Police don't face criminal charges for this.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel...
My guess is there's a little bit of confusion on why this happened on your part. If the government wanted to, they can and will go after the other platforms. But you see the other platforms aren't end to end encrypted and gladly give up the data to law enforcement. If they keep giving over the data, there is no risk of prosecution.
This is false. Discord (Voice & Video), Facebook Messenger, iMessage (to the point law enforcement has to rely on "leaked" message contents from the phones notifications), WhatsApp, Signal, Viber, and plenty others. They all have end to end encryption in some way, shape or form. There's also Twitter / X that has this as well.
Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning
Edit: and none of those cases would involve pretrial remand/jail
Here in the UK it is illegal to be grossly offensive online. Racism for example will have you charged under the Communications Act 2003.
https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/2056692341399081235
While here in the UK you can be arrested and charged for saying mean things about the royal family on private whatsapp groups,
https://www.itv.com/news/london/2023-09-07/five-former-met-p...
I am opposed to criminalising hate speech, BUT I think its important to be clear its not just "saying mean things".
Can you provide a definition of "hate speech" which doesn't also apply to "mean words"?
Are you suggesting racist words are a special category of mean words or something? If so why?
I think I disagree with you on this, but I think what you've said is a perfectly valid opinion and appreciate your response. I'm sorry that it appears someone has downvoted you for disagreeing. This seems to be a new trend on HN and I wish people would stop doing it.
The first is covered by current UK law, the other are not.
> I think I disagree with you on this, but I think what you've said is a perfectly valid opinion and appreciate your response. I'm sorry that it appears someone has downvoted you for disagreeing. This seems to be a new trend on HN and I wish people would stop doing it
Agreed. I upvote a lot of things I disagree with to counter unfair downvotes (including GP).
Height and weight discrimination depends on what is considered height and weight discrimination. Saying you need to be x height or y weight to do something? That's safety. People saying they'd only date someone above x height or below y weight? I bit shallow but that's personal preference. Saying everyone above 200 pounds is lazy and deserves to die of a heart attack? Maybe then it crosses the line into actual discrimination
What about height and weight affecting career prospects?
You assume we both know what is meant by "racist words" which implies it is a category that can be defined. Hate speech laws apply to more categories than race too. The wikipedia article has excerpts of and links to the relevant legislation and important cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United...
This is the problem with going after 'harmful communication'. It is not something that can be defined precisely, which allows government officials to choose to interpret it in whatever way they want when the enforce it. Obviously in these cases, the courts ruled against the official's interpretation, but that didn't stop this guy from having to spend 37 days in jail before they released him.
As they say "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride".
While it is good that the UK version doesn't send you to pretrial jail, you still have to fight the charge. You have to respond, spend time in court, hire council, and hope you can convince the courts that your post doesn't fit the definition of incitement to violence.
This has a chilling effect on free speech, even if all the cases are eventually thrown out. This is a tactic the Trump administration has used repeatedly. Go after people in court for things that are clearly not illegal. You make the person fight the charges, both in court and in the public eye, and then the cases are dismissed eventually and the administration moves on. All it does is make people factor this in when deciding how to act; is my act of protest worth having to fight this in court?
The UK has much stronger protections at the start of this process though. Pre-charge detention is capped at 96 hours, charging decisions are by a professional, non-political, and non-elected governmental department who have accountability, political cases require sign-off right up the ladder, and bail is presumed in favour of release. You might get a police visit, worst case scenario an arrest and your devices seized, but it's also a case that will go nowhere because the CPS won't charge it. And you don't really get this whole "rogue sheriff" issue in the first-place, because we're not insane enough to politicize local law-enforcement.
Why do you need to arrest someone just to warn them?
One case I read of a guy who got in trouble for a social media post, he was called into the station and they basically forced him to sign a paper otherwise he couldn't leave as they'd just keep interrogating him, where I'd imagine they threatened to get the courts involved unless he admitted he was wrong for doing it. Which is why most of them don't end up as convictions.
It's basically a very aggressive warning.
Example: https://www.aol.com/police-apologise-arresting-former-specia...
