Officer who ignored NYPD's 'courtesy cards' receives $175K settlement
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Give him a promotion.
This is 100% corruption. No doubt these are also sold by some cops
So they should be held to the same standards as everyone else, which is a safe, sane compromise between those ends.
I don't propose to have any magic solutions or great insights, but if there's a proper series of reforms I don't see how that could make them an easier target. As for a "proper series of reforms" - mandatory body cams is on my personal short list (enshrined in law or insurance policies, but with clear and severe repercussions for incidents of not having them on), though better pay (it's harder to bribe someone who isn't having money issues), crisis and mental health training (and yes, establishing other support structures for these issues, rather than relying on police to handle them too), stricter and more streamlined disciplinary action (no more needing national outrage to get a murderer fired and charged, and no union/FOB protection for clear violations of civil rights and this new code of conduct), and whistleblower protection would all be great.
If anything, that would make police _safer_ - there will always be criminals and those who wish to do harm, in general or to those who oppose their illegal activities - but having the entire citizenry at best wary of you, and at worst hostile, does _not_ help. Policing their own and just generally "doing better" would do a lot to increase general support for the police, which would increase cooperation and reduce the chances of radicalizing citizens.
The entire discussion is very complex, and I'm just an idiot on the internet, so take this with a bucket of salt.
Thanks for reading that wall of text; have a good day.
Keep in mind the parent poster said "absolutely highest impossible standards."
Maybe this just isn't a good example, but AFAIK I can't, as a private citizen, do anything about someone jaywalking, speeding, etc. That enforcement is the sole jurisdiction of the cops. So trolling cops with it is not an avenue for criminals.
And I'm hard pressed to see how enforcing these things more stringently against cops is a bad thing. Cops SHOULD be setting the example here.
Your point about "absolutely highest impossible standards" is valid, though I'd say that I don't actually support _impossible_ standards. I don't know what the parent poster was thinking, what you're thinking, or what _anyone_ other than me is thinking about what would be "reasonable" standards, but obviously _impossible_ standards are, well, impossible... So yes, the standards would need lots of discussion and work, that I have not put in (and am not qualified for).
As for your general point about harassment...there's a lot.
First, I don't get how your specific example of jaywalking would apply - I don't think that would be something that a random person can take another random person to court over. Ignoring that pedantic note - if the cop jaywalks while not on duty, I don't really care - treat it the same as any other jaywalking incident. If they're on duty - if they're actively pursuing a crime/criminal, or doing something else that justifies the action, fine; if a random citizen reports them, worst case should be that someone (group, really) reviews the body cam footage, and then issues either a "no this was fine" or appropriate punishment - for jaywalking, I hope that wouldn't be more than a strongly worded "try to stick to the sidewalks and crosswalks when in uniform".
In general, the jaywalking example is actually really valuable - laws that are unenforced or unequally enforced leave a huge amount of space for abuse.
So maybe that would be a good start for the standards for the police - enforce the laws that actually already exist. So if a cop, say, walks into somebody's house to update them on their search for someone who was creeping around, and then ends up shooting the person _who called the police there_ in the head, well - sounds a lot like murder, and should be pursued as such. Same for kneeling on someone's neck for, what was it, 8 minutes and 46 seconds while others stand around and watch - sounds a lot like murder and ignoring a murder going on right in front of you (while you have the ability and responsibility as a representative of law enforcement to stop it)...
Alright, that turned into...much more of a rant than I expected, sorry.
Again, thanks for reading, and the civil discussion (not sarcasm). Have a good day all.
That would actually be a great thing. Not because of the wasted time, but because it'll highlight silly laws that didn't need to exist.
There should not exist laws that get overlooked for normal people (most of the time except when powers that be want to harass them).
The solution is to recognize such laws didn't make any sense to begin with, and remove them. Problem solved, now nobody gets time wasted on nonsense.
This should be abolished as something illegal; some countries function perfectly well with much more reasonable laws on that topic.
