Driver accused of DUI tracks missing laptop to Illinois State trooper's house (opens in new tab)

I have friends who are cops.....the amount of shenanigans that happens behind the curtains is insane. It is literally full of high school drama, divorces, sleeping around, just all around poor behavior.

Unfortunately, the same happens in other high stress industries. Nurses are wild too.

A lot of this will happen without unions anyway. It seems like every country has a completely different cultural gestalt surrounding police work.

For some reason, modern police culture in american seems to increasingly value a corporatist perspective of us vs them (them being everyone who is not police), the normalization of violent response, fixation with the concept of face and widespread corruption.

Police Unions didn't create them, and abolishing them won't eliminate their lobbying power, you don't need a union to organize yourself around a lobby.

Let's not use this excuse to perpetuate the demonization of unions. After decades of increase concentration of productivity gains in the hands of capital at the expense of labor, and as we enter the AI age, this is the least thing we need.

I would think Police unions would probably gladly accept. higher pay for more accountability. It feels like accountability sheltering is a deal with the devil that cities made.

Back in 2019 the police in Fresno stole a bunch of rare coins during a search of a house where the warrant did not cover anything like said coins, valued at $125,000, by reporting that they seized $50,000 when they actually took twice that much in cash and the coins. The 9th Circuit ended up deciding that while it was obviously morally wrong, qualified immunity applied because there's clearly established case law that stealing property that was specifically targeted for a search does violate the Constitution, because there's no analogous case regarding property stolen by police that the police did not know was there and are not covered by the warrant, there's no clearly established violation of the 4th Amendment even though it is literally an unlawful seizure of property. Supreme Court denied cert, allowing the decision to stand. I wish I was joking.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...

It's an AND. The union is why administrations can't get rid of the problem employees.

In Seattle, the police are "quiet quitting" (traffic ticketing is down 8x over ~10 years ago) and literally committing fraud and getting away with it (an officer on his second time falsely applying over 24 hours of work in a day, just had to return the pay for that week. There's STILL not computerized time tracking...)

Unions strike primarily for collective bargaining purposes.

They use the bargaining to set contract terms that restrict how people can be fired.

A union member who gets in trouble can leverage union resources and representation to protect themselves.

One of my family members did a term as a union rep. He was getting really frustrated with some of the little claims that union members wanted to use the union to protect themselves from, but it was part of the job. Fortunately for him there wasn’t a serious incident like this to deal with during his term.

Police Unions engaged in collective action beyond striking to support other police who shoved a senior citizen to the ground and gave him brain damage, so stealing is nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_police_shoving_inciden...

No, but they go on strike when negotiating their collective contracts, and put terms in the contract that govern how failures like this are investigated and punished.

That's a funny thing because, as with all absolutes, it's trivially easy to prove it wrong. All you need is _one_ cop to not be a bastard to prove it wrong.

I've known several non-bastard cops.

I disagree with the other trendy slogans, but yours is one I can definitely get behind!

I don't want to blow your mind but the union is part of the system. A pretty central part, actually.

The one day suspension was 100% because of union protections.

Hence insurance on the individual. Kick in the wrong door and insurance covers it. Do it twice and suddenly the actuary sees an expensive and risky pattern.

Colorado has no qualified immunity for cops. Are they short of cops?

Doctors regularly have people's lives in their hands and if they make a significant mistake, they are liable. Not that the current state of medical malpractice law is exactly the gold standard, but that's an example of another approach to a similar situation. I do hear that some folks avoid the profession because of that, but I don't think that it's the case that "no reasonable person" wants to work in healthcare.

I don't think most reasonable people want police to be personally liable for every single thing they do, but neither do they want them to have broad and complete immunity from the law. The answer is somewhere in the middle, where police are protected in certain situations, but do still need to think about the consequences of their actions.

That's already true of you and I (assuming you are not a policeperson).

Kind of like how an unjustified DUI arrest can mess up your life?

That's a false dichotomy. Those aren't the only two options.

Plainly, we don’t have to pretend like there could be unforeseen consequences. This is a thing that exists in many jurisdictions and many societies around the world and we can see that many reasonable people become police officers in those societies.

It's the same rules the rest of the population works under.

That's how it is for literally every other fucking job. The goddamn cashier at McDonalds could theoretically get fired if some bozo complains loudly enough, even if it's not true.

We're legitimately at the point where mcdondalds cashiers have higher standards for accountability and behavior than the police. Just sit back and really, really think about that. And, to top it off, there's droves of people like yourself who are so accustomed to such a broken system that they legitimately believe it couldn't be done any other way - even though there are minimum wage workers working under stricter rules!

This is fixable. Many jurisdictions have a provision for outside prosecutors appointed by courts.

The "compelling case" was all based on gait analysis which is heavily debunked and while making the case they quoted from reports about gait analysis but left out all the parts about it being an extremely inexact process prone to false matches.

>took an act of congress to get released.

I guess?

I mean you go ahead and call that a release.

If it brings you comfort.

The US government is just corrupt from tip to tail. Why everyone continuously acts surprised about these things is genuinely a mystery?

Their actual material conduct was coordinating with other dirty cops which is how their phone got seized and entered into evidence.

Are you saying people need to put up with racist POS cops?

Sounds like you hang out in racist, sexist, antisemitic dank memes groupchats yourself, and don't think there's anything wrong with that.

You're half right but missing the point.

Police probably shouldn't be sued for performing their duties. But the issue is that with a few choice words (I feared for my safety/life) their "duties" cover a wide array of actions that a lot of citizens would argue it shouldn't.

Example: There are many cases of Cops stepping in front of a moving vehicle when confronting a suspect, which then is used as a reason to shoot and kill the suspect because "their life was in danger". But it's very easy to argue that the Cop put their own life in danger by stepping in front of the vehicle. IMO, that should not be covered by qualified immunity, and yet it usually is.

Just like "Stand Your Ground" and "Castle Doctrine", people learned a new legal buzzword and think it applies to every story in the news.

But it’s not one bad apple. It’s one cop who stole someone’s laptop while arresting them and entire system that looked the other way and let the theft go unpunished.

And really it's just a few.

and pensions...

> but it comes with significant risks

But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.

> but it comes with significant risks.

Simply being able to tell other people what to do knowing they probably won't beat you up, like they used to back in school, is motivating enough. Id love to know the shit your parents covered up

Pizza delivery drivers face about twice as much risk of on the job injuries via violence when compared to cops. Also twice as much risk of fatal injuries. This mythos the US has with cops does not match reality.

I did. Where in the article does it answer my question?

It’s just a sloppy article.

The concept is right but sovereign immunity is about states and between states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...

Huh, interesting. I am very dubious of that quote. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure if they actually filed that in court they would be laughed out of the room. My guess is either the reporters got it wrong or its some AI hallucination. Unfortunately they don't source this claim.

If there's no way to charge the public for policing besides corruption, that's not a police force, it's a gang.

I was billed about $1000 when US police took me to ER in cuffs and claimed (made up) I was secretly smuggling drugs up my ass.