So police officers do not have to follow the law? They just have to believe that they are doing it?
Left, right, center, whatever. Everyone should be on board with getting rid of it regardless of political affiliation, there are reasons for everyone to hate that qualified immunity for government workers/agents is a thing.
> The case refers to the incident in Jackson, Mississippi where 15 Episcopal priests were arrested after entering the coffee shop at the local Trailways bus terminal. The group were part of 28 priests from Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, ...
> On September 13, 1961, a group of 15 including three black priests took taxis from Tougaloo into the nearby Jackson Trailways bus terminal to catch the bus to Chattanooga. When entering the coffee shop to have lunch before their departure, they were stopped by two policemen, Officers David Allison Nichols and Joseph David Griffith, who asked them to leave. After the priests refused to leave, Captain J. L. Ray arrested and jailed all 15 priests for breach of peace, using a now-repealed section of the Mississippi code § 2087.5 that "makes guilty of a misdemeanor anyone who congregates with others in a public place under circumstances such that a breach of the peace may be occasioned thereby, and refuses to move on when ordered to do so by a police officer."
> The group included 35-year-old Reverend Robert L. Pierson, who was son-in-law to the Republican Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller. They were brought to trial before the local judge James Spencer who found them guilty of breach of peace and sentenced them to four months in jail and $200 fine.
> Represented by Carl Rachlin, the chief legal counsel at Congress of Racial Equality, they sought damages in the Jackson district court before Judge Sidney Mize, alleging the police and the local judge had violated Title 42, Section 1983 of the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act by false arrest and imprisonment for exercising their civil rights. However, the jury found in favor of the police who said they were trying to prevent imminent violence from a gathered crowd, contradicting the evidence of the priests.
> On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the local judge was immune from liability for his decision. Although the appeal court found the Mississippi code unconstitutional, it found that "Mississippi law does not require police officers to predict at their peril which state laws are constitutional and which are not."
The case discussed in the article is very different as police officers just believed they acted within the law. That should certainly not be enough.
As a police officer in 1950, being informed of an, according to then current state law, illegal abortion, how on earth could you know what would happen later? Today, could you be sure that last ruling won’t be overturned again?
Isn't that such an interestingly insane question? Qualified immunity lets people walk around unironically debating whether "just following orders" should be a valid thing that cops get away with doing.
As for the cop that "just follows orders" and arrests a newlywed gay couple in 2023 (an entirely feasible thing considering what's happening with women seeking healthcare in Texas), is that a Good Cop, or a Bad Cop?
That's the thing, for civilians ignorance of the law is no excuse. But for police ignorance of the law is not only expected, but it also protects them from civil litigation.
Judges gonna make judgements - that's their job. It's in the nature of judgements that they're not right or wrong. But in this case, the judge didn't even make the judgement; it was made by a jury.
It's not a good look to try and get a judge convicted for doing his job.
It has no bearing on suing organizations or departments, such as this lawsuit, AFAIK
> What’s more, the officers had good reason to believe they had probable cause. Both the City’s Law Director and the judges who issued the warrants agreed with them. Reassurance from no fewer than three other officials further supports finding that the officers “reasonably,” even if “mistakenly,” concluded that probable cause existed. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 591 (cleaned up). That’s enough to shield Riley and Connor [the cops who arrested him] from liability.
