zlacker

>>sorami+(OP)
I'm interested to see what comes out of all this. I am very glad I do not live in Minneapolis. I did not see a specific damages amount in the complaint, but I am assuming it will be high, especially if granted class action status. Bankrupting state and city police forces probably "feels" good to a lot of people here. But what are the second and third order effects of underfunded police departments?

In MN the Minneapolis city council wants to disband the police department entirely. This may be all talk, and I'm not sure if it's technically possible, but what happens if there is no police department? What are the second and third order effects of that? Is having no law enforcement a better outcome for the residents? My initial reaction is "no".

When confronted with videos of people rioting, looting and vandalising most respond that "it's only a few bad apples, the vast majority are peaceful". Is it not true that most cops are OK too? I'm honestly asking. Yes there are some problem cops - Chauvin obviously having a long history of issues. But are we really saying that the majority of cops are bad actors? It feels like with emotions so hot right now, people are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am skeptical that is the right course of action.

>>eric_b+Hl
The problem is that the "good" police are incentivised to protect the "bad" police, and do so. You're not going to find the "good" police investigating and charging their colleagues - when it does happen, they're inevitably harassed and removed from the force - and nobody else is in a position to do so, so what you get is the "bad" police operating with impunity.

And there's effects on the wider system - courts will believe a police officer's account of what happened pretty much no matter the opposing evidence. There's no accountability when a police officer goes against the reasons they were hired, and destroys people's lives.

There's the possibility of alternative systems of protection and justice, which don't create organisations which are incentivised to protect murderers, abusers, and rapists.

>>vertex+Yn
As far as I understand it[1], the state and the federal government have the ability to prosecute police misconduct, and their incentives are aligned to crack down on the bad police officers.

The problem is that they are dramatically limited in the types of charges they can press against officers of the law (charges that carry big penalties, and have a very high burden of proof). This is anachronistically because we as a society have decided that officers deserve benefit of the doubt in the lack of compelling evidence. These days, many instances of misconduct are recorded, and the rules should change.

In Eric Garner's case, for example, the govt attorneys declined to press charges, because they lacked sufficient evidence that the officer was knowingly violating the rights of Eric Garner. The burden of proof for any kind of misconduct charge is currently so high, that even an egregious misconduct case like this passes by untouched.

If the attorneys general had a wider range of misconduct charges in their arsenal, they could raise the average cost of police misconduct, and it might improve the situation.

[1] recently informed by https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/pushkin-industries/deep-bac...

>>gen220+or
Actually states do not have the ability to prosecute police to the extent we would think they do. Police chiefs cannot even fire police. Investigating a police officer for wrongDoing or firing a police officer for wrongdoing must follow specific protocols in Union contracts that are put in place specifically to make holding the police accountable a bureaucratic nightmare.