Police-issued "courtesy cards" help friends and family out of minor infractions | Hacker News Reader

Police-issued "courtesy cards" help friends and family out of minor infractions

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608 pointsdanso435 comments

If curious, see this discussion about the topic from early 2018:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16207890

The simplest way to fix a huge amount of problems that exist in the USA would be to start holding the police accountable for their actions.

This is police corruption, an especially harmful category of corruption that undermindes our entire legal system. It should be 5 years minimum in federal prison. Police should recieve drastically stronger charges and sentences when they violate the law, not the other way around. If someone above was found to have known about it and didn't report it should be 2x.

You show me a problem in modern america (maybe except healthcare) and I bet I could argue this one policy would fix it in one roundabout way or another.

It won't happen for a bunch of structural reasons unless a major party took it up as a major part of their platform but it would work.

Come to think of it, this is one of the very few things one of the major parties could do to get me to vote for them.

And to be clear, to to common refrain "well, if cops were going to be held responsible for their actions, they wouldn't put their lives at risk, they've be extra conservative!", my answer to you is: "fine, we don't want those people to be cops anyways."

And if it really is that much more dangerous and risky to be a cop because of this, pay them more! People put their health on the line to be GARBAGEMEN for cryin' out loud! They do it because the pay is good, and the benefits are solid. Make the cops earn the inordinate salaries they pull home.

According to multiple "Most Dangerous Jobs" lists, being a garbage collector is far more dangerous than being a police officer.

Police officer salary isn't that great from the data I've been able to find. Nationwide average is 48K/yr. 57k/yr in NYC, 55k/yr in LA.

This is roughly the same range as a public school teacher, slightly less.

what you don't see often mentioned is lots of cop jobs come with overtime. that even in a small city like temple terrace fl, the avg pay incl overtime is over 75k. in NY cops regularly clear 120k

Anecdotally amongst lawyers, perhaps, but I've heard tale by many that this is largely accomplished by choosing to arrest someone just a few minutes before their shift ends, which requires them to get overtime for the hours of paperwork involved.

Police working overtime is not healthy for anyone. Pay them a salary that puts them at a point where they won't want to.

They can retire at 55 and get paid that salary for the rest of their lives. You also appear to be incorrect: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2020/04/23/polic...

Dude this is FUD. NYC's own page clearly states salary at 5 1/2 years is $85,292. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-be...

Starting salary: $42,500 Salary after 5 ½ years: $85,292. Including holiday pay, longevity pay, uniform allowance, night differential and overtime, police officers may potentially earn over $100,000 per year.

Add to that: opportunities to get promoted, "private security" gigs, near 100% job security, and a lifetime pension based on their final (highest-paid) years.

It turns out that most of the apparently high paid cops are simply committing overtime fraud and relying on the union to cover for them.

The local "expired registration" cop makes $153k/yr with <6 years of experience. How much more do they really need to be paid?

Minor side-rant: I know the law here is that you need to have the physical sticker, but why does the police department feel that the middle of a pandemic is the right time to take advantage of the DMV being slow to mail those stickers out? I bought the damned tags months ago, and they arrived in the mail this weekend...grumble grumble.

Strong agree, take that extra payroll and give it back to the cops willing to stick around and make it a respectable job again.

Require malpractice insurance for police; require that they pay it themselves, not as part of a union or from their civilian employer. Require insurance companies to set prices solely by service record of the individual and of the unit and of the city/county/state employer.

Commit a felony, lose your insurance coverage, be unemployable. Happens to doctors; why shouldn't it happen to police?

Go to work for a misbehaving department, watch your premium rise.

Act professionally your whole career, watch your premium drop.

Everybody likes incentives here. Police don't have many right now.

When you violate someones rights the actually get compensated, instead of getting a judgement that doesn't get paid.

or gets paid by the community the officer harmed. :(

The problem with this is a case against a professional tends to pull in other professionals as witnesses. You may not end up solving the problem because cops may refuse to testify against other cops. The solution is to rely on common sense, it is unknown if that will happen.

First off, who would offer insurance to individual police other than the police union?

And the police union has a bunch of influence over the other cops who might cause everyone's premiums to go up if they tell the truth?

I dunno, I think it's a good try but a more direct approach is warranted. Fire people with a history of complaints. Promote people who don't tolerate bad behavior. Vote for people who will do that, and if that means reconstituting the police force from scratch like in Camden so be it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-jersey-city-disband...

To me this makes far more sense than a indiscriminate defunding. It’s what I’ve been advocating for. Defunding the police by itself doesn’t solve the problem. Firing crooked cops does to some extent.

And in the case where crooked cops have infiltrated the department to the point where it's effectively impossible to fire just the crooked ones, shut it down and start over. Or do something better and call it "police" so that the pearl clutching causes less nerve damage.

> First off, who would offer insurance to individual police other than the police union?

Presumably the same institutions that offer other forms of professional liability insurance. I wouldn't be surprised if the police union offered insurance, but they will have to compete with other insurers in the market. In this scheme, though, if they fail to adequately adjust for an officer's risk then they will either lose money or they will have to overcharge safer officers. The likely reality is that low risk officers would flee to the cheapest insurance and the police union would be unable to protect the riskier officers from higher premiums due to the lack of low-risk officers to balance out the pool.

How much local competition is there for cop employers? I can't say I know a ton of cops but it would have to be a pretty extreme difference to actually factor into decisions on where you live.

Just solve the actual problem. Fire the cops that have lots of complaints. Promote the ones that enforce a healthy culture. Vote for sheriffs or comparable that have those priorities. Push for laws that enforce those priorities.

It's certainly no harder nor time consuming than designing and then waiting for a capitalist equilibrium. We know the actual problem, we don't need to assign a dollar value to it to prohibit it, especially since these are public employees.

Of all the systems the US has I think the insurance industry is the last to come to mind to fix a problem.

“Tort” (insurance’s cousin) is but one of the many gods in the cathedrals people build to avoid blaming hate.

Tory is not really anything to do with insurance; it is a very old legal concept referring to any kind of job bodily harm to the interest of another.

What would happen to your insuarance, if say you became part of a highly valuable but risky operation investigating crime syndicates? Sounds expensive.

"Risky" means violating the law, ignoring civil rights & hurting innocents.

If that's the only way that unit can investigate crime syndicates, maybe that operation shouldn't exist in the first place.

No - risky can equally mean getting shot in the course of duty. See also the issue of surgeons being cautious about taking on procedures with low survival rate

Only if you define "getting shot" as malpractice, which I'd consider a rather odd choice. Remember, we're talking about risk in the context of a malpractice insurance.

are police paid like doctors?

what happened in healthcare will likewise happen with policing... where many wont serve figuring its not worth it... overall, safety will be reduced.

Honestly many of them are in larger cities.

I don't see how this isn't paid for by the taxpayer. You say the cops should pay for it themselves, but we give the cops every dollar they have so who is really paying when it's your dollar being given to the cop to be given to an insurance provider?

In truth right now, departments self insure for malpractice and spend a ton of money on litigation. They don't care how much it costs, the taxpayer always pays. You can actually get fired after being sued and you just get hired in a department the next town over, because malpractice insurance isn't going to do squat about the boys club mentality that pollutes American police departments. Doctors never protect their own over malpractice like the police routinely do, so we shouldn't even entertain using the model doctors use when it's apples and oranges to begin with.

> but we give the cops every dollar they have so who is really paying when it's your dollar being given to the cop to be given to an insurance provider?

The key point parent made was that the officer had to pay it themselves.

Every officer would (likely) start paying the same premium, but the one with 4 pending brutality charges slowly making their way through the criminal courts will be forced into retirement for lack of insurance (or outrageously priced insurance).

Not much unlike auto insurance.

Isn’t this one of the reasons why US healthcare is so unaffordable?

Not that comparable unless you start issuing the insurance bills to the people the officers ticket or arrest.

Well, they do issue the bills in that we pay for the policing.

That seems like it would end up with police being incentivised to turn a blind eye to those who can afford expensive lawyers more than they already do?

Can you explain your reasoning, because I don't follow.

Super simple: if policeman arrest rich guy who can hire good lawyer, then this guy have much higher chances to win in a court against policeman / police department and insurance company gonna have to compensate. So insurance premium gonna be higher for them in that case.

On other side piss poor suspect don't have a lawyer and capacity to get compensation by "police insurance".

I dont think insurance is the solution. Instead take the money from the retirement fund.

This actually exists

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/22/705914833/epis...

I think the problem is that the system has historically obfuscated a lot of the malpractice.

So I think the real reform is more transparency (body cameras and other things) to make sure infractions are actually exposed.

Thing is this doesn’t merely exist as these cards. It is extremely easy to get out of police incidents with social skills and high-quality ability to manipulate people. Because people are fallible. So there will always be differential applications of justice because justice is a game, just like every other social system.

And automated policing can be played too, just in slightly different ways.

So when people are shocked by this or talk about how this must be fixed in one way or another that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how complex reality works and how systems are implemented. And wishful thinking.

Instead it is much more interesting to understand how things work and to embrace them. And if someone refuses to accept reality, it will be to their detriment.

> Instead it is much more interesting to understand how things work and to embrace them. And if someone refuses to accept reality, it will be to their detriment.

Are you suggesting we embrace police giving certain members of society more rights or ability to break the rules more than others?

If.

You forgot the "if".

It is extremely easy to get out of police incidents with social skills and high-quality ability to manipulate people if you happen to be a white male.

So while justice may be a game to you, to a significant portion of the American public, it's a game they've already lost.

Ask a black family and a white family what "the talk" means. You will get two answers. For white families, "the talk" is about sex. For black families, "the talk" is about how you might just killed because your skin is a little too dark to be walking in certain areas. The talk is about how to keep your hands visible at all times when you have any encounter with police. The talk is about how you will be treated as less than other people, you cannot let that ever make you angry, never let it cause your voice to raise, to always be conciliatory. Because you might get killed.

So I'm glad you find it interesting. It still needs to be fixed.

Wow anecdotal is anecdotal but I'm white and definitely got that "Talk" from my dad when I was 15 and a permit driver (US).

He got very serious and said "son: 1) Never take make any sudden movements when a cop is approaching your car 2) Don't reach for your wallet until he asks you to. 3) Always say "Yes sir" or "Yes Mam" 4) Keep your hands in your lap or on the wheel where he can see them."

I distinctly remember talking with friends and they got the same talk. We were all white, suburban kids in the southern US. I still basically do all 4 of those things anytime I'm pulled over (don't speed and haven't pulled over in prob 20 years but I know I would still act that way).

Police are definitely out of hand in this country but now genuinely curious how many people get this parental "talk" by race.

Anecdotal as well, by myself, and all my peers (white, rural, Northeast) got the exact same talk. Hands on steering wheel, no sudden movements, announce “I’m going to reach into my pocket/glovebox/etc..” before moving your hands at all, be polite, be respectful, you can always fight in court later.

Well, you probably don't get the other part of the talk though: "The talk is about how you will be treated as less than other people, you cannot let that ever make you angry, never let it cause your voice to raise, to always be conciliatory. Because you might get killed."

The cops shoot white people too, you know. A heartbreaking example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver#Shoo...

That was a horrific crime committed by a psychopath.

That's nothing compared to the systemic comprehensive demonization of black men and boys by police, prosecutors, judges, and civilians.

No one is claiming otherwise. It's disingenuous to take a real-life issue ("cops kill black people disproportionately") and strawman it by applying a cutoff filter to it ("cops only kill black people"). It's like responding to "smoking kills" with "but my grandma smokes and is still alive".

Was part of that talk not to run from the store to your car in the rain if you are Black living in a mostly White part of town because people think it is suspicious?

Was part of that talk, don’t walk down the street with your other Black friend to meet your classmates after a basketball game to the Waffle House because it looks suspicious unless you have your White friends with you?

Did you ever have to be careful walking in your own neighborhood because you “don’t look like you belong”?

Some perspective.

114 unarmed Americans were killed by police in 2019. [1]

While any number other than zero is unacceptable, that is also 0.000035% of the US population, or a one in 2.8 million chance. If you are African-American, that goes up to a one in 1.5 million chance – also unacceptable, while at the same time a vanishingly rare occurrence.

You are 328 times – that's 32,800% – more likely to die of suicide than to be killed by police. You are 733 times more likely to die of diabetes than you are to be killed by police.

Police reform in the US is absolutely needed. But suicide prevention and healthy eating are objectively much greater problems that need solving, and are at very least worth as much of "a talk" with developing children.

[1] https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

I can choose not to eat sugar. I can't choose not the get shot by the police. Diabete also kills at a much later average age than police.

Also, getting killed is only one hard-to-hide extreme flavor of police brutality. There are also beatings, rapes, and theft (both civil forfeiture and simple banditry).

These statistics don't include all the discriminatory interactions with the police that don't end in death. Being killed by the police is only one way that racialized policing can have a disparate effect on policed populations.

This sort of argument is just straight up bullshit.

We already dedicate resources to suicide and diabetes prevention.

We do not have to wait for them to be 0 before we look at the problems with the police force.

You are also using percentage of the total population. Rather than percentage of police interactions. Why, because you know that second number is really bad. Because very few people interact with the police every day.

But, you know, I'm glad you agree that it's a real problem.

> It is extremely easy to get out of police incidents with social skills and high-quality ability to manipulate people.

In the US at least, I think that this is only true for white people, or at least for people who appear to be high-status. I don't see any way a homeless person could avoid being moved out of a park or, more dramatically, George Floyd could have avoided being murdered, by social skills and manipulative ability.

If you're at the point of resisting arrest, no amount of "social skills and high quality ability to manipulate people" is going to save you from some degree of violence. I would argue black or white or asian or hispanic or whatever. We desperately need improved non-lethal deterrents in this country (among other things like training etc.)

Maybe if you're trying to get out of a speeding ticket or something then that can help you but in my experience most cops have heard it all before.

Bottom line if you're resisting arrest...in the US they're going to restrain you...often very violently.

Obviously the excessive force part is another topic altogether. Once someone is restrained no one should ever die (what happened to George Floyd after he was restrained is obviously horrific).

Sure people are fallible. Our system makes it particularly easy and rewarding to be fallible when you are a cop. Let's fix that.

I'm all for being realistic. So let's alter the incentive structure in a way that realistically improves this. This is the exact kind of issua our congress is designed to be there to legislate on

A problem with the current culture and incentives is it attracts sadists to police work. Those guys then terrorize and abuse anyone who isn't in a position to push back. Change the rules of the game to come down on cops like to with a ton of bricks and they'll leave. Which is what you want.

