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Comment by frgtpsswrdlame | Hacker News Reader

Sidenote: how come when a police officer does something and gets fired for it, the headlines always state 'ex police officer?' The headline reads to me as if he was not a police officer at the time of the offense but the article reads as if he was. It feels confusing on purpose.

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The media loves to protect the institution of the police. If they can downplay the idea that maybe this is indicative of a broader problem with policing by saying "former" police officer, they'll jump at the chance.

The media is complicit in making police appear to be passive bystanders when whey kill people. The most egregious example is "OIS". Instead of "A police officer shot and killed a 22-year-old man on Friday," news articles will say:

* "22-year-old man dead after an officer-involved shooting on Friday."

* Or even more mangled: "An officer-involved shooting involving a 22-year-old man occurred on Friday."

My immediate thought is, did the shot person have a gun? Were they shooting?

In such a scenario, the language makes sense.

(If not, then you should specific so...)

This happens because cops have trained the media to do it. Cops have an informational advantage over journalists and use it.

A huge chunk, just by volume, of news comes from the local crime beat. That means journalists need to be on friendly terms with cops, because they usually have a near-monopoly on this information and can choose to give it to someone more pliant.

So that's why you get tortured headlines like 'Bystander killed by bullet in officer-involved shooting' - maybe the editor is a lawn-order authoritarian, maybe not, but they definitely don't want their sources to dry up.

Well, as the second sentence of the article says, it seems relevant here because he was able to use the application… with his law enforcement credentials.

so hes not a cop anymore, then uses credentials provided by previous employment to access an LEO app, and commit a crime.

this is beyond what one individual has done, there are levels of involvment.

this crime was enabled by others.

Agreed. If the offense happens while the person was an police officer, it should read "Police officer used..." and the article should explain that they got fired for it.

Personally the ex-officer is what I believe to be the most interesting part.

On the face of it, the guy is just a random psychopath hacking women Snapchat accounts and using their explicit pictures to blackmail them.

It’s disgusting but it wouldn’t be extraordinary if he didn’t also manage to become part of the police. You have to wonder how someone with this particular psychological profile actually got hired.

> You have to wonder how someone with this particular psychological profile actually got hired.

They explicitly look for this type of person to hire.

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