> Mr Foulkes was detained in a police cell for eight hours and questioned in relation to a potential charge of malicious communications. He said he ended up accepting an unconditional caution because he feared the investigation could affect his visits to his daughter in Australia.
Another https://www.foxnews.com/world/blogger-arrested-sharing-anti-...
> After being questioned for several hours, North was released without charge.
So pretty much half the time than in the US. (County of Riverside v. McLaughlin)
-In the United States, police generally cannot hold you for more than 48 hours without formal charges or a probable cause hearing before a judge.
My main concern is the fact they are raiding peoples houses, taking electronics, and aggressively interrogating people for hours over a tweet, then pushing them to sign a document admitting they did something wrong without charging them. While everyone pretends they just got a 'warning' and it's not a big deal that this happens to thousands of people a year.
That's a lot of colorful language to say "words hurt".
I could point you to 30 BlueSky posts that would qualify.... posted in the last 5 minutes.
Here's one horrible example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j718we6njo
As an aside the police body cam footage one of the officers searching his house says "lots of Brexity books'
There are countless awful examples of arrests for online comments. Here's another:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921
She posted the lyrics of her dead friends favourite rap song, and was convicted. How this even resulted in an arrest never mind court and conviction is beyond me.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/03/met-police-c...
I don't know why HN has become full of authoritarian anti-free-speech apologists. The current political divisions are turning people insane.
> [1] An overt act or conduct in public (or affecting the public) that disturbs the peace, safety, morals, or order (e.g., fighting, making unreasonable noise, using obscene/abusive language or gestures, obstructing traffic, creating hazardous/physically offensive conditions, refusing to disperse).
Our online laws which Americans often seem to view entirely through the lens of free speech are more about public (dis)order. It’s not ideas that are being censored, it’s personal conduct online which may be harassing, threatening, abusive or may create a breach of the peace.
Even at his age of 60 (I'm getting up there), I wouldn't have made that deal.
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates...
> “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
He'll dole out small amounts of it to J6ers and other supporters in a public display of rewarding loyalty, but enriching himself is always the prime directive over every other concern and who (in his mind) has been the biggest target of "DOJ/govt weaponization?"... himself, of course.
He will take almost all of it to go along with the various other billions of dollars he has scammed away from the American people as president.
For example, there are surely dozens of others who are taking plea deals because they can't afford a lawyer to bring such a lawsuit, a few hundred thousand could multiply the impact tenfold.
https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/supreme-court-ice-r...
More succinctly, down this path lie guillotines.
Generally, I'm against incarceration for that reason. I think the relatively muted violence of it is too easy to stomach for the public, which leads to people letting the system get sloppy. For public and infamous crimes, however, where the question is not "what act took place", but rather "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"-type cases, I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment being on the table. We trust public officials with significant authority, and abuse of that authority is utterly irredeemable. Frankly, for elected officials I'd support a "two-thirds vote and you hang" policy. If you want power, and seek out power, you have an immense responsibility to live up to your constituent's expectations.
I guess that last part is the perspective I'd change, for a more compassionate world. I'd much rather ask "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what made the person commit that crime, and how can we help them not do that in the future again?".
My compassion for my fellow man is why I suggest we wait for them to commit a crime before punishing such behavior.
Yes, which is why we need to help these people. They clearly lost all their humanity and compassion, at one point we should care about the betterment of humanity as a whole, and put a limit to how these sort of people can act and do, the current situation is not tenable, and they should be classified as the sick people they are, rather than idolized.
The ones that were executed would have been alive for the exoneration if we they had been given life in prison instead.
Vast majority of death penalties happen in countries where citizens don't have much of a say what their government does...
If dylan roof was allowed to live his full natural life in jail, there would be race riots in the US by the end of the press conference.
While prisons in the USA are often more punitive and dangerous than a forensic psychiatric facility, that does mean forensic psychiatric facilities are not their own form of Hell rife with their own problems. Essentially, autonomy, dignity, and human rights are stripped from individuals in both facilities -- you do not want to go to either.
There's a huge gap between "6 years and a parole officer" and the death penalty.
> If dylan roof was allowed to live his full natural life in jail, there would be race riots in the US by the end of the press conference.
