Comment by josh2600 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josh2600 | Hacker News Reader

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It's rational for a police officer to respond to civil disobedience in some circumstances with detention. That is not unreasonable in some situations, particularly one where lives are at stake or where there is clear and present danger.

My point is that while the arrest may have been bad, what happened after is egregious and clearly definable as awful. There's lots of blame to go around here but blame does little good.

We should all want justice because it makes our society a better place. It's all we can ask for and it's all we deserve.

Edit for clarity: I'm not saying what happened here was right or good, I'm saying that there are other situations where the police response might've been appropriate. While it's possible to have a debate about the initial arrest, it's impossible to justify what happened after. Rather than muddy the waters of this discussion with anecdotes about the arrest, I was attempting to place the focus onto the portion we could all agree on in an effort to move forward faster.

To be explicit, I do not agree with how SFPD handled this situation in any way, shape or form.

following the 911 operator's instructions is not civil disobedience.

Well, now you're talking in the abstract. Before you were explicitly calling it reasonable on some level in this particular situation. That's what struck me.

>> That is not unreasonable in some situations, particularly one where lives are at stake or where there is clear and present danger.

Which was absolutely not the situation here.

Your comment reads like this:

"It's rational for officers to arrest law-abiding citizens who are slightly annoying officers."

And I get that a lot of people believe that. But you're wrong. You're so, so wrong.

It saddens me that a lot of cops (like the one in this story) feel as you do, that it's fine for police to grossly abuse their powers.

In a rational world, the cop would no longer be a cop.

In this world, he probably could've raped the kid with a toilet plunger and still remained on the force.

I'm not the person you're replaying to and I don't think that someone should be arrested in the described situation, but I think the logic follows like this.

Police are the people we've put in charge with keeping public order. In the course of that job, they're going to arrest and / or detain people. We want them to always detain the right people, but even a very good police department will detain the wrong people sometimes. So, we give the authority to individual officers to detain people, and we don't second guess their decisions at the time.

Of course, this system only works when there is a functioning review system. Where the policed populace feels like their concerns are listened to by the authority figures. Where officers who misbehave, even by the loose standards of american police, are publicly disciplined. None of these things are common in modern america - but you can still believe in the right for police to detain people and push for better accountability.

I think you should consider how much you are reading into statements before you ascribe particular views to people. You both agree the author was treated deplorably, and you both agree (I assume) that police can do better.

> this system only works

It doesn't work. You are naive.

All countries with police are police states? Any arrangement with police officers of some kind will inevitably abuse their power?

The system doesn't work at all. Police are NEVER held accountable, even when they blatantly needlessly kill citizens.

If anything, they get to take paid time off until they are cleared of wrongdoing.

There are no citizen review boards with teeth. There is no way that police departments can self-regulate.

Never is a strong word, though it's pretty close: http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/01/police-involv... (not a great looking source, but obviously this is not a topic authorities like talking about). In general, I agree with all your points, and I favor a system were non-LEOs investigate LEOs.

You aren't using the term "civil disobedience" correctly. You're not really using the term "rational" right either.

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