The reason qualified immunity is such a huge problem is that it's even harder to sue departments. There's a bunch of weird rulings that have the result that in America people who's rights are violated tend to need to sue individuals, who are then defended by the government. (If a cop loses a lawsuit the only consequence tends to be that the city's police misconduct insurance premium goes up)
In this case he also tried to sue the municipality, but that lost too
> Finally, Novak contends that Parma had an establ ished custom and pattern of “indifference to protected speech in criminal investigations.” Appellant’s Br. 57. And he runs through a list of cases where Parma had to reverse course over protected does not explain how this list of cspeech claims. But he ases could form a “clear and persistent pattern” so strong that it resembles official policy condoned by the City. 432 (6th Cir. 2005). Thomas v. City of Chattanooga , 398 F.3d 426, Perhaps unsurprising, since it’s a “heavy burden” to show municipal liabi lity based on custom. Id. at 433. Novak doesn’t even suggest (as he must) that this pattern resulted from a deliberate choice “from among various alternatives” that amounts to an unwritten “legal institution.” 507Doe v. Claiborne County ex rel. Claiborne C nty. Bd. of Educ. 08 (6th Cir. 1996) (cleaned up). Nor does he explain how that policy — , 103 F.3d 495, despite independent warrants from Magistrate Judge Fink and Judge O’Donnell See Thomas , 398 F.3d at 429 (quoting Doe — caused a constitutional violation. , 103 F.3d at 508). He simply argues that “Parma should have known better.” Appellant’s Br. 58. This is not enough to support a finding of municipal liability, so we affirm.
https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/22a0090p-06.pd...
But where they make a mistake, the police department should be paying any compensation for places their behaviour falls short of the actual law.
That translates to cops never being liable, because they’d have to be caught confessing to it on tape for a “honest belief” defense to fail
> But where they make a mistake, the police department should be paying any compensation for places their behaviour falls short of the actual law.
That translates to the taxpayer paying for it, when odds are the taxpayer is also affected by it. So cop remains unbothered and taxes are used to compensate taxpayers for cop errors.
Same as if you repeatedly break stuff at work... At some point your boss decides enough is enough and fires you.
In general, if I break the law at work, I'm probably gonna lose my job. If I break stuff on purpose I'm gonna get fired.
If I "break" stuff that just breaks as part of my job (or was in ill repair), I don't expect to get fired and if I do, I have a claim.
About the only "eventually fired" that I can think of is by operating something in a way that it breaks despite being trained (repeatedly) in the correct manner.
This isn’t what qualified immunity is about at all, but you know, that’s why.
https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-c...
Out. Of. Control.
We emphasize that our decision applies only to suits for civil damages arising from actions within the scope of an official's duties and in "objective" good faith. - Harlow v. Fitzgerald [1]
Consider, in carrying out his official dutues, he has some degree of discretion in doing so. For example, some engineers might decide the best tool for their job that day is a slide rule. Others might decide on a given day to use an autoleveling level. And some, particularly Mr. Large, might decide on exercising the "detain trucks that are interfering with road work" provision. It turned out there was no such provision, and Large's job didn't have the authority to detain vehicles. But the absence of a statute specifically forbidding state employees (other than police officers) to detain trucks meant that he was entitled to qualified immunity.
Keep in mind that QI doesn't mean that the injured party isn't entitled to damages at all, it just means they have to sue the state and not individual officers/officials. Of course, suing the state has its own hurdles. Some government bodies have very short statutes of limitations for filing lawsuits against them, and they must receive advance notice before the claim can even commence. And the claim might need to be filed in a special court. And the state may be protected from liability if it had no advance knowledge of a condition, or by a statute limiting the amount of damages.
If I make that mistake as an ordinary Joe, how much time would I spend in jail?
I won't pretend to be an expert---today being the first day I've read about it---but, the very first Wikipedia article I read about the topic discusses qualified immunity w.r.t. "government officials", not "officers", which is a much bigger category of people. [1]
Because it's useful to have the enforcers of state power to be above the law.
It's a bigger problem for police officers than the clerk at the DMV, because one of them walks around with a gun, a nightstick, and a pair of handcuffs, and extremely broad discretion for their use.
Police officers just stand out because their actions can have much bigger consequences and they often act as individuals. But I don't think it should mean QI cannot exist, just that there should definitely be a different standard when it comes to life and death (or freedom in case of arrests).
Police are expected to be the security force of the powerful and influential against society's undesirables. If cops were required to strictly obey the law, they would be much less effective at this job. Most officers would understandably opt simply not to get involved in situations which might lead to someone's rights being violated.
If the powerful want a force which is willing to knock heads for them, they need to assure that force it will not be held responsible for the mess it makes along the way.
