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Comment by xd | Hacker News Reader

The majority of people do not care because the police can legally blow your door of its hinges, kick the shit out of you, drag you into a van, and stuff you in a cell all before you get to the due process part of the justice system.

No, the police can not legally "kick the shit out of you", they can use reasonable force if you decide to ignore or refuse instructions when they have a warrant which has been obtained via the courts. The warrant will only be granted after presenting substantive evidence that the person they are wishing to arrest has committed serious crime i.e. possession / distribution of indecent images of children, drugs, money laundering etc which required rapid entry to secure evidence. They don't get to enter your property for minor offences or on a whim.

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   the police can not legally "kick the shit out of you"

I realize that we don't feel such behavior is legal, but recent history has shown that when police misbehave at this level (cf. Breonna Taylor), there are no meaningful consequences.

So many engineers live and breathe P.O.S.I.W.I.D. (purpose of a system is what it does) in all technical areas and then are violently opposed to that kind of thinking when it comes to politics or sociology.

I'm honestly baffled by it. I get that people can be ignorant of how police act in the real world because they have no experience with it and watch cop shows on TV, but once you learn what the actual behaviour is ...

My God, I'd not heard that one before. Like I'm fully aware of the philosophy, but not of the acronym as a name for it. Thank you. Filing that for later use.

> Breonna Taylor

Given the discussion topic, maybe you should cite an incident that the RCMP was involved in, or at least one that occurred in Canada?

I could cite police violence in Hong Kong, but I think that would be off-topic too.

Sadly, while this answer is theoretically correct (and should be correct), reality is a lot muddier.

> they can use reasonable force

“Reasonable force” for values of “reasonable” that are defined by a group of people that doesn’t include me, no thanks.

"[a] person is privileged to use such force as reasonably appears necessary to defend him or herself against an apparent threat of unlawful and immediate violence from another."[1]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-defense_(United_States)

In England it's got what I think is clearer definition:

"Force is reasonable if a reasonable person would think it necessary to use force and would have used the same level of force as the defendant."

As far as I'm aware these definitions apply to police officers.

For police officers its defined by the policy of their department because they have training, less-lethal weapons, and are (at times) obligated to initiate force on subjects. The reasonable person in this case is a law enforcement officer who has the requisite training and experience.

Not in the USA, they don't. Not as long as the cops in question don't know for a FACT that their behavior violates established law - even if it DOES violate established law, they aren't held accountable unless a previous court case established precedent under almost the EXACT SAME CIRCUMSTANCES. As you might expect, finding a previous case in which the exact same circumstances applied is not an easy thing to do. Read up on qualified immunity: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-qualified-immunity-and-what...

> Not in the USA, they don't. Not as long as the cops in question don't know for a FACT that their behavior violates established law - even if it DOES violate established law, they aren't held accountable unless a previous court case established precedent under almost the EXACT SAME CIRCUMSTANCES.

This only applies to civil liability; criminal prosecution of unreasonable use of force is not affected by QI, though there are other problems with that.

> As far as I'm aware these definitions apply to police officers

They do, the problem is qualified immunity rules out most civil liability in practice, and relying on criminal prosecution has problems because of the relationship between prosecutors and law enforcement.

There are some other answers already regarding whether or not these rules apply to on-duty Police officers but I think you're missing the point.

There seems to be a broad based perception these days that the Police don't obey the rules regarding use of force and they are not proscuted when they break them.

This might mean that the original statement: "the police can legally ... kick the shit out of you" is technically innacurate but it is functionally accurate. The Police do not appear to large swathes of the general public to be at risk of prosecution for beating the shit out of suspects (which basically means anyone they want to).

US Marshals straight up executed an American citizen in Portland (to wit, Michael Forest Reinoehl) on order of the President. Trump himself all but admitted it, in classic Trump style. I'd say that ranks as "kick the shit out of you" and, since there was no consequence for the police or the one who ordered the hit, it sure appears to be "legal".

> No, the police can not legally "kick the shit out of you", they can use reasonable force if you decide to ignore or refuse instructions when they have a warrant which has been obtained via the courts.

Ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kelly-Thomas-Police-Beati...

Yeap, there are bad actors in the police just like in all other walks of life. Do we demonise doctors because of the likes of Harold Shipman?

>Yeap, there are bad actors in the police just like in all other walks of life.

Irrelevant. It's evidence that refutes your earlier claim that police can not legally "kick the shit out of you". They can. Dismissing them as "bad actors" doesn't change that fact.

I'd take it a step further after having read the article associated with that horrifying picture. Two of the officers were found not guilty. The third had charges dropped. This isn't just "bad actors", this is bad actors with the backing of the court system.

No, we require extensive training, and re-training, of doctors. On top of that, they need malpractice insurance, which balloons for the individual if they're royal fuckups. They aren't demonized, they're held accountable.

Demonization is a consequence of bad behavior combined with radical unaccountability.

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