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Whenever these people ask for more power in order to "stop/prevent crime", there should be a bot that replies a list of times when the police didn't act to stop

Whenever these people ask for more power in order to "stop/prevent crime", there should be a bot that replies a list of times when the police didn't act to stop crime, despite having full knowledge of the crime occuring and potential to stop it from happening. EU member and supporter of Chat Control, Romania, had a massive scandal where a kidnapped 15 year old girl called emergency services multiple times to report she was being kidnapped, every single time, the operators and the police officers spoke to her in an ironic and condescending tone. It took 19 hours to locate her, by which time, she was already dead. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%83ce%C8%99anu_and_Luiza_Melencu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%8...

alistairSH 9mo ago
Even better, in the US, the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime (unless that person is in government custody). The courts have upheld this time and again.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo ago
  > (unless that person is in government custody) Someone please correct me, but do they ever much bother to protect those in custody?
  - JasonADrury 9mo ago
    They certainly seem to be willing to spend a lot to keep Luigi Mangione safe.
  - foxyv 9mo ago
    Their main method of "Protecting" people in custody has been deemed a form of torture called Solitary Confinement.
  - freedomben 9mo ago
    Generally speaking, yes. I have worked with the corrections side of law enforcement in the US and don't internationally for quite a few years at this point. The correction side is a different beast than the police side in many ways, so I definitely want to meet clear that my personal experience is limited in scope to that. However, generally speaking I have seen that the majority of corrections staff take protection very seriously. There are individual officers that can be scum, and ideally they should be bounced out of there. But realistically, it's a human problem. I've known plenty of software engineers that were cavalier with people's personal information in ways I think can be just as damaging. On the whole though, the majority of software engineers I know take protecting that information quite seriously.
  - alistairSH 9mo ago
    That's tangential... they can be held liable if they fail to protect somebody that is in custody. They generally cannot be held liable for failure to protect a member of the public.
- JasonADrury 9mo ago
  Per the DOJ, there's also this: >An officer who purposefully allows a fellow officer to violate a victim's Constitutional rights may be prosecuted for failure to intervene to stop the Constitutional violation. >To prosecute such an officer, the government must show that the defendant officer was aware of the Constitutional violation, had an opportunity to intervene, and chose not to do so.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    Who represents the government in these cases?
    - mothballed 9mo ago
      The government prosecutes the government and is judged by the government and a jury screened under voir dire by two government lawyers? Kind of like when a robber comes to your house, you have him arrested, and when you go to court you look up and he is the one swinging the gavel. Of course, interesting the cop has to know there is a constitution violation. Somehow ignorance of the law is always an excuse for the cops but the citizenry must know all 190,000 pages of federal regulations and 300,000+ laws and by god if they forgot one they are fucked.
    - cogman10 9mo ago
      Generally speaking, the way it's supposed to work is the local prosecutors will start the process. That, unfortunately, isn't something they like to do because they have to work with police departments. If they fail to do their job, theoretically the next step is that the FBI gets involved. But, doesn't seem like today's FBI is doing much beyond prosecuting Trump's political enemies. This is the reason why I've long believed we need a check both federal and local to police that is completely divorced from regular prosecution. We need lawyers/investigators whose sole purpose is investigating and prosecuting police at pretty much all levels of the government. The federal government theoretically has that with the office of inspectors general.
  - jshier 9mo ago
    Unfortunately the courts have repeated ruled that "aware of the Constitutional violation" means knowing that the exact action being observed had previously been ruled a violation of Constitutional rights. It's essentially impossible to prove, which is one of the reasons we don't see that offense prosecuted.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the fact they do have an obligation to stop anyone from protecting other people from crime (see Uvalde, where orders from above were to block parents from saving their children).
- Aunche 9mo ago
  > the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime This gets misrepresented on the Internet all the time. What this really means is that you can't sue the city for incompetent policemen, which is the case in basically every country. That only punishes the taxpayers after all. What is different about other countries is that they are much better at firing incompetent police.
  - eftychis 9mo ago
    In some (EU) countries, as a public officer/agent you can actually get prosecuted (civil or criminal proceedings per case), in cases of blatant or willful incompetence. (Think of the levels of gross wanton disregard/negligence.) (There is also the legal vehicle of insubordination.) For instance, in Greece https://www.lawspot.gr/nomothesia/pk/arthro-259-poinikos-kodikas-paravasi-kathikontos/ https://www.lawspot.gr/nomothesia/pk/arthro-259-poinikos-kod... (N.B. the bar of wilfulness in this section in the Greek criminal code is much lower than the corresponding notion of wilfulness in the U.S.) The bar is high, of course, and yet people have historically managed to get prosecuted, lose their jobs, and go to prison. I think the problem in the U.S. is, ironically, the power of police unions in a fragmented police force (city, territory, county, etc.) ecosystem, coupled with the lack of unified, express state and federal statutes to enforce a standard of care and competence. Add to that that peace officer-specific state statutes (e.g., describing manslaughter while on duty) are written in such a way that, as a matter of law, it becomes a herculean task to tick all the boxes to successfully preserve a conviction on appeal. It is truly troubling. (I am hopeful, as this can be solved by the U.S. legislature, which I think we have a lot of reasons to demand to be done.)
