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Comment by idoubtit | Hacker News Reader

In which countries are law officers accountable for their crimes? I can't name any.

Two weeks ago in France, 2 policemen were sentenced for beating up students. This kind of conviction is extremely rare, but they were caught on CCTV beating up "for fun" two students that were walking back home. It was probably a racist beating, since they first attacked the colored guy. Their sentences were symbolic. Both are still policemen, and one of them has been promoted. https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/prison-avec-sursis-pour-d... (in French)

De facto, policemen are above the law. And of course, many of them abuse that system. Yet most people don't care. They want law and order, even if the law is not the same for everyone, and even if the order is not just, and sometimes criminal.

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There is a more insidious problem at work here. Police are, by dint of their daily work, good at understanding how the law works and how people get away with crimes.

This means that if you treat them equally to a random person, they have the knowledge to/will get away with more crimes.

The only problem with holding them to a higher standard once you understand this, is that it generates resentment, and the higher standard becomes a different system they learn and game.

I say this as someone committed to justice for who 15 years in policing is receding into the past.

I don't have a perfect solution or I might have stayed in policing, at least kept my badge- I work in security now which scratches the itch that got me into law-enforcement in the first place. (don't tell my coworker devs that- some already think infosec is out to get them- we are not) It is hard to stay justice oriented no matter where you are- in gov law enforcement or the private sector, startup or big-corp.

>> In which countries are law officers accountable for their crimes? I can't name any.

Basically none, if you mean as a rule. There are exceptions of course in all countries, including the United States, but by and large, officers are above the law.

Yet the answer is rarely "less government / oversight" when it comes to these issues. It's just a race to get their preferred candidate into office who will wield the expanding power in a more efficient and effective manner, of course.

The "officers" being shown in /r/HongKong disgust and enrage me.

My dad was Oakland PD in the 70s - he quit after OPD killed several black panthers. He said he had to quit, as, "When you spend your whole life looking for bad, soon, thats all you can see"

https://old.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dujohq/1111_hong_...

Policemen are above the law because that's how the system was created. At least in the US, police departments were primarily created by the elites to protect the elites from immigrant masses. When the elites were all mostly anglo-saxon protestant, we didn't have a need for police. But when cities started attracting immigrants - particularly german and irish, the elites needed a forceful mechanism by which to suppress and control these people. Of course when the germans and irish moved up the social ladder and the new arrivals were italians and blacks, the germans and irish suppressed and controlled these people. Now in a "post-race" age, police exist primarily to serve and protect the rich elites against the less wealthy masses.

The idea of police existing to protect you ( Protect and Serve nonsense ) is just PR/marketing. Just like "Don't be evil".

I suspect in most countries, these same pattern holds.

It would be more accurate to describe police as 'in group' vs 'out group' for their bias as opposed to the straightforward rich elite narrative. While they may overlap the region and its politics may vary heavily. Still often servants of a status quo in an ugly way but certainly not wealth alone. "Carpetbaggers" with the gall to move south to provide goods and services in Post Bellum south sure as hell didn't benefit from police protection much less favoritism. Nor did Greenwood District, Tulsa a.k.a. "The Black Wall Street" or the other pogrom victims of what were euphemistically and victim blamingly termed 'Race Riots'.

And there was the old summing up of cliches as the cops went from beating up the Irish for 'not fitting into society' to being the Irish beating up Hippies for 'not fitting into society'. Indeed part of why historically gay neighborhoods and districts exist in many cases is because they congregated under friendlier enforcement jurisdictions.

Putting aside the ancient police 'expecting the city to mob accused and restrain or kill them' the military largely were what we call the police essentially - at least with European history although they weren't homogeneous and there was some nuance to it and memetic factors. English highwaymen for instance could thrive better in the isles than on the Continent where they had Gendarme where as in England using cavalry for that was viewed as tyrannical.

Their longbow practice also had some 'citizen army' and ancestral 2nd Amendment rhetorical factors while still not exactly 'free' it still provided a check to power in a 'don't piss off the armed peasantry enough that they decide an armed rebellion is worth it'. Meanwhile France and others specifically didn't adopt the practice because the rebellion concerns made the idea anathema to their worldview.

>At least in the US, police departments were primarily created by the elites to protect the elites from immigrant masses.

They were created first and foremost for slaves, not immigrant masses. History gets too sanitized for my liking in this country and we miss important lessons because of it.

"The Texas Rangers are the earliest form of state law enforcement in the United States, first organized by Stephen F. Austin in 1823. The original ranger force consisted of ten men charged with protecting settlers from Native American attacks." ...and slaves escaping to Mexico...

The down voters are why sanitizing history is a bad idea. It also allows the criminal past of many families/institutions to be swept under the rug.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_police_(United_States)

https://www.history.com/news/underground-railroad-mexico-esc...

Singapore.

Amazon's had an episode in their tv series: The Giant Beast that is the Global Economy where they covered corruption throughout the world. It showed who's living with it and who's stamping it out better.

Direct link to the episode: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07NVPSSK7/ref=stream...

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