This is both offensive and untrue. Black Americans oppose the death penalty at much higher rates than white Americans and in fact, several survivors and victims' family members have come out against his execution.
I’m sure that would never be abused.
However, currently the court has to at least find that a murder has occurred or in some cases child rape (sometimes with conditions like a second offense). These are categorically different offenses that are unlikely to occur during the normal course of a public servants job, except perhaps if police kill someone there may be a question whether it was murder.
If “violation of trust” is given the death penalty than any normal act in the course of a public servant’s service history could potentially be used to hang him by questioning the legitimacy of the act.
The greater problem is that many innocent people have already been and certainly will be murdered because of the death penalty. That should be totally unacceptable.
If you make exceptions, you will make more exceptions, and you are eventually guaranteed to put an innocent person to death due to the law of large numbers. A justice system must have a way to reverse mistakes to deliver justice properly, period.
It becomes a slipper slope argument - well if we allow people to be jailed then inncocent people will be jailed and that's due to the law of large numbers, and there's no way to reverse our incredibly horrible prison system as it stands.
So now its my job to build our restorative justice system or... take out a few more nazis.
> If we kill innocent people that is bad, and we should require an incredibly high bar for this type of thing.
Yeah, the bar should be "only when humans reach infallibility" and then we won't kill any innocent people.
Why would you want a justice system that kills innocent people (and spends more money in the process) when it is entirely avoidable?
Also, the body of federal law and regulations is so vast that smart people estimate the average person unknowingly breaks roughly 3 federal criminal laws per day[1], giving the federal government the legal ability to arbitrarily arrest anyone they want.
[0] James Duane, You have the right to remain innocent, 2016
[1] Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, 2011.
I genuinely don't think certain charges relating to preserving one's freedom should even be a crime in of it self.
Unless you endanger others in an extreme manner, things like "resisting arrest", running from police, or attempting to escape prison shouldn't be charges within themselves.
People love the phrase "you can beat the rap, not the ride", but that essentially gives broad power to harass and damage one's life without recourse sans extremely expensive legal routes. In this example, a man lost his freedom for 37 days over a bogus charge and was paid by the taxpayers to essentially shut up.
Federal statute should categorize that as a fireable offense and an intentional tort incurring punitive damages at minimum, and any subsequent proceedings (after the lie) as inadmissible evidence.
If that makes investigation more difficult, then so be it. For too long, law enforcement and federal investigators have relied on inappropriate and immoral techniques to obtain conviction. Mass surveillance, warrantless wiretapping, manipulating suspects -- what happened to old-school investigation that was after truth via smart observation and deduction? There's a reason people love watching Poirot: it's a (admittedly stylized) snapshot of real justice in progress.
Their expected standard of behavior should be higher than that of citizens.
Making it illegal for police to lie on the job would have the effect of many police no longer lying on the job, rather than putting all police in jail.
Obviously lying isn’t required by all employers. Most employers aren’t the police (eg it is not the grocery clerk’s job to lie to you.) We are just talking about police, where lying to you is their job.
> Making it illegal for police to lie on the job would have the effect of many police no longer lying on the job, rather than putting all police in jail.
I still have no idea what you are talking about here. If you made something that the police do every day illegal then they wouldn’t arrest each other for doing it? That is obviously true but unrelated to the fact that it’s the police’s job to lie to you. Or it almost seems like you’re trying to say “if cops couldn’t lie to you then their job description would be different than it is now”, but that would just be another way of you saying that it is their job to lie to you?
I’m not sure what this fixation on hypothetical police that don’t lie to you is about, but again, saying “I am picturing imaginary police in my head where it’s not their job to lie to you” does not refute the fact that it’s the police’s job to lie to you, it affirms that it’s their job to lie to you. “All of my contrary evidence exists as stuff I made up in my head” is generally a supportive statement to any notion!
No it isn't. Their job is to enforce the law. The only time it's reasonable for an officer to lie is when they're engaged in authorized undercover operations.
As the famous Russian saying goes, "Был бы человек, а статья найдется" (Show me the man, and I will show you the crime.)
"OK, before we begin this meeting of the capas of our totally legitimate, not at all criminal business... Is anyone here an undercover officer of the law?"
