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Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

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Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#211
post #204

> The statute requires that a person knowingly circulate a false report. Combs says she was repeating what people told her. Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual. The State Health Services or TCEQ would need to conduct that investigation and ask those questions. Both of those are state level agen…

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Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. Same for…

> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand. i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially lif…

>so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.

Those ones are the easiest though, are they not? Someone going into it with convictions (or even chickening out because they are aware of the consequences) have consolation and inner reserves. Some kid angry that he can't get a six figure salary at age 22 fresh out of college might regret it as soon as they're in the clink, but if that doesn't get them... the 6-10 years of lawyer-wrangling and stress certainly will. All for the payday to not even go half as far as they think... it'll pay down some bills, there won't be any sports cars.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#213
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualified Immunity should not apply ever. Period. No one should be above the law for any reason ever.

Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive. The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly…

Where I work, we follow quality management systems to ensure mistakes don't happen. Of course they do, people are human, but the point is to find why something happened and enact a corrective action to ensure it doesn't happen again. Is it a personnel problem that requires more training? Do procedures need to be updated to cover something new? Do we need new tools? Sometimes it really does boil down to a personnel issue where someone has been instructed, trained, and given all of the tools they need yet they still error. That's when management steps in and either transfers or fires them. That same system needs to be applied to police. When camera phones came out, suddenly cops were faced with people recording them. We have had many lawsuits where the cops have been told that people are allowed to film them and there are plenty of department manuals that state the same. At this point, a cop should never have the excuse of qualified immunity for violating someone's right to film because how much it's been harped on and any that do should be personally liable.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#215

This type of treatment of citizenry by the State of Texas, and its various (and especially red ) localities should be all one needs to see of where conservatives (and Christian Naitonalism) will take our country in the future -- should they get their way. Republicans hope to enable just such a future by scaring Americans with made-up visions of transsexuals 'grooming' their children, yet they cleverly hide what await…

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Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#216
post #211
post #204

> The statute requires that a person knowingly circulate a false report. Combs says she was repeating what people told her. Gregory says she should have verified it with the hospitals first It would be a violation of HIPAA for a medical system to disclose that to a private individual. The State Health Services or TCEQ would need to conduct that investigation and ask those questions. Both of those are state level agen…

[flagged]

Didn't greg abbot spend a lot of time trying to make political hay out of persecuting a Muslim charity? Not from the state, so correct me if I am wrong.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#218
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could just buy insurance. > the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers. I fail to see how this would change anything other than increasing taxpayer costs further in the form of insurance profit margin.

Make the police officer like the Doctor pay for their own insurance.

The doctor's own fees just rise. You, the patient pays for it. There's this 10-20% of revenue parasite on the entire industry, and you're paying that while complaining that prices are too high.

Now you'll do the same thing with police, as if police wages and salaries won't increase proportionally, but 20 years from now you'll wonder why that costs so much. It's bizarre how economically imperceptive everyone is.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would being arrested for memeing be a black mark? It would be a hilarious talking point that I would be more than happy to chat with a landlord, employer, or literally anyone else about. Anyone who would hold that against you is pretty much a textbook example of a bad person (banal evil or some such).

I wouldn’t rent my house to someone who has been arrested for memeing. It’s an unnecessary risk with absolutely no upside for me. What happens when they decide to meme on their landlord?

Then you're part of the problem.

Convicted, sure. Merely arrested, with no conviction? Then you'd be an asshole

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