zlacker

> Doesn't make any of them look better but an interesting wrinkle.

Of course it does. The pragmatic decision not to be without a legal safety net (which even a hypothetical innocent cop would want) is way better than resigning at the first hint of legal accountability.

>>wutbro+(OP)
Not really. It makes it sound like they know that professional misconduct happens with such frequency in their unit that they can't control themselves. It also turns the story from one of misguided support for a colleague to one of craven self interest.

Few if any professions I've ever heard of get blanket legal defense from their union or professional association to defend them against their own blanket misconduct. Soldiers for example manage without it.

>>pmoric+i1
> to defend them against their own blanket misconduct.

Do they expect defense from blanket misconduct, or from accusations of misconduct while performing their professional duties? There are plenty of rotten cops, and significant institutional rot in police depts, but it's seems unworkable to suggest that they should be on the hook for legal fees to defend against complaints filed in the line of duty.

Any system that takes seriously legal complaints against police will inevitably have false positives, which means that even a hypothetically-perfect cop who never does anything wrong risks being exposed to legal fees.

> Soldiers for example manage without it.

I'm not sure this is a great example; the limiting of rights that soldiers are subject to is pretty despicable IMO; there are plenty of phenomena we'd consider horrific in civil society that have been the norm for thousands of years of military history (hell, the rape problem in the military was treated with as much apathy as the rape problem in _prison_, of course until women started being victims in non-trivial numbers).

>>wutbro+Oa
The reality of the situation is the opposite of what you are concerned about. There are large numbers of un-prosecuted police misconduct cases that we've seen happening just this week. You are making the same argument against passing a law to deal with real and current concerns that Sen Rand Paul says the new law against lynching will make it too easy to accuse people of lynching - but the us has a real problem with facing up to lynching as a historical reality. And almost all the other republican and democratic senators and reps don't see it.

We have an even bigger problem facing up to police misconduct in the US and the multiple layers of extra protection police get when something violent happens: (1) time to figure out their story before they are questioned, which normal people don't get, often based on union contracts (2) often cities have contracts to keep misconduct hidden, and we see many of these problem officers with multiple misconduct issues over the years until they finally go a bit too far (3) the supreme court and legal doctrine that sets a very high bar especially for convicting police of malfeasance.