1) Reign in qualified immunity for both law enforcement, prosecutors, and politicians.
2) End the influence of the Police and Sheriff public employee unions over politicians. People carp constantly about corporate influence don't understand the level the public sector employee unions have; go look at California's prison and even education problems for a refresher.
¿Por que no los dos?
There's no conflict between wanting to see corporate influence diminished and disgust for the Fraternal Order of Police and their appalling role in keeping officers from being held accountable.
> go look at California's prison and even education problems for a refresher.
The abuses of for-profit prisons in California and elsewhere are a perfect example of the consequences of excessive corporate influence in our political system.
Dismantle it in stages, because trying to do it all on one go is a recipe for failure.
People are losing faith in the political system and I fear they are also losing faith in the judicial system.
Do you think the people would be OK with more oversight on the lower level of the executive branch, but none on the legislative or the judicial branches nor on the top level of the executive branch (the president, in the US of A and in at least a few other countries) ?
Also, it's worth noting that laws are usually not retroactive, AFAIK, meaning that if you commit what would be a crime under a new law before that law was passed, you can't be prosecuted.
My worry is around maintaining and so perhaps there's a 'github'-like tool/platform that they could use to ensure the data is updated.
Perhaps folks could suggest a scale'able solution that wouldn't break the bank towards the responsible upkeep this would entail.
This dataset[1] has been frequently asked about on the open data stack exchange site[2], with no real authoritative answer until now.
A few years ago, ProPublica designed an updated way to "Investigate Doctors". They built a chart that explains the nuances of the disciplinary history available, how to contact boards, and the disciplinary actions taken by each state. If interested, it's available here: https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/investigating-docto....
Something like this may be useful for USA Today or any folks who, as you say, may want to scale this up.
"... are you suuure you want to go through with this? Because if we investigate and can't prove any wrong-doing, we will charge you with filing a false complaint!"
Now, I didn't back down and got a letter from them saying, "we investigated and, although we are not going to tell you the outcome for privacy reasons if there was anything we would have given the appropriate punishment," or something along those lines.
I think that a civilian-oversight board (and I am fine with making them have security clearances) that can look into these once a year to make recommendations to the City Commission is not too much to ask for considering this is paid for with tax money and currently has little to no oversight.
I'd ask him to send me that in writing so I can prep my attorney.
EDIT: Actually, if you do a search without providing input, it will apparently return the entire dataset and a download button will appear at the top right. Total csv size is 3.8 MB.
I was hoping for an aggregate view on why cops were dismissed. They didn't seem to try to index the reasons. This just lets you search for names/towns, which then links to a spreadsheet that contains the reason someone was decertified.
So it seems like the main purpose of this would be for avoiding the other situation they have there: a crook/felon becoming police chief[1]. But I'm concerned that this is yet another example of how technology is making it impossible to move on from one's past. Many of them are drug use, or small crimes, "Unprofessional relationship", etc.
On one hand, it's great this can be researched to avoid a bad hire like above, but I guess I also feel sorry for Joe or Jane Cop who was dismissed from the job for using cocaine or shoplifting and now it's easily searchable 25 years later for everyone in the world[2]. Is avoiding the former situation worth the latter?
[1] - https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/0...
[2] - Not specific to cops, but this is literally how mug shot websites make their money. "Pay us to remove your mugshot on our site".
Yes of course
"A MESSAGE FROM USA TODAY NETWORK It appears that you’re visiting us from a location in the European Union. We are directing you to our EU Experience.
This site does not collect personally identifiable information or persistent identifiers from, deliver a personalized experience to, or otherwise track or monitor persons reasonably identified as visiting our Site from the European Union. We do identify EU internet protocol (IP) addresses for the purpose of determining whether to direct you to USA TODAY NETWORK’s EU Experience.
This site provides news and information of USA TODAY NETWORK. We hope you enjoy the site. "
I am not in the EU and I am not using an EU ip address.
So I guess you can't find out about police misconduct unless you are trackable...
It seems to be just news articles without all the bullshit. (It redirected me to https://eu.usatoday.com/, so maybe U.S. viewers can also experience it.)
It's even better than lite.cnn.io and thin.npr.org, because it is not all text but also has some pictures to the articles, which I want to see.
It is an odd publication. They have some sort of deal with many US hotels where guests get a paper copy for free. I suspect that represents the overwhelming share of anyone that reads it. It's commonly thought of as low quality here.
Archived copy: https://outline.com/FdzvqY
Their database as a csv: https://gofile.io/?c=bEbPGv
e.g. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5977583/New-York-... and https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5977583/New-York-...
(url can be easily derived from the urls in the csv, "https://www.usatoday.com/documents/5977583-New-York-Decertif... in this case)
But they haven't actually dealt with it. This is a common misunderstanding among websites that do this.
EU citizens are not required to identify themselves to you preemptively for GDPR to apply. If I connect to their website via a US VPN and they start tracking me without asking my consent assuming I'm from the US, that's a violation of GDPR.
So, in reality, there are two cases here:
1. They do not operate under EU jurisdiction, and thus might as well not have bothered making the EU specific page since the EU has no leverage over them any more than china can force them to take down articles that paint the chinese government in a negative light.
2. They do operate under EU jurisdiction, in which case their EU specific website is not in and of itself enough to handle their GDPR liability. Regardless on your opinion on VPNs, they must still for example nominate a specific data protection officer if they fall under EU jurisdiction.
I suspect that at least some of the websites with EU specific experiences know that the EU experience legally speaking doesn't achieve anything and are attempting to use them as a protest movement disguised as a self-righteous compliance effort. A whole bunch of other websites then didn't do their homework and are blindly hopping on the bandwagon.
The funny thing is the whole thing is backfiring, since a common reaction is "the EU experience is really nice I wish it was like this for americans as well".
police /pəˈliːs/ noun 1. the civil force of a state, responsible for the prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order. "when someone is killed, the police have to be informed" synonyms: police force, police officers, policemen, policewomen, officers of the law, the forces of law and order, law enforcement officers, law enforcement agency; More verb 1. (of a police force) have the duty of maintaining law and order in or at (an area or event). synonyms: maintain law and order in, keep the peace in, keep guard over, keep watch on, watch over, guard, protect, defend, patrol, make the rounds of "it would not be possible to police the area effectively"