Is there evidence that this is big enough problem that it warrants a major party to take it up as a major part of their platform? Against a backdrop of climate change, disease, the economy, and so on. To share a perspective that many on the right have, this seems like a problem but one that gets far more attention than it deserves because it elicits strong emotions, riles up voters, etc.

> this seems like a problem but one that gets far more attention than it deserves because it elicits strong emotions, riles up voters, etc.

Undermining trust in society is an enormous problem. The whole reason the west was successful is because people can go about their day without having to worry about nominal costs of corruption in day to day life.

Also, many issues can be handled at one time, and this is a pretty straight forward and quick and easy problem to fix. It’s obviously illegal, it’s obviously corruption, the only question is how much does society want to tolerate it. And the more it tolerates it, the more the parameters of which corruption is okay gets pushed.

Eventually, you end up like a third world country where you expect to pay a bribe or know someone to get anything done.

Edit: also, notice that the US currently has a president whose well known business practice was to not pay vendors and tangle up them up in court. And he’s openly proud about it. In any high trust society, brazen theft and dishonesty like that would be highly shameful, much less get you elected as a leader.

One perspective: at least 6 amendments in the Bill of Rights are directly about the relationship between the People and their police (most written prior to the concept of "police" as a separate entity from the country's militia forces/military, so not phrased as such, but is still known to directly apply). It's easy to argue that the remaining amendments all have indirect application to the police.

This seems clear evidence that the trust relationship with police was a critical ingredient to the Bill of Rights writers, an essentially a foundational principle in the US Constitution.

Aside: reviewing the Bill of Rights on Wikipedia there's a remark that as of 2018 the Third Amendment (no quartering of Soldiers) has never been invoked in a Supreme Court case. I cannot believe that the Third Amendment has never been invoked in a fight against "civil forfeiture" yet! [1] Yes, the wording of the Third Amendment specifically states "Soldier" and "home" but it seems to me clear that the intent should cover "police" under "Soldier" (again, given the document predates modern police), and "home" should be easily extendable to other private property. The more I think on it, the more I think civil forfeiture is directly a Third Amendment violation. But what do I know, I am not a lawyer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...

> Undermining trust in society is an enormous problem. The whole reason the west was successful is because people can go about their day without having to worry about nominal costs of corruption in day to day life.

Not worrying about the nominal cost of corruption is not the whole reason the west was successful. There are countless of arguments from both sides of the aisle that would show that to be untrue (capitalism, democracy, reward for innovation, acceptance of immigrants, pillaging land/resources, exploiting slaves, etc). The US has always had plenty of corruption so arguing that a lack of it is what made the west successful is difficult to justify.

> Eventually, you end up like a third world country where you expect to pay a bribe or know someone to get anything done.

There are laws today that prohibit bribery of police officers and they are enforced. Not sure this slippery slope type of argument holds water in the face of that.

> The whole reason the west was successful is because people can go about their day without having to worry about nominal costs of corruption in day to day life.

And I think that is still the case. Get outside, go talk to people, in the real world there is plenty of faith in our institutions.

In the real world, that is demonstrably not the case.

> It’s obviously illegal, it’s obviously corruption, the only question is how much does society want to tolerate it.

It’s not obviously illegal to me. Corruption yes, but it’s legal for me to mention during a traffic stop that “my brother is on the job”, these cards are just a physical manifestation of that statement, and it’s legal for a cop to exercise discretion in handling the stop.

It’s corrupt, but I’m not convinced it’s illegal.

The principle that everyone is equal before the law is a corner stone of any society that can claim to be free. Police are sworn to up hold the the law, this is a systematic undermining of the rule of law. If it was a few unorganised officers doing this then yeah it could be ignored maybe at the highest levels of government, but it's not.

Part of the issue is I bet the vast majority of U.S. politicians have one of these cards themselves and use it routinely.

There's been protests against police behavior happening non-stop since May in some areas of the country. Many people consider it an important issue.

lmao millions of people are in the streets

> Against a backdrop of climate change, disease, the economy, and so on. To share a perspective that many on the right have, this seems like a problem but one that gets far more attention than it deserves because it elicits strong emotions, riles up voters, etc.

That's really the problem with the right. Constantly downplaying issues like police reform so they can focus on climate change... wait, what?

it goes deeper than having laws against police abuse though.

As I understand it, the police investigates police abuses. I find that very shocking. My own country has lots of the same issues, but at least it is a separate branch of police which investigates abuse, not a colleague who will have to deal with the backlash if they report dirty acts.

Also DAs have to prosecute these crimes. The same DAs who have to work day to day with the same police department.

There are huge conflicts of interest in there. We need both to end qualified immunity (I did not go into this, but it has soo many issues as well) and have an organization dedicated to investigate police abuse. It needs both to have the authority to do so and to be entirely independent from the accused.

note : in the context here this is not just police corruption (even though that's something that should be taken seriously) but any kind of police abuse.

This is why the public defender's office should be handling the prosecuting of police and the DA should become their defender. You maintain the adversial nature of the current legal system, and you also fund the PD office more effectively. Win win win.

> This is why the public defender's office should be handling the prosecuting of police and the DA should become their defender. You maintain the adversial nature of the current legal system, and you also fund the PD office more effectively. Win win win.

It sounds good on the face of it, but, even assuming that the public defender's office is staffed with amazing defense lawyers, it seems to me that there's no reason to believe that they'll be able to serve as amazing prosecutors.

> there's no reason to believe that they'll be able to serve as amazing prosecutors.

Seems to me there's an awful lot of well documented police behaviour that totally doesn't need "amazing prosecutors" to secure convictions. A high school kid standing up and saying "Here's 40 bystander phone videos of the defendant officer using unreasonable force. There are affidavits from all the photographers in exhibit b. The prosecution rests."

(And the flip side to your argument also holds, the Das won't haver the most skilled/experienced defenders available either. Seems totally fair to me.)

I don't think it's that easy. Many people have a positive bias towards police. The police lawyer will come in and cite some frightening statistics about police injury and fatalities on the job, the officer will say that they used the minimum amount of force they were trained to. They only have to convince one juror to get a hung jury.

The free market is an interesting possible solution. Mandate government LE cases to be tried by a law firm. The law firm cannot be paid by the city, but is only compensated with a % fee of any fines levied as a result of a conviction, as well as any civil cases pre-empted by a conviction (i.e. if you have a civil case for wrongful death, and the defendant is convicted of murder, you effectively immediately win the civil suit as well due to the lower burden of proof for the same crime). Law firms that want to softball their prosecution go out of business, and we can still have lawyers that are well-versed in the prosecution of crimes. I am wary of unintended consequences, though.

Simply changing venues would be an option (i.e. require that cases against LEOs cannot be prosecuted in the county the LEO serves in), but I worry that the level of police solidarity would cause the police in the new county to pressure the DA. It might be worth a try though.

also require the Public Defenders to get at least the same budget/funding as the DA

> As I understand it, the police investigates police abuses. I find that very shocking. My own country has lots of the same issues, but at least it is a separate branch of police which investigates abuse, not a colleague who will have to deal with the backlash if they report dirty acts.

Also in the US we have (or can have—I don't know the statistics on how many districts have them) a separate branch that investigates the police: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcem... . They're still police, though.

To me that’s a bit like complaining to HR. They’re on the side of protecting the company. If you get protected too, it’s just a happy accident.

What’s needed is something completely independent like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_S%C3%ADochána_Ombudsma...

> To me that’s a bit like complaining to HR. They’re on the side of protecting the company. If you get protected too, it’s just a happy accident.

Agreed completely. I meant to respond to this from my parent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24358059):

> My own country has lots of the same issues, but at least it is a separate branch of police which investigates abuse, not a colleague who will have to deal with the backlash if they report dirty acts.

I meant to point out that an internal-affairs branch is still part of the police, even if it's nominally a separate branch; and, as such, as you put it very well, their job is to protect the police, not you.

that's a good point and I agree entirely.

Actually I agree completely, that's pretty much the problem that my home country (France) has. "Police des polices" is separate, but it still falls under the authority of the interior ministry, who also helms the police.

As a result, its mission is very often perverted and they get pressure from the ministry in order to get the result the interior minister wants.

So close .. take the same organization with a different head (somebody completely independent from the interior minister) and that would be great.

"I propose a coalition of organised crime, white collar criminals, and recreational drug users (excluding, of course, any members of those groups who are currently or have previously served as LEO) - to form a tribunal and rotating panel to oversee and investigate police misconduct."

What/who is this a quote from?

Me, in my most sarcastic voice...

oops, my bad

Very good point independent enforcement would need to be part of any solution.

Police corruption is a nebulous issue prone to outlier emotional anecdotes. It can never be “solved” and can be used, as seen in the parent post, to justify virtually any policy. It is incredibly difficult to accurately study and the data can be highly subjective.

Great point.

Many citizens don't know that "qualified immunity" is a thing that protects police officers from being held accountable.

QUOTE: "Tragically, thousands have died at the hands of law enforcement over the years, and the death toll continues to rise," said Judge Carlton Reeves, of the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. "Qualified immunity has served as a shield for these officers, protecting them from accountability."

SOURCES: - https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/05/ask-the-author-reuters-on...

- https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/qualified_immunity

- https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/politics/qualified-immunity-f...

- https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/876212065/an-immune-system

The craziest thing to me about qualified immunity is that no law was ever passed to create it. It was invented out of whole cloth by 20 years of supreme court decisions.

Many, less controversial doctrines and holdings come to pass the same way, from the 'laws' against insider trading, to the current incorporation of the bill of rights.[1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#United_States

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...

Yeah. That's literally the foundation of the entire American legal system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

The big problem with QI in the US is the phrase "clearly established" which has been interpreted extremely strictly to mean there needs to be a case already ruled on with essentially exactly the same circumstances sometimes tiny differences mean a cop gets away with clearly egregious conduct.

On top of that they get a chance to have the case thrown out immediately for QI reasons and if that's denied they can immediately appeal that ruling. Also the Supreme Court essentially only takes cases that grant immunity rather than stripping it meaning it's constantly getting tougher and tougher.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/national/crime-and-courts/for-...

Qualified immunity only applies to civil lawsuits.

The real problem is the prosecutors are tight with the cops and will never bring criminal charges against them.

Take that one cop who shot the woman in Minneapolis by accident. He was sent to jail. There was something different about that case I can't quite put my finger on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/us/minneapolis-police-sen...

(Edit: typo)

The threat of being bankrupt for life would be a deterrent.

Prosecutors and mayors wouldn't be so tight with cops if not for 1) the role of police unions and 2) optimizing for conviction rates.

Change the incentives, change the outcomes.

SOURCE:

- https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/how-police-uni...

- https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21290981/police-unio...

- https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/poli...

- https://thelensnola.org/2019/04/11/misconduct-by-prosecutors...

"Mohamed Noor Somali-American Police Officer Sentenced "

Of course, the conservatives will say that the unusually severe sentence was surely not due to to his name, religion or ethnic origin.

Police, prosecutors and judges are never, ever, ever prejudiced in the fantasy America that they live in.

Exactly. good points

They're not going to do that, which is why people asking for harm reduction call for defunding the police. They are harmful, so we need less of them. They don't prevent crime, so there's little point to having them around.

Other problems with America stem from allowing a few people to control everything who then run rampant. Rather we should restructure things with stronger institutions that have more democratic buy in.

Who is going to investigate the police? How many police officers are willing to report wrongdoing on their fellow officers? How many politicians or DA’s are willing to be “tough on police”?

No party is going to run on a platform of being tough on police. Most Americans actually “Back the Blue”. They protect the good folks from “them”.

Make an independent body with only this job.

Democrats have been working on it for over a decade. Even George W Bush engaged in some consent decrees, under the auspices Joe Biden's 1994 crime bill.

It's only in the past 4 years that the Federal government stopped trying to reduce police brutality and started openly encouraging it.

Really think these would be helpful:

1. Demilitarize police 2. Make police disciplinary and complaint records public 3. Eliminate qualified immunity for police

These would be a good starting point.

It seems that a bunch of countries with centralized police forces have an institute of ombudsman or other people representatives, whose operations are taxpayer-funded and provide free/cheap venues to someone who’s been wronged by the police or other authorities.

In the US alternatives seem to be

* reporting to internal affairs, which is kinda laughable and conflict-prone as that dept reports to the chief of police

* have a PR-worthy case appealing enough for ACLU or some law firm to take your case pro bono

* finance it yourself, unless it just so happens that your assets have been seized by the agency that wronged you, in which case it’s back to the other two

Edward Snowden points out the ridiculousness of his situation in “Permanent Record” - in a fair court trial NSA’s argument would be fair game, but his own counter-argument would disclose classified information and would therefore be inadmissible.

This type of case isn’t very clear cut, because a police officer is allowed to let somebody off with a warning. They’re obviously not allowed to let PBA members off as a blanked policy, but good luck proving that they’re doing it.

I worked with one police department once a long time ago that tried to institute a policy never letting police or police union member off with warnings. So if an officer stopped a car for an infraction, and found out the driver was police or a police union member, they had to give them a ticket for it. It was arguably pretty successful, especially since there were a lot of rumours that people were driving about with union cards trying to get tickets (no idea how true that was).

It seems it would take about 15 minutes for a signaling mechanism to emerge. Cars that had a particular shield sticker left of the license plate would not be stopped. (The display of such stickers would probably be protected speech.)

Which would take just about as long to catch on with the public as a way to avoid tickets.

There is no perfect system to address a problem like this. But if officers/union members know they’re at least as likely to avoid the possibility of leniency as they are to encourage it, then they are both less likely to commit traffic infringements to begin with and less likely to try corruptly weasel out of them.

I find it naive that people directly jump to policy design phase and start suggesting fixes. This framing implies that current policies are a result of not having thought any better at the time of enactment and simply fixing these codes will fix everything else. It is not like there is a shortage of policy experts and academics on these topics. They have had better ideas than any of us can slap together on a hacker forum.

I want to suggest another framing; some of the problems current policies give way might as well be features and not a bugs. It certainly has the desired consequences for certain stakeholders. The emotional reactions and lack thereof the public has based on the general impression police casts might as well be "working as intended". Without figuring out that link, designing the best policy solution will still achieve nothing.

