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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

It literally doesn't matter -- you're focused on the wrong thing. She could be that woman's exact twin and it wouldn't matter. Spending six months in jail and losing your house, your car, and your dog with the flimsiest of evidence is ridiculous.

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'you can beat the wrap but not the ride' has been a pop culture reference in the US since the 1940s. Our society wants/supports the ability for this to be inflicted at police/court whim on people.

Which means that, if the cops (and other relevant personnel) gets it wrong, they should get served with the same injustices that they committed, no questions asked... you know, because they didn't raise any when they were the ones dishing out punishments.

Edit: wording, formatting

>if the cops (and other relevant personnel) gets it wrong, they should get served with the same injustices that they committed

What if no one would want to work as a policemen and you end up alone against local gang?

What if the police force is the local gang?

There are plenty of westerns about it

> What if no one would want to work as a policemen

This is by far the worst argument. What if we held doctors accountable for malpractice and no one wanted to be a doctor? What if we held engineers liable for faulty designs that break and kill people and no one wanted to be an engineer? What if we held OCCUPATION accountable for DOING JOB BADLY / BREAKING THE LAW? Its a nonsense argument.

What would happen is that only the people that intended to be bad police would not want to the job and/or the people that were bad police (intentional or otherwise) get kicked out of the police force. Same as with every other profession. This is a fantastic outcome and we should do it immediately.

That's a straw-man argument

I don't think society supports it as much as you are suggesting. Marijuana is still illegal despite 65% of the nation being in favor of rescheduling. Clearly our laws do not easily mirror what the population believes.

A lawsuit is exactly what matters. They learn only the hard way, and no other way. If you want them to not be ridiculous, a lawsuit with large punitive damages is the only practical way to get there.

I disagree. The city or state gets sued and they pay the result from the taxpayer funds and literally nobody learns anything, especially not the hard way. Everyone is so completely divorced, and in some cases immune, from consequences that this will change nothing.

The cities and states make laws to better govern police behavior. You can look back on a century of history of this.

After a couple million dollar lawsuits the city or state will learn to be more careful with their methods. It's the taxpayer funds, but it's not an endless supply of money. Cities and states have their own budgets.

There’s a heck of a lot of individual cities and states. Their ability to remain solvent is greater than your ability to stay out of jail.

> After a couple million dollar lawsuits the city or state will learn to be more careful with their methods

You'd think, but watching how many millions my local police department and city paid out every single year leads me to believe they just don't care.

How many, exactly? Anyone can wave vagueness around. Do you have numbers or no?

I haven't lived there in years, nor do I have exact numbers, but they make national news enough for the same problem nearly every year. I'll drop you some links if you care.

1 - 38 million between 2017 and 2022.

2 - 29 million in 2023.

3 - 12 million in settlements in 2025.

Dare I keep going?

[1]https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/louisville-payouts-for-police-...

[2]https://www.aol.com/louisville-paid-least-29m-settle-1030450...

[3]https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2026/02/04/...

The region's GDP is 100 billion dollars, so these are tiny amounts, although they may seem large to some.

And the first article you link proves that people are already worried about it. You think they can safely 10x that?

> The region's GDP is 100 billion dollars, so these are tiny amounts, although they may seem large to some.

It's a fair point and easy to handwave away "it's only $100 per resident." But it's a lot of money still. And yet that city is shutting down schools and selling off school properties to make budget this year. I bet they'd love to have those wasted millions.

> You think they can safely 10x that?

I have no idea the reason for this question. The OP said cities learn after a couple million dollar suits. I'm showing that no, they do not. If anything suits are increasing.

> I have no idea the reason for this question

Well it does make sense, in the full context of the thread. I'll let future readers decide.

LMPD budget is $250m, if they lost ~10% of it every year, they'd surely notice.

NYC has, over the last decade or so, averaged $1M/week in judgments against NYPD for abuses of authority.

More than $1.5 billion has been spent to settle claims of police misconduct involving thousands of officers repeatedly accused of wrongdoing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

Do we have any evidence that these lawsuits have no effect on the number of wrongdoings?

Did you see the word "repeatedly"?

Good point! It shows that the settlements are far too low and that the victims should get a lot more.

If a few cities/states were to default due to debts coming from such cases, the others would start to take notice...

Why won't we just dole out real punishments instead of an indirect chain of money? Money is not the solution to everything.

No. It's not their money and they don't care.

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