You're describing the principle of qualified immunity, which is already in effect in US courts. I was suggesting an explanation for why this is the law of the land, despite it being in such obvious contrast with the principles of a free and democratic society.
If you don't agree with my explanation, I'd be interested in yours: why do you think cops are exempted from having to follow the law the same as other civilians?
It's infuriating that this farce is what our legal system hinges on.
Some people are going to be upset, but in the end we can’t live in a “papers please” society with no freedom of expression. You want to cancel someone? Go ahead. You want to socially ostracize them? No problem. All that’s just freedom of association. Reasonable constitutionalists can have no problem with any of that.
But when you start arresting people? That’s a bridge too far. If the supremes say the law is good with this then we need new law makers, new laws, and new supremes just to be sure.
My understanding comes from having listened to far too many 'Audit the Audit' videos while doing work. I could be mistaken, this is my understanding of the issue though.
I'm not sure why this would be so given the way precedent works in US courts: since SCOTUS denied cert in this case, none of this applies outside the Sixth Circuit. Even within the Sixth Circuit, it's not clear that the same set of facts should pierce QI as long as the PC can be reasonably justified, an area where courts give police extremely broad latitude.
There's a 100% chance that some (many, actually) members of the community would have believed this account to be 'real' ergo, he's impersonating an entire police force.
Ergo, reasonable to think he was 'disruptive' to Emerg. Services.
Here is one of his 'satire' posts [1]
Where is the satire?
I can't even see how that's funny to anyone, but that's besides the point, there's no reason for people to not be certain that it's not real.
Frankly is seems really 'real' to me.
EDIT: Here's a very salient point - I glanced at it and actually missed the specific detail about 'hiring upon passing a 15 question test'. Why? Because even as I knew it was parody, the badge was there, my mind was filling in the blanks. I had to re-read it and 'think about it' to realize that was the 'comedy'. That's part an parcel of why we're not allowed to impersonate police officers for fun.
He is 'impersonating' Emergency services. That's it. That's obviously not appropriate and surely should not be legal.
I suggest the Police were called out of confusion, which is very literally supporting the claims that it was 'disruptive' to their operations.
I'm sad that so many people here seem to think he was maligned, I suggest having a look at what he did.
'Making fun of cops' is obviously fine, this was just someone impersonating the police.
All of that said, maybe people are assuming this was all truly a clear, South Park satire?
[1] https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Novak-Facebook-Pos...
More broadly - anyone who thinks that this is 'obviously a parody' needs to get out more - meet actual people. Many Americans are not hugely clued in, not up to date with culture, have difficulty reading, hearing, moreover, we're all busy and will misinterpret key items - for example even both of us misread the statement.
My mother has used a 'Web Browser' for 20 years and she doesn't know what a 'URL' is. My father uses 'The YouTube' daily and doesn't really know what a 'Web Browser' is. He clicks on the icon, and gets the videos. That's his understanding.
Phone scammers take advantage of a lot of people, not just the elderly.
But if we put this to the test, and showed this to random people without any context at all, there's a 100% chance that people would believe some of the post are real, and at minimum, literally call the Police to ask what is going on, hence 'disrupting' police.
The case discusses a total of about a dozen calls. If this was enough to disrupt a moderately sized suburban police force in a meaningful way, then I think the issue is larger than just a Facebook impersonation account.
The bar for disruption must be higher, else any call that is not strictly the jurisdiction of the police is grounds for arrest as you're disrupting the services.
Consider a situation where someone runs a parody account about upcoming social events and makes a parody post about an upcoming "baby bbq" and asks residents to find they plumpest baby and bring it for a cookup.
While the account page mentions it's parody, the community members spread the post around without this context
Dozens of people call the police, some even demanding they send officers to stop the bbq, and the police only confirm the post not the account; should the police be able to SWAT the parodist without repercussion?
This gets into way too many edge cases of how much _immunity_ should the police have when performing due diligence. In the actual case, the disruption is arguable, and the urgency of stopping the posts/account was also arguable. That people fall for it is not the point; onion articles from more than a decade ago still get posted as real and get real outrage, so the general publics opinion is not a good bar as it constantly shifts and changes depending on who you ask
In this case there was not a major disruption any more than a concerned parent calling the police because they didn't recognize their neighbor at night.