I would make this same argument in some cases but this is something with a clear route to action and would be a single piece of legislation to implement. I wouldn't call enforcing existing laws and hold up the basic tenets of our system "jumping to policy design".

Yes I understand the current system benefits a lot of stakeholders. I directly acknowledge that in my post. Unless you are saying the police are going to coup the government to prevent passing legislation here than there isn't much they could do if you got support for this legislation.

> It should be 5 years minimum in federal prison. Police should recieve drastically stronger charges and sentences when they violate the law, not the other way around. If someone above was found to have known about it and didn't report it should be 2x.

This is an attempt at policy design. It sounds reasonable, but in all likelihood you are not an expert, which is important not because of credentials, but because it would have provided us with the expertise to make an informed decision. How much would it cost to implement and operate, paid by whom, at what percentage we would expect to see an improvement, by what target metric, would there be any side effects etc. Just because it seems like a clear route of action and a single piece of legislation doesn’t mean it is simple, and it doesn’t get a free pass because it sounds nice.

> Unless you are saying the police are going to coup the government to prevent passing legislation here than there isn't much they could do if you got support for this legislation

That is not about what the opposition could do, but again about the framing of the problem. Firstly, assuming police is your main opposition is overly simplistic and mostly wrong. Sure, police will be after their own self interest, but they are given that power because it aligns with other interests. Secondly, thinking that it is on us to debate and think about piecemeal legislations to fix things is already a sign of grave imbalance. You have a right to demand “think about this and fix it” from your policymakers, who already are in contact with an army of experts. The fact that you think it is on to you to take this action means whatever mechanism we use to choose and hold those policymakers accountable is drifting towards not working well. That is a more important root cause than any pet policy people feel passionate about. In fact, it is the perfect hangout for a false sense of agency and distraction, while things are rotten at a much much deeper level.

We think we are doing good by participating in democratic processes in this way, but parameters of our participation has been altered way before this particular issue. I suggest focusing on those higher order parameters than tweaking a variable here and there.

One could also advocate for truth and reconciliation with victims, alongside an amnesty for all past police crimes. Finding any kind of masterminds behind the current culture and bringing them to justice doesn’t feel tractable.

The situation sometimes feels bad enough to warrant drastic measures, though these feelings have increased a lot since I expatriated, but the linked article is also genuinely shocking.

I'm not convinced. Show me at least three examples where this works in an existing government jobs that matches the same criteria-- extreme risk, unpredictable situations, low pay, low appreciation.

Perhaps you could work as a police officer in the USA for a few years to get an authentic perspective. Based on your ideas, it seems like you're a large consumer of media narrative. There's no magic pill buddy.

I doubt harsher sentences or new policies will fix anything. I think what would be more effective is that the police see punishments for any wrongdoings at all, but that's not even my preferred strategies.

> Police should recieve drastically stronger charges and sentences when they violate the law, not the other way around.

The problem that most people are concerned with is implicit bias, which includes systemic racism. Corruption is important too but it’s a matter of probable intent where implicit bias is certainly not. That said be very explicit about which problem you wish solved in which priority because will not be solved in the same way.

The distinction is important because if police are to be held to a higher standard for ethics violations, such as anti-corruption, those standards cannot themselves be resultant from systemic bias, such as guilt by association, and achieve the outcome you are hoping for. It has to come from provable intent and legal common person standards (expectation of knowledge). Additionally there needs to be a clear distinction as to whether more aggressive anti-corruption is an enforcement action or a sentencing recommendation. That distinction bears its own second and third order consequences.

Getting that wrong to satisfy a hasty generalization will produce all kinds of unintended consequences not directly associated with policing.

No party would ever take this on. They might mumble something out of the corner of their mouth to get elected but politicians are way too scared of the police union.

This is not a problem with the US only and goes beyond systemic racism too, even though that's what's in focus right now.

> he frequently receives PBA cards as a thank-you for extending cops small business favors and deals

This is corruption. I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?

If this happened in the UK I'm fairly sure it would be raised in the press, then parliament and then the Home Secretary (in charge of policing) would be forced to make a statement and likely do something about it.

1.Plenty of Americans view enforcing traffic laws are nothing more than "a greedy gubbermint cash grab." For those participating, they view it as using corruption to avoid corruption.

2. You can't easily do something about it other than taking away police discretion. Unlike with a traditional bribe, where something is exchanged for something, you can't demonstrate that the person got off for the card compared to the officer just deciding to give them a break.

Can't you just ban the cards?

Mostly they are "secret". Edit: didn't read the article, but I still think they fly under the radar for the vast majority of people and they should absolutely be a career ender for Police to hand out. Sounds like low fruit for cleaning up America.

Sure, we'll just have the police arrest the police officers who give them out.

Silly response. If the cards were illegal people would absolutely be hesitant to flash them to a random cop.

It's too late. You are better off sending millions of them out to people (inflation).

But, it's not just the cards. Sherrifs also hand out their business cards to their buddies and tell them to flash that if they get pulled over, or firefighters and EMTs show their public service license cards when they hand over their wallet to an officer to get out of tickets. Same thing with the 11-99 license plate holders- donate to the police retirement union to get out of tickets! http://zo-d.com/stuff/automotive/1199-foundation-license-pla...

If the "cards" are banned, their still would be a system for insiders to show they have access to special benefits and treatment.

A different/related point - aren't (always on) body cameras taking away police discretion anyway?

I would have thought that they mostly take away the "rough em up" type of discretion. The public is fine with police giving warnings over fines in many cases. They are just upset when it is warning over fine along with the association card.

No. In many situations the officer has discretion to ignore an infraction, write a warning, or give a ticket. Many aspects of interactions between people and police officers are up to an officer’s discretion.

Cops can turn them on and off, and no.

Plenty of Americans that don't run in these corruption circles view traffic laws and other intermittently enforced laws as a tool to hassle "undesirables".

I've always said traffic laws mostly encourage a disregard for the law. I think they should set things like speed limits high enough that there is no reason to break them. They are LIMITS, not normal speed. Maybe post a recommended speed too.

If someone breaks the speed limit it should be 30 day license suspension and impounding their vehicle.

> I think they should set things like speed limits high enough that there is no reason to break them.

I mean... that's not why the limit is there. The limit isn't "how fast can you possibly go without feeling out of control", it's "how fast can you possibly safely go". Are they still operating with 20th century cars in mind? Yeah, but it's hard to argue that a school zone should be 60 MPH.

Yeah, but it's hard to argue that a school zone should be 60 MPH.

Most people who complain about speed limits are complaining about freeways, not surface streets.

You clearly don't live in a community that likes putting 25 mph signs all over the place.

We already have pretty draconian enforcement in school zones. And I am arguing for how safe can you safely go, it's just way too low.

I've heard that it's not the absolute velocity on a freeway that's the issue, but instead the relative velocity of all drivers. A speed limit that all can comfortably hit keeps that to within a much more narrow band than a speed limit that some wouldn't be able to comfortably hit.

At least in Germany it seems that people routinely drive 100km/h on the same road as people doing 250, and they have fewer fatalities per passenger mile than we do in the US.

I would guess it has something to do with the strict adherence to the keep right/pass left rule.

Safe speed varies with weather, time of day, and even the flow of traffic. There's no one number that's going to apply to a given stretch of road all the time.

Probably not feasible to do this for every speed limit sign in the country, but there are already variable signs on places like mountain passes that change with the weather and traffic.

> Safe speed varies with weather, time of day, and even the flow of traffic

And by car! A truck or an older SUV will have a far worse breaking distance and does not corner well compared to any sports car or sedan. So even assuming you a perfect situational analysis, you still could not post an exact limit.

Some freeways have two limits, one for semi trucks, one for the rest of traffic. Something like that could be extended to lanes, along with prohibitions (which already exist) of towed trailers in faster lanes.

we don't need the limits, just post the recommended speed. then for any extreme case, it's up to the officer to prove reckless endangerment, which is what speed limits were ostensibly designed to prevent (though practically, it's served many interests, including fuel rationing in the 70s).

So you don't think we have enough selective enforcement already?

It's much better to have selective enforcement of a law that says "this is a judgement call" than to have selective enforcement of a law that says "this is a crime".

The latter is literally encouraging the populace to commit crimes. The latter is hard to challenge the selectivity of in court because it is theoretically strict liability. The latter results in the unelected enforcement officials making up the criteria entirely instead of being given criteria by the elected officials.

no, i'm saying reduce instances of selective enforcement by reducing ineffective and needless laws. reckless endangerment is already a crime that's selectively enforced.

> They are LIMITS, not normal speed.

In the UK, many drivers view them as targets. Driving under the limit will often lead to tailgating. Especially in overtaking lanes.

That is by design, at least in some places.

In Australia, for example, at least when I got my license, you were explicitly told that you are

"required to drive at the maximum possible speed that is: within the posted limit, appropriate for the weather and road conditions, and within your ability to maintain safe control of the vehicle".

I agree and want to add that bad traffic laws can even cause more injury and death. There's research on speed limits that shows that they don't influence actual speeds all that much, people generally drive at what they think is a reasonable speed[0] regardless. But some people do follow them very strictly.

So on roads with speed limits that are far too low you get people driving together at very different speeds, which results in more accidents.

[0] I can't find the source right now but IIRC in one of the experiments they increased the speed limit by 5 mph on a highway, but the speeds driven only increased by 1 mph.

>I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?

Police unions and a strong pro-police "thin blue line" culture.

We have unions in other countries too, they don't endorse or organize corruption/nepotism/bribery, or the appearance of such.

Most European countries have a general police inspection and the unions are not as strong, and there are no 'federal employee' protections like the USA does.

Most police aren't federal employees and thus have no "Federal employee protection".

Good catch. what's the situation of ordinary policeman?

If you have tenure, and you don't cross the thin blue line, you are untouchable. Your local police union can absolutely ruin a local politician's career[1], and in general, make life hell for your city, so most of the politicians don't try to rock the boat.

When they do, they discover that the police, despite being employees of the city will just refuse to do what they are told. Sheriffs magically turn into constitutional scholars, and start unilaterally choosing what laws to enforce[2], start blatantly violating the city's bylaws, and instructions from the mayor[3], and when pushed in the only way they can be hurt (The budget), engage in malicious compliance.

Picking a fight with the police union is generally speaking, not a politically savvy move.

[1] Mostly by doing a deliberately poor job in the district they represent, and being incredibly vocal that the reason they are doing a poor job, is because the politician is causing them problems.

[2] A number of sheriffs across the country made it clear that they won't issue Covid mask/gathering citations, despite state and local law, because the law is an obvious violation of... Some constitutional amendment that they can't name.

[3] After weeks of violence, Seattle city council banned the use of crowd control weapons. The SPD celebrated the very next day by gassing and blast-balling crowds.

I can see how dismantling a police force by firing everyone, and starting from scratch is a non-trivial task.

It would also probably be illegal in Seattle, due to the consent decree. [1]

[1] The SPD has been under federal censure by the Department of Justice for the past 8 years, due to fragrant constitutional violations, excessive use of force, racist behaviour, lack of accountability, and a pattern of disciplinary failures. Because of this decree, federal permission is necessary for any large policy changes to be made to the department.

Firing it, and starting from scratch would almost certainly qualify as a 'large policy change'. And, ah, the current administration has made it very clear as to where it stands on these sorts of questions.

This whole thread is like part of a crazy Batman themed nightmare to me

Lucrative.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-06/lapd-laf...

http://lacity.payroll.finance.socrata.com/#!/year/2018

Here's a good article [1] on some of the differences between classical workers' unions and American police unions. Many reasons but a few takeaways:

"... the agendas of police unions mostly reflect the interests of the institution (the police department) rather than those of the working class."

"Labor unions exist to protect people; police exist to protect property."

[1]: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-know-police-unions-l...

Unions don't necessarily exist to protect people. They protect members. Which is an important distinction.

Just in our area there was a case where the longshore union organized slowdowns at the docks that eventually made them lose their contract with the only shipper in the area.

What they were fighting for? Stealing two jobs from another union: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/11/29/longshore-union-faces-...

> Unions don't necessarily exist to protect people. They protect members. Which is an important distinction.

This is a point of contention between unions. Some (especially the traditional trade unions like the one you mention) see themselves as exclusively representing their current members. Others (typically the newer service industry unions like SEIU) see themselves as promoting the interests of a particular category of workers, whether currently members or not.

Police unions are fundamentally different from other forms of organized labor. No other union is composed of members who hold the legal monopoly on violence.

It’s the government that holds the monopoly on violence, not the police.

And the government in turn delegates that to the. What other profession can you kill an unarmed man and be back home for dinner the same day?

> What other profession can you kill an unarmed man and be back home for dinner the same day?

Doctor/surgeon? I think most of their patients are unarmed, hehe :)

Joke aside, police outside the US generally can't do that either.

Lots of machine operating professions?

Well, their authority to kill comes from the gov’t, not the police force itself.

If they kill someone they shouldn’t, then they get in trouble (yes, I know not always).

To the point that an aberration of the US flag is considered the preferred symbol of display for some: https://www.npr.org/local/305/2019/11/04/776060800/barring-o... .

> This is corruption. I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?

Because "police" in the USA can mean a lot of things, from county Sheriff, to city police to state police to FBI or one of the other 2 dozen armed federal agencies. It's a patchwork. There's no central authority to enforce some kind of standard of behavior.

Yet there is a central authority involved in this problem: the Fraternal Order of Police. It is that Fraternity that accepted, and made common, these "courtesy cards" as a way of business. The corruptive rot clearly has centralizing forces. The FOP and the police unions have the ability to combat them centrally and presumably enforce a higher standard of behavior, if they wanted to, just as they had a hand in creating the corruptions in the first place. If they wanted to fight it (they probably don't).

Excellent point. I should have written "central authority that's accountable to the citizens and other branches of government".

Keep in mind this happens most other places in the world too. The police force is generally a corrupt force. It's just not as obvious and not spoken about as much.

Also keep in mind police force generally targets minorities more. So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption. But it's there.

As a brown person, my worst experiences with cops was in UK and Germany. When I tell people this they're quick to dismiss it by "This shit doesn't happen here"

> So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption.

I don't buy this. There are plenty of ethnically homogeneous countries that also has rampant police corruption (e.g. in Eastern Europe), and there are tons of other parameters that affect police corruption overall. We can't single out presence of minorities as a factor.

I believe the key word there is "see". Without obvious targets, from the outside all you see is everyday activities, even if that includes bribes and preferences, because that is how it's always treated from the inside.

