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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> who do you report law enforcement misconduct to?

These rights are privately enforced. There is no public federal enforcement. You have to do what this gentleman is doing. Sue in the courts.

It is becoming apparent that the U.S. needs an independent agency focussed on transgressions by law enforcement / a civil rights enforcement bureau. One could keep it purely civil, to avoid conflicting with the DoJ. But in the same way that criminal prosecution is specialized enough that consolidating it in the DoJ makes sense, investigating law enforcement is specialized and conflicted enough that consolidating it under an independent agency makes sense.

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>It is becoming apparent that the U.S. needs an independent agency focussed on transgressions by law enforcement / a civil rights enforcement bureau.

YMMV, but:

Many agencies have an Auditor General with a cadre of agents whose entire role is to investigate and publicly report on what that agency does wrong. Sadly, I can't think of any Auditor General's office with the power to punish. So if the agency is acting unconstitutionally or illegally because the governor or agency director wants them to, it's on the public to push for change. That's a hard ask.

For issues with state agencies, contact your District Attorney or state Attorney General. I've never done this, but it's stuck in my mind as the path to go. If other people want to report their dead end stories of doing this, I'd welcome the lesson.

The DAs work with law enforcement on a daily basis. They are in some ways considered law enforcement themselves (they have detectives and investigators working directly for them). My experience is that they don't care.

I've contacted the AG about stuff in the past. He was a complete idiot. I contacted him about a state law that was being violated by a state government policy and he said he would forward the complaint to the FBI. Why? It has nothing to do with federal law!

Better than my state AG. She actively works with state law enforcement to deny people their rights without saying that's what they're doing.

That's kind of what's going on here. There's a state law making it a felony to reveal specific information of citizens except in specified situations. They are revealing that information contrary to law, so a violation of the statutory right to privacy.

In my experience, state AG's can be very helpful with consumer complaints.

Yes, but those are usually against companies. Do you have any info when it's a complaint against state agencies?

You're thinking Attorney General. The correct title in the U.S. is Inspector General, and they fall under OIG, the Office of the Inspector General.

Note: outing classified to an Inspector General not cleared, will still get you thrown in prison. Even pointing in a direction to start asking questions or getting cleared may carry legal consequences that OIG has no authority to protect you from, even if in the end you are in the right.

I've often thought the OIG should be charged with and have authority to countermand and investigate executive agency oversteps through unfettered access to all information regardless of classification in the Executive branch, but it'll never happen.

What you just described is one of the biggest downsides of accepting a security clearance - and, happily, the First Amendment prevents such consequences for those of us (like me) who have never done so.

I very much respect my friends and colleagues who have made the other choice, but it's a lifelong sacrifice of liberties that are otherwise present.

> The correct title in the U.S. is Inspector General, and they fall under OIG, the Office of the Inspector General.

Note that each agency has its own IG (usually within an OIG directly under the top-level of the agency), there is not a single central OIG.

The nature of Auditors General or Inspectors General is explicitly that they cannot punish. If they could, they would essentially just be another layer of management. The tradeoff for not being able to punish here is having unlimited powers to ask for documentation and to investigate.

The system is set up under the assumption that the institutions themselves cannot have systemic issues and all problems are really the work of individual employees acting outside of what they're supposed to do, and so you're supposed to sue them in their personal capacity. Then the Supreme Court basically slammed that door effectively making remedies impossible to obtain. Deetz: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/civ...

> agencies have an Auditor General with a cadre of agents whose entire role is to investigate and publicly report on what that agency does wrong

This was the case with prosecutors. Then in 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant consolidated them under the DOJ [1]. The common portion of their work, criminal litigation, was specialised and conflicted enough that the benefits of densifying its practitioners outweighed the cost of distance from the field.

I argue a similar problem persists among our Auditors and Solicitors General. Yes, there are advantages to having them in house. But there are disadvantages, too, and the bad outweighs the good.

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

> For issues with state agencies, contact your District Attorney or state Attorney General.

State agencies often have their own IG or similar office, and DAs may not have jurisdiction over state agencies. Some states have centralized agencies that have general oversight of illegal activities in state and sometimes local agencies, as well (Bureau of State Audits in California, for instance.)