The police had no urgent need to take action, could have handled this without any police action.
The charge is that the police did not like being parodied and thus used their power to shut down free speech, and now the courts are supporting this.
I think it's a bad choice to not hear this case and the police are in the wrong. They are over reacting and trying to litigate someone into having their rights suppressed.
This is not about 'the specific proportion of disruption' - it's about impersonating police and emergency services.
The 'disruption' is not just measured in 'how many calls and how much that disrupts' - it's a measure of civil disruption and confusion.
"The case discusses a total of about a dozen calls."
This is about a call per hour (!) because of a parody.
First - a call an hour over 'confusion of some web site' is quuite high, and that alone is materially disruptive.
Imagine having a startup, and your assistant is literally fielding a call every hour about some confused granny, immigrant/non english speaker, or other random person? That's a lot.
It's also an indication of now nutty the situation must be and how such a large number of people were confused.
But that's a bit besides the point, because it's clear that the man was ultimately impersonating a police officer to the point where obviously mebers of the community were confused as to the nature of what is going on. That's bad.
Frankly, I can hardly believe what I'm reading about all of this.
I think 'online' - people take academic positions that are detached from reality.
Coupled with HN's obsessive libertarian/hacker streak, and you have an entire thread taking an absurd position, supporting a who's impersonating police, causing obvious confusion in the communnity.
"The police had no urgent need to take action"
? They are literally getting a call an hour about some confusing over their online presence. They absolutely have to respond. This is not just some 'civic office' thing it's the frigging police aka 'emergency services'.
"The charge is that the police did not like being parodied"
No, there was someone impersonating the police wiht a whacko account - you can't do that. Legally, morally, pragmatically.
I'm sure this guy probably thought he was just 'being funny' which is fine, and I think they should have just told him to put 'parody account' on the posts so that people knew it was a parody and that would be the end of it.
If you want to find out how this works, go ahead and do the same to your local police. Make a 'parody account' (that looks identical to the real one) and really push the boundaries of what you think is 'free speech' and put out some seriously dark humour about specific individuals.
Then see what happens.
Again - a legit pardoy without confusion, 100% fine, but this guy should have the self awareness to realize what he's done. But instead he's trying to be a victim, claim that he has arbitrary rights to do things he shouldn't do, to make himself the center of atteniton and rake in a few million dollars.
He should have apologized and changed the account.
Also FYI I don't see why the police should have put this guy in jail, he shuld have been out on bail at minimum while it got cleared up. Frankly he should have been just told to 'take it down or mark it as pardoy' and that could have been the end of it right there.
If he opens a true parody account that is labeled as parody and then he gets into trouble, we can take up the discussion again under the premise 'cops won't allow parody'.
You can't to have it both ways and you don't seem to understand legal definition of ompersonation -
Impersonating is intentional effort to blend inm Parody is making jokes that stand out.
Just because you dont get the joke or are not clued in, does not suddenly give the joker Mens Rea and make him an impersonator. It's your problem, not the joker's.
If people read about your police force helping pedophiles, and it sounds like something the police would do, that's their problem.
> The 'disruption' is not just measured in 'how many calls and how much that disrupts' - it's a measure of civil disruption and confusion.
Oh man there is so much social confusion, so many people to jail.
Lets start with journalists that write about drone strikes killing innosent people. The government said any male over 16 is 'enemy combattant' and these journalists are creating social confusion.
Now, 9/11 truther? Causing confusion, straight to jail. You think enchanced interrigation at guantanamo is torture? Confused, straight to jail. Dont support war in ukraine? Confused, straight to jail.
You wrote an article about how FBI groomed autistic people into planting a fke bomb so they could arrwat them as terrorit? Super confused, life sence.
The appeals court touched on this issue specifically to say that (a) police reasonably inferred probable cause from this, but (b) the standard is "reasonable reader" rather than "most gullible person on Facebook", so (c) it's definitely protected speech.