On the other hand, you can always find a disliked minority somewhere. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-e...

hmm, when I hear "Eastern Europe", I don't think "ethnically homogeneous", I think "substantial Roma minority".

I'm quite confident the police don't treat them particularly well, either.

You have no idea.

Brown lives does not matter in Eastern Europe. Only thing that saves their lives is that gun ownership is not popular and cops cannot claim that they felt threatened. Beatings though...

> hmm, when I hear "Eastern Europe", I don't think "ethnically homogeneous", I think "substantial Roma minority".

What first comes to our minds doesn't constitute data, and is prone to create availability bias.

Percentage of Roma for several Eastern European countries are; Bosnia And Herzegovina: 0.36% (2013), Serbia 2.1% (2011), Macedonia 2.7% (2002), Albania 0.6% (2011), Croatia 0.4% (2011), Ukraine 0.3% (2001). There is no substantial Roma minority, in fact Roma is usually one of the smallest among other minorities in these countries.

For several more:

Bulgaria: 10.3%, Romania: 8.3%, Slovakia, 9.2%.

This same source has Serbia's percentage as 8.2%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Contemporary_iss...

I would call these numbers substantial. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve picked my numbers from each of these countries’ censuses, whereas your source claims an estimate, and I cannot verify their methodology because source of that table takes me to an unrelated telegraph.co.uk article (likely a bug in the wikipedia article).

Either way, if the OPs hypothesis is true, we should see a change in corruption levels with minority percentages. I’m not an expert in Eastern European criminology, but I highly doubt that is the case. There might as well be Eastern European countries with substantial Roma population, for some definition of “substantial”, but that doesn’t change my original point that high cultural homogeniety and high police corruption definiely does co-occur.

> Keep in mind this happens most other places in the world too.

Citation needed.

In central Europe it works slightly differently. When stopped by police and getting ticket, you can decide not to pay it on the spot and instead send the infraction to administrative proceedings. There you have chance to dispute the ticket at the cost of risking higher ticket (to cover the cost of proceedings) if found that you really committed the infraction. But if you have friends either at police or at the office which handles the proceedings, you can ask them to pull a few strings, and the ticket simply disappears/gets time-barred/... But at least it's not as brazen as these "courtesy cards". Also your "friends" will usually have influence only locally, to cover up something in different city will be much more complicated.

EDIT: Also forgot to mention that cops here know not to bother car with "nice" licence plate numbers, interestingly enough, even though the numbers should be random, there is a class of people who tend to get them disproportionally often...

The US takes localism to extremes in order to preserve historic fiefdoms and injustices.

The stated desire is to prevent government abuse of powers by keeping the governments small and limiting the powers of the larger ones, but if you look at actions rather than words, it's less about restricting government and more about preserving existing power structures.

Reconstruction is one of the most egregious examples.

Yeah because our federal government is some grand example of honesty and good governance.

By comparison: yes, for the most part, the federal government is such an example. It's by no means perfect but, yeah, for the most part it works pretty well and relatively honestly. Always room for improvement--but the critical difference is that, when it is not, there are ways to expose the need for improvement and to push change that will not, full stop, ever even start at local and even state levels.

And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.

The federal government may do its current job well but that doesn't imply it can do a better job at local governance than... local government. I'm thankful that no Kentucky voters are able to make decisions about my city, for example.

There are real benefits to small local government. Yes, there are also problems but that doesn't mean the system is wrong fundamentally. This sword cuts both ways.

Again, this is a canard. Local government in some areas have been shown to make bad decisions that trample on explicit and enumerated rights (rather than the arbitrary or vague "rights" that are conjured to impede reform).

Speaking broadly, and particularly of the late 20th century, when the federal government has stepped in to unilaterally overrule state and local government, it has been on the right side of history. There are, of course, a number of infamous exceptions, but the fact that I would likely be unable to converse with you w/o the federal gov't's historic interventions speaks loudly to their efficacy in suh matters.

The hierarchy is a confounding factor. I imagine you could cite the opposite situation happening if the hierarchy was flat. However, e.g., no local government stepped in to end US-sanctioned torture chiefly because the hierarchy doesn't allow it, not because local governments were all pro-torture. It seems clear throughout the arc of history that people generally want the right things— when it's important to speak out people have historically done so. Their membership in any particular governmental body isn't the impetus, but rather probably confers a varying degree of disadvantage because of perverse incentives to their continued hold of power.

That local government also tramples rights is more an argument for checks and balances than a reversal of federalism.

Local gov't trades reach and power for proximity and savvy. This manifests as fairly equal amounts of influence from each level of the "hierarchy".

I think it's funny that you would use torture as your example, considering that several municipalities (most infamously Chicago and its PD) have been caught torturing suspects and have been placed under federal watch if not control in order to curb their abuses.

What's important about federal oversight is that it is accountability. The ultimate fact is that few institutions, let alone local ones with limited budgets and moral hazards/incestuous conflicts of interest galore, are capable of effectively policing themselves.

Sure but my point is just that we still need local government and there are real benefits to small government. I agree there are also benefits to federal oversight but I don't believe that more federal power or control would continue to be beneficial. The balance is important and I prefer as much power concentrated as close to me where I have a chance to influence it.

Well, that's a preference, not an argument. I would prefer not to be held captive by the cultural inertia of former slaveholding and/or union-busting local government, and appreciate the assistance of far-flung compatriots in ridding us of their residual insults to individual and collective dignity.

Yeah I disagree that you can effect real change on a national level without first proving the ideas on a smaller scale. Local governments can be progressive as well as oppressive. I don't pretend to know what people halfway across the country know. I don't want specific input into their lives.

Say what you will about Minneapolis city government, at least it never invaded any foreign lands and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Well, except at the beginning.

Well, Tulsa may not have invaded foreign lands, or killed hundreds of thousands of people, but scaled to the size of the locale...

It is likely that you can compare the federal government to specific muni/state governments favorably, but against the sum of muni/state governments, it's a wash.

> It's by no means perfect but, yeah, for the most part it works pretty well and relatively honestly.

Its current primary function appears to be taking in tax dollars from regular middle class people and transferring them to corporate campaign donors and special interest groups, or whatever the people in swing districts want to the detriment of everybody else. That this may not legally be corruption doesn't mean that it's doing something good or that we wouldn't be better off on net if it would simply stop doing that.

> Always room for improvement--but the critical difference is that, when it is not, there...

...is nowhere to hide because whatever harm or corruption is implemented at the national level can't be avoided by moving to another neighborhood or another city.

> And even were it not: the unquestioned (and, tbh, often profoundly racist when not merely corrupt) localized governmental structures in question are still wrong, so attempting to sandbag criticism of them by pointing at the federal government, regardless of its status, smells a mite bit fishy.

When something is wrong and someone proposes as a solution something that not only doesn't remove the problem but actually makes it worse, they're not saying that the problem isn't a problem, they're saying that the "solution" isn't a solution.

If you look at the federal budget, most of it goes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. So by the numbers, the federal government's primary function is to take money from working people, and transfer it to the states and the retired.

Transferring money "to the states" while requiring them to not only spend it in a specific way but add even more money to that pot first if they want to get it at all is in reality transferring money from the states.

And given that Florida is disproportionately retirees and a major swing state, all you're doing is proving the point.

I would argue that whatever the USA is doing is working.

The USA has substantially lower taxes and higher salaries, including for the poorest, than the rest of the Western world.

The USA policeforce seems focused on policing, whereas Police Forces in countries like the UK spend time monitoring online behavior whilst ignoring child grooming gangs.

Its also interesting that in the original article, the examples listed are mundane traffic offenses, and the only serious abuse is entirely fictional - from the Sorpranos.

"The USA policeforce seems focused on policing"

In my experience, they seem mostly focused on figuring out how much time they can get paid for standing around chatting. Others experiences vary, but I don't know many people who would put "policing" high on the list of things US Police focus on.

The people involved are getting a huge benefit and there is no reason to report it. Others who don't receive the benefit either don't know about it or are shouted down.

There is a culture in the US that the police are pristine warriors of justice and any accusations of wrong-doing are denied and ignored. There are also many laws that specifically protect LEO and government officials in general because there is a natural ethos that everyone working for The Good is always Good and whatever Bad they did must have been in the duty and service to The Good. Immunity is easy to achieve when the entire legal system wants you to be immune as a class and we are currently having a debate about qualified immunity regarding police in the US.

In my view it is the entire system that is corrupt. A fish rots from its head as they say.

I think the bigger problem is that the general population does not want the law enforced.

There is also a sentiment that there are so many laws on the books that there is nothing wrong with breaking them or LEO letting people off the hook.

If the average person is good and still commits "3 felonies a day", then it is easy to believe that LEO is giving people a reprieve from systemic injustice, opposed to carrying out injustice.

Nobody shames an individual who get out of a speeding ticket with a warning, when the individual was randomly selected from 10,000 other speeders the same road that day.

I agree with your sentiment, but clearly "the bigger problem" is that the system is corrupt.

You don't get one without the other. The collection of all laws is such that even, consistent application would be untenable. That which cannot work, doesn't; instead, enforcement becomes selective. At that point, you're doomed; your system only works by being a system "...of people, not laws".

I disagree.

I think this type corruption is inevitable when you have legal system where the police are responsible for arbitrarily enforcing the law on an arbitrary subset of offenders.

If you remove or universally enforce the law, the grey area for this type of corruption will go away.

Sure the system is corrupt, but selective enforcement is how corruption happens. Remove the mechanism and there stops being anything to be corrupt over. If everyone got pulled over and ticketed for speeding, every time, it would be impossible to e.g. pull over black drivers disproportionately, or give a warning in exchange for a PBA card.

Or charged for rioting and looting

> If the average person is good and still commits "3 felonies a day", then it is easy to believe that LEO is giving people a reprieve from systemic injustice, opposed to carrying out injustice.

It’s the same people arguing for maximal support of the police (e.g. to beat the shit out of people for no reason, to confiscate innocent people’s cash and just keep it, to threaten people with made up charges and get them to sign false confessions, to fabricate evidence, to illegally stalk and harass anti-police-brutality activists, etc., and suffer no consequences) and arguing that friends of the police shouldn’t get punished for their infractions if they have the special card. (And also the same people arguing against both things.)

More realistically, the little “courtesy cards” are a result of tribalism and corruption, and have nothing whatsoever to do with “systemic injustice”.

I think you misunderstood my point and I don't see any contradiction.

I am saying that the general public is not very offended by "courtesy cards" because they think the law is bad to begin with.

If I don't think speeding and jaywalking should be a crime, I certainly don't care about people using cards to get off the hook for these crimes.

I see this as a separate issue from police brutality, confiscation, ect.

The people promoting these courtesy cards have absolutely no problem with speeding and jaywalking being crimes, and in fact are proponents of police discretion to e.g. constantly pull black people over and give them tickets for made up infractions just for the fun of it. It isn’t the “friends and family” of the police who want to end stop-and-frisk, decriminalize minor drug offenses, end cash bail, stop funding police departments from speed traps, ....

You have diametrically misunderstood the point of the “3 felonies a day” book/argument, and you are shoehorning it in here to confidently promote your pet theory, without evidence.

>The people promoting these courtesy cards have absolutely no problem with speeding and jaywalking being crimes, and in fact are proponents of police discretion

I agree on both counts. They are proponents of police discretion to let them off for crimes they dont want to be charged for, and have no problem with it.

>to e.g. constantly pull black people over and give them tickets for made up infractions just for the fun of it. It isn’t the “friends and family” of the police who want to end stop-and-frisk, decriminalize minor drug offenses, end cash bail, stop funding police departments from speed traps, ...

I disagree and dont know where you are getting this from. The characters in the article clearly wanted to get off the hook themselves, but that doesnt mean they want to see minorities targeted and abused. I want to get off the hook when stopped for speeding, but that doesnt mean I want police to be shooting and terrorizing minorities.

>You have diametrically misunderstood the point of the “3 felonies a day” book/argument, and you are shoehorning it in here to confidently promote your pet theory, without evidence.

Again, I disagree. The point of the book is that everyone is a criminal and LEO can currently use their discretion to go after anyone they choose to. MY POINT, is that by making 100% of citizens criminals, we have eroded public support for the enforcement of the law. Those who get get caught for everyday crimes are considered unlucky, and those who get off the hook are celebrated. We should enforce the laws we have uniformly, and get rid of the ones we don't want. This is far superior to unwanted laws on the books and rarely enforcing them hoping we wont be affected. Infrequently enforced laws are terrible for a number of reasons, but a big one is that those without power and connections are the ones who are most likely to be affected.

Only exempting your friends isn't making a stand against unjust laws though, it's still just corruption.

I totally agree, bit it is the kind of corruption that most people are ok with, which makes it particularly insidious.

I'm not saying lawbreakers or corrupt police are freedom fighters, just that the root cause is garbage laws which neither the police or citizens believe in.

The "3 felonies a day" are mostly stuff like copyright infringement, not rapes, murders, etc. Though there are a few obscure laws like those protecting endangered species that might prevent you from, say, picking up a feather you found outside on the ground, this isn't something that's normally going to get a person in trouble, just the kind of thing that makes for shocking headlines.

I don't think anyone is getting out of rape or murder with a courtesy card. The article talks about crimes like driving on the shoulder, expired registration, ect.

I'm not sure if the courtesy cards will get you out of a copyright infringement either...

I agree with both of you, I just wanted to keep in mind what sort of felonies the book is talking about.

I think the bigger problem is that the general population does not want the law enforced

They want the law enforced against people who don’t look like them.

See the “War on Drugs” vs. “Drug Abuse is a Disease” when it hit “rural America”.

I think this is mostly right, but I don't think there are many arguing that police are universally good or perfect as much as (1) they have a hard job and (2) we should be more focused on violent offenders than police corruption.

I'm certainly not advocating for these arguments, but I believe it's important to accurately understand that which you fight against.

I think you're right, but the excuses probably vary by location. In my area (which has very low petty traffic law enforcement), people do argue that cops are all good, usually with appeals to "the rule of law". I often wonder if this is seen as identical to "the rule of law enforcement". Mentioning the compliance rate with the speed limit (or gun control, for that matter) just makes them angry and the discussion ends. Mentioning nonviolent crimes like cannabis possession is usually met with a claim that drugs require violence, followed by the same anger as they shut down. There's a lot of discordant opinions held about police, at least near me.

I suspect a lot of the counterproductive emotional reactions are a result of the fact that so much force is involved, but I'm not sure how to mitigate that.

