7 ms·

If police unions defend officers from all accountability...surprise! They're not accountable to anyone. This means they don't engage when they don't want to and

If police unions defend officers from all accountability...surprise! They're not accountable to anyone. This means they don't engage when they don't want to and engage with unreasonable force whenever they feel like. We've got the worst of both worlds: cops who both shoot civilians with impunity and don't engage with criminals

Nicksil 5y ago
>If police unions defend officers from all accountability...surprise! They're not accountable to anyone. This means they don't engage when they don't want to and engage with unreasonable force whenever they feel like. We've got the worst of both worlds: cops who both shoot civilians with impunity and don't engage with criminals This is hyperbole.
- LocalH 5y ago
  Courts have consistently found that police do not have an obligation to prevent crime. It's not hyperbole, it's standard operating procedure
  - dTal 5y ago
    What do they have an obligation to do? Paychecks generally come with some sort of hard requirement.
    - LocalH 5y ago
      Certainly they should have an obligation to not let a crime happen in front of them, yet do nothing about it.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It's really not. Sure it doesn't happen every single time but cops very often turn a blind eye to crime, even violent crime, and they often shoot innocents or worse and get away with it.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    Defending employees, even when they do shitty things, is literally the entire point of unions.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      What other union defends the right of their employees to commit crimes? You know what happened to the longshoremen unions that organized to facilitate crimes by their members? That's right, they were declared as a criminal enterprise under RICO and every single member of the union was guilty of a crime.
      - akomtu 5y ago
        The situation in question doesn't involve violence: three dudes grabbed some merchendise from a cannabis shop. From the cop's perspective it's a lose-lose situation: some of the burglars may turn out career criminals and attempt to avoid arrest by any means possible, because getting arrested would reveal some other crimes, and the cop would have to use force or a gun, possibly killing a burglar. The media would predictably paint the cop as a merciless thug and the actual thug as a saint, riots would follow, legislators would further handicap police. The cop wisely decided that it's better to stay aside and engage only if things turn really violent. SF has a cognitive dissonance right now: it doesn't want crime, but it doesn't want to punish criminals, so when criminals come uninvited, SF can't decide what to do.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        Alright. So for this to be dangerous to the cop, the criminal has to react violently to any risk of arrest. In that case, how would the criminal react to the inhabitants coming out? In any case, it seems reckless not to arrest them as it would risk someone's life. Also, career criminals very rarely use violence to resist arrest. That is something that inexperienced or impulse criminals do. Any career criminal knows that using violence against the police will end up in a worse outcome than getting caught. I would be interested to see a story where a criminal, in the comission of a crime, initiated deadly force against a policeman and was painted as a saint after their death or injury, leading to riots. This happens almost every day and no one cares about it.
akomtu 5y ago
In other words: "damned if you do, damned in you don't".
dragonwriter 5y ago
> If police unions defend officers from all accountability...surprise! Lots of unions try the same and are far less effective; police unions are not inherently powerful, they are granted power by the fact that the citizenry in the US worships military and paramilitary forces and grants undue deference to them, particularly, in regard to this issue, in selecting the civilian political leaders to whom police are nominally accountable.

Nicksil 5y ago

>If police unions defend officers from all accountability...surprise! They're not accountable to anyone. This means they don't engage when they don't want to and engage with unreasonable force whenever they feel like. We've got the worst of both worlds: cops who both shoot civilians with impunity and don't engage with criminals This is hyperbole.

LocalH 5y ago
Courts have consistently found that police do not have an obligation to prevent crime. It's not hyperbole, it's standard operating procedure
- dTal 5y ago
  What do they have an obligation to do? Paychecks generally come with some sort of hard requirement.
  - LocalH 5y ago
    Certainly they should have an obligation to not let a crime happen in front of them, yet do nothing about it.
sudosysgen 5y ago
It's really not. Sure it doesn't happen every single time but cops very often turn a blind eye to crime, even violent crime, and they often shoot innocents or worse and get away with it.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Defending employees, even when they do shitty things, is literally the entire point of unions.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    What other union defends the right of their employees to commit crimes? You know what happened to the longshoremen unions that organized to facilitate crimes by their members? That's right, they were declared as a criminal enterprise under RICO and every single member of the union was guilty of a crime.
    - akomtu 5y ago
      The situation in question doesn't involve violence: three dudes grabbed some merchendise from a cannabis shop. From the cop's perspective it's a lose-lose situation: some of the burglars may turn out career criminals and attempt to avoid arrest by any means possible, because getting arrested would reveal some other crimes, and the cop would have to use force or a gun, possibly killing a burglar. The media would predictably paint the cop as a merciless thug and the actual thug as a saint, riots would follow, legislators would further handicap police. The cop wisely decided that it's better to stay aside and engage only if things turn really violent. SF has a cognitive dissonance right now: it doesn't want crime, but it doesn't want to punish criminals, so when criminals come uninvited, SF can't decide what to do.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        Alright. So for this to be dangerous to the cop, the criminal has to react violently to any risk of arrest. In that case, how would the criminal react to the inhabitants coming out? In any case, it seems reckless not to arrest them as it would risk someone's life. Also, career criminals very rarely use violence to resist arrest. That is something that inexperienced or impulse criminals do. Any career criminal knows that using violence against the police will end up in a worse outcome than getting caught. I would be interested to see a story where a criminal, in the comission of a crime, initiated deadly force against a policeman and was painted as a saint after their death or injury, leading to riots. This happens almost every day and no one cares about it.

akomtu 5y ago

In other words: "damned if you do, damned in you don't".

dragonwriter 5y ago

> If police unions defend officers from all accountability...surprise! Lots of unions try the same and are far less effective; police unions are not inherently powerful, they are granted power by the fact that the citizenry in the US worships military and paramilitary forces and grants undue deference to them, particularly, in regard to this issue, in selecting the civilian political leaders to whom police are nominally accountable.