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Comment by BearGoesChirp | Hacker News Reader

But only for cops. Shouldn't cops be treated like anyone else, which would normally mean being fired or maybe, if we are lucky, unpaid leave?

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I think being put on paid leave during an investigation is not that uncommon. Especially in adversarial jobs where the people who bring complaints are more likely to be malicious, you don't want to give them the power to disrupt someone's paycheck without an investigation. Otherwise you'd have criminals getting entire police departments fired.

Except the person "making the complaint" is a dead man that committed no crime, as the police chief established.

Livingston didn’t say if the man, who was 28, had a weapon when he came to the door, or what caused the officer to shoot the man. Even if you were innocent before the SWAT team showed up, threatening them afterwards will get you killed and no court is going to convict them. So far it is not "established" that the officer should not have shot the man.

It doesn't take more than a few minutes after the man was shot dead to know whether he had a weapon. Frankly, it doesn't matter why the officer shot the man so long as he hadn't threatened the officer. In the time it took me to write this comment, a clear determination of whether the officer abused his power could have been made. If he did in fact have a weapon, you could bet your ass the police chief would have confirmed that.

What exactly do you think this investigation is going to yield? "It looked like he may have had a weapon" or "He made a threatening comment"? Neither are reasons why the officer should have shot the man.

It took 6 months for a grand jury to exonerate another Wichita officer. http://www.texomashomepage.com/news/local-news/wichita-falls... The appeals etc took years after that. My point is, you don't let the cops make the determination about whether a cop is guilty. There are whole other layers of accountability.

Edit: and yeah I agree cops don't get convicted often enough. Either way a real investigation is going to take time.

A bit of a correction: that article is talking about Wichita Falls, which is in Texas. This swatting/shooting is Wichita, Kansas.

Did it occur in a state where being in possession of a weapon inside your home is a crime? And if they felt threatened, it should be up to a jury to determine if it was self defense or murder based on why they felt threatened.

The comparison isn't what happens to someone's job when they're facing a complaint relating to that job, but what happens to their job when they're facing criminal charges. Garrity basically sounds like institutional corruption whereby the (administrative face of) the police to avoid asking questions that could help the (criminal-prosecuting face of) the police. At any other job, the internal investigation would demand answers to questions that would criminally implicate you (under pain of firing), and the police wouldn't agree to close their investigation due to the administrative inquiry beginning!

Also, these separate serial investigations seem like a powerful incentive to brush over the criminal inquiry as quick as possible - figuring wrongdoing can still be punished by the second investigation, and also not wanting to delay it.

Anyone (except cops) suspected of murder would be arrested and jailed... so actually it's worse than you say, for anyone that is not a cop.

And then they'd be arraigned within a few days (max -- often, within 24 hours) and given the opportunity to post bail.

Its best practice in HR for serious cases for those accused to be put on administrative leave prior to any investigation -just firing some one who then turns out to be innocent would lead to expensive lawsuits.

Though being put on house arrest and being treated as on duty whilst on leave is on dodgy grounds I am surprised the police unions haven't challenged this in court.

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