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Comment by elihu | Hacker News Reader

> In a statement, the Idaho Springs Police Department said the two officers didn't know Mistic was deaf during the initial encounter and maintained that Mistic resisted arrest, causing one of the officers to break his leg.

Weird the article mentions this once and doesn't elaborate. I mean, how exactly did the officer break his leg?

> Mistic then spent more than four months in jail and says he was repeatedly denied an interpreter.

That's horrifying.

> Hanning was later charged with third-degree assault and fired from the police force in a separate case in which he allegedly used his Taser on a 75-year-old man, according to The Associated Press. Summers, who used a Taser on Mistic, according to the lawsuit, is still an officer with the Idaho Springs police.

Sounds like this sort of thing is a recurring problem.

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Denial of an interpreter is a denial of civil rights.

The only crime is that the taxpayers will pay the settlement not the police force.

We should take all settlements out of the local police Union so that all cops suffer.

> We should take all settlements out of the local police Union

as much as I have disdain for the actions of some police unions, I'd rather legislate bad behavior directly than set precedent for charging unions for members crimes.

> We should take all settlements out of the local police Union so that all cops suffer.

No, we should abolish public-sector unions, which protect bad cops and bad teachers alike.

What we should have is a total rework of Federal labor laws, and impose tariffs against any country that doesn't provide equal or better to its workers.

Workers should enjoy some level of protection against summary dismissal. This needs to run on a sliding schedule. You should be able to fire new people that can't cut the proverbial, but if somebody's been with you for a year, they are clearly contributing value. Tenured folks can get the axe, of course, but it should be harder. Maybe require a full year to retrain/recover, and failing that, a year of severance.

All of this should scale to the size of the company. Starbucks can afford this. Bob's Bait Shack And Discount Virology Research can't.

Flatten out personal income tax. You pay 5%, period. Automatic deduction not required, although for practical reasons, it'd need to be the default to start. That gets you however much government it does. "The Rich" don't pay income taxes, so I'm not interested in hearing how this isn't fair. It's way easier to enforce.

There's a big trade-off baked in: no more minimum wage. You get paid according to your value. If you're working, the Fed can make up the difference for you, and will levy additional taxes against your employer should they be just trying to milk the public teat.

Health insurance should work like it does here in Japan. Regulated market, fallback on the State as an insurer of last resort.

No requirement to buy insurance if you don't want to, but if you don't and you get sick, you either pay cash, or you can opt back into the insurance system with full back-payment.

This wouldn't be easy. Devil always lies in the details, and it'll take real work to avoid focal points -- e.g., encouraging firing-and-rehiring at 364 days because of 365 day benefits cliff, for example -- but every worker deserves the same level of protection.

Of course, this is all sensible shit that tries to solve real problems. So it'll never happen.

> no more minimum wage. You get paid according to your value.

You had me until this.

Without a minimum wage, you create a race to the bottom on wages as you find people who are more and more desperate. Meanwhile, you'll create a huge homeless problem as people who are willing to get paid 50 cents an hour won't be able to afford rent anywhere.

Also, define "your value". It doesn't take a graduate Economy class to know that nearly all jobs that aren't commission are not paid based on the profit they create, but by how easy they are to replace.

Maybe, maybe not. It's interesting to consider, because they wouldn't need an interpreter if everything was done through writing, which maybe they or others wouldn't want to do either.

This may be a little off topic, but, like, instead of just being able to film your encounter with police, you're able to just take pictures of the notes they hand you as a way of documenting your encounter. Not to say that's sufficient, but it's interesting to think about.

Often times, written form of communication are denied to arrested folks as the narrow, generally cylindrical implement for writing, drawing, or marking, consisting of a thin rod of graphite, colored wax, or similar substance encased in wood or held in a mechanical holder, can be used as a weapon.

Crayons? Those bendy pencils? A very thick and blunt pencil?? Finger paint??? Hell, give them a typewriter! How is this even remotely an excuse?

Seen a typewriter as of late?

Yes! Our municipality building has a dusty basement room full of them and there are a handful of companies still producing new ones (although expensive).

But even better, just get those <100$ ARM/baytrail laptops and have them boot straight into a kernel with no network stack and launch only Xorg and AbiWord.

> Summers, who was in training at the time,

> Summers told emergency medical staff called to the scene that Mistic was deaf, but neither officer

I can see why some leniency is shown towards the junior one.

When you say some leniency is shown, did anything happen to either one as a consequence of this? From my reading of the article, it doesn’t seem like it.

> Hanning was later charged with third-degree assault and fired from the police force in a separate case in which he allegedly used his Taser on a 75-year-old man

So not directly, but reading between the lines there is probably something to do with straws and camels going on.

...on the other hand, Summers was also the one who tasered Mistic, according to the article.

> Mistic resisted arrest, causing one of the officers to break his leg. Weird the article mentions this once and doesn't elaborate. I mean, how exactly did the officer break his leg?

I agree. This is a crucial part of the story which should be discussed…

Mr. Mistic’s complaint doesn’t shed much light:

> At some time in the process of rushing up to Mr. Mistic, grabbing him, and throwing him to the ground, Defendant Hanning realized that he had caused himself to break his own leg/ankle.

> 51. At no time did Mr. Mistic threaten, physically harm, or fight with the officers.

There are plenty of ways to break a leg! And police officers aren't a particularly healthy group, tending to be overweight and out of shape. Combine that with a job that involves infrequent but strenuous exertion and you get lots of injuries.

I'm certain the broken leg will be discussed but it is likely that the break has nothing to do with any particular action by the deaf person.

e.g., my neighbor "broke his leg" a few months ago in the first few minutes of playing soccer with his grandchildren. No contact was required: he slipped while setting up for a kick and broke his fibula.

Doesn't the sentence say that the victims leg was broken? And their excuse for doing that was "he was resisting arrest"

I didn't realize it, but you're right that "causing an office to break his leg" could be referring to Mistic's leg. The wording is ambiguous, since we don't know if "his" refers to the officer or Mistic.

Other articles on this story are saying it's the officer who broke his leg.

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