  - themafia 9mo ago
    The case in NY was police setup a sting on the subway to catch a serial stabber. Instead of stopping him they stood by and watched him attack several innocent bystanders. They were sued for incompetence. For the failed sting. The two police officers who stood and watched him get attacked were ruled to be immune because they had no duty to protect him. Point being, if police see you getting attacked, they have no duty to /stop/ that from happening. Their only duty is to take a report once they feel safe enough to approach. If you see two police on the corner and think "this is a safe area" you'd completely be operating on faith in their character.
mothballed 9mo ago
In some parts of the world it's well known if you actually want the police to show up, just claim there are lots of drugs or cash at the location. That will actually get the police excited since they stand to gain from it. It's not clear why the police would care someone is being raped/murdered since they cannot profit from that. Although at 15 I would not expect someone to be wise enough to the world to figure that out.
simion314 9mo ago
From my memory this case can actually be used to support spyware, I remember all the media complaining "how is it possible that the police or the secret service can't instantly locate a phone very precisely" , same when that airplane crashed and the people were calling for help but the authorities could not get the coordinates and searched for hours , the media was demanding that the police or other services have the technical ability to locate any person in distress.
- budududuroiu 9mo ago
  Of course it would've been spun that way, and maybe it would've worked had it not been for the police mocking the victim in the phone logs
- jeroenhd 9mo ago
  It is rather jarring to be stuck in the woods with Google Maps offering turn-by-turn navigation back home while the emergency room only gets a vague triangulated position (which might be wrong entirely if the signal gets reflected off of something). Of course these days such a system has been added. Bonus feature of the (at least American) feature: the system can be activated remotely, even if you're not actually calling in an emergency. The European ETSI spec is pretty funny, it basically comes down to sending an SMS to a Secret Number with a Secret Format containing your coordinates to prevent abuse (both can be found very easily); at least that supposedly only activates when you dial the emergency services.
atmosx 9mo ago
Two years ago a woman in Greece phoned the police, begging for a patrol car because her ex was about to “kill her.” The officer mockingly replied, “Police cars aren’t taxis”. Seconds later she screamed, “He’s here! He’s going to kill me” (screams). She was murdered outside the police department moments later. https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/ag-anargyroi-plirofories-oti-i-28xroni-eixe-meinei-egkyos-sto-parelthon-kai-apevale-otan-ti-xtypise-o-syntrofos-tis/ https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/ag-anargyroi-plirofor...
- dmitrygr 9mo ago
  Let me guess, dispatcher was NOT publicly prosecuted and jailed for life as accessory to murder?
  - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
    Being bad at your job isn't the same as being an accessory. But then again, doctors can be arrested for being bad at their job. As well as lawyers losing their license to practice. Maybe that's a standard we should hold to our supposed "public servants".
    - dmitrygr 9mo ago
      yes
    - JasonADrury 9mo ago
      >Being bad at your job isn't the same as being an accessory. Deliberately refusing to intervene when you have a duty to do so kind of is though, at least in a moral sense. Although, reading the transcript in that article through a translator, it does not seem all that bad. The taxi comment is very early in the conversation, and the operator does immediately offer to send a patrol car to her home. The operator also stays on the line, keeps collecting more information and does really not seem to do anything obviously wrong. Even if they'd immediately acquiesced to her request to send a patrol car to drive her home, the car probably wouldn't have been there on time anyway.
themafia 9mo ago
Or a bot that lists out all the times police have been given these powers only for them to be abused. Flock is a great example. Story after story in the local news (only there for some reason) about police officers being disciplined or fired because they stalked people using the flock system. Meanwhile not a single story where a major case was cracked by, and could only have been cracked by, the flock camera system.
- mlfreeman 9mo ago
  Does anyone even compile these into a site?
asdff 9mo ago
All the technology and clearance rates are the same as they ever were.
TacticalCoder 9mo ago
[flagged]
- komali2 9mo ago
  > To not "demonize" a particular community where a sizeable percentage (in at least one city the number of 30% of all pakistani muslim men involved in the rapes has been mentioned) of its members happens to think that raping infidels ain't rape. These accusations keep happening, but the whole "why didn't this get investigated" thing was investigated, and the answer is no, investigations weren't throttled because of woke, in fact the machinery of justice operated just about the same as it always does for sexual assault cases: poorly. Also there's been quite a few investigation and convictions.

alistairSH 9mo ago

Even better, in the US, the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime (unless that person is in government custody). The courts have upheld this time and again.

NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo ago
> (unless that person is in government custody) Someone please correct me, but do they ever much bother to protect those in custody?
- JasonADrury 9mo ago
  They certainly seem to be willing to spend a lot to keep Luigi Mangione safe.
- foxyv 9mo ago
  Their main method of "Protecting" people in custody has been deemed a form of torture called Solitary Confinement.
- freedomben 9mo ago
  Generally speaking, yes. I have worked with the corrections side of law enforcement in the US and don't internationally for quite a few years at this point. The correction side is a different beast than the police side in many ways, so I definitely want to meet clear that my personal experience is limited in scope to that. However, generally speaking I have seen that the majority of corrections staff take protection very seriously. There are individual officers that can be scum, and ideally they should be bounced out of there. But realistically, it's a human problem. I've known plenty of software engineers that were cavalier with people's personal information in ways I think can be just as damaging. On the whole though, the majority of software engineers I know take protecting that information quite seriously.
- alistairSH 9mo ago
  That's tangential... they can be held liable if they fail to protect somebody that is in custody. They generally cannot be held liable for failure to protect a member of the public.
JasonADrury 9mo ago
Per the DOJ, there's also this: >An officer who purposefully allows a fellow officer to violate a victim's Constitutional rights may be prosecuted for failure to intervene to stop the Constitutional violation. >To prosecute such an officer, the government must show that the defendant officer was aware of the Constitutional violation, had an opportunity to intervene, and chose not to do so.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Who represents the government in these cases?
  - mothballed 9mo ago
    The government prosecutes the government and is judged by the government and a jury screened under voir dire by two government lawyers? Kind of like when a robber comes to your house, you have him arrested, and when you go to court you look up and he is the one swinging the gavel. Of course, interesting the cop has to know there is a constitution violation. Somehow ignorance of the law is always an excuse for the cops but the citizenry must know all 190,000 pages of federal regulations and 300,000+ laws and by god if they forgot one they are fucked.
  - cogman10 9mo ago
    Generally speaking, the way it's supposed to work is the local prosecutors will start the process. That, unfortunately, isn't something they like to do because they have to work with police departments. If they fail to do their job, theoretically the next step is that the FBI gets involved. But, doesn't seem like today's FBI is doing much beyond prosecuting Trump's political enemies. This is the reason why I've long believed we need a check both federal and local to police that is completely divorced from regular prosecution. We need lawyers/investigators whose sole purpose is investigating and prosecuting police at pretty much all levels of the government. The federal government theoretically has that with the office of inspectors general.
- jshier 9mo ago
  Unfortunately the courts have repeated ruled that "aware of the Constitutional violation" means knowing that the exact action being observed had previously been ruled a violation of Constitutional rights. It's essentially impossible to prove, which is one of the reasons we don't see that offense prosecuted.
mothballed 9mo ago
Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the fact they do have an obligation to stop anyone from protecting other people from crime (see Uvalde, where orders from above were to block parents from saving their children).
Aunche 9mo ago
> the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime This gets misrepresented on the Internet all the time. What this really means is that you can't sue the city for incompetent policemen, which is the case in basically every country. That only punishes the taxpayers after all. What is different about other countries is that they are much better at firing incompetent police.
- eftychis 9mo ago
  In some (EU) countries, as a public officer/agent you can actually get prosecuted (civil or criminal proceedings per case), in cases of blatant or willful incompetence. (Think of the levels of gross wanton disregard/negligence.) (There is also the legal vehicle of insubordination.) For instance, in Greece https://www.lawspot.gr/nomothesia/pk/arthro-259-poinikos-kodikas-paravasi-kathikontos/ https://www.lawspot.gr/nomothesia/pk/arthro-259-poinikos-kod... (N.B. the bar of wilfulness in this section in the Greek criminal code is much lower than the corresponding notion of wilfulness in the U.S.) The bar is high, of course, and yet people have historically managed to get prosecuted, lose their jobs, and go to prison. I think the problem in the U.S. is, ironically, the power of police unions in a fragmented police force (city, territory, county, etc.) ecosystem, coupled with the lack of unified, express state and federal statutes to enforce a standard of care and competence. Add to that that peace officer-specific state statutes (e.g., describing manslaughter while on duty) are written in such a way that, as a matter of law, it becomes a herculean task to tick all the boxes to successfully preserve a conviction on appeal. It is truly troubling. (I am hopeful, as this can be solved by the U.S. legislature, which I think we have a lot of reasons to demand to be done.)
- themafia 9mo ago
  The case in NY was police setup a sting on the subway to catch a serial stabber. Instead of stopping him they stood by and watched him attack several innocent bystanders. They were sued for incompetence. For the failed sting. The two police officers who stood and watched him get attacked were ruled to be immune because they had no duty to protect him. Point being, if police see you getting attacked, they have no duty to /stop/ that from happening. Their only duty is to take a report once they feel safe enough to approach. If you see two police on the corner and think "this is a safe area" you'd completely be operating on faith in their character.

