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Comment by skrowl | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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.

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

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.

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