Arizona police placed on leave after watching man drown | Hacker News Reader

Arizona police placed on leave after watching man drown

bbc.com

16 pointsrob_c16 comments

Keep in mind that the guy jumped into the water even though he knew he could not swim and it was a no swimming area. Also, who's to say the cops can swim. Yes, they could have jumped in but who would have saved the cops? They are cops not supermen.

There should be an investigation but some situations are just bad and nothing can change that.

Agreed. This is not comparable to the Uvalde situation. In Uvalde, the cops were specifically trained for that situation and apparently refused to act. That's a deplorable dereliction of duty.

The Arizona drowning was different. AFAIK cops are not typically required to be able to swim nor are they trained to be lifeguards, especially in places where no swimming is allowed (which this was). Even if one of the cops did know how to swim and happened to be trained in water rescue, he/she would have needed to take the time to doff all their gear before going into the water or they would have sunk like a rock. And in that case, who guards their gear? Their partner obviously, but now they've left their partner alone with a potentially hostile crowd while the partner is also guarding their weapons and trying to make sure the officer who entered the water is not drowning. And what if the swimming officer starts to have difficulty? Who rescues them?

If I were the supervisor of these officers and one entered the water alone while leaving his/her partner alone, I would probably fire them for making a dangerous situation worse (if they lived).

The only proper procedure here is to radio for additional resources, which they did. (Whether they did so immediately or dragged their feet is another question.)

EDIT: Looks like 3 officers were involved. This lessens the danger on shore but the danger to a lone swimming officer still applies.

When you go into the water to save someone, you knock then unconscious or they will drag you down with them. So let's assume the cop did that, now he's suspended for assault.

The only way to win is to not play.

> They are cops not supermen.

Part of the issue is that a good portion of the US worships cops as heroes, and police themselves actively cultivate this image, when in reality they are civil servants.

Exactly: never try to save a drowning man if you cannot swim. That only leads to two drowning men.

Unless you're a strong trained swimmer, it's almost a certain that trying to go in after a person drowning will just result in you drowning too. People who are drowning will panic, they will use anything and everything to try to catch a breath, including using you as a stepping stool. There's a reason lifeguards have a flotation device and are trained on rescuing someone who is drowning.

These cops should have tried to do something more to rescue the man, but jumping into the water to rescue him would have probably just resulted in two deaths instead of the one.

We need an entirely different entity handling people dealing with mental health crises. The police are not trained to handle this type of situation and for too long we've put them in the situation where they need to use force when other methods are required. Big cities are all mismanaging mental health issues as criminal issues. Until we find a way to offer (and demand people accept) help for people facing these issues, we are going to pay far more in crime and it'll all be ineffective anyway.

Immoral, possibly (certainly IMO), illegal almost certainly not. The police[0] had no (legal) obligation to help him and they have none to help you. It has been established in few cases [1] [2], and will likely be reaffirmed should any suits arise from Uvalde.

Protect and Serve may be a motto, but it is most certainly not the law.

[0] US police, since the article refers to Arizona. [1] Deshaney vs Winnebago Dept of Social Services, 1989 [2] Castle Rock, CO vs Gonzalez, 2005

It's important to note that there are different contexts of legality operating here. The cases you address deal with the legal obligations owed by the state government (or subdivisions thereof) to private citizens. They do not deal with the legal obligations of police officers as public employees to the employing public entity. The actions of the police officers here may be illegal in the second sense even if the action of the police department through those officers to the citizen involved is not in the first.

I don't need these people put in jail, I need them fired.

I wish we could simply fire police officers for being bad at their jobs without having to prove a criminal case.

A question I've always had.

In Castle Rock, CO vs Gonzalez, 2005 , one of the supreme court justices is asked "Then what was the point of getting the restraining order" and a reply is heard "to ask the police to do their job". (and nothing more . ie. they don't HAVE to help you if you ask).

So we've established asking the police to do their job is OK. And surely speech is a way to do that. And we know money is speech.

So does that mean it's legal for me to "ask" the police to investigate someone or something by giving them a few million dollars?

Doesn't that also mean I could continually give them millions to investigate something or other to keep them nice and busy so they don't have time or resources to investigate whatever I'm doing on the side?

Money is speech in the context of political donations and advertisements, per Citizens United, in which the Supreme Court that the First Amendment prohibited the US government from "restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations"[0].

Money is not speech in all contexts, nor does it follow that because speech is protected by the First Amendment, all monetary transactions are thus equally protected by an equivalence of money to speech. And even if it were the case, the First Amendment doesn't prohibit all limitations on speech, just limitations by the Federal government (and even then, the Supreme Court allows Federal law to govern speech in limited instances[1], such as regulating the airwaves, food labeling.)

Despite the ruling of Citizens United and its implications, which are narrower than "money is speech" implies in the naive case, laws involving money such as theft, embezzlement, and bribery remain on the books. Paying the police to not investigate crimes would obviously not be legal, if for no other reason than the most obvious: there are already laws against it.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think I need to be to call this one.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

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

Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate that.

> So we've established asking the police to do their job is OK

No, we haven't.

A reply heard during oral argument has no binding precedential force.

(And, even if we had, restraining orders are issued by courts; so we would have established that a court of law asking police do due their work is okay.)

> And we know money is speech.

“Money is speech” in the sense that expending your money to publish speech, not in the sense that giving money to people you are trying to sway is speech. (The political speech cases you rely on for that were about independent expenditures for public propaganda, not bribes to politicians.)

> So does that mean it's legal for me to "ask" the police to investigate someone or something by giving them a few million dollars?

No. For the multiple reasons stated above.

Thank you, I appreciate your explanation.

> The transcript also showed officers tried to calm down Mr Bickings' companion as she grew increasingly distraught, telling her they were getting a boat.

Mr Bickings’ companion didn’t jump in and save him either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com