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Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops

usatoday.com

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Re: Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops

#11

Post by ar0 »

sschueller wrote: post #2

Instead of the article I get: "A MESSAGE FROM USA TODAY NETWORK It appears that you’re visiting us from a location in the European Union. We are directing you to our EU Experience. This site does not collect personally identifiable information or persistent identifiers from, deliver a personalized experience to, or otherwise track or monitor persons reasonably identified as visiting our Site from the European Union.…

I get the same treatment (and I am also not in the EU), but I have to say: apart from this specific link not working, their "European Union Experience" seems so much more uncluttered than all the other news sites out there!

It seems to be just news articles without all the bullshit. (It redirected me to https://eu.usatoday.com/, so maybe U.S. viewers can also experience it.)

It's even better than lite.cnn.io and thin.npr.org, because it is not all text but also has some pictures to the articles, which I want to see.

Re: Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops

#12

Post by TheRealPomax »

Shivetya wrote: post #9

There are two things that must happen before any movement will occur on this front. Bringing the abuses to even more exposure can help both occur. 1) Reign in qualified immunity for both law enforcement, prosecutors, and politicians. 2) End the influence of the Police and Sheriff public employee unions over politicians. People carp constantly about corporate influence don't understand the level the public sector empl…

Scope creep - (1) doesn't need to include "prosecutors and policians", those can come later. In fact, keeping immunity up for those two for the first decade or two means they're in a much safer position to call out the police force without having to fear legal reprisal over having (inadvertantly, or intentionally) collaborated with them.

Dismantle it in stages, because trying to do it all on one go is a recipe for failure.

Re: Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops

#15

Post by [deleted] »

flowersjeff wrote: post #7

I really have to give it to USA Today, the amount of effort/work to create this is immense. My worry is around maintaining and so perhaps there's a 'github'-like tool/platform that they could use to ensure the data is updated. Perhaps folks could suggest a scale'able solution that wouldn't break the bank towards the responsible upkeep this would entail.

[deleted]

Re: Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops

#17

Post by _m7bj »

tyingq wrote: post #3
sschueller wrote: post #2

Instead of the article I get: "A MESSAGE FROM USA TODAY NETWORK It appears that you’re visiting us from a location in the European Union. We are directing you to our EU Experience. This site does not collect personally identifiable information or persistent identifiers from, deliver a personalized experience to, or otherwise track or monitor persons reasonably identified as visiting our Site from the European Union.…

I imagine they get a pretty low amount of EU traffic, and so went for the least effort path to deal with GDPR. And, yeah, IP location databases are often wrong. Or maybe they just treat "non US IP" as "redirect to sparse GDPR site". It is an odd publication. They have some sort of deal with many US hotels where guests get a paper copy for free. I suspect that represents the overwhelming share of anyone that reads it.…

>I imagine they get a pretty low amount of EU traffic, and so went for the least effort path to deal with GDPR.

But they haven't actually dealt with it. This is a common misunderstanding among websites that do this.

EU citizens are not required to identify themselves to you preemptively for GDPR to apply. If I connect to their website via a US VPN and they start tracking me without asking my consent assuming I'm from the US, that's a violation of GDPR.

So, in reality, there are two cases here:

1. They do not operate under EU jurisdiction, and thus might as well not have bothered making the EU specific page since the EU has no leverage over them any more than china can force them to take down articles that paint the chinese government in a negative light.

2. They do operate under EU jurisdiction, in which case their EU specific website is not in and of itself enough to handle their GDPR liability. Regardless on your opinion on VPNs, they must still for example nominate a specific data protection officer if they fall under EU jurisdiction.

I suspect that at least some of the websites with EU specific experiences know that the EU experience legally speaking doesn't achieve anything and are attempting to use them as a protest movement disguised as a self-righteous compliance effort. A whole bunch of other websites then didn't do their homework and are blindly hopping on the bandwagon.

The funny thing is the whole thing is backfiring, since a common reaction is "the EU experience is really nice I wish it was like this for americans as well".

Re: Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops

#19

Post by rectang »

Shivetya wrote: post #9

There are two things that must happen before any movement will occur on this front. Bringing the abuses to even more exposure can help both occur. 1) Reign in qualified immunity for both law enforcement, prosecutors, and politicians. 2) End the influence of the Police and Sheriff public employee unions over politicians. People carp constantly about corporate influence don't understand the level the public sector empl…

> End the influence of the Police and Sheriff public employee unions over politicians. People carp constantly about corporate influence don't understand the level the public sector employee unions have

¿Por que no los dos?

There's no conflict between wanting to see corporate influence diminished and disgust for the Fraternal Order of Police and their appalling role in keeping officers from being held accountable.

> go look at California's prison and even education problems for a refresher.

The abuses of for-profit prisons in California and elsewhere are a perfect example of the consequences of excessive corporate influence in our political system.

Re: Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops

#20

Post by drb91 »

trimbo wrote: post #6

Hmm. I was hoping for an aggregate view on why cops were dismissed. They didn't seem to try to index the reasons. This just lets you search for names/towns, which then links to a spreadsheet that contains the reason someone was decertified. So it seems like the main purpose of this would be for avoiding the other situation they have there: a crook/felon becoming police chief[1]. But I'm concerned that this is yet ano…

> On one hand, it's great this can be researched to avoid a bad hire like above, but I guess I also feel sorry for Joe or Jane Cop who was dismissed from the job for using cocaine or shoplifting and now it's easily searchable 25 years later for everyone in the world[2]. Is avoiding the former situation worth the latter?

Yes of course

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