An Idealistic Cop, a Forbidden Ticket and a Police Career on the Brink | Hacker News Reader

An Idealistic Cop, a Forbidden Ticket and a Police Career on the Brink

nytimes.com

33 pointsjseliger7 comments

Have experienced this as my partner is from the greater NYC area. Cops will hand out these cards (or sometimes it is a little badge that you pin to your wallet or a larger badge that you stick in your rear window so they don't pull you over in the first place). It doesn't have to be a family member - I knew people who had them because their neighbor was a cop.

It's all part of a "I've got mine" culture that is comfortable with different sets of rules for different kinds of people. And it certainly fosters corruption, favors and deals done outside the normal channels.

This practice and anything like it should absolutely be outlawed and rooted out.

This is one of those situation I wish were more well-known, to counteract a kind of "we don't have that problem" or "it can't happen here" thinking.

Most corrupt police forces at least have the decency to keep it hush-hush and these cops hand out fucking courtesy cards? That's hilarious.

Second time I'm linking this today, even more relevant here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft

Policing as an institution enforces these norms on itself, which is part of what we mean by ACAB. Good people can become cops but they can't remain cops: they conform or are forced out.

See https://archive.ph/99HcL

What if one of these speeders kills a pedestrian? Or is involved in an accident with another vehicle? Does the investigation find the other party at fault if the offender had a courtesy card?

Sort of, yeah. The responding cop's assessment of the crash is considered pretty authoritative for what happened. So they can talk to both people then just lie and say the pedestrian entered the crosswalk late and didn't have right of way or whatever. A lot of time the way this goes is someone will have been drunk but the cop will simply not demand a breathalyzer. A crash while drunk driving is criminal, but without it may make it mutual fault.

There was kind of a locally-known-among-cyclists case in chicago a few years ago where a driver (police family member) did a bad left turn and hit someone in the bike lane. A cop witnessed it and wrote a failure to yield ticket to the cyclist. Luckily there were a ton of witnesses and it got picked up by a good lawyer who worked it hard. But still there were no particular consequences to the driver or the cop.

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