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Comment by PuppyTailWags | Hacker News Reader

> It would also require police departments and agencies to purge databases of photos of children who were subsequently released without charge, whose charges were dismissed or were acquitted.

Feeling weird about the notion that law enforcement keeps photos of children who have had run-ins with the law but ultimately weren't convicted of any crime. Why would they even need to keep such photographs? Data retention == legal liability.

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You assume police experience anything that can be called legal liability. There is rarely any consequence for abuse of power by police, because for the most part the people tasked with investigating any such abuses are either police or people who have a vested interest in keeping police happy.

So they keep any data they can and hide any data that makes them look bad. It's always useful to them to point out the kid they just shot might have stolen a pack of gum in the past.

This is the correct take here. Law enforcement, at least in the United States, often operates above the law, particular at the federal level.

Pass all the laws you want, but they'll continue getting away with abuses of power.

The town I grew up (about 10k people, in the midwest) had exactly one bike cop. I don't recall his real name, but everybody called him Lurch. The story was that when he was new, he spent a day speed trapping outside the police station, and giving other cops speeding tickets. They took away his squad car, and he was a bike cop forever after. I'm not sure what he did when there were three feet of snow on the ground.

Anyway, when I heard that story, it was a joke about how dumb Lurch was. As a grown up, this is a story about how local law enforcement is above the law, and how they punished an officer who challenged that.

People around the NYC area openly drive around with fake badges mounted on their windshield to indicate they know a cop and should get preferable treatment. And cop unions openly advertise handing out cop union support stickers in exchange for donation.

Very in your face corruption.

I know a career opiate addict who has about a dozen of those stickers on their car, many on top of each other. Like they truly believe each sticker reduces their chance of not looking like a total suck up

I mean nobody is expected to investigate their own group. That is why things like judges/courts, prosecutors, civil/town/city observation groups and federal agencies are there.

The problem arises when you have cases like: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/lawsuit-claims-loveland... (series of false DUI arrest to bring in cash) and the whole police department is not raided on the spot.

Courts just drop cases because: a) qualified immunity and b) an "allergy" to having the D.A. and other agencies step in and do the investigation.

P.S. Hold your D.A. accountable in your area when you hear things like that. It is more important in the long run to have a few less street criminals behind bars and more corrupt "apples" in.

Edit: typo

> I mean nobody is expected to investigate their own group. That is why things like judges/courts, prosecutors, civil/town/city observation groups and federal agencies are there.

Maybe we need a setup where local cops are investigated by the FBI, the FBI and CIA are investigated by DoD's Navy NCIS or Army CID, DoD is investigated by Homeland Security or Treasury, and Homeland Security is investigated by local cops. It's hard to collude around that big a loop.

Right. State cops can investigates local cops, etc.

> It's hard to collude around that big a loop.

Yeah, but I don't know that collusion is the min mechanism. I think it's more that cops just feel a lot of solidarity with other cops.

If incentives are strong enough that a cop can make a career by putting away a lot of "dirty cops", that usually is what works. I think we're far from there though.

It’s far from perfect, but this is probably the best proposal I’ve ever heard except the federal agencies would need to be more broken up.

More true at the local level than the Federal.

It very much can be. The sheriff in the county I grew up in used to search people's property without a warrant and they weren't home. I remember my buddy's dad when I was a teen was growing a little marijuana deep in his cornfield. Buddy and I were home, his parents gone. Sheriff knocks on the door with the plants at his feet to tell us to tell his dad that he better not catch him growing anymore. I also remember others having similar experiences with them coming home to the sheriff looking through their sheds for a stolen ATV. No warrant, no nothing. And nobody ever did anything about him because he was too well connected with town leadership and county leadership. Small and rural areas can be heavily screwed up because the sheriff and many of the county commissioners or city councilmen or other people in local governance all went to highschool together. Nothing like an old good ol' boys network.

The sheriff definitely had the right to search the farm field, and possibly had the right to search in sheds without a warrant. I’m not a lawyer, but there is a Supreme Court case that defines what is and isn’t protected on someone’s property, the result of the case is the open fields doctrine. [0] Open fields are not protected by the 4th amendment, the shed may or may not have been protected.

