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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

I understand and agree with everything you said.

My understanding is that around 2000 people were arrested[1] for peacefully assembling. It wasn't 2am, and they were not sacrificing any humans.

In the case of Naomi being arrested that I posted above, she very clearly knew the sidewalks are public, and she was very clearly not breaking any laws, and was arrested anyway. Of course charges were later dropped, because the Police very well knew they had nothing on her.

So when the Police in the USA don't like your perfectly legal use of 'right at assemble' they arrest you, fingerprint you, make sure you get a record and are out of the way for a while, then just kick you out the back door when they're sick of you.

That doesn't sound so great to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Arrests

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Then it would be up to a competent attorney to sue the arresting officer under 42 usc 1983 civil actions for deprivations of rights. The law provided for reasonable attorney fees to be paid by a defendant who violated your civil rights. The nice thing is that even though your suing the officer who violated your civil rights they are usually covered by an insurance policy so it's technically not an asset poor officer paying the judgement

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Better that then the successful plaintiff being left holding the bag when their civil rights are horrifically violated. Excessive force cases can and do result in death and disability not including whatever mental trauma. Better the people that the state that employs law enforcement bear the cost associated with their actions, then victims of civil rights violations are unable to collect against a bankrupt defendant.

Any comment on the "In the mean time the authorities have effectively shut down the protest, that was perfectly legal" aspect?

You forgot the part where it's not only not their money, but in fact our money.

How public officials get "punished" is one of my biggest issues. We are right now holding them to a lower standard whereas we should hold them to a much higher standard. If a public official, especially in law enforcement, commits a crime it's a much bigger problem because it undermined the entire system beyond just the crime itself. This should result in draconic punishments for even small crimes.

That's the point. We pay, it should anger us, so we hold the authorities to accountability

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. It leads to flamewars. We don't want those here.

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Except that under the doctrine of qualified immunity that case would be thrown out for an infinite number of tiny reasons. Check out the Institute for Justice for a good run down based on cases they've fought.

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