Besides, he was acquitted. Prosecutors actually took this nonsense to trial and failed to convince a jury of your conclusion.
It's ridiculous, all of the poeple here defending this.
Literally a call an hour to the police station, among the small number of people who saw the site just in the first few hours, and actually decided to make the call? That's clear evidence that enough people in the community were confused, and conclusive evidence of material disruption.
Moroever, I think the most 'rational' conclusion given the situation would be that the Facebook page was hacked, not that it was a fake account - that's what I would have inferred without doing much research.
The lack of understanding of basic communications here as well - it's as though people on HN don't know anyone outside of their bubbles.
Go into your community and meet some actual people. Old people, less educated people, migrants, people with disabilities. Just hop on the bus and start up a convseration with a random person to see what 'average' is.
Moreover, there is the problem of the 'authority of the brand' aka the emblem itself.
If a police officer came to your door, presented a badge and then started doing some whacky stuff, how long would the average person hold out before being sure it was a farce?
The badge/brand itself is a marker of credibility which makes the participant have to assume a degree of validity. Which is the whole problem with impersonating memebers of the justice system.
Let's try an adjacent case:
You dress up as a real police officer, and then start acting like and idiot. Free speech? Why wouldn't the 'average person' know that you're doing satire? Go ahead and try.
"Judge, I knocked on the door in uniform, showed a real badge, and then told the person to do 20 jumping jacks! Clearly every reasonable member of the communnity would know that police officers don't ask you to do 'jumping jacks'!"
It's not up to the community members to have to use their inteligence to do some kind of discrimination, it has to be 'clearly' not a polic officer.
Which is why when the stripper shows up at the door, they don't wear real uniforms.
Let's look at the negative cases:
If it was clearly and obviously legal - then why don't they sell real police uniforms everywhere? So that you can go and be a buffoon for 'satire'?
There should be 100's of web sites that 'impersonate the police' but using 'real badges and branding'.
Let's look at the civil commercial scneario:
How long would you last running around in a real UPS uniform, making a fool of yourself making 'fake deliveries'?
How long would you last using a real UPS/Amazong/McDonal'ds logo/branding on your web site - changing only a few details for fun?
Obviously there'd be liability.
Whether or not that his man was doing 'satire' not is besides the point - he was impersonating Emergency Services.
Go ahead and do exaclty what he did in your own home town / region and see what happens.
HNers are making fools of themselves.
Space_meme.jpg “never have”
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2020/what-is-quali...
Policing as an institution in the US is incredibly rotten and backed up by the abuse of qualified immunity.
Here is the page in question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8h4PIC4HhI
It had the police department logo, with no mention that it was a parody. The post said people would be arrested if they went outside at certain times.
I would like to think that most people would question and fact check clearly weird shit like this. But, as we now know, the vast majority of people do not fact check. They take dumb shit like this at face value, hook line and sinker.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/775/the-possum-experiment
Lady puts up "Cat Found" posters around her L.A. neighborhood with pictures of a possum, as a stunt:
https://hw4.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/styles/...
Her voice mail explodes with callers from all over the country after the poster gets shared online. Hundreds of calls. She gets three types of messages, which she catalogued:
1. Those who didn't realize it was a joke or weren't sure and called to politely let her know she had found a possum, not a cat. About 70% of callers.
2. Those who realized it was obviously a joke and called to tell her she had found their cat. About 20% of callers.
3. Those who didn't realize it was a joke and called to tell her how dumb she was. She got some really mean messages. About 10% of callers.
Worth reading - or at least scanning - to understand both the seriousness of their filing and their parody of it in all seriousness.
This wasn't about slander though. It was about the 10 x unnecessary 911 calls caused by the page. He also didn't help himself by deleting all comments saying the page was fake, and posting a warning on his page when the police posted a warning about his fake page.
That's a problem to address by telling those people not to make frivolous 911 calls.
Anyway, if you do things that are in the boundaries of the law, you shouldn't be surprised if you get arrested.
Doesn't matter.