I don't doubt your experiences at all, but my suspicion is that people are articulating their positions poorly, and their anger and defensiveness is explained by a frustration at their own inability to adequately articulate and defend their position.

Usually when I disarmingly unpack the "rule of law" issue with people, their argument is more akin to "if we crack down on police, then it will empower criminals" which is a different disagreement than whether all cops are good or all cops are bad. Their argument is perhaps more aptly described as "we have to choose between mostly good cops and mostly bad criminals and we'd rather take the former". They would rather police rough up a few protesters if it means dissuading rioters from burning the neighborhood down.

Of course, I firmly believe we can have our cake and eat it too--after all, better policing seems to exist in Europe, but it takes some faith and imagination, especially when I'm honest with myself about the ways in which we differ from Europe (wealth inequality, diversity, corruption, 2A rights, etc). I'm a pretty educated, articulate person who has thought a lot about these issues. I can certainly appreciate how the every-man would see things differently.

I think that means it's incumbent upon us to communicate a vision of things working properly that addresses our unique challenges, and I certainly don't blame people for failing to be persuaded by the riots, protests, and generally demeaning rhetoric.

> why is this tolerated?

Cynically, the answer is "what are you going to do about it, punk?"

Optimistically, this kind of "friendly-corruption" benefits everyone who participates.

Isn't this true for unfriendly corruption as well?

At the expense of everyone else.

Only as long as you believe that mutually beneficial transactions don’t exist and networking is worthless.

Is there any other kind of corruption? Of course participants of corruption benefit, otherwise they wouldn't participate.

Yes, corruption where you are denied something that you are entitled to unless you pay a bribe. You are no better off than how you should be at the end and are out some money.

- who is allowed to participate.

> then the Home Secretary (in charge of policing) would be forced to make a statement and likely do something about it.

I mean, I would think they'd be forced to resign, in practice.

The state of policing in the UK took a considerable amount of work.

https://theconversation.com/northern-irelands-police-transfo...

> This is corruption. I've never understood how things like this can happen in the US - why is this tolerated?

I think it shows that a sizable portion of the citizenry considers this acceptable. I.e., they're enamored with the idea of getting preferential treatment for themselves or their friends, with little regard for the implications. It makes me figuratively (and a bit literally) want to vomit.

> I think it shows that a sizable portion of the citizenry considers this acceptable.

That only makes sense if you assume a sizable portion of the citizenry knows about it.

I think people assume that cops are imperfect and let people off if they know them, or feel like it (the average hetero male cop probably lets disproportionately more pretty girls off with a warning), but that as a judgement call it's hard to alter (and there are good reasons to allow judgement calls). That it's often formalized and systematized into cards that are given out is another thing entirely, and I think you need to prove the average person knows it's happening before you can use it as evidence as to how average people feel.

> That only makes sense if you assume a sizable portion of the citizenry knows about it.

Are you kidding? At least growing up in the 90s every teenager knew about PBA cards and any kid with cops in their family would eagerly whip out their collection of PBA cards for bragging rights. There were even different levels of cards, associated with different levels of officer you had connections too.

I was honestly surprise to see this as 'news' since at least where I grew up this was widely known.

> Are you kidding? At least growing up in the 90s every teenager knew about PBA cards and any kid with cops in their family would eagerly whip out their collection of PBA cards for bragging rights.

Have you considered that it might be affected by locale, and be more prevalent in some areas than others? I grew up in the 80's and 90's, and I never heard of this and have never seen a card.

What makes you think your experiences with this when you were a teenager scale to everyone in the United States?

And growing up in the 90's, this just entirely wasn't a thing in my area. Instead of a codified system of cards, our local PD just had a car sticker they gave out to families of officers.

Well, the Home Secretary would probably be forced to announce an inquiry, which might report over a decade later, long after said Home Secretary's political career was over.

Consider for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry

« In 2012 Theresa May had commissioned Mark Ellison QC to review allegations of corruption » « The Undercover Policing Inquiry or Pitchford Inquiry … is due to report back in 2023 »

Nonsense. That’s investigating thousands of investigations that took place over 40 years, with many questions and issues.

Whether ‘get out of jail free’ cards are acceptable is a yes/no question.

Yet no one says anything about turning London into a police state. Are the press still on top of this story?

I think you need to be clearer on what you mean by "police state" before anyone can answer that.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/police

Camera network.

Then https://www.theguardian.com/world/surveillance is a better 'topic search' for The Guardian.

This year seems to have had less focus on Britain, and more on problems abroad.

It happens because the general public, as well as LEO, don't believe that many of the laws on the book should be enforced.

As far as I am aware, nobody thinks LEO is letting murders go as a favor. For example, 90% of Americans ignore posted speed limits, as do LEO. When someone gets a speeding ticket, it seems bad luck and unfair. This makes it seem more acceptable for LEO to let someone off the hook.

In the US, the police are essentially an occupying force with their own agenda that they pursue. At times it aligns with the agenda of broader society, but at times not. Because the police know not to mess with the "wrong" people, and because they're generally very well regarded by society, the police unions have considerable power, such that elected officials are often terrified to reign them in. A good example of this is NYC where hundreds of cops turned their backs on the mayor and basically accused him of stoking violence against the police after he was mildly critical of them. This was a huge news story[1], and the mayor has refrained from criticism since then.

1: https://time.com/3644168/new-york-police-de-blasio-wenjian-l...

I think it's corruption too, but I have to roll my eyes at "If this happened in the UK..."

The police, and city councils, in the UK have tacitly permitted, for decades, systematic child rape as seen in the Rotterham grooming scandal [1] and numerous others throughout the country. How can you suggest that cops wouldn't look the other way for minor infractions when there are countless examples of them ignoring obscene and severe crimes of the worst sort against the most vulnerable?

I don't want this to come off as a "my country is better than yours" but at the same time, I don't think using the UK police as an example of anything to aspire to is a good idea.

1 -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_explo...

That’s absolute bollocks. The uk police has oversight from the IOPC and you can read all about the ongoing conduct investigation for that cherry picked example here https://policeconduct.gov.uk/news/independent-investigation-...

Cherry picked? The "see also" section lists another 6 "grooming gang" scandals across the country and I have no reason to think that's comprehensive. UK police permitting the organized rape of children seems the norm rather than the exception from what I can tell.

The fact that there is an investigation decades after the fact doesn't really negate what I've written.

My point isn't really about the grooming gang scandals though. My point is: UK police look the other way for the crime of child rape, why should I believe they don't look the other way for minor infractions?

How can a city that small be that fucked up?

> "The failure to address the abuse was attributed to ... fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations"

Defund the police for being too worried about racism to do their job. Wait ... what?

Are you saying these acts were encouraged by police unions and widely supported by police and their families nationwide and that it was widely reported about, known about and continued to take place?

When it was widely reported in the press, the public were disgusted and the government took action.

I’m not saying that the UK police are perfect, or the UK is better than the US. Just that this kind of systematic, widespread behaviour that many/most people find unacceptable would be stopped.

Your outrage reminds me of the "bribery scandal" of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Somebody "exposed" an extensive system of bribes made to officials who would vote on the host city for the Olympics. Every night more allegations of the scandal were reported with proper shock and outrage.

It was a bit of a head scratcher for me. I remember, for example, when it was uncovered that one official had been gifted a very expensive custom-made shotgun. The news anchor was very solemn in reporting this outrageous misdeed. Rewind 9 or 11 months earlier and the exact same anchor was cheerfully reporting a public ceremony in which a visiting Olympic dignitary was presented with a gift from the organizing committee formed to win the bid. It was a happy day filled with optimism and hope for what might soon be. Lots of flash bulbs. That publicly-presented token of good will was the custom-made shotgun.

The issue there is that the custom-made shotgun should be considered a gift to the Olympic organization as an organization, not to the official personally. The official could even display the shotgun in their office. Then, when they left that office, the shotgun stays behind, and doesn't become part of their personal collection.

My point was that we all observe blatant corruption all the time. Very often, we don't even think about it until somebody calls it out.

Here's another example: When was the last time you saw a big shiny 4-door 4x4 with a company placard hauling a boat on a weekend? The company placard is for a construction company or something that is unrelated to towing boats on non-business days. Does it even register with you that this is probably committing some kind of tax or business impropriety? The truck is written off as a business expense, but its main purpose is personal. Do you even care? Does anybody care? Probably not too many who pass the boat doing 10 miles over the speed limit. Probably not the LEO who passes the people passing the boat. Probably not the guy at the marina who notices that the registration on the boat is expired, but sells beer to the 20ish-year-old kid driving the truck without ID.

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

Letting some people get away with speeding and other minor crimes isn't seen as an corruption, or something that needs to be stopped. It is also still up to the police to make the decision either way, they can still give you a ticket, flashing a PBA card could make some situations worse.

The closest thing to it in the UK is that traffic police would put "Black Rat" stickers on their personal cars. Of course, it didn't take very long for members of the public to find out what the stickers meant and for people who had nothing to do with the police to start making and selling them- by all accounts they don't really work any more, and haven't for years.

The level of police corruption is much, much higher in many other countries. Why are you singling the US out?

What the actual fuck ?

From an outside-the-US perspective, the stack of “Things I’d never believe about the USA, please, Alex” is just getting higher and higher.

How is it legal to have preferential treatment, no matter under what circumstances, for ‘friends of the police’? Is Lady Liberty not famously blind while balancing the scales of justice ? Does the maxim “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done” somehow not apply in the USA ?

Over the last few years, it seems to me the rock that used to be the USA has been overturned, and all the slimy creepy little nasties are being exposed to the harsh light of day. What happens in a few months is going to be critical to the soul of your nation. Get it right, I doubt you’ll recover if you don’t.

I assure you, “friend of the police” cards have been going on for more than a few years. And from what my military friends tell me, handing a cop your military ID tends to work just as well.

In some communities other memberships can also hold sway. I remember one person mentioning some sort of scouting membership getting him out of a traffic stop.

I was told an Eagle Scout card might have the same effect, but it seemed.. un-Eagly to try.

I got out of a speeding ticket once because the officer was into the classic car I was driving.

The officer puts you in a category within seconds of meeting you - citizen, perp or 'blue line'. Their response depends upon this judgement call.

My son the disable vet could not seem to get a ticket. He occasionally speeds, not egregiously, but the Fort Benning parking sticker on his truck window and the military ID in his wallet made a difference in the attitude of the officer.

In my city, you'll sometimes see people riding around with the official cap or bumper sticker of the police union on the back of their car. It's no mystery why.

Is it really that surprising that ingratiating yourself to someone who has power or resources on average makes you better off? Nothing about this has anything to do with police.

You get a "baker's dozen" because the baker likes you.

No, you get it because the baker doesn't want to risk getting caught for selling short weight, if the individual items happen to be slightly undersized.

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/Bakers-dozen.html

Neat! I never knew the actual origin. But since we don’t flog bakers anymore I think my point stands in modern times — I know it’s only time I’ve ever gotten a baker’s dozen.

The baker isn’t in charge of enforcing laws. Nor is the baker given a gun by the state with the expectation of using it.

There is a big, bright line between “favors for valued customers” and “corruption”.

But we’re not talking about bright line corruption here. We’re talking about police being nicer and more lenient to their in-groups: veterans, other cops, emts, firefighters, personal friends, family, politicians they like, police union reps, the clerk at the Dunkin’ Donuts that always adds a shot of espresso on the house.

The cards are literally corruption and bleh, but being friendly with the cops (or anyone) getting you special treatment sometimes is a human thing.

> But we’re not talking about bright line corruption here.

Yes, we are. A public official doing a law-related favor for someone based on their group affiliation is exactly what corruption is.

> being friendly with the cops (or anyone) getting you special treatment sometimes is a human thing.

That is not a universe anyone should have to live in. If you miss out on an extra baked good because you're not buddies with the baker, it's no big deal. If a cop treats you more harshly because you're not a friend of the police, that is a big deal.

Bakers can't deprive you of your life and freedom. Cops can.

Again, cops are capable of depriving you of life and liberty. There is a big difference between getting favorable treatment by your baker, and by the armed representative of the state.

We got let off with a warning because I have USAA insurance, even though it’s because my father is ex military.

> And from what my military friends tell me, handing a cop your military ID tends to work just as well.

Not literally handing it over, but I've seen this work a few times growing up.

A relative started getting pulled over a lot for speeding right after he bought a red car. Solution: he’s an ex-Marine so he bought a USMC number plate surround (not even one of the custom plates that require proof that you’re a veteran!). Problem stops just as quickly as it started.

> Is Lady Liberty not famously blind while balancing the scales of justice ?

No, in two ways

First, that lass with the scales is Justice not Liberty.

Second she doesn't always wear a blindfold, the depictions of her vary considerably in that regard, and there's a good chance there's a depiction of Justice near near you where she can see perfectly well.

And Justice is holding something important in her other hand, which artists (and perhaps other people symbolically) sometimes forget.

Liberty is the one with the book and the torch.

You're right, but missing all the points. Or just deciding to not talk about them.

Police could also put certain license plates into a database that means they don't have to pay tolls. https://www.ocregister.com/2009/11/12/special-license-plates...

See also the CHP 11-99 Foundation license plate frame which djmobley posted about in this thread.

I think the legal theory is that for many minor crimes, the individual officer has personal discretion to decide if they give a fine or just a warning.

You don't want every jaywalker dragged into jail "on principle".

It's probably true in most countries that if the cop likes you, you can get away with much more than if they don't. But this brazen selling of "freebies" does seem uniquely american.

> You don't want every jaywalker dragged into jail "on principle".

Why not?

Because the police force would spend approximately 100% of its time writing jaywalking citations and courts would spend approximately 100% of its time dealing with the administration of jaywalking offenses.

I think a charitable way to think about it is that jaywalking can sometime be a serious threat to public safety but most of the time its harmless. So we have a law against jaywalking in general but in practice its more like a law against jaywalking that causes a breach of public safety. But the latter condition is hard/impossible to really codify so in practice the best way to deal with it is just make a law against jaywalking and then make the second condition discretionary on the part of law enforcement. It is of course abused frequently (police may be much more likely to hassle minorities or people who "look suspect") but I'm not sure the alternatives would be better on net

My opinion is that a law that should not be enforced uniformly should then not be a law at all.