"Shucks, you got me. I'm FBI."
However, your implied extreme isn't accurate. Lying to suspects can in some cases result in entrapment charges (although it is historically more likely for suspects with power and public office). Etc.
Yes, the current system is injust. No, it's not as bad as you claim.
1. You do not assert the right to remain silent - you must state verbally that you are doing so. Otherwise the prosecution can describe your communication as "refused to cooperate with or answer questions from law enforcement" which is a "negative" finding, whereas the right to remain silent is at least meant to be interpreted neutrally.
2. Beware anything beyond the simplest statement: "Yo, I want a lawyer dawg" can be successfully argued in the (state) Supreme Court as "Defendant asked for a canine attorney. Law enforcement were unable to find one, but had fulfilled their obligation to attempt to provide counsel for the defendant. Therefore, any statements he made after his were done knowing he had no counsel and were as a result admissible."
The US military is subject to a higher standard, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Penalties for US service members breaking the law or codes of conduct are much higher and much more severe than civilians. The US military makes routine example of law breakers and misconduct.
The US police force, by contrast, is civilian. They are not licensed, commissioned, or subject to additional standards. Certainly not nationwide standards that would bar police removed from their post from finding similar work elsewhere.
We should pay our police officers more, make them undergo nationally standardized training and licensing, and then hold them to a higher standard if and when they break the law.
Police court-martial.
Honest question, is this currently true?
I wouldn't say in most. In many they wouldn't
The real problem right now is how the courts determine if an official was acting in good faith. Right now they are assumed to have acted in good faith unless it has already been “clearly established” that what they did was illegal. This means that the official can argue that they didn’t know that their actions were illegal because no prior case ever dealt with that exact fact pattern. This works far too often and has let a lot of very guilty police get away with their crimes. Still, some police officers _are_ held to account, so it is not actually impossible.
The current implementation of it- where you need to have "clearly establish" a Constitutional right with a prior case in this region- is based on Pearson v. Callahan from 2009, and it takes a terrible Supreme Court precedent and makes it even worse. This has created the patchwork "no case in the circuit has clearly established that a police officer must not make a warrantless search on a Tuesday in May" sort of quibbling.
The work of legislatures has been to roll back qualified immunity. Colorado, New Mexico, and California have removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. LEO's can still claim qualified immunity for suits under federal law, but they cannot for some suits brought under state law or the state constitution in those states.
The Supreme Court has also, at the same time they've made it harder to hold police to account, made it harder to hold politicians to account, gutting bribery laws and expanding "free speech" to include paying politicians. And the recent idea that a President can't be prosecuted for any "official acts" is also nonsense created by the Supreme Court. This isn't Congress fault, there were laws that prevented it. The Supreme Court just decided that they didn't want to enforce those laws.
The Supreme Court at the root of a lot of the dysfunction in American politics, and somehow still has more respect than they deserve.
> California [has] removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#State_law, it's Connecticut, not California, as the third state which limited qualified immunity.
I'm not a lawyer, and I have never lived in California so I don't know how much that covers. The QI removal I knew best was Colorado (CO's law also made individual LEO's have to pay with their own money, up to certain limits), and was doing some googling which listed California and New Mexico.
If the prosecutor thinks they can get a criminal conviction for murder (or whatever) that is a totally separate process that is between the People (whom the prosecutor represents) and the defendant (in this case, the LEO who killed the guy in the line of duty). Qualified Immunity never applied to criminal cases(1). But criminal cases will not provide any money or anything like that to the victim (or their family)- that comes from civil suits alleging that the LEO violated someone's civil rights. And that is what removing Qualified Immunity encourages, individuals who were harmed can sue individual officers and receive payments from those individual officers (Colorado's police reform bill holds individual officers responsible with their own money up to certain limits where the organization becomes responsible; I don't know about other states).
1: Which are rare against LEO's because prosecutor's don't want to anger the LEO's that they work with regularly. This is why civil suits are generally the main avenue for people to get justice from over-zealous LEO's.
The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution says, in its entirety:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
The key in this context is "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law." If a government agent takes that from you without due process that is a civil right of yours being abridged, at least in the US. I can't speak for other countries.