> But, as we now know, the vast majority of people do not fact check. They take dumb shit like this at face value, hook line and sinker.
Doesn't matter.
Uh, actually, if nothing else --- this should definitely matter.
>> But, as we now know, the vast majority of people do not fact check. They take dumb shit like this at face value, hook line and sinker. > Doesn't matter.
So the consequences of one's actions, don't matter?
For the purposes of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, this is broadly correct.
The context I was following down from the top was (mainly) "obvious parody".
No. It doesn’t. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men exploits for plenty of examples, like https://theyesmen.org/project/snowcones
It is legal to parodize your local police department if you live in the US. (You would get in trouble if you tried to make parody traffic stops with a parody police car with parody flashing lights, but that’s very different than a Facebook page.)
> So the consequences of one's actions, don't matter?
The government may not punish legally protected First Amendment speech - which parody absolutely is.
Your boss can fire you for it, though.
It is reasonable for the police to believe that the law was broken in this case, due to the 911 calls and similar disruption that could reasonably be expected to happen in this case, and the judges agreed, which is why his legal bid to sue the police failed.
Also wholly unrelated, districts have hired huge numbers of PR people to shine up their image; for example, 67 full time PR and propaganda people for the LA area alone - https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1484966547244433416
Nobody would want to be a cop without some form of protection, but having this protection covers the worst cops. A tough situation, but if we make police work unappealing, what will we achieve? Are there successful examples of this?
It is also interesting that software engineering is one of the only engineering professions that has no industry regulation or personal accountability for negligence.
The challenge is how to protect the first group and not the second. Would you want to be a cop if every shitbag you arrest is going to sue you for some frivolous crap? You will lose some of those cases even if you are a saint of a police officer.
Apply the same to police.
They are the same group, because the ones trying to fight crime will eventually witness a "worst cop" committing a crime, report it, and then get fired.
https://www.aclu.org/video/meet-officer-mader-fired-trying-d...
https://mfranciswrites.medium.com/5-good-cops-that-got-fired...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/what-polic...
Batman isn't a cop, Batman is a vigilante sociopath with a bat fetish who assaults the poor and the mentally ill because he can't process trauma like a normal person. Batman is only allowed to exist in the context of a corrupt justice system that wants someone like him and his circus of violence to distract the citizens of Gotham from their own systemic corruption. In a just society he'd be in a padded cell where he belongs.
We shouldn't want police to be Batman. We shouldn't just accept the premise that the cops just have to "crack a few eggs" now and then. That's just conceding to authoritarianism.
> padded cell where he belongs
Times change, and the heroes of yesteryear become the villains of tomorrow. Seems to me there's a quote about that.
In a just society, he wouldn't have turned out the way he did to begin with. You know, because Gotham, and his world, wouldn't be fucked up the way it is.
> We shouldn't want police to be Batman. We shouldn't just accept the premise that the cops just have to "crack a few eggs" now and then. That's just conceding to authoritarianism.
We shouldn't want Batman, no. But nobody here is arguing that police should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, just because, hell, they felt like it. That's not what's meant by "cracking a few eggs". The argument is that mandatory strict adherence to every possible law at all times, is possibly not the best way to combat crime perpetrated by criminals who by definition are disregarding the law.
Except... Gotham being what it is, Bruce Wayne isn't the only person to have lost loved ones, even parents, to criminal violence. Other people learn to deal with it and move on with their lives. It seems to be just Batman and the Joker who feel society owes them a blood debt for the pain it caused them.
> But nobody here is arguing that police should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, just because, hell, they felt like it. That's not what's meant by "cracking a few eggs".
OK, but that is essentially what the idiom it seems to be drawing from means - "if you want to make an omlette, you have to crack a few eggs," implies breaking the law and/or people to get something done. It's just a prosaic way of saying the ends justify the means.
And anyway, for the most part, police do do whatever they want, whenever they want, just because, hell, they feel like it. And QI lets them get away with it.
>The argument is that mandatory strict adherence to every possible law at all times, is possibly not the best way to combat crime perpetrated by criminals who by definition are disregarding the law.
