desperate acts by prolonged homelessness tried to steal his phone. In the end, the victim decided that the best course of action after reclaiming his phone was to kick now lying down thief until satisfied. I and another passenger have stepped in, restrained the aggressive phone owner. We have gotten 4 of us out of the bus. We told the phone owner repeatedly to verify that his phone is OK, in order for him to realize that no harm has been done. We have talked him down. He was still inclined to (way less fervently) take revenge. I had to choose between getting confrontational and sending him home to sleep it off "or else" and calling the cops. Since the first option would put me at risk of being caught breaking the law, I had to call cops. Cops came in sirens blazing, 3 cars, acting all high and mighty. "Your IDs" and shit. In the end, the phone owner has not even been told not to kick other people. The homeless person has not been checked by a medical professional. He was drunk, might have had some ribs broken, but none of those 7 "public servants" bothered to check. I asked if they were at least giving him a lift to wherever he was residing. "We are not taxi." Fucking useless.

autoexec 4y ago

> if a raid is performed and the warrant doesn’t pan out the cops behind the warrant should be immediately investigated by another agency (which, they’re cops too so who knows if this would help). As long as we're talking about shoulds, we should have an independent body reviewing police misconduct and major screw ups. There should be very little "police policing themselves". Police can police themselves when it comes to the kinds of things any other workplace handles themselves, like people showing up late for their shifts, or stealing office supplies. When police end up violate the rights of Americans though, let police handle that however they want internally, but that should always be in addition to what an outside body decides. Honestly, the police should welcome the idea too. I'm sure there are plenty of officers who would rather be doing their job than spending time busting down the doors of innocent people and searching for fake kidnapping victims they'll never find.

numpad0 4y ago
Independent body(s) correctly incentivized to review misconduct and major screw ups. The court and prosecutor’s office currently exists and are working as ill-incentivized, clueless, codependent body that mostly post-hoc justify actions. I believe this is an unsolved problem, not inherent to US or any country.
- lrem 4y ago
  Quite a few European countries seem to have much less issues with their police forces. But you can’t just copy-paste solutions. “Weapon discharged - automatic suspension until proven innocent” just wouldn’t fit the way the US is.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    You aren’t going to change the problems with the way the US is with “solutions” that fit the way the US is.
  - numpad0 4y ago
    The United States is basically the single largest country on Earth, surely the US representation of a problem must be among the most expressed.

jmpman 4y ago

And lose their pension. That’s the only thing which motivates cops. There should be a citizen review board that has the power to hand down the verdict. I’m primarily thinking of the Daniel Shaver incident in Mesa AZ, where Daniel was effectively murdered by a Mesa police officer. The officer had to leave the force, but he’s still collecting his pension. Effectively an early retirement plan.

rowanG077 4y ago
I have watched that video. It's incredible that officer is not inside a jail cell right now.
- anonymousiam 4y ago
  The jury will watch it too. This could backfire on the officers (and hopefully will).
  - wlesieutre 4y ago
    He was already acquitted (in 2017), and then briefly hired back to the department which reimbursed PTSD related medical expenses and allowed him to retire on medical grounds with a $2500/month pension. I'm of a mind that police officers should have to carry malpractice insurance like doctors and other professions do, and repeated incidents would jack their rates up and if they're out of control would be priced out of the profession, instead of moving to the next town over and continue dumping the lawsuit costs on taxpayers. But in this case even that wouldn't have done anything. There are bigger training and accountability problems.
    - anonymousiam 4y ago
      He was acquitted of criminal charges. This will be a civil case.
      - wlesieutre 4y ago

rossdavidh 4y ago

That was more or less my first thought, but most likely the result would be that it would never happen, because it is not so difficult for someone with a warrant to search your house, to "find" something there. Right now, there's no motive, but if you knew that coming up empty would be, not embarrassing, but legally dangerous, the temptation to make sure you always bring backup evidence to be "found", would be large. I think it would make things worse, not better.

lolc 4y ago
Well, planting evidence would also risk your pension in this scenario. It's not risk-free.

bandito11 4y ago

I have been saying this for a long time, as in, why are other police departments investigating the police departments. This is one of the few agencies where the agency investigate themselves, and the government just let it happen.