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Comment by theturtletalks | Hacker News Reader

Was just reading into this and it’s infuriating. He was recording another person’s traffic stop in a parking lot. Once the stop was done, he walks to his car. The same officer goes to his car and “pulls him over.” The vet says that you can’t pull someone over in a private parking lot, that’s not a legal stop. Doesn’t matter, he’s arrested and car towed.

He’s kept in jail for 5 hrs before being released for it not being a legal stop just like the vet said. Then that officer tracked him thru flock over 100 times for some personal vendetta.

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> Then that officer tracked him thru flock over 100 times for some personal vendetta.

That's not quite accurate according to the article. It was actually worse: There were over 100 searches and some of them were done by officer in question, but some were done by other officers. This was due to lieutenant's order in connection with Jones' citizen complaint. So it wasn't just one officer abusing the system.

so it was a department wide surveillance. almost like officers choose to engage in illegal behavior constantly to support each other.

This is disgusting, and I continue to argue that we should not excuse Flock Safety for this kind of misbehavior. They created the tech and marketed it to police departments without providing good protections against this kind of thing. Making something cheap and automatic changes how people use it. If this cop had to tail the guy around himself, maybe he wouldn't have done it.

But the far worse problem IMO is that this cop is dirty, corrupt, untrustworthy, and should be punished for stalking this man, and yet he surely will not be. Worst case, he might catch some administrative sanction or maybe be fired - he won't go to jail like he should for this misbehavior.

If you have 1 dirty cop and 100 who ignore his bad behavior, you actually have 101 dirty cops. We need a way to deal with this in our society without resorting to the absolutes of "defund the police" or "back the blue".

We have a way. Diligently prosecute the offender. Unclear why it's not used here.

Broadly speaking, you will only rarely find police properly prosecuted for their misdeeds. Usually, the worst that happens is dismissal, if even that. Of course there are outliers - cops who wrongly kill people have been prosecuted from time to time, but even then, their chances of escaping justice are higher than for an individual citizen in their place.

There are many reasons for this, but in my humble opinion, the worst one is the "thin blue line" - the idea that police are a brotherhood holding back the darkness of crime and evil, which leads to the idea that their misdeeds are somehow excusable by people "on their team", which includes other cops and citizens who are aligned with them.

In my opinion, police should be held to a higher standard by society to match the higher level of trust, protection, and presumption of regularity that we give them. If they commit crimes, they should be prosecuted even more zealously and reliably than laypeople, rather than only rarely.

Prosecutors are insufficiently independent from cops. The job of prosecutor is often as political steppingstone. Prosecuting cops isn't compatible with that.

Pretty cut and dried civil liberties case there

I'm glad this guy will get his payout, but infuriated that the perpetrators will likely face no consequences, and the burden will fall on the public.

sounds like an easy win for a prosecutor for felony stalking.

there needs to be more separation from prosecutors and cops. I know a lot of places now have prosecutors who are actively against cops, that is not what I mean.

the prosecutors are supposed to be unbiased and make decisions on evidence. we know they don't regardless of their political leaning. but that is the standard we (citizens) should hold them accountable. unfortunately there are too may bootlicking voters who just want to feel "safe" and have zero courage of their own even in the voting booth.

we need to stop giving agencies money based on stats. that is one cause to a lot of these problems. then the cops and agencies get all twisted and in a tissy when a tool that made stat pumping easier like right now the flock cameras.

> we need to stop giving agencies money based on stats.

I think you just need to stop giving agencies money based on bad stats. Goodhart's Law is an extremely well-established effect. At the very least, crime rate should be monitored by a separate department.

Sorry, but as we are a nation incapable of moderating its emotions in favor of higher thought, your only policy choices are “back the blue under any circumstances” or “defund the police and empty the jails”.

Infuriating, yes, but apparently getting shot for no reason is also quite popular. This sounds like the better deal.

Nobody offers you such deal. You get both.

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