If mandatory strict adherence to every possible law at all times makes it impossible for the police to fight crime, then maybe the problem is there are too many laws, and they're too strict. Because remember, the police don't chase criminals, they chase suspects assumed innocent until proven guilty by a court.
We're not even talking about high speed chases, crimes committed in undercover work, property damage, shooting dogs, no-knock warrants or any of the extralegal things police do that put the public in danger for the ostensible greater public good. We're talking about a Facebook parody. The police could have just, you know, had it flagged or something. But they chose violence because the police always choose violence. Maybe when they're obviously wrong, they for pay for it.
This seems to be going a bit off the rails, I guess I'll just say the Batman I'm familiar with seems to be different from yours, and leave it at that.
> If mandatory strict adherence to every possible law at all times makes it impossible for the police to fight crime, then maybe the problem is there are too many laws, and they're too strict. Because remember, the police don't chase criminals, they chase suspects assumed innocent until proven guilty by a court.
Possibly. I definitely feel there are too many laws, and many seem arbitrary and/or too strict.
> But they chose violence because the police always choose violence.
I guess I missed the part where they beat him into submission. I had thought they just arrested him.
And, maybe he didn't deserve to be arrested. I don't know. I do think what he did shouldn't really be morally defensible, but that's a different argument that's been debated into the ground elsewhere in this thread.
> for the most part, police do do whatever they want, whenever they want, just because, hell, they feel like it. > police always choose violence.
I'm afraid this is where any meaningful discourse probably ends. I can't say I really get along well with most officers, but this is also not what I've seen out of most officers. You get some definite assholes, and some bigots. But words like most and always seem pretty far out of line.
What if recruitment focused on hiring warm, generous, and communicative people who can relate to troubled people and deescalate complex situations -- competing for candidates from nursing and education programs -- instead of on mimicking military structures and courting highly volatile aggro meatheads?
Would these discussions still immediately turn to how "eggs have to be cracked" to defeat the baddies? Or would the discussions instead be about process failures that might be remedied through analysis and reflection?
But you have quite a hill to climb with your argument.
There has never been a police force at scale implemented anywhere on earth with the qualities that you state. Not saying that its not possible. But there's a reason people some people become nurses, others become gamblers, other become politicians, teachers, and cops.
I think you could expect better outcomes from simply having more effective means of separating the bad apples, vs taking QI completely off the table for the good guys.
Note - I'm not even against abolishing QI. Yet when I see arguments like this that hinge on changing human nature... and replacing it with a novel concept in recruiting, that has never succeeded anywhere on earth for thousands of years....
Then the job would be "community service"; we have that in the form of, say Red Cross. Policing by definition is anti-crime in purpose.
Maybe there's a place for the sort of agency you envision, but regardless of the goodwill of others, there will always be wolves trying to eat the sheep, and we'll need an agency to deal with them.
Every other profession has protection in the form of insurance. A bad cop's insurance policy will eventually become too expensive to do the job and will have to find another line of work.
How do they manage this? They have training manuals which break down the law for them in basic, easy-to-understand terms. These are used in training and are widely available to the police, including when a scenario develops. For example: when is it legal for a police officer to move a member of the public's car without their permission? Rather than discuss detailed case law or legal concepts with funny names, it just gives standard examples and standard exceptions (when moving the car is immediately necessary to prevent damage to the car; when moving the car is necessary to prevent damage to some other property; when a order clearing the road has been obtained AND sufficient notice has elapsed since blah blah BUT NOT when the order was obtained AFTER... etc).
Are police officers in these countries often prosecuted successfully over slight discrepancies between this type of summary and the exact legal position in grey area cases? Of course not. But they are subject to prosecution in scenarios where it can be demonstrably shown that, for instance, none of the conditions for moving a vehicle applied, and it must have been clear to the officer at the time that none of the conditions applied.
And obligatory advice, “Don’t talk to the police.”
But no, in practice you can't personally sue a cop in civil court in the United States for anything that can be even vaguely understood as police work, no matter how terrible an abuse it is.
That counts as case dismissed, not as settled.