Independant agencies to police the police can help but more is needed

We have such a organisation here (Aotearoa) to monitor the police. https://www.ipca.govt.nz/

It is mostly captured, policywise, and supports outrages committed by police.

It is a improvement over what there used to be, but not much.

What has made the biggest difference here is a succession of cases where it became undeniable that the police were raping and framing. They have taken shame and attempting to reform themselves, which is a surprise to those of us who over the years had to deal with the bigoted, prejudiced, violent pigs.

There is a lot of opposition within, and without, the police here. Time will tell.

...you really had to throw a 'pigs' in there?

I always felt it was a slur to Sus scrofa—an animal I like.

You could easily argue that any law enforcement officer who feels targeted or offended by that is admitting to being bigoted, prejudiced, and violent... Or at the very least knows their profession contains enough bigoted, prejudiced, and violent members that they're being tarred with the same brush, while presumably turning a blind eye to it all instead of outing the pigs from the inside.

Except I'm offended by it, but I'm not a law enforcement officer, but did have many dealings with them in my youth due to my wayward ways - some police officers were massive dicks (dog handlers seem to be rather unnecessarily aggressive), but then some were amazing and gave me chances that let me turn my life around.

Hence my objection to the pejorative term often applied to all police offers equally - it only advances a "them vs. us" mindset, which is not at all true for my country if you're not an active criminal, a country I share with the user I was replying to.

> any law enforcement officer who feels targeted or offended by that is admitting to being bigoted, prejudiced, and violent

Responding to a taunt is an admission of guilt?

> You could easily argue

Sure. But it still just hurts your main argument.

No it does not.

Ask George Floyd... Oh wait, you cannot.

"Pig" is a pejorative term, I used it in connection with the violence, bigotry, prejudice, adn stupidity (forgot to mention that), the raping, the framing....

I did not use it as a replacement for "peace officer". I know what I said and I meant it

So, you were only calling police officers "pig" selectively?

>I did not use it as a replacement for "peace officer". I know what I said and I meant it

That seems to be quite clearly the intent.

Anecdotally around my region people refer to corrupt police officers as pigs, so when someone says something derogatory about 'pigs', it's colloquially understood as "the violent bad ones that extort and over-step, not the ones that help you find your dog."

Around my region, people who yell "pigs" at the cops, haven't stopped to ascertain whether or not the officers they're yelling at are the violent bad ones who overstep. They're just yelling "pigs" because they're wearing the uniform and driving the car.

Noting that I left out extort because that's incredibly rare here, and prosecuted very quickly if it ever does.

The courts protect FBI and police. [0] Impossible to get a real win from a lawsuit. Getting money is not a real win. [1] No changes will be made. The dude who got murdered by police and caused a riot of criminals stealing and burning down buildings, not even that caused the police to change.

I should add a white person got killed the same way before that. No riots. No news. No screaming crying people in the streets demanding justice. No change then either. The family of that person didn't even get money from it.

[0] https://abc7news.com/san-jose-police-beating-hotel-couple-ta...

[1] https://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/10/31/utah-nurse-arrested-f...

Which person are you talking about? If it’s who I think it was, formal charges were filed and the outcome was totally different.

There's so many. How can we guess which one?

You could argue that this is what the ACLU is. They need better funding.

ACLU donation link for the lazy https://action.aclu.org/give/now

I personally have a monthly recurring donation. Give what works for you.

I wish they could let you donate to specific issues. I agree with much of what they do, but I disagree on specific issues.

You point is true for all organisations that cover many issues, and do not concentrate on one single small issue. You end up not donating to anything, even if your donation would have a large net positive.

Tagging money for specific issues is problematic because the organisation doesn’t change its budget percentages for small donations (money is fungible), and organisations find tagging difficult to manage [TODO insert article link here].

I've been in organizations that allowed earmarked donations for certain funds / projects. The ACLU can totally allow earmarked donations for projects they are undergoing.

Ex: A policy of %80 towards earmarking & %20 towards the general fund to help boot up new projects / general admin would be totally fine with many donators.

