411–420 of 543 posts
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…
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Those 30 aren’t arrested for just for writing “social media posts” but for possibly “harmful communication including incitement to terrorism and violence, online threats and abuse, and unwanted communication via email and other means” Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning Edit: and none of those cases would involve pretrial remand/jail
Great summary here of the kind of things people are arrested for and a bit more about the laws this refers to https://open.substack.com/pub/monkdebunks/p/are-30-people-a-...
Here's one horrible example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j718we6njo
As an aside the police body cam footage one of the officers searching his house says "lots of Brexity books'
There are countless awful examples of arrests for online comments. Here's another:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921
She posted the lyrics of her dead friends favourite rap song, and was convicted. How this even resulted in an arrest never mind court and conviction is beyond me.
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…
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.
Is privatising ethics enforcement like this a good idea?
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…
The police are an organ of society (if you don't live in an authoritarian shithole), so the society that gives them the power of pit and gallows is ultimately accountable for their behaviour.
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Isn't it way more narrow than what you're saying? For New Mexico's cases it only applies to civil rights violations. If the police officer just for example kills someone in the line of duty, he still has qualified immunity
Civil Rights law is how these sorts of things are enforced by individuals who were harmed, in your example a Law Enforcement Officer violated someone's civil rights by killing them in the line of duty and their family can sue for violation of the deceased's civil right to life. Qualified Immunity short-circuits that entire process for the individual LEO's (it does not protect the organization, just individual officer…
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When trying to obtain evidence, investigators or regular officers will make frequent recourse to lies and intimidation to get you to admit to things that you may or may not have done. For example, "If you don't tell us where you were that day, CPS will take your kids away" or "Look, if you just admit what you did, we can let you go" or "We've already detained your wife/brother/mother/father and they've fessed up; jus…
I'm well aware of when they will lie, but it's a choice, not an inherent part of the job.
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…
It's one thing to agree that he should be compensated (I agree), but the figure doesn't make much sense. Per the article:
> During his stay in jail, Larry lost his post-retirement job and missed his anniversary — as well as the birth of his grandchild.
That's all pretty rough, but I fail to see how it entitles him to the lavish sum of $800,000. That's roughly half a lifetime's earnings for the typical worker!
> we need incentives for voters to take this stuff seriously.
I have a sneaking suspicion that setting public money on fire is not the best mechanism to achieve this outcome.
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I'm well aware of when they will lie, but it's a choice, not an inherent part of the job.
There is no law prohibiting a police department from requiring their officers to lie to you. It absolutely can be part of the job.
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From what I could tell from the article, an officer submitted a warrant request to a judge and the judge approved it. That request was potentially incomplete because it left out the fact that the victim here didn’t actually make the meme. On the other hand I’m not sure whether omission matters since it would still be protected speech if he made it. So I would place a good amount of blame at the feet of the judge, who…
> Second problem I see is that this took 37 days to resolve "Justice delayed is justice denied " is an important principle that appears to have been forgotten in the west
It's also "the punishment is the process". It's often a feature, not a bug.