This is related to the common law concept of ‘curtilage’. [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hester_v._United_States

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage

It also sounds like the sherrif chose NOT to prosecute, and tried to handle the matter informally - I think this is just good policing unless it's only certain social or ethnic groups that get the benefit of the doubt in these kind of circumstances

The thing about that is at least you have the feds to report to. If you have enough people file complaints with the FBI and DOJ, they should end up looking into it. Usually the local guys don't have connections that deep.

On the other side, if it's just one or two complaints, then they won't do anything.

Absolutely, most likely nobody can make a call on corruption % but the FBI seems to make arrests in the low 10s of thousands / year max at the highest[0] while the total number of arrests tends to be ~10M minimum in a normal year

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/745456/number-of-fbi-arr... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191261/number-of-arrests...

Here’s a story about the FBI stealing $80 million after lying to a judge:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-23/fbi-beve...

Here is one anecdote in contradiction? ok

(fair enough, since it's not like I provided any support either lol)

In my experience I'd say particularly at the local level since there's usually much less oversight or training and more gun-ho attitude.

> particular at the federal level.

I'm not sure that's accurate. State and local have shining examples.

My local PD growing up would have kids in for field trips and one of the 'activities' was getting fingerprinted.

See also: The boy scout fingerprinting merit badge, which local police departments are naturally happy to assist with.

The original requirements from 1938 included "Obtain the fingerprints of 5 persons and present evidence that these fingerprints, together with complete descriptive data, have been accepted for the civil identification file."

https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2021/08/09/merit-badge-his...

For my age demographic, the US went through a kidnapping moral panic when I was young and that's why people let their kids get mass-fingerprinted. It was very "We must do something. This is something, therefore let's do it" thinking.

As boy scouts, we set up a booth at the local Dairy Queen to get fingerprints for kids if their parents wanted it. A lot of parents did indeed want it. Can't remember exactly what year it was, but early/mid 80s sounds about right.

If those parents were the same age but in today's world, I wonder how many of them would still be so willing to do it. Back then, the concept of mass surveilence and all of the crap we deal with daily today was just not even an idea people would have had. Then again, most people today still are ignorant, so maybe the numbers wouldn't change at all?

It would be interesting to know the statistics on how many missing children have been identified by the fingerprints they filed with the local PD over the decades.

And how many times this data was used for other purposes by the PD

I've been finger printed a few times. More and more jobs require it - SEC, security work, schools, etc. Some states require it for the exercise of specific rights. It seems likely that at least 50% of people have been fingerprinted by the age of 30, likely higher.

There's a pretty big difference between doing an FBI fingerprint card to show kids the process and send home vs. submitting that card to a database.

With the advent of live scan, that distinction may have disappeared, though.

This was my first thought when I heard (after the fact) that the police visited my kids daycare. I was livid with the director, but it looks like the cops in my Bay Area town are a little more restrained

Wait til you find out the widespread practice of getting a baby's footprint on the birth certificate! Maybe those fade or change more with time, I don't actually know.

Why does any organization keep 90% of the data that they have. It's all a liability. Either they are required to keep it by law, or they are making money selling it or mining it for others.

"Hey boss! I just had a great idea to glean new metrics from all of that data we've been hoarding. We can't get it unless we go back to the raw data. Is it still available?"

"Of course it is. This is exactly why we keep it around."

Palo Alto local police definitely do this; also require fingerprinting/recording (at least) of any new massage parlor employees, among other things

WHAT. For what purpose? I mean, I know the real reason is prostitution but what’s the justification they use? This is so insane I don’t even want to believe it’s true.

It's probably not the fingerprinting you're thinking of.

More likely it's the Live Scan system, which is a thorough background check that touches with DOJ and others, etc. It does include finger/palm scanning but also much more.

Think of it like a very thorough background check.

If you have a criminal background, ever been in trouble, or have known criminal associates, it'll turn up on the Live Scan.

So yes, the real reason is probably anti-prostitution and anti-sex trafficking - and they probably don't hide that fact I would imagine.

I wouldn't be surprised if they save the Live Scan.

Of course they do. That's part of the Live Scan system. It's a background profile of sorts. Teachers, field trip chaperones, certain licensees and many more folks have to get one done.

My first guess would be an attempt against human trafficking.

"Data retention == legal liability"

The government has ensured to give itself very little liability.

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