Agree that jaywalking can be a threat to public safety. The law, as written, should account for that. "A pedestrian shall not cross a public road outside of a crosswalk intended for pedestrians, unless it is safe to do so." Yes, there's then a bit of wiggle room where a cop and jaywalker can disagree on what is and is not safe. But at least that's something you can argue in court, and the cop needs to argue why it wasn't safe, while the pedestrian needs to argue why it was.

As it is now, if you get a jaywalking ticket, you probably got one not because you were doing something unsafe, but because a cop didn't like how you looked; no cop is going to waste their time on a jaywalking ticket unless they have an axe to grind. But what is this pedestrian to do? Go in front of a judge and say, "Your honor, I know jaywalking is illegal, but everyone does it, I was doing it completely safely, and I think this cop has it in for me"? Right, like that'd work.

I jaywalk all the time and think it's mad that we have laws written strictly against it, even though I know those laws are rarely enforced. For me it doesn't matter; I'm financially comfortable enough that if, against all odds, I got a jaywalking ticket, I'd just pay it and move on. There are many people, some who might be more likely to be targeted by police, for whom that kind of fine would be a financial burden. Not to mention that taking time off work to go to court for it would be impossible.

Imagine you are a legislator. If know that laws will not be completely enforced then it gives you the freedom to create laws that are bad or overly harsh because that harshness is rarely seen. Whereas if you know the police will enforce these laws against you and your family you will be much less likely to support them.

To be fair no law is completely enforced. Even if there is no discretion on the part of law enforcement, they still have limited resources and have to prioritize enforcement in certain areas.

I do take your point though. It is easy for legislators to pass laws against all manner of things because they know that the police won't be patrolling their neighborhoods enforcing them.

This is a good question to call out - the answer to the deeper question is that jaywalking (and many other "crimes") need to be decriminalized.

Excellent point. Let's look at how "police discretion" works for what's basically a non-crime like jaywalking. In 2019, the NYPD issued 397 tickets for illegal or unsafe road crossing. 354 (90%) were issued to black or hispanic walkers. Black and hispanics are about 55% of the population.

But the story doesn't end there. The police in NYC are divided into 77 "precincts." Just 3 of those 77 divisions issued 40% of the tickets. Those precincts are predominant black and hispanic areas (Claremont Village, South Bronx, High Bridge). Meanwhile, 37 precincts didn't issue even a single jaywalking ticket all year.

If police officers used their personal discretion in some sort of consistent or even completely random way, it'd be fine, but clearly it is enforced in a terribly uneven way, even consciously or unconsciously.

law enforcement is fundamentally broken in the U.S.

I highly recommend reading Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States". I assure you that things like this -- and things much much worse -- have been going on in the US since before the US was the US, without much of a break through present times. I dare say that things are actually better now than they used to be[0].

The stuff Americans learn about in primary school about US history, respect for the constitution, blind justice, etc. is a very very "polished" version of what actually happened. It's a shame to hear that even people from outside the US get this whitewashed history.

[0] As a simple example, it was common until the early 20th century for police and state militias to be brought in to break up what are now legally-protected workers' strikes, often with fatal results for workers, where no one was held accountable for those deaths. Police were a tool of the elite, land- and business-owning classes. And to some extent they still are.

You seem to be suggesting that if the correct candidate is elected in November these problems will be fixed, that couldn't be further from reality. These problems have been here for decades. In fact, if we put forth that the candidate that has been voting on bills and by extension existing laws for the longest period of time is more to blame for the current state of affairs then you have no choice but to conclude that voting for that candidate will not change much.

We have tons of preferential treatment in our justice system, it's not really a secret. For example, economic preferential treatment. If you have lots of money, you can get out on bail easily. If you're poor, you may lose your job, maybe your kid (social services), etc, if you can't afford bail. If you get arrested on some minor charge and you have $80 cash in your wallet, you can be released immediately rather than wait overnight for a judge to arraign you in the morning. Did you know foreign nationals can buy residency in U.S.? Not citizenship, but residency; I think it's ~$300,000.

Unlike Lady Justice, cops are not blind at all - they can pick and choose when to enforce the law. I forget what it's called, but the police are literally given the option for some laws to just not enforce the law if they don't want to. If the cop is in a good mood, they can decide to just let it slide. If they're in a bad mood (or they don't like the color of your skin) they might prefer to enforce it.

I once got pulled over for speeding in the middle of Kansas. The cop who was giving me my ticket told me that they had a program for avoiding having the ticket reported so your insurance rates won't rise. So I went along with it, and mailed the cost of the ticket plus a hundred dollars to that city's police department, care of the "sheriff's benevolent association" (or similar -- it's been a decade, the name is fuzzy to me).

...it remains one of the more blatantly shady-feeling things I remember encountering in the US.

I'd rather give my money to an insurance company than corrupt cops.

I'd pick a lawyer over either. At least he has to make a living delivering results. The other two have their existence perpetuated by law.

I mean you could argue that LAWyers literally exist because of law. Or at least perpetuated by the other two options which are perpetuated by law.

Doesn't that work the other way around as well, as in LAWs come to life or stay in place because of LAWyers? Both due to the rather large percentage of lawyers who end up in politics as well as due to lawyers using their powers of persuasion - monetary or otherwise - to influence law makers?

The prevalence and prestige of the law profession only started (in the US) in the late 1800s because of the rise of complicated, business-friendly contract law that made highly-trained lawyers a necessity for getting things done. The laws were used primarily to enforce burdensome contracts against workers and individuals, and protect businesses from holding up their end of the bargain.

I'd say that period was likely the birth of the American tendency toward litigiousness. The legal profession exists and is so lucrative specifically because of the shape of government and the law.

I've used a random traffic lawyer a couple times for stupid speed trap tickets. The process was really fast and they got the fine knocked down quite a bit. I'd much rather pay $100 each to a lawyer and the city, than pay the city $250.

The only reason cities and towns abuse speed traps is that it's profitable. If the costs exceed the money they bring in they might shift those resources to real crimes and fix the artificially low speed limits.

I think this sort of "we'll give you a pass on this one if you just pay the ticket" is a super gross practice.

I recently got a camera citation for not stopping completely behind the line before turning right on red. Fine was $125. If I paid the fine, it would be treated as a parking ticket. If not, it would be a moving violation and points would hit my license, if I lost the case.

I feel like, if a cop thinks I broke the law, they should stand behind that. If $125 convinces the cop that I didn't really break the law, that sounds like corruption to me.

If you're paying a ticket, you're not paying the cop though, that's not corruption. They're saying "we've got you, but here's an offer because we don't think we can convict you of the big thing, or because you've been doing this for the first time". You can take it and pay your dues, or you can fight. But then they might fight as well.

There's no reason why the state should go to court over every infraction. You hopefully learned a lesson about stopping the car, why should the state spend thousands of dollars on a court case and make you spend a lot as well?

That would be very different if they said "you can get a ticket or you can donate the money to my wife's charity."

I'm not handing the cop the money, sure; but I'm handing his employer the money (the city, the county, whatever).

They're essentially saying "you can get a ticket or you can donate money to the city".

The way this applies to someone who can't afford the ticket is a bigger problem, similar to cash bail. If you can't throw them some money, you get shafted 10x worse.

This was codified in my state's public transport fines. Pay on-the-spot (assuming you have a CC and funds) and it's $75, wait or contest it an it's $223.

It was a system blatantly established to prevent people exercising their right to contest a fine. New government abolished this arrangement as it was blatantly unfair and illogical, and also reduced compliance.

They also removed on-the-spot warnings and fines, having all interactions reported and justified-to and reviewed by a separate governing body before an infringement or warning is issued. Taking a great deal of power away from the transport officers.

These all seem like pretty straightforward measures to avoid corrupt or even just unfair practices.

In the same category of the "Unhooking fee" a tow truck will charge--you can pick up your car from impound for $200, or you can pay the tow driver $200 on the spot and save the hassle.

Though obviously lesser significance than the same behaviors from your police force.

To be honest, it seems like if a tow truck had to be called out to tow you, the tow company has earned something even if they didn’t tow you to impound.

Depends, there's plenty of cases in some cities where the tow trucks aren't called, they just prowl around for any minor infraction. I remember Columbus OH being particularly bad about this--things that in a normal world might warrant a parking ticket, you're towed in minutes.

If you get in the vehicle, their power over you grearly diminishes as they can't tow a vehicle with a person in it.

For the curious: a more regional[1] form of this petty corruption in the NYC area is placard abuse[2]. It's pretty common to see cars with these parked in front of hydrants, in bike lanes, etc, being completely ignored by the police.

[1]: As far as I know, being a lifelong New Yorker.

[2]: https://twitter.com/placardabuse

The Houston area PD has an organization called the "100 Club" [0] where you can donate to get a nice sticker. Each year has a different color, so it's easy to show how long you've been a member. [1]

Officially they're just to support the LEO orgs, but there's also anecdata in my friend group that having one (or more) makes you more likely to get out of most things with just a warning.

[0]: https://the100club.org/about/#what [1]: https://twitter.com/sighborgs/status/1246113527158497282

Apropos of nothing: apart from being similar to the placard racket, I wonder how many people who donate to this organization realize that their dollars are being used to buy MRAPs[1], not pay for the educations of the children of dead cops.

[1]: https://the100club.org/newsroom/

There must be something like that in LA as well, as a surprising number of people are driving on the road and parking on the street with no plates at all. Sometimes nice cars, usually with the drug dealer tint level on the windows (slightly darker than celebrity tinted windows).

I couldn't believe it when I found out that these are a real, actual thing. I don't see how anyone in the US can cast stones at any other nation for corrupt police accepting bribes when you can largely get carte blanche just for being 'in the club' there.

While I think this practice is bad and should end, it's not the same. Not everyone has these cards, whereas anyone can bribe.

If Cops accept cards through an organized and supported system, seems to indicate they would take bribes just as easily.

The cards are bribes. They have a cash value. You can earn them in exchange for "small business favors and deals" extended to officers.

I think the difference is in the incentive to stop someone in the moment.

In places where cash bribes are common, police will pull people over -- even if they've done nothing wrong -- in order to solicit a bribe.

That sort of thing isn't possible with the "courtesy cards", so police stops are more likely to be for legitimate reasons (or at least no more or less legitimate than in an ideal system), but people who shouldn't get away with things often will.

So this is... actually worse?

Not anyone, only those who have money or connections

Anyone can buy a FOP decal though, and as far as I'm concerned, an FOP Decal accomplishes the same thing in practice.

I mean, its not the same as bribery. But its the kind of thing that creates the mindset of people like Rittenhouse (Kenosha Shooter).

Showing off a "pro-police" political affiliation (be it a FOP sticker or a PBA card) makes the cops go easy on you for minor infractions.

The problem happens when people who are "pro-police" start showing up at protests, staying past a 8pm curfew, and then shoots three people in self-defense (allegedly).

On the one hand: the Sheriff of Kenosha refused to deputize these people and had the foresight to see what issues the behavior would cause. On the other hand: there's a low-level expectation "friends with benefits" with Police culture. If you're a friend of the police, the police reciprocate that friendship back to you. And one can argue that things are unfair in that regards. (Ex: failure to enforce the curfew on Rittenhouse)

----------

With that being said: I've been to countries with explicit bribery. The American way is better. Period. There's no comparison between this behavior and bribery.

But there seems to be an unfairness even in the American way, which is discussed in the core article and exemplified in Kenosha (and IMO: the Kenosha shooter is just the highest-profile example of this debate).

>On the one hand: the Sheriff of Kenosha refused to deputize these people

I’m not sure I understand why this is even mentioned - it seems like you’re giving him credit for it, but why on God’s green Earth would he have done that? That would’ve been crazy, right?

>With that being said: I've been to countries with explicit bribery. The American way is better. Period.

I’ve been to (and lived in) countries where there’s pretty much neither - surely that’s where the bar should be?

> I’ve been to (and lived in) countries where there’s pretty much neither - surely that’s where the bar should be?

Well, if the question is "Is this better than bribery", I can say without a doubt that its better than bribery. When EVERY traffic ticket is really a request from the local officer to shake you down for money (you may have not been speeding. Doesn't matter, the local cop wants his breakfast or whatever and knows that bribes are widespread. They stop you for a ticket, which is really a request for a bribe). There's simply no comparison.

> surely that’s where the bar should be?

Well yeah. But the people I was responding to was comparing the behavior to bribery. And bribery is what I have experience with.

You really, really don't want to live with a bribery culture. In this case, you're declaring friendship with the cops (through the use of an FOP sticker or PBA card, or whatever the local police union is). And that's where you get exceptional behavior.

Yeah, the USA has civil asset forfeiture, but given the red tape behind that, its still a step up from bribery.

-----------

> I’m not sure I understand why this is even mentioned - it seems like you’re giving him credit for it, but why on God’s green Earth would he have done that? That would’ve been crazy, right?

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2020/07/01/cla...

Its not crazy in America. These things come down to the local sheriff's decision. I think people underestimate the power of the Sheriff in many cases.

I bring it up because Sheriff of Kenosha seems like a reasonable person, compared to other Sheriffs across the country. On the one hand, the Sheriff of Kenosha is responsible for the actions of his own officers (and in this case: responsible for the failure of his officers to arrest Rittenhouse for violating curfew).

On the other hand, the Sheriff of Kenosha cannot fight the "greater police culture" that's across America. The expectation for pro-police people to be treated with leniency is endemic in virtually every place I've been to in America (again: FOP decals or PBA cards): along with "Police Bill of Rights" (special protections to officers that normal people don't get), and so forth.

I'm not sure that is in the "better" column. At least anyone with access to some cash can pass a bribe. Here we are making it a more exclusive to those who hang in the right circles. That to me is more corrupt.

Even the signal it is sending stinks. The law should apply even to other cops (on and off duty but that is another story) equally as any other citizen. If just being friends with a cop gets you some special entitlement then what does being a cop mean, near total immunity?

> If just being friends with a cop gets you some special entitlement then what does being a cop mean, near total immunity?

That's been more or less the case, yes. That and the systemic racism exhibited while they get this near-total immunity is a large driver behind the recent protests.

wut

So in a way, it's less democratic than bribing :)

Pretty sure "having enough money for a bribe" is the opposite of democratic.

Pretty sure "only have to obey the law if you're not chummy with the cops" is the opposite of democratic.

Not sure where you're reading that I said it wasn't; I completely agree with you. But if my choices are living in a society where some people evade punishment by being buddies with the cops, or a society where cops routinely stop people for no reason other than a shakedown for a bribe, I'd pick the first option every time.