mothballed 9mo ago

In some parts of the world it's well known if you actually want the police to show up, just claim there are lots of drugs or cash at the location. That will actually get the police excited since they stand to gain from it. It's not clear why the police would care someone is being raped/murdered since they cannot profit from that. Although at 15 I would not expect someone to be wise enough to the world to figure that out.

simion314 9mo ago

From my memory this case can actually be used to support spyware, I remember all the media complaining "how is it possible that the police or the secret service can't instantly locate a phone very precisely" , same when that airplane crashed and the people were calling for help but the authorities could not get the coordinates and searched for hours , the media was demanding that the police or other services have the technical ability to locate any person in distress.

budududuroiu 9mo ago
Of course it would've been spun that way, and maybe it would've worked had it not been for the police mocking the victim in the phone logs
jeroenhd 9mo ago
It is rather jarring to be stuck in the woods with Google Maps offering turn-by-turn navigation back home while the emergency room only gets a vague triangulated position (which might be wrong entirely if the signal gets reflected off of something). Of course these days such a system has been added. Bonus feature of the (at least American) feature: the system can be activated remotely, even if you're not actually calling in an emergency. The European ETSI spec is pretty funny, it basically comes down to sending an SMS to a Secret Number with a Secret Format containing your coordinates to prevent abuse (both can be found very easily); at least that supposedly only activates when you dial the emergency services.

atmosx 9mo ago

Two years ago a woman in Greece phoned the police, begging for a patrol car because her ex was about to “kill her.” The officer mockingly replied, “Police cars aren’t taxis”. Seconds later she screamed, “He’s here! He’s going to kill me” (screams). She was murdered outside the police department moments later. https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/ag-anargyroi-plirofories-oti-i-28xroni-eixe-meinei-egkyos-sto-parelthon-kai-apevale-otan-ti-xtypise-o-syntrofos-tis/ https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/ag-anargyroi-plirofor...

dmitrygr 9mo ago
Let me guess, dispatcher was NOT publicly prosecuted and jailed for life as accessory to murder?
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  Being bad at your job isn't the same as being an accessory. But then again, doctors can be arrested for being bad at their job. As well as lawyers losing their license to practice. Maybe that's a standard we should hold to our supposed "public servants".
  - dmitrygr 9mo ago
    yes
  - JasonADrury 9mo ago
    >Being bad at your job isn't the same as being an accessory. Deliberately refusing to intervene when you have a duty to do so kind of is though, at least in a moral sense. Although, reading the transcript in that article through a translator, it does not seem all that bad. The taxi comment is very early in the conversation, and the operator does immediately offer to send a patrol car to her home. The operator also stays on the line, keeps collecting more information and does really not seem to do anything obviously wrong. Even if they'd immediately acquiesced to her request to send a patrol car to drive her home, the car probably wouldn't have been there on time anyway.

themafia 9mo ago

Or a bot that lists out all the times police have been given these powers only for them to be abused. Flock is a great example. Story after story in the local news (only there for some reason) about police officers being disciplined or fired because they stalked people using the flock system. Meanwhile not a single story where a major case was cracked by, and could only have been cracked by, the flock camera system.

mlfreeman 9mo ago
Does anyone even compile these into a site?

asdff 9mo ago

All the technology and clearance rates are the same as they ever were.

TacticalCoder 9mo ago

[flagged]

komali2 9mo ago
> To not "demonize" a particular community where a sizeable percentage (in at least one city the number of 30% of all pakistani muslim men involved in the rapes has been mentioned) of its members happens to think that raping infidels ain't rape. These accusations keep happening, but the whole "why didn't this get investigated" thing was investigated, and the answer is no, investigations weren't throttled because of woke, in fact the machinery of justice operated just about the same as it always does for sexual assault cases: poorly. Also there's been quite a few investigation and convictions.