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Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

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Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#351

Post by jgwil2 »

boredumb wrote: post #193
embedding-shape wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take, but I feel like no humans should be killed as a punishment... But I'm also probably too European to understand the true value of death penalty.

If someone kills a family member and the court gives them 6 years and a parole officer, the remaining family will and has taken justice into their own hands and that has a much higher blast radius and margin of error than executing a guy convicted of the murder in a court of law and sat on death row making appeals for 10-15 years. If dylan roof was allowed to live his full natural life in jail, there would be race ri…

> If someone kills a family member and the court gives them 6 years and a parole officer, the remaining family will and has taken justice into their own hands and that has a much higher blast radius and margin of error than executing a guy convicted of the murder in a court of law and sat on death row making appeals for 10-15 years.

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.

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#352

Post by breezybottom »

bearjaws wrote: post #257
kadushka wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would this work? Where do the money for their pension fund come from? Would taking money from it result in them receiving smaller pensions?

Maybe it would make officers turn in the bad apples, since they insist "one bad apple" each time these issues arise.

How do you "turn in" a sheriff? It's an elected position

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#353

Post by breezybottom »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #206
sidewndr46 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This distinction doesn't make sense. A police officer's job is to lie to you. Are we expecting jailtime for doing their job?

Then it shouldn't be a crime to lie to the officer. 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 essentiall…

It's not. You might be thinking of perjury, which is lying under oath.

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#354

Post by stonogo »

breezybottom wrote: post #352
bearjaws wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it would make officers turn in the bad apples, since they insist "one bad apple" each time these issues arise.

How do you "turn in" a sheriff? It's an elected position

You take it to the public, and the public recalls the sheriff.

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#355

Post by bell-cot »

freediddy wrote: post #155

The fact that taxpayers and not the police themselves have to pay the settlement is the worst part of this. Every settlement against the police should be taken from their pension fund. This is something I've been advocating for decades now, because it creates an incentive not to do things like this. Right now, good cops don't patrol bad cops because it won't affect them. By aligning the incentives right, it will mean…

> By aligning the incentives right, it will mean good cops will force out the bad cops quickly.

While that would be nice, it seems like extremely wishful thinking.

Maybe ask a wrongful termination lawyer how things would actually play out?

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#356

Post by anigbrowl »

staticautomatic wrote: post #332
WillAdams wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And insurers doing their due diligence and charging based on potential for liability would go a long way to mitigating abuses. Best solution would be to simply require licensing and conduct standards to be a police professional similar to that required for Registered Nurses.

Municipal insurers already do that

It seems like municipalities just past the insurance costs onto taxpayers.

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#357

Post by WillAdams »

staticautomatic wrote: post #332
WillAdams wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And insurers doing their due diligence and charging based on potential for liability would go a long way to mitigating abuses. Best solution would be to simply require licensing and conduct standards to be a police professional similar to that required for Registered Nurses.

Municipal insurers already do that

For municipalities --- requiring that individual officers secure their own insurance would have far more effect on behaviour and standards.

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#358

Post by autoexec »

unethical_ban wrote: post #268
elicash wrote: post #71

I’ll cut against the grain here and say it’s ABSOLUTELY appropriate for taxpayers to pay the bill here. It’s pretty toxic that people don’t want to take responsibility for their own government in a democracy. In this case, it’s especially bad, given the sheriff is elected by the people directly. But I’d go even further and say even where control is less direct, we need incentives for voters to take this stuff serious…

You're on the right track - the services of government should be more accountable to the people, and the people should hold some responsibility for the actions of their government. For police in particular, the unions prevent a lot of police accountability, and because of the power that police wield over the population, I am comfortable saying I support unions EXCEPT police unions. At best they should be ballot initi…

> For police in particular, the unions prevent a lot of police accountability, and because of the power that police wield over the population, I am comfortable saying I support unions EXCEPT police unions.

Police unions don't have the power to stop state prosecutors from filing charges on officers, or the power to stop a jury from finding an officer guilty, or the power to stop a judge from sending a cop to prison for their crimes. Those are the main problems standing in the way of police accountability.

Where police unions do end up giving too much protection for police it's in contracts that get approved by government officials when they shouldn't have been. Police unions can ask for unreasonable things, but when they do our governments should be telling them to fuck off instead of rubber stamping whatever they ask for.

Police, like almost all workers, still need unions though. Police can still be subjected to things like unpaid overtime, unsafe working conditions, insufficient training, low wages, and poor benefits. Police should be able to unionize to prevent being exploited. Local governments should refuse to cave to their unions unreasonable demands such as those that prohibit anonymous complaints, or purge disciplinary records to prevent identifying repeat offenders, or reject body cameras, or allow officers to use paid vacation time to cover unpaid suspensions.

Police unions get a lot of attention as being the main thing preventing police accountability but they really aren't. The problems are much deeper and eliminating the unions will not solve them.

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#359

Post by anigbrowl »

autoexec wrote: post #343
elicash wrote: post #71

I’ll cut against the grain here and say it’s ABSOLUTELY appropriate for taxpayers to pay the bill here. It’s pretty toxic that people don’t want to take responsibility for their own government in a democracy. In this case, it’s especially bad, given the sheriff is elected by the people directly. But I’d go even further and say even where control is less direct, we need incentives for voters to take this stuff serious…

This seems to imply that voters elected someone because they campaigned on violating civil rights or breaking the law. That's rarely the case (Joe Arpaio is one exception). If an elected official breaks the law and/or violates the constitution they are still the one responsible for their actions, not the voters. If voters continue to elect someone with a record of breaking the law and ignoring people's rights that's…

I fully agree, but you will never hear a candidate for sheriff call out an incumbent for being a shitty person. They're cops first, and public officials second, so both candidates will say they'll bring down crime more, but they will never betray the tribe by suggesting that law enforcment institutions can harbor criminal behavior.

Re: Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

#360

Post by [deleted] »

breezybottom wrote: post #353
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it shouldn't be a crime to lie to the officer. 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 essentiall…

It's not. You might be thinking of perjury, which is lying under oath.

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