Iowa man files lawsuit after being arrested twice for criticizing the police

Sure. And given the officers consulted the "City’s Law Director and the judges who issued the warrants," there was evidence of that disagreement. There were no similar consultations in Petersen's case.

> until officers and officials start getting held personally liable for these events, they will never stop happening

I don't believe there is evidence for this. Municipalities vigorously defend themselves for a reason. Yes, in large systems, the cost gets baked in--but Newton isn't a big nor rich town.

> he might get something from the municipality, but I doubt he'll get anything from the mayor or PD

I agree. And I think that could even be fair, especially if the mayor and cop thought they were acting according to the law. The law they relied on didn't come out of nowhere, after all.

In the end, if the only thing that comes out of this is the non-disparagement rule being struck down, I think that's a win. (I generally believe we need qualified immunity reform. But that needs to happen through statute.)

It continues to fascinate me that people have already forgotten, or never heard, the stories of the foundations of the country. We asked the existing government multiple times to allow us to handle ourselves, and give us more autonomy. They outright said no. And what was one of their first actions in response? Go take the plebs' guns. Now, if controlling the arms, ordnance, and munitions isn't important, why is that?

And no, our government being a republic rather than a monarchy does not make this time any different than the last. It should be evident by now that all it does is slow down the inevitable, and prevent us from pointing the finger at any one specific person. Which is to say, it'll be even harder this time. And that is not an excuse to give us less advantages. It is a reason we need more, or our future generations are more doomed than we already have allowed ourselves to be.

Since armed Choctaw rebellions and plantation slave uprisings are of course still a very legitimate concern buying assault rifles at the gun store should be a sacrosanct holy right. We certainly don't want another Haitian revolution on our hands.

Also, I never said you'd survive such a scenario. Not everyone survived the first revolution. Did that make it a bad idea?

Also x2, why do people I speak to about this always get the impression that everyone in the military will unanimously agree that drone striking and nuking its land, resources, and people is a beneficial strategy? Not to mention the immorality of it. There will be splintering. It will be civil war. There's a great chance there will be two US armies, two presidents, etc. when the time comes.

The bit that many seem to overlook is that the US police are being called out for all manner of first response calls and traffic management that are essentially equivilant to fire and ambulance calls, the strategy should be to investigate the issue and then bring in the heavy handed response if required.

There seems to be a very general blinkered view that is unable to break out of the "this is how we've always done it, there is no better way".

As "the police" are so strongly identified with violence the best interpretation of "defund the police" is to break out "incidence response | community assistance" away from "armed thuggery" and work to get some respect back from the broader public.

But I did have a very interesting conversation with a Met Police Officer while he was escorting me to hospital. He pointed out that without the Taser, his only other option was his baton. He frequently used the threat of the Taser to deal with situations where he would be forced to use a baton instead, and noted most of the simply the threat of a Taser was enough to get people to reconsider their actions, and accept arrest more peacefully.

Obviously there are places where the presence of Tasers have resulting an increase an escalation which wouldn’t have otherwise, and no doubt there are some officers that abuse their Tasers, but I don’t removing Tasers would be a clear cut improvement. But I would be in favour of more technical controls (automatic logging of a Taser being upholstered, automatic trigging of body-worn cameras, simple method for the public to request footage etc) to prevent abuses.

Edit:

> In Q2 2018, Avon and Somerset police record 1 use of taser for the whole quarter.

I would be very careful reading this data. Looking through what’s available it’s clear to me something significant changed in either police behaviour or, more likely, data collection.

According to the data, Tasers were used only 15 times in 2018/2019 Q4, but in 2019/2020 Q1 usage shot up to 201. They were fired 0 times in 2018/2019 Q4 and fired 30 times in 2019/2020 Q1.

Additionally “tactical communication” was used 1,865 times in 2018/2019 Q4, but only 515 times in 2019/2020 Q1.

So either the Avon and Somerset Police got a lot less talkative, and lot more trigger happy after the 2019 easter holiday, or the 2018/2019 data was collected using a different methodology, and appears to be wildly inaccurate. If we exclude the 2018/2019 data, the increase in Taser usage is still there, but it’s not a 100X increase, more like a 10X increase. Not great I agree, but still an order of magnitude lower than your original analysis.

> The term can also be used to describe a stockless handgun-style submachine gun. The term is a calque of Maschinenpistole, the German word for submachine guns.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_pistol

Didn’t realize it wasn’t as widespread as SMG.

> we shouldn't be suprised if they act like one

I'd love it if cops were held to the same rules of engagement as the military.

You, as a civilian, are expected to remain calm while LE is aggressive and shouting at you.

You, untrained, are expected to remain unafraid with guns pointing at you, but a trained cop can "fear for his life"...

The vast majority to US police offers will never encounter these situations in their careers. There’s no reason to have every officer armed to teeth just in case they’re blind sided gang violence, or a mass shooting. Besides we also know that most U.S. officers have no interest in responding to types of incidents, preferring to sit it out until someone else comes a deals with their mess.

> American police officers would never wear a tie. They’d (rightly) fear that someone would try to strangle them with it.

That’s why police officers in other countries wear clip-on ties that are specifically designed to breakaway if yanked on. Nobody wears a real tie.

I know you are talking about police in general, not this specific town, but I wanted to make clear that none of those are a daily reality in Newton.

The costume changes how people perceive you, the assumptions they make about you, and by extension the way you interact with those people.

Very few people will choose to go to prison instead of turning down their music or calming down their guests.

The problem is for a notable segment of the populace, "disrespect" can be as minor as "looking bemusedly at you" or having the audacity to have a different opinion.

Thanks for elaborating the point, this is exactly what I was trying to get at with the "you go do it then". How are you going to convince people to join the police knowing they'll be going into places where people will be armed but you yourself are not armed and somehow need to enforce the law and project some level of authority if the situation is hairy.

If that were true, unarmed security guards wouldn't exist yet we have no problems finding people willing to do that job.

But there's a good reason why defund/abolish the police is sticking around - because a significant part of the activists do mean it [1] (ACAB didn't come from nowhere), and the moderate faction that doesn't mean it literally is unwilling to part from the radical faction that does.

Anyone supporting the moderate faction is in a thorny position - do they think the moderates will grow a spine and stand up to the radicals once they've achieved their goals, or will they continue to meekly let the radicals set the agenda?

[1] Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police [..] There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo. - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

Another I just thought of is Nat Hentoff https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/309340.Free_Speech_for_M...

The fact that a cop can't be jailed due to qualified immunity is not directly related to the fact that he would be fired long before that for not behaving up to standards.

Police is subject to checks and balances, their transgressions just don't seem to be the priority for voters.

> even though I'm a borderline millennial.

I simply say that because I dislike the establishment, and the majority of the establishment comprises currently of that age range. No insult meant to you.