Avondale Man Sues After Google Data Leads to Wrongful Arrest for Murder | Hacker News Reader

Avondale Man Sues After Google Data Leads to Wrongful Arrest for Murder

phoenixnewtimes.com

40 pointsdanso10 comments

until individual police officers are directly responsible for their actions, nothing will change. Currently they get bonuses based on the number of "arrests" and have no consequences for violations of the law, constitution, or basic decency.

None of the police or prosecutors will have to personally pay a single dollar for this gratuitous abuse of power.

Ticket quotas are explicitly illegal in some states[0]. I would imagine arrest quotas would be legally similar.

[0]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticket_quota

Yea, those laws mean nothing because whose going to enforce them? The department chiefs that are giving quotas to their underlings? Prosecutors that stay buddy buddy with cops?

And that's the problem - prosecutors don't want to do anything that makes police officers unhappy. That means requiring the police to obey the law. It means supporting the police when they murder people.

It's somehow considered acceptable - as in not a fireable offense - for police officers to not do their job or to prevent the prosecutors from enforcing the law.

Because police as currently operating in large portions of the US are not meaningfully different from gangs. Only they are even less likely to suffer consequences.

I disagree. I think if you make officers individually responsible, you will paralyze them. In this case instead of the wrong person arrested for the murder, nobody would be arrested and the case would go unsolved. My suggestion would be to treat it like an air crash investigation. An independent body produces a public report on each incident, with the power to make changes to procedures or training, or even recommend changes to the law, with no blame or punishment, and the full co-operation of all parties. Maybe it's less satisfying, but for air travel safety this approach is incredibly effective, and it seems like it could be for policing.

“In this case instead of the wrong person arrested for the murder, nobody would be arrested and the case would go unsolved.”

Are you suggesting this would be worse?

Just want to reiterate: “In this case instead of the wrong person arrested for the murder, nobody would be arrested and the case would go unsolved.” Are you suggesting this would be worse?

also, I don't think the air crash investigation analogy works well here, as pilots aren't as incentivized to fly in a way that is dangerous and likely to result in a crash. I assume more crashes are purely accidental or due to mechanical failure, where with law enforcement the concern is that wrongful arrests are due to overzealous and/or badly motivated officers.

This isn't an individual cop problem. This goes all the way to the top of LE and the court system.

The police acted irresponsibly, an innocent man was caught in the crossfire, but without the Google data the real murderer would have gotten away with it and still be at large.

perfect example of how the "well, i have nothing to hide" response to privacy concerns underestimates the scope of the issues involved.

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