The right to life, etc. anyone can deprive you of.
Who said they were?
> I don't see how someone could stop me from voting. If they do that is just kidnapping, threats of violence, etc.
Section 131(b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 states that “[n]o person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose” for any candidate for federal office.[1]
[1] https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/what-is-voter-intimida...
It'd be an interesting thing to see garnishing of wages, deductions from pension funds, or loss of some kind of bonus system to help balance the scales.
The suit was filed against Perry County, TN, not the state or federal government. A quick google says that its budget is $33M, so in fact this is a very impactful settlement for the county.
I had to spend money to sue the local unemployment office because a bureaucrat there illegally cut off my unemployment payments. They lost and had to pay me back in arrears but that money came from the taxpayers(so me and you) and that asshole who did that is still working there just fine collection golden handcuff paychecks and a gold plated pension when she retires.
All civil servants need a form of direct accountability with consequences for their mistakes at work, especially when malicious and repeated. Currently they're untouchable and the taxpayer foots the bill for their mistakes with no repercussion.
If supressing cases or throwing big money lawyers against legitimate lawsuits is cheaper, they will do it. If teaching cops to hide their corruption is easier than rooting out all the corrupt individuals to raise rates, thats what they will do.
This wasn't some honest mistake. This was a deliberate violation of a citizen's civil rights. This was a crime, and the only reason it's treated so lightly is because the criminal is an officer of the law.
But who am I kidding, even him losing a single day's pay would be a victory here. Nothing will actually happen to him.
No they won't face anything like that. Police lawyers will claim they were just enforcing hate speech laws to protect the country's leadership from far right supremacists and will be let go scuff free. You also won't get anything remotely close to $835,000 from the state for being falsely imprisoned. You're lucky to get maybe 5000 Euros for your trouble.
In Germany for instance the politicians are protected by dedicated law against negative comments from the public. You can't even call them fat or they send the police after you. Sure, you won't get locked up for the fat comment, but the point of the police going after people with mean comments is only intimidation, to get people to self censor and stop criticizing the leadership and accept the propaganda like obedient cattle.
Americans with their 1st, 2nd and Nth amendments, have an overly rosy view of the EU justice system which is far more lenient to law enforcement abuse of power and speech crackdowns. It's why you easily saw Americans attacking and throwing rocks at masked ICE officers in the US, and why Germans would never dare touch a law enforcement officer in their country, because the courts would never tolerate public attack on law enforcement and challenging the state authority.
Today, the parties announced in a joint statement that Larry will receive $835,000 in exchange for dismissing his complaint.
“I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” said Larry.
Ultimately the US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police" that would be able to ban people from being law enforcement officers or at least require e.g. retraining or restriction of duties, without leaving it up to frankly corrupt local authorities.
Double-edged sword though when the Feds get captured by the Party, though.
I don't think this is true, or at least it's not entirely true.
Various states and law enforcement agencies have an office of the inspector general which at least should provide some oversight. We also have the courts and individual officers and agencies can be sued in the court of law which also provides a means of oversight. You seem to be suggesting that everything is corrupt, corrupt local authorities, corrupt feds captured by the party. I think that level of perceived corruption is not reflected in operational reality.
Some states or local police organizations do in fact look at past police records for applicants. There's a bit of variation here, but it's probably a bit better organized than, say the EU where outside of other bureaucratic hurdles I don't believe there is any real way to stop some German citizen who should be banned from being a police officer from moving to Estonia and being a police officer. Though perhaps I'm wrong and there is an EU-wide database that all countries and their police forces use?
I know the UK isn't in the EU, but I just bring that up as I think it may be a bit closer of an example.
Let's bring up the Iran war - you could say a few things about how it's wrong or something and I can just reply de oppresso liber.
Ok? That's not a discussion, it's a drive-by, feel good zinger.
But then you say it's not a discussion, nobody said anything about it being a discussion.
So, not very much, and I suppose you can argue about whether it's meaningful, but it is a consequence.
Eh, just fire him and garnish a portion of his future wages to pay back the cost to the city.
> In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it
Do you have a recent example?