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Comment by moomin | Hacker News Reader

Just to be clear: what we are looking at is a concerted and coordinated criminal conspiracy to cover up a range of activities including murder.

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Yes, this, as simple as this. This isn't a rogue "bad cop" - it's systemic, criminal abuse of power, and the very reason we have separation of powers - so this kind of activity can be checked all the way back to its origins.

Which is pretty much the origin of my disillusionment, since it isn't happening at all, in the face of red-handed evidence.

What's the bar for 'at all'? People seem to speak (at least relatively) favorably of the new policing situation in Camden, the old department was disbanded:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_Police_Department_%28Ne...

That's a large municipality discarding their entire police organization and creating a new one.

I see no mention of systemic checks and balances or corruption investigation further than a couple of bad actors. So yeah cover it up replace it with something hopefully less corrupt, but not what needs to happen to prevent it from happening again.

I'm trying to establish some common ground. When I read something like this:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/year-in-review/20100221_Ca...

I see the "federal investigation" as a systemic action, and I don't really see how disbanding the old department is a cover up, it's a pretty real consequence.

Action after it makes the evening news, not an on going part of the system that is actually capable of changing it.

> how disbanding the old department is a cover up, it's a pretty real consequence.

Consequence to who? Not the corrupt officers who weren't the scapegoat, all they had to do was re-apply for their old job.

the police officers have been fired?

I believe some of the worst offenders from that defunct department are in prison.

I don't mean to hang my hat on that particular case, as stonemetal points out, there is overlap between the new department and old department:

http://camdencountypd.org/senior-leaders/

But if we today have a situation where only egregious problems get attention, we should probably not mistake that for a situation where no problems get attention, because it's likely that the latter would be far worse.

There's also the opportunity to look for good outcomes and try to replicate them, rather than coming up with brand new solutions.

This can't be upvoted enough. You're right. The police are protected by their dependent partners, the prosecutors. Anyone who does this should at the very least be prosecuted for one of the following:

  1.  Interfering with a police officer
  2.  Obstruction of justice
  3.  Destruction of property

Ask yourself why they aren't? Is it the police union? Is it a true explicit conspiracy?

What world we we live in that people get 3 days suspension for breaking a recording device their management put in?

Can you do this to the cameras at your work location?

> Ask yourself why they aren't?

The prosecutors and the officers they're charging may be drinking buddies, or at least have collaborated professionally before. Prosecutors may also fear other officers being unhelpful in the future to the person who charged the latters' buddy.

The prosecutor may also fear having to open every case that officer was involved in to retrial. The prosecutor, themselves, may have logged those cases as wins.

In the end, the system will never work unless an independent prosecutor, with the power to investigate and bring charges, exists for police crimes.

> In the end, the system will never work unless an independent prosecutor, with the power to investigate and bring charges, exists for police crimes.

Surely that's a trivial and obvious step? That's why an independent branch of cops was instituted to investigate other cops etc.

Like I don't mean to denigrate your point - I just mean "How hasn't this already been done?"

This right here is it -- the DA's and state's attorney's career advancement is tied to winning cases, and there is no better way to win a case than having the PD on your side.

PDs that curry favor from their judicial counterparts get freedom from oversight.

Both feed off of each-other, especially when confessions and plea bargains are the norm -- PDs coerce confessions and prosecutors coerce plea bargains, and justice remains un-served.

a concerted and coordinated criminal conspiracy

Yes. It's Chicago. You've just described city government in six words.

Chicago might be notorious for high murder rates, crime, and corrupt government, but I would be shocked if this weren't happening in other areas across the country.

Another poster already alluded to the point, but I'd like to make it explicit: if you believe Chicago is exceptional in this, you are wrong. The NYPD is almost as bad (as far as we know, the NYPD doesn't have an off-the-books torture chamber[1], rather preferring to sodomize arrestees with brooms in the regular jails on a more ad hoc basis).

But just as life-destroying are the things that go on in smaller communities, where talking about conspiracy is just as valid, but the stakes, departments and communities are smaller, so it doesn't get as much attention. I know from personal experience that small town cops can be just as awful, and power structures in small towns don't get the same push back as they do in larger places.

I'm pretty sure we are seeing the beginnings of a sea change here.

Citizen surveillance tech has reached the point that the behavior of police can't be ignored any more, and the disconnect between law, policy preferences and "rough justice" as actually practiced is shocking to people who lived comfortable enough lives to not notice before[2].

Prosecutors and especially judges, always slow to change when change makes their jobs harder, will take longer to get used to the notion that wink-and-nod isn't going to work any more. Police unions are going to lose this fight, especially as activists are starting to become savvy to the tactical advantage of splitting Republicans between law and order fears and union busters.

The result, at least hopefully, will be police that, if not actually part of the community again, are not able to function as the biggest gang around with legal cover.[3]

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicago-police-abused-detainees-...

[2] Not casting any aspirations there; we all pick and choose where our outrage lands to some extent, I'm just as oblivious to some injustices as other people are to this. It is simply human nature to worry about things closer to one's self.

[3] Not all police, some of them are very good at what they do, etc. At least we can retire the "few bad apples" deflection.

> rosecutors and especially judges, always slow to change when change makes their jobs harder, will take longer to get used to the notion that wink-and-nod isn't going to work any more. Police unions are going to lose this fight, especially as activists are starting to become savvy to the tactical advantage of splitting Republicans between law and order fears and union busters.

I'm optimistic. State budgets are such a mess that the police unions are going to get hit hard from both sides. Young families on one hand, when police pensions start cutting into education, and fiscal conservatives on the other, who will relish the opportunity to take out public unions. The Illinois that rises out of the ashes of bankruptcy might look a lot better.

I'm not sure why anyone is excited about paying policea less--the less they're paid, the more corruptible they are.

I envision asset forfeiture of houses and cars increasing as police budgets decrease.

Most state laws don't allow police departments to keep the proceeds of forfeitures under state law, and the policies around local agencies doing federal-law forfeitures which do allow the agencies to keep proceeds have been narrowed recently because of concerns of inappropriate use.

What about splitting the left with people who despise police unions and those who support all public sector unions 100% of the time?

I don't see a lot of people on the left supporting police unions just because they're unions. Some will support their right to unionize but none of the subsequent behaviour from police unions. You can't really split the left in a significant way on this.

If you can find someone who "support[s] all public sector unions 100% of the time", have a great time.

I'm sure there's someone out there, but I've never met them.

The worst part of the "few bad apples" deflection is that when used, everyone is dropping the second part of that idiom. It's "a few bad apples spoil the bunch|barrel"

"It's just a few pints of Ebola-blood."

And just to be clear: it goes on all the time in police departments, and most involved in this one will also get just a slap on the wrist.

Absolutely, but also look at the higher level- The snowden revelations showed a treasonous level of criminal activity at the highest levels of government.

So, of course, Snowden is the bad guy and no charges have been filed against the perpetrators of the crimes.

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