The original comment bizarrely asserted that bribery is more democratic than the cop-buddy system; that's what I was responding to.

I'd of course prefer a third choice where neither of these things happen.

It's not the same. It's much, much worse. This is sanctioned, happy-few bribery.

That only makes it worse, surely?

Anyone can bribe... if they have the money to do so. Which certainly puts many groups at a disadvantage.

Regardless, the police officer doesn't benefit directly from being shown a "courtesy card", so it's not like a cop is going to pull someone over just for the hope of getting shown one of these cards. But in countries where police bribery is prevalent, police will often stop people who are doing nothing wrong, simply because they want a bribe.

So I agree that these two practices aren't the same, but not for the reason you state. Both practices are awful and disadvantage people who are unable to participate (don't have police friends, can't afford a bribe), but the "courtesy card" garbage at least doesn't create a police-citizen extortion situation.

There’s a huge difference between signaling a prior relationship with law enforcement by presenting a PBA card and outright bribing the responding officer.

They are different, but both forms of corruption.

What's the difference besides how the special permission to break the law is obtained? It's still corruption. The article shows you can buy these cards on eBay for <$100.

> What's the difference besides how the special permission to break the law is obtained?

Outright bribes can be demanded on the spot for infractions that’s don’t exist. They incentivize stopping more people to demand them. They directly benefit the responding officer and can become a core part of their income. Once that happens you’re really screwed as the only people willing to become cops are dirty cops.

> It's still corruption.

I didn’t say it’s a good practice. But just because it’s bad does not mean it’s worse than living with a “police tax” every time you’re stopped.

> The article shows you can buy these cards on eBay for <$100.

That’s be pointless and is for suckers. The cop is supposed to contact the source to verify the relationship.

From the article:

> Mike works in an industry that regularly puts him into contact with police officers, which gives him the opportunity to form personal, trusting relationships with them. As such, he said, he frequently receives PBA cards as a thank-you for extending cops small business favors and deals; currently, he estimates that he has somewhere between 10 and 12 unexpired courtesy cards in his possession.

That is literally a bribe.

And if it was cash exchanged at the time of an officer responding to a crime it’d be even worse.

Is it not possible for both things to be true?

It is, but it seems like you're arguing against a straw man? I don't see anyone in this thread arguing that bribes are good.

The original comment to which I responded was arguing that the concept of PBA cards was as bad as direct bribes as seen in other countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24353240

> And if it was cash exchanged at the time of an officer responding to a crime it’d be even worse.

Would it be? Buying bribe credits ahead of time doesn't seem inherently any better than on-the-spot bribes to me. Arguably worse; if it really is the case that small business owners get these with favours, then unless they're reimbursing the company personally for the bribe purchase, they are purchasing personal items through their business. So add tax evasion to the list of sins.

You wouldn't have to deal with a "police tax" if you didn't do things that made you get stopped. Admittedly that's easier said than done in america where the police are told how to use a gun and let lose on the public, but as a rule of thumb, not breaking the law is an advisable course of action.

I think the point is that police will stop people for no reason in order to shake them down for a bribe.

I'd prefer outright bribes, at least then you have to shell out for it

Yeah it's the difference between paying $10/month for Netflix vs buying movies a la carte

I think the argument concerns how commonplace bribery is.

This exists, but is relatively small in scope. And no, I don't agree with the "universal bribery is democratic" argument, because the end goal is to arrive at 0 bribery.

I think the counter argument would be that the issue with police bribery is not so much that some people are able to get out of minor citations (it's not like these cards will get you out of murder charge or anything) but rather the issue of corrupt police shaking people down for bribes.

I find unequal enforcement of the law to be one is it’s worst aspects. There is not only officer discretion, but there is also discretion several places in the judicial system and privilege in being able to hire better legal council. Some neighborhoods are policed more heavily than others. Some groups of people are targeted more heavily than others. Some city police departments enforce state/federal laws unevenly.

There should be one law for everyone, and if two random people with similar criminal histories break the same law in different places we should expect their outcomes and sentencing to be very similar. Right now this is far from the case.

I agree, but at the same time the alternative is zero tolerance.

Maybe the big problem is not the discretion, but that it isn't recorded? For example, i think it is complete corruption that LEOs and their families generally get "professional courtesy". I've heard the argument that it is a perk of the job. I disagree, but if you accept that argument, I would say: let the judge and courts handle the forgiveness of the offense and have it recorded in documents. Make it an official procedure and it will not look like corruption.

> I agree, but at the same time the alternative is zero tolerance.

I think it’s unfair to use term zero tolerance to describe equal enforcement. Zero tolerance is a specific sentencing pattern which uses harsh punishments for crimes. Equal enforcement is about making sure all groups have the same relationship with the law. If the laws on the books are overly harsh once enforced than we should change those laws.

The public would be better served by reducing the number of things that are illegal to only those things that deserve to be enforced with 'zero tolerance'.

The mere appearance of corruption in police is enough of a problem. Even in minor cases.

Debating whether this is bribery or nepotism is pointless, because the appearance this gives should be plenty to fire officers who hand out such cards.

Conveniently, they supposedly write their name on the cards they hand out :)

Sounds like the CHP 11-99 Foundation license plate frame, which could (allegedly) get you out of speeding tickets [0]

[0] https://priceonomics.com/can-you-buy-a-license-to-speed/

The big problem in the US is the lack of automated speed enforcement. When you have officers doing traffic enforcement it inevitably turns into a corrupt shit show, and if you're black, you might not even live through it.

Although its now 2020, where every 300 gram toy drone will automatically refuse to fly anywhere near an airport. It took 0 drones taking down 0 airplanes to do that. Modern cars can trivially enforce the speed limit, but we have ten thousands of deaths and counting every year and it's not happening.

A 100% guarantee of getting caught would significantly reduce the number of people speeding. That eliminates something that functions like a regressive tax, so it's never going to happen.

Modern cars can trivially enforce the speed limit

Not sure about everywhere, but speed limits are first glance limits in at least some places, where other evidence can prove that a speed above the limit was not "speeding". Speed limits don't know what traffic is doing, they don't know road conditions, they don't know if you have an emergency. They're just a number set by ideally an engineer, or less ideally a party with conflicting interests (revenue).

I had to drive someone to an emergency room once. There wasn't time or money for an ambulance. If my car was automatically enforcing speed limits, they might have died.

Moreover there are far, far, far fewer no-fly zones than speed limit zones. A no-fly zone is a fairly simple polygon -- are you inside or outside. Every street has its own speed limit, which can vary from 5mph to 80mph in the US, and traffic on some freeways is consistently higher than 80. Some highways have dynamic speed limits, e.g. 65 at night and 55 during rush hour. School zones and pedestrian crossings have limits based on whether someone has switched on a light, or times of day, or even just the presence of children.

So no, you cannot have, and do not want, automated in-vehicle enforcement of speed limits.

No, the fact that US people can't call an ambulance for risk of bankruptcy is not a good reason to allow cars to accelerate to 120 mph in cities.

That's the point here: you can add cities as simple convex polys and you are already 80% of the way there. Drones don't need to listen to air traffic either.

The ambulance emergency is just one example, there are many more that you aren't considering. As one more example there are many passing situations, such as pretty much any two lane highway, where it's perfectly acceptable to break the speed limit for a brief period. I can think of other exceptions too and this is just after thinking about it for a minute, there are probably thousands of real world situations neither of us could think of ahead of time.

Plus, this is all assuming such a system could be implementing flawlessly. In practice, such a complicated and messy system would have a million bugs. Who keeps the speed limit database of every single road in country up to date? How are all of the precise boundaries of every single speed limit zone going to be defined and recognized by every vehicle?

No, of course you can not break the speed limit to pass, why would you think that? If you need to speed to pass, why would you pass in the first place?

The reality of it is, as someone who has driven thousands of kilometres on unrestricted autobahns, speed is just a trick your ape brain is playing on you. It feels fast, but going 30 mph faster than everyone else just drains your tank excessively while the GPS is not fooled and ticks down the arrival time only by a few minutes by the end of it.

> As one more example there are many passing situations, such as pretty much any two lane highway, where it's perfectly acceptable to break the speed limit for a brief period.

That's not true legally speaking and I'm pretty sure it's not true from a driving standpoint. Why would it be acceptable to break the speed limit to overtake somebody? If you need to speed to be faster than somebody you shouldn't be passing them. If they speed up during the passing manoeuver you should probably slow down and fall back.

If you are passing someone on a two-lane highway using the opposite lane, you need to do it as quickly as possible and then return to your lane.

Also, even if the traffic you're passing is at the speed limit, there are perfectly legitimate reason to pass them. For example, you may want to keep some distance from a heavy truck.

It's a pretty frequent problem for someone to be going 10mph below a 55mph limit. To pass safely you have to go well above the limit for a few seconds, even if they don't speed up, so that you aren't in the oncoming lane for too long.

If they speed up during the passing manoeuver you should probably slow down and fall back.

If there's oncoming traffic, sure, but not as a matter of principle. Once you start passing, you should definitely finish unless it becomes dangerous to do so.

Wouldn't the emergency issue be solved by having a "emergency mode" where after that was activated you'd have to justify it within say 24h or so?

Also the "no simple polygon" is more an issue of time, right? If I enter a 40mph zone and do 60+mph for a sustained 1min perhaps it should lower my max speed by 4mph per min or similar.

I don't think these are simple problems, but I also think they are far from impossible and if it both makes traffic safer and removes a human corruption element it might be worth it.

Perhaps it's just my friend groups and family but most people I know would be vehemently against this. (UK)

Most people speed (including myself), it's just not a big deal. I mean sure people die, it happens, but that's almost exclusively from distraction.

The police waste far too much time on the issue, but it makes money so they do it. Fully automated enforcement around schools ? Sure. On a 4-lane motorway ? No (Germany has it right)

The fundamental issue here is that being a normal person puts you on the wrong side of the law and/or the punishments for being on the wrong side of the law are too severe.

That is just a symptom of the problem as the tyrannical administrative bureaucratic police state expands at exponential rates, to cheers and demands for ever more control by mommy and daddy government.

But to your point, you are correct, the only people left on the wrong side of the law are law abiding productive people who do not have personal connections to law enforcement. Ever other group gets treated with a light touch and has excuses made for them and criminals are now getting off the hook left and right, while the anarcho-tyrannical administrative state increases it's abuses of regular productive and peaceful people.

It's either by design, out of desperation, or due to incompetence; but it will not end well for any of us, regardless.

I find it unsurprising but disheartening that this was flagged.

The entire administrative bureaucracy is in on this racket and it's unfair to pick in the police alone for it. In my state it's not just the police that peddle influence like this. Many state agencies have little identifiers that range from IDs to bumper stickers that they give to their employees with the unspoken purpose of signaling "don't screw me, I work for your team". The most coveted are the court system ones because no matter what agency is trying to screw you none of them want to piss off people who work for the courts. My state also has all sorts of ways to wave fines and whatnot for economic hardship reasons (which I fully support). This creates effectively three classes of people, those who are part of the in-group and treated decently by government. Those who have money and are preyed upon by government. And those who don't have money and are ignored by government unless they are committing serious (i.e. violent) crime because the government gains nothing by cracking down on them. Why can't the government just treat everyone like the former or the latter or, even better, repeal all the stupid laws that have wildly low compliance rates?

You don't need a physical card.

A friend of mine who used to get into trouble all the time when he was a teenager got away with a ton of stuff. His father was a chief or something, so every local cop just knew who he was.

You don't want to arrest your boss's son.

Heck, if you're wealthy enough, and get pulled over drunk, tell then you're friends with someone at the department. The cop will make a few phone calls, and boom, you get chauffeured home by the cops for free.

Yeah, these cards are basically a way of extending behavior that has always occurred in small departments to a larger force where the police can't possibly know everyone they are "supposed" to give favors to.

There used to be something similar in the UK IIRC - the traffic police nicknamed themselves "black rats". If you had a sticker of the black rat mascot/logo on the back of your car then you were either a traffic officer, or someone close to them (wife/husband/etc) and a wink and a nod an you were on your way. I don't think it was a deliberate "get out of jail" move - just more of a "Oh you have a sticker for my unit's mascot on your car!" recognition type thing.

I think it kinda stopped when they started giving away the stickers on "enthusiast" car/motorbike magazines etc

Lol, I suppose as the cards carries no real legitimacy, it's not illegal to fake them.

That said, being stopped by cop who notices that it's fake probably isn't a good idea :)

Are "KMA 367" plate holders still a thing in Los Angeles?

https://www.straightdope.com/21341883/in-los-angeles-why-do-...

I've also noticed in a lot of states that cars have the "fraternal order of police" sticker, and it is affixed right on their licence plate.

I suspect its for a similar reason, that either if you get your plate's picture taken or local police can see that right away.

yep, its a signal to officers that you went out of your way to donate extra money to the police force so that they are more forgiving as they approach your car or just don't pull you over to begin with.

I think that today a Trump 2020 bumper sticker would have the same effect.

I think the american thin blue line flag is more direct.

https://www.amazon.com/Matter-Sticker-Support-Enforcement-Of...

There is a chilling effect in the other direction as well. I'm not too keen on decorating my car to support various things I do support (candidate/BLM/etc) because I know the cops might treat me worse with that on my car... fun times.

I just have two Seattle Mariners bumper stickers on my truck; haven't been pulled over since putting em on, so they must think I have enough misery as it is!

/s I think the real issue is that it has been decided somehow that it is our fault for being policed and experiencing the frequent resulting injustices. A police officer can pull you over, stop you walking down the street, etc. etc. and fine you, jail you, or brutalize you at will, and in all but the most egregious cases (that also must become a cause celebre), they can just do it again tomorrow. There's always some justification, no matter how flimsy! That's not to say this violence is evenly distributed among the population. POC, the poor and working class, those who work odd hours and have to drive at 3 AM etc. certainly have a much, much, much harder time than e.g. the median HN commenter. But the answer to the question "What's stopping a given police officer from e.g. breaking my arm while pulling me out of my vehicle?" is much less "they will suffer consequences if they do" and much more "they haven't decided it's what they want to do today"

> to donate extra money to the police force so that they are more forgiving

So a bribe then. Wow.

As citizens of the country we live in, we should all be subject to the same laws and restrictions. Anything less than that is a form of corruption and undermines the whole concept of democracy and a fair society.

In Illinois, land of the drivers license / license plate cash grab, you can order a custom plate that "shows your support" for the police.

https://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/vehicles/lice...