Organizations that say that they let you donate to fund specific issues are fooling you, unless the amount you plan to donate is huge. The reason is that money is fungible. Let's say I need $200k to fund issue A, and $200k to fund issue B. You say that you want to support only issue B. Fine, I just put your money in the issue B bucket and move a corresponding amount of unrestricted funds into the issue A bucket. Unless almost everyone restricts their donations they can always do that. They can backfill any unrestricted money to fund any of their priorities that are, for some reason, less popular with donors.

That only works if earmarking for issue B is not common, but if some media story suddenly made earmarking for issue B 50x the general fund / issue A, by people in aggregate, your not going to be able to do that well.

What you talk about is much like the arguments against voting, while such logic makes society lose it's prisoner's dilemma for change.

Call them and ask. There is usually a fund manager who can direct the money into different causes at the benefactors wishes. Now, if you only donate a minimal amount that will go in to the general fund. They wouldn't expend the same energy for a $35 donation that they would for a $3500 donation.

If I were able to donate thousands, then I'd probably use it to file a civil rights case for a recent issue we've experienced.

If it's a civil rights case and there's merit to your claims, you might be able to find public interest lawyers to help out for much less than that. Call around, there are firms in most large cities.

I've contacted one. They said we have a case, but that the federal courts don't really care about rights violations unless there were substantial financial impact. In theory, the DOJ is supposed to investigate our complaint and take injunctive action to correct any agency policy, practice, or pattern that violates the rights of defendants/people. We'll see how that actually works, but I won't hold my breath.

ACLU has mostly shirked their core mission and embraced whoring around their brand recognition for political gain in recent years. Basically the NRA but for the other side of the isle.

But yes, they kind of used to do that.

Actually, they've supported some gun cases in the recent past.

They, alongside the Second Amendment Foundation, have actually had some success fighting states for discriminatory laws that deny 2nd Amendment rights to specific populations. After all, the Constitution wouldn't work if it doesn't apply to everyone, but states have spent a lot of effort putting up roadblocks to everyone from legal immigrants to medical marijuana patients and states would selectively refuse to renew CCWs and licenses without cause or bar legal gun owners from receiving Section 8 vouchers and imposing categorical bans on legal gun owners attempting to foster or adopt children. In a sense they are the exact opposite of the NRA, who haven't done much to address the lack of equal access to the Constitutional right for quite some time when the complainants don't fit a particular mold.

That's not really true. The NRA has fought for shall issue and even constitutional carry, which removes the discriminatory possibilities under may issue schemes. They worked with an African American in the Chicago handgun ownership case, the PA mother arrested after crossing into NJ, etc. They have shied away from ambiguous or complicated cases, regardless of demographics.

This country was founded on checks and balances. We seem to have lost that entirely.

> This country was founded on checks and balances.

No, it wasn’t. It was founded on an impotent central government. It later adopted checks and balances when it decided it needed a much more powerful central government and what it was founded on was unsuitable.

But just because US Gov 2.x lasted longer than 1.x doesn’t mean everything in the 2.0. release was perfect; its certainly needed many minor and bugfix releases, and there’s no reason to think that it might not at some point need another ground-up rewrite.

Prior to 1900 or so (even more so prior to 1860) the "potent" central government was still very impotent by modern standards.

What are you counting as 1.x, Pre-Constitution?

Articles of Confederation. It was in force for 6 years before the founders dumped it and drafted the Constitution. The main problems were the inability for congress to levy taxes, regulate trade international and interstate, and congress wound up having to beg the states for money.

Most likely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation

This isn't really an example of that, though. This is just a clear cut 6th (and probably more) amendment violation by the government.

We need such an accountable agency more badly than any of the other govt projects being funded right now.

There's the GAO. They don't get much publicity or power.

The DOJ does have a civil rights division that investigates issues in state and local law enforcement agencies. But politicians seem to have no taste for proper oversight of the federal law enforcement agencies. For example, Biden's Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines shielded CIA agents who hacked Senate Intelligence Committee computers. The hacking occurred while the Senate Intelligence Committee was attempting to perform oversight of the CIA's use of torture.

On a scale of 1 to Feinstein and Harman, how bad was this?

Worse than.

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