I'm sure the card started as a cute novelty, but the instant it became a signal that someone is above the law it became a problem no matter how few were in circulation at the time.
It's not nepotism or any lesser thing, it's outright corruption.
It's also clear sign that you're living in a police state when the police and those of their choosing appear to be above the law.
Traffic cop sues city for get-out-of-jail-free cards for NYPD friends and family - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36188406 - June 2023 (47 comments)
The Little Cards That Tell Police 'Let's Forget This Ever Happened' (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33638962 - Nov 2022 (43 comments)
NYC Police Union Reducing Number of “Get Out of Jail Free” Courtesy Cards (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30742209 - March 2022 (32 comments)
Police-issued "courtesy cards" help friends and family out of minor infractions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24353003 - Sept 2020 (435 comments)
“Get Out of Jail Free” Cards in New York - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16207890 - Jan 2018 (207 comments)
NYC Police union slashes number of ‘get out of jail free’ cards issued - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16201487 - Jan 2018 (2 comments)
Am I missing something or is that really backwards? They should get rid of these cards fully, not regulate how many are being distributed, seems to focus on a really weird solution.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/nyregion/terrorism-nypd-i...
Speaking of, this just broke: "The NYPD Is Tossing Out Hundreds of Misconduct Cases — Including Stop-and-Frisks — Without Even Looking at Them" https://www.propublica.org/article/nypd-tossed-out-police-mi...
Of course, NY subway police is something else, and that's a very NY thing.
Mostly, it's just a waste of money. Just move the fee collection to taxes and you can free literally hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to stationing cops and stop pretending that fare skippers are going to financially cripple the city. Cops can't keep up with the kids anyway.
> Most of the time, they're lowly constables and recruits doing national service.
"Service" is a reach given most of what they do is... nothing. Literally just standing around as a physical manifestation of security theater. If they want to be useful they can build housing or distribute food or bring people healthcare.
Police standing around in subways is still a deterrent from bad behavior, especially when coupled with a justice system that doesn't reward criminals. See Japan, Korea, Singapore, Dubai, Israel, etc.
The United Fruit Company, with U.S. support, orchestrated coups (like in Guatemala in 1954), suppressed labor movements (e.g., the 1928 Banana Massacre in Colombia), and funded paramilitary groups. The so-called "corruption" was largely a result of foreign exploitation, not internal failings.
So, when you say "banana republic level corruption," you're actually talking about imperialist practices imposed by the U.S.—the very first-world country you’re wondering about.
Sources:
- Banana giant held liable for funding paramilitaries: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6pprpd3x96o
- The Dark Side of Bananas: Imperialism, Non-State Actors, and Power: https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism...
> In 1904, American author O. Henry coined the term[1][2] to describe Guatemala and Honduras under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita).
When the NYPD is harassing native New Yorkers so that investors from Israel, Europe, and China feel more comfortable (on both a personal and economic level), that feels quite "banana republic"-y to me.
Captain Harry Bryant: "Stop right where you are! You know the score, pal. You're not cop, you're little people“
So, someone with a colour printer and the right template could distribute them at-will. ;)
There are riskier games to play, but not all that many.
That'll generally only go wrong if you're not married. ;)
But it seems like sometimes there is capture by a cartel that creates and enforces anti-social behavior. In the case of police, once the cartel is established I don’t see how it can be broken. In a small town, you can just fire the whole department and start over, but short of bringing in the national guard while you trained new police, I don’t know how a city like NYC could do this. This is important because as we’ve already experienced in the post-2020 period, if enough people ignore the police union political endorsements, they will take collective action to reduce public safety. So the cartel (along with violent criminals obviously) effectively can make their own rules.
One solution might be to demand that the majority of police working in a region/burrough/etc, actually lived there????
It is less corrupt than other systems. Massachusetts has a system of special vip license plates to prevent influential people from being pulled over in the first place.