Stack that up with a bunch of bumper stickers and, if you're brave, hang a checkered headband on your rearview mirror and you'll have a cop thinking you're a cousin of someone on his squad. (Just make sure you're white)

In the USA legislators and others in government have publicly voiced their support of, contributed to, and organized bail funds for specific groups of people based on their views on particular topics. One Presidential candidate's campaign (through its staffers) has also paid money towards something called the "Minnesota Freedom Fund". Why is there a contribution only to this fund? If you protest animal testing and are arrested for some similar crime, where is your bail fund? In those cases you have to organize the money yourself, people in your government don't organize it for you.

Philosophically, government is supposed to serve everyone equally, but depending on the political views of the alleged criminal, or the self-proclaimed cause that they are supporting while performing allegedly illegal acts under the banner of "civil disobedience" or "peaceful protest", there is an availability of bail funds, selective prosecution, and all sorts of other features of the justice system available on a selective basis - i.e. the banner under which the illegality takes place.

If the principle of selective/unequal dispensation of justice is wrong, it ought to be criticized irrespective of the form it takes. When it is ignored in some forms but other forms result in outrage, it's difficult not to question the motivations of whoever is amplifying this particular flavor of bias.

If it is acceptable for the system to consider banners and offer different features to offenders depending on which banner they are flying when they interact with the system, then this is also acceptable.

I personally would prefer a conversation that looks at the problem of selective enforcement across many spheres.

Or we could just eliminate cash bail, for everyone. It's been eliminated in my state for most crimes, and they are trying it out in other states as well. It's not perfect, but it results in a lot less people in jail because they can't pay, and it hasn't made us any less safe.

Otherwise, I don't think you're going to solve the issue of "people only donating bail money to people they like." Because people are going to spend money the way they want.

My neighbor in Austin is a lawyer for the police union. He would hand these cards out to everyone in the cul-de-sac along with some booze for Christmas presents. There's a little "CLEAT" sticker that you can put in your back window too.

I put the sticker in the window of one car but not the other.

In the car without the sticker... I got pulled over in West Texas visiting relatives, and the cop literally had his gun drawn as he came to my window. Alone on a dark and empty road, guy with a gun on you -- probably the scariest moment of my life.

In the car with the sticker, in a similar small town in West Texas (lots of speed traps between Austin and Midland)... as the officer was walking to my car he saw the sticker and his whole body language instantly shifted. He got to my window, "Hope I didn't scare you with the lights, you don't seem like you're from around here. Are you lost? Just trying to be neighborly."

I was going 20-ish miles over the speed limit both times.

I looked into getting another sticker and it literally only cost me $25. Significantly better treatment from police doesn't cost very much. Anyway, yup corrupt as fuck... but as long as these exist, for a simple $25 donation, might as well have a CLEAT sticker in your window.

Also, what really bugs me... Police in Texas are allowed to unionize, but Teachers are not. Oof. Been here almost 20 years now, I love a lot of things about Texas, but some of the politics still suck.

PS: Also I keep a Book of the Mormon in my glove compartment, that way if I ever do get pulled over I just casually grab the book when looking for insurance papers. For some reason seems like a lot of cops in Texas are Mormons...

Lund, "Bible on the Dash": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S00y75ebq8

Ha, spot on.

When you find a flaw, do you fix the system or game the system?

Wow. I wonder if there is an equivalent of this sticker for other states.

Fraternal order police chapters put one out in every state.

> The cards embody everything wrong with modern policing.

That's a pretty broad claim. The cards aren't even big enough to LIST everything wrong with modern policing.

Its a pretty broad claim because a lot of countries have a different idea to america on what modern policing means.

The cards represent corruption, self-interest, and selective enforcement of the law. I think a lot of problems would be solved or help accountable for if those issues were resolved.

I think it's a pretty reasonable claim. The cards illustrate the idea that the law is applied unequally, and at the whim of the police officer... which I believe is the root of much of the problems with US policing.

> be an expression of or give a tangible or visible form to (an idea, quality, or feeling)

The cards "are an expression of" everything wrong with modern policing. Not sure if you are just being pedantic, but this seems to fit.

This has been a common thing forever. Whether it's right is very much and should be up for discussion but I'm surprised at how many people seem to be learning this for the first time.

Same thing worked with the small silver shields you could give out. I don't really agree with how policing is done in the US and it has started more than one fight with my long retired former police father but as a matter of practicality I still carry his silver shield with me.

He hasn't been an officer since I was 5 or so but even in high school the active police families and the families with ada's or prosecutors all had PBA cards and would give them out.

Very much been around forever. The PBA cards are common in NY and NJ, where cops are basically a legalized mafia. In areas where PBA cards are not the norm, a simple business card with the officer's signature plays the same role.

"If there's a problem, you can check with my friend Officer so and so. Here's his card."

Presumably this sort of thing will become harder to maintain as bodycams become more prevalent.

It seems plausible that anti-corruption NGOs could request the bodycam footage (anonymized, I suppose) under public records disclosure laws. (e.g. see https://www.rcfp.org/bodycam-video-access/, though I'd be really interested in what others think about the likely legal interpretations of disclosure requirements.)

Yet another reason to push for more bodycams, and auditability/disclosure of that footage; sunlight is often the best disinfectant.

Given that we have lots of body cam footage of police brutality now yet haven’t significantly moved the needle on reducing incidences, I’m not hopeful that will make a difference.

Maybe incentives for snitching on fellow police would work better?

The problem right now is that camera footage is handled by the police departments. Any oversight requires the police to operate in good faith. Thinking back to how many news reports I've seen where the footage was "lost" or "the cameras were not switched on" I don't have any trust in that type of system.

We really need third party monitoring.

Plus, think of the thousands of hours of footage that is regularly collected. Without some incident or reason to inspect the video, most of the incidents would go undetected.

Pretty confused why this post got flagged, but I did put together a (strong) personal opinion a while back[^0] that touches on these topics. I didn't publish it because a friend gave me a counter opinion I couldn't find a time to respond to, but I suppose it might as well be public now.

[^0]: https://smaslennikov.com/posts/enforcement/

The first step to being an authoritarian is separating the in-group from the out-group so you can deal out harsh punishment to one and be forgiving to the other.

30 years ago (quite exact), we drove back after a 48 hour "party" in Berlin (Roger Waters playing "the wall" at the broken down wall). We got stopped at the border (Germany > Holland) and I drove. We where tired, still high and half drunk.

When the border patrol asked me (the driver) for papers, it took me a long time to produce them and one of my friends woke up, asked what was going on and pulled out his official "bridge operator" badge. Showed it (before I was even capable to find my driving licence and passport) to the trooper and just said "Hi partner": we where waved through.

When I asked what the actual F just had happened, he told me his job made him an "non commissioned officer" and that was all it took for us to be treated as part of the blue family, who go to great lengths to "help each other".

Different times, different continent, same rules.

The equivalent in our industry is when somebody gets locked out of a Google/Apple/etc. multi-service account, has no backup or rescue access, but is put in touch with a friend of a friend who happens to work at the vendor. It's systemic favoritism.

I wish people would keep these kinds of situations in mind when discussing whether or not a certain industry is a "meritocracy".

The issue people have with “meritocracy” is because they can only think in black and white, no grays.

Society is made up of humans and humans do unfair things. That doesn’t mean that tech companies aren’t generally meritocracies.

I have no idea what you are saying?

Having friends in an industry is hard work, so it a meritocracy, it is well earned to have made contacts that will help you.

In this article it's perhaps family, but a family that supports their childrens career in a blue collar job like policing, in a meritocracy, also deserve the reward.

In policing perhaps it's illegal or should be illegal. But it's still a meritocracy.

I don't think this is systemic at all. If companies found out that this was going on in their organizations, most of them would shut the practice down pretty quickly and almost certainly fire anyone involved. Otherwise, those companies could face some pretty heavy lawsuits and fines.

Systemic doesn’t necessarily mean official.

But semantics aside, I think this often works without violating company policies. It’s more about having a connection to get the attention of someone who has authority to override or initiate a friendly appeal of some prior judgement call.

I never said that "systemic" means "official". Those are very different things. What I'm saying is that it could be systemic if companies commonly granted certain groups of people special access that others couldn't obtain. This simply isn't the case and is widely condemned.

Why "certain groups"? It's not about groups, it's about personal relationships. If you get dog piled on Twitter and you know somebody on the security team, your problem goes away and the people annoying you get their accounts suspended or banned. If you don't, your problem will most likely remain as it does for most people.

It's not a conspiracy where all members of group x get a direct line to Jack Dorsey to take care of things, it's you knowing somebody who knows somebody and that somebody wants to help an innocent person out.

The problem is that Twitter is a private enterprise, and it's okay if they choose to run their system that way. The police aren't, and they're not supposed to favor anyone, no matter who they are. There's a saying in Germany, Dienst ist Dienst und Schnapps ist Schnapps (literally "Duty is duty and liquor is liquor") that articulates that. You might drink with somebody, but you must not let that influence your judgement while on duty. In a private company, that's somewhat different, you can't damage the company, obviously, but you're not bound by law, and company policies are -at best- rough guidelines.

This is not the same.

Knowing someone at Google/Apple who can help you out with a totally legal tech support issue is nothing at all like police corruption.

It isn't corruption, but an example of the systematic advangages some of have because we have connections. People we know from school, university, work, sports clubs, the goddamn Masons. The Chinese call it guānxi and accept it as the way of things. I think it sucks.

The recent focus on racial bias in policing has had a negative outcome: to distract attention from the fact that the law is being applied unevenly across the US.

Racial bias in police encounters is a symptom, not the disease.

This is true, but the racial bias is easier to get people to rally behind. And it's gotten people talking more about the non-racial injustices in our justice system, too.

What I don't get is:

- The police need social capital. It helps enormously if they can be take at face value for "just doing their job". And this would help in the minor day-to-day interactions that makes up the majority of their working lives.

- Not only is it blatant corruption, the very existence of such cards harms the whole police forces social relationship! It is a "associate infraction with a cop!" card!

If I were a true friend of the police, I would:

- let them do their job fairly (while not letting them get away with unfair)

- not try to associate a cop buddy of mine with my poor decisions!

This is real at least in the NY area. NY law gives officers "discretion" in issuing violations (not crimes). That doesn't have a limit. So being friends with a fellow PO is technically not an illegal reason to not issue a violation. I agree that it is not fair. Generally though if you do something like drive 30 over the limit, they aren't going to let you off with a card.

But a non connected person can get pulled over for something minor and get every ticket they can. This snowballs for poor people that then have more fines on top of fines.

I feel like we're at a crossroads: Hire huge battalions of union dues-paying forever-rookie police behind an iron curtain and arm them to the teeth, or Operate a modernized, transparent, outcomes-based criminal justice system. It would be interesting to understand why so many politicians and police themselves talk about the latter while quietly implementing the former. What's in it for them?

I had one of these.

I was given it not having slightest idea what it was for (was only in the NYC/US about two years at that point). I was told its meaning a couple of years later when I found it again during a move.

I've thrown it out.

While I appreciate the gesture from the person who gave it to me, I was repelled by what it represented in terms of how privilege and the police system work.

Last paragraph:

“Policing was never meant to be held accountable in the first place, not in a meaningful, substantial way,” Wall said. He cautioned against focusing too much on the injustice of PBA cards. “Be careful that the outrage [doesn't] become directed in too narrow a way. The real outrage should be directed at the nature of policing itself.”

Also available on eBay (of course)

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...

I know two people who had these in New Jersey. One used to speed all the time and never get a ticket or warnings. Super convenient for them. It was a legit card, a metal one, I saw it. Pretty corrupt there in New Jersey.

So... "protection" like under the mafia but only if you can afford the state price, so its supporters invariably are high in the food^Wdecision chain. It doesn't seem like a very democratic rule of law.

Hahaha, I love it. They literally formalized the old boys' network.

So we are now using monopoly rules to run a country?

A literal get-out-of-jail-free card!

There's literally a monopoly "go" tile on it. Contrast this with the UK where the coppers like to get "go to jail" t shirts.

Wait till y’all learn about “fraternal order of police” fundraisers and car stickers identifying donors, allowing “discretion” to be used by the cop to let the violation go.

In Ohio it’s is common to see license plates with police badges or stickers on them. They are handed out to friends and family and deter officers from pulling you over.

Almost all cops I know are specifically told to take all things that could identify them as cops or friends of cops off their cars, windows, etc. since there is so much targeted violence and crime specifically directed against police. And this is in relatively safe NJ suburban areas. Tires on their personal cars get slashed all the time due to having a badge in a window or similar.

People drive pickup trucks with a 6' trump flag and a 6' thin blue line flag mounted to each side of the bed in the midwest. different animal than the east coast.

This is a common sort of corruption, worldwide.

Here in Australia, my receptionist has got out of a few minor traffic infringements because her husband is a friend of a cop.

Around here you see a lot of people with plastic stars they give out for “donating” to police organizations screwed onto the rear license plate.

Seems sketchy. But even the TSA has a 'safe list' of folks who can skip the line - is this morally different? Law enforcement identifies folks who are not habitual offenders, who support law enforcement and who if they abuse the privilege will hear about it from a cop/friend, and give them a card. Not sounding like such a terrible thing to me. Remember, nobody is getting away with murder here.

<edit: elaborate>

So "get out of jail free cards" do exist. And here I thought that GTA came up with them.

In 1997

Why is Vice always flagged on HN?

Sounds like China's social credit system but maybe worse in some ways.

This can't _possibly_ be legal, surely? Wtf.

Only (or is it 'not even'?) the Police police the Police.

Can't find any evidence in this article.

Literal get out of jail free cards. JHC.

The racial connection here is quite a stretch and sounds like more race baiting. It has nothing to do with that. Knicks players have them. Yankees have them.

Hate the game, not the player. This is definitely corruption. BUT, at least, it is supposed to be for minor infractions.

Unlike meter maids, police officers should be given leeway to let people go. It’s the mandatory minimums and fines you should worry about... cops doing revenue generation for the city. And when their department doesn’t get enough from taxes and tickets, police departments across the country turn to civil forfeiture.

Ideally, the officers should act as if everyone has these cards.

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/local/20100607_Police_s...

> Ideally, the officers should act as if everyone has these cards.

Totally agree with this. I think part of the reason they are in issue is it reduces the political pressure on this happening if some people can get this treatment anyway.

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