Two people go through border security, one just a random person and the other is carrying a military passport. One will breeze through security and the other might not.
Why *should* a military passport (or my relative is a cop, or my government ID, or my Boy Scout badge, or my jacket patch for that band you love, or my sports jersey, or my bumper sticker) alter how someone evaluates whether I have broken a law or pose a security threat?
I'm not asking why fallible, busy, and sometimes immoral people behave as if it does. I'm asking why it should.
Does any of these allow someone to break the law with impunity?
There are lots of rotten police, and rotten police practices, in American. And many other nations.
Obsessing over these cards, because they're oh-so-visual and push people's buttons, is a "whack any white mole, which appears in this specific spot, if the sun is currently shining here" approach.
Maybe it feels good, and success is incredibly easy - the moles learn fast - but it won't do squat to reduce your yard's horrible mole problem.
They're laminated and full color corruption. How is this allowed?
As long as there's any amount of leeway in enforcement of the law, things like courtesy cards will exist. All it is is a little nudge to say, "Hey. I'm one of you and yours. Let's let it slide."
That will continue to exist even if the cards entirely disappear.
The moment it’s standardised not only in writing, but as a physical object, it should become trivially prosecutable. The existence of these cards should trigger DoJ intervention. (Maybe the Adams administration’s recent failings will prompt this.)
1. The existence of these cards has been widely known about for well over a decade.
2. The DoJ is full of cops as well.
This hypothesis would appear to be disprovable by the DoJ prosecuting cops. (Hint: they do. Including entire police forces.)
I don't know if it's an actual thing.
Edit: I remember now, it was Jack Reacher season 2.
Do they exist somewhere else?
The police have wide discretion to issue a warning instead of a fine in most countries as far as I know. But these cards seem to be unique to NYPD. I don't mean that corruption doesn't exist elsewhere but usually it's a little less obvious!
"Driving while black" comes to mind.
> Many are officers trying to make quota.
This is another thing that should never exist.
All the cops who didn't like corruption have been chased out - a process this article shows in action. All the people who think the culture is unconscionable have quit. Every new hire is trained by people who will tell them "it's normal, everyone does it". And all the leadership, even if they don't engage in corruption themselves, have ignored it or covered it up.
If you're the governor and you decide to crack down on corrupt cops? The cops can simply stop dealing with certain highly visible crimes, claiming they're too busy or whatever. And sure, you can fire some of them - but all the replacements are also implicated in corruption.
Meanwhile, voters don't care about the political minutiae and blame-shifting, all they know is under governor Chris_wot they don't feel safe walking the streets, they want someone tough on crime. You lose the election to your opponent, who gives the cops MRAPs, AR-15s and a license to kill; and suddenly the cops have time to deal with those highly visible crimes.
The trick to avoiding this is that you've got to root out corruption early - before the honest people have been driven out.
There’s no way an enterprising college student would ever charge $25 for a knockoff get out of jail free card.
Sarcasm aside, we are one nation under law. The NYPD needs to step up and accept the moral authority they’ve been given…they’re like an older brother to the other police departments in the country and they are watching.
This is just corruption.
Graft, plain and simple
It's still unfair. The law should apply equally to everyone.
I'd be a little more on-board with the NYPD's cards if you had to get shot in service of the country to possess one.
They settled this because they didn't want dirty laundry aired, but this should be on headlines in news outlets everywhere. This should outrage people. I want a corrupt cop card too, especially with their badge and name of the offender on them!
Years ago I read about this because they were being resold on ebay commonly, it disgusted me then, it still disgusts me now.
So much for equal rights for all.
† Robert Peel was a Tory politician who founded the Metropolitan Police. Peel did a bunch of criminal reform stuff and one of his ideas was what we'd today called "Policing By Consent". As you may have noticed Britain's police don't (on the whole) have guns or armoured vehicles, they aren't paramilitaries or armed gangs, the only way they can be effective is if the community being policed consents to their activities and sees them as legitimate.