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Comment by dependenttypes | Hacker News Reader

> Taylor's death has ignited a firestorm across the nation in recent weeks, as prominent activists and politicians questioned why an unarmed black woman had been gunned down by white officers

The whole police immunity for murder and violence needs to stop. If a civilian did something similar even if under worse conditions they would be treated horribly by the cops and be put to jail under shitty conditions for years. A policeman can easily say "I was worried for my life!" when shooting an unarmed person but a civilians can't say the same thing if they shoot a cop that invaded their house, or even another civilian.

Hell, the police can even demolish your house during an investigation and they don't have to pay anything for it. https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/30/swat-team-destroyed-gr...

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Don't forget the doctrine of "qualified immunity". Police officers/departments carrying out their official duties can only be sued for violations of "clearly established" law. Seems maybe reasonable in theory, but in practice means that even if they do something obviously, blatantly illegal, they can avoid consequences if they can argue that the specific set of factual circumstances had not previously been judged to be a Constitutional violation.

Here's one case that recently came to my attention: https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/micah-jessop-br...

The plaintiffs allege that, while executing a search warrant, Fresno police officers personally stole several hundred thousand dollars worth of coins. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that even if this theft happened, the officers could not be sued:

> We recognize that the allegation of any theft by police officers—most certainly the theft of over $225,000—is deeply disturbing. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, would not “be ‘clear to a reasonable officer.’” [...] Because Appellants did not have a clearly established Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from the theft of property seized pursuant to a warrant, the City Officers are entitled to qualified immunity.

Yesterday the Supreme Court declined to consider the plaintiffs' appeal, which means they're SOL.

That was an interesting read. Thank you for the link.

Do you happen to know off hand if any investigation was actually pursued to track down the missing coins or money?

Wow. Yeah IDK who thought police being able to murder and steal without punishment was a good idea, but it seems antithetical to the notion of a free society.

That is the right decision...the officers should not be sued for the alleged theft because they were seizing property pursuant to a warrant.

The police department or city should be sued for it, if the warrant were unlawfully obtainedor if items seized during the search allegedly went missing. And they were sued.

The ruling you are complaining about was specifically about removing the officers as individual defendants from the civil case. The city of Fresno is still a defendant in the case. It is simply the individual officers that are not.

On another note--the difference in values in that case is due to how the police recorded the coins into evidence. When physical money is taken into evidence, they record the stated value of the money (i.e., a quarter is recorded as a quarter...even if it is a rare quarter worth $1million on the collectibles market, since it's not the police's job to get an appraisal for items taken into evidence). The plaintiffs valued the collectibles at their alleged market values.

Or you know, when they don't shoot / arrest people of a different pigmentation who do have guns and go for their guns:

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...

Saw that one making the rounds again, and I gotta say, you don't grab a gun unless you're about to shoot period.

Edit: Fix typo: sad -> saw

What’s the context of this photo?

A few months after the Charleston massacre, several white nationalist groups held a confederate flag rally at Stone Mountain, a monument to the confederacy and the birthplace of the second KKK. Police were there to keep the rally and protestors separate and as tensions flared, dude reached for his gun:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tensions-f...

> The whole police immunity for murder and violence needs to stop.

The punishment for crimes committed by police officers should be harsher than the punishment for the same crimes committed by regular citizens. And the law should be actually enforced, not conveniently ignored. It would probably only take a few high profile cases where they make an example of the officer to change the attitude in the police force.

Right now, some police, who are meant to protect, are trigger happy because they know that their colleagues "have the backs," and they will be let off the hook with a suspension in the worst case. They don't analyze a situation carefully enough before reaching for their guns. There are shortcuts taken far too often by police, such as entering properties without warrants, arresting people who have not committed or are even suspected of committing crimes. The police think they're a different tier of citizen, and well, they are, because they can violate citizen's rights with almost immunity.

It is understandable that mistakes can be made, but it this is precisely why they need to be made an example of, to prevent the mistakes recurring.

It's funny how this perfectly reasonable argument is always downvoted.

I'm pretty sure there's some kind of bot which automatically downvotes every comment I make shortly after posting.

I'm also rate limited to 5 comments per 3 hours due to wrongthink. Has been that way for a couple of years.

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

It's a slippery slope, and that's not always a logical fallicy: https://www.aristotl.io/?s=slippery#slippery-slope

If you want to do that, it would need to apply to everyone.

The system that exists is unequal protection. The police are protected by a culture of the State looking after itself and its public servants. There is supposed to be an independent body which investigates police crimes, but the two are hand in hand in letting their men off the hook.

This is also a slippery slope in the other direction. If they know they are essentially immune, then their limiters are removed in their behavior - making them more likely to be negligent and cause accidents, which in turn, they get let off for, strengthening the idea that police are mostly immune from prosecution.

One could argue that a police officer could voluntarily give up their "equal protection" right as a pledge for entering the force. If they are committed to serving and protecting, then such declaration could give confidence to those are meant to be being served. Right now, almost everyone is sceptical of the police in one way or another. The system is rigged and it stinks.

I agree except your 3rd paragraph, because I dont think that would have the intended result. It breaks the findamental concept.

I read your comment as agreeing with Equal Protection. In the end we are talking about the penality for framing or depervation of rights under the color of law. It should apply to everyone. It's easy to point out the problem, but proposing a slution is much harder. Juries are the real firewall, but they depend on the knowledgebase of the jurors.

It's one of these things that a direct "of x then y" prob isnt going to work. Giving the public direct access to lower level raw information is what I would like to start with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23232250

Imagine if we could script Pacer stats....

EDIT: hit my comment limit for the night, good point about the DA; in that case, it's the next level up from juries; the electorate. The DA is only accountable to them if they make them so, and public opinion does not always wait until the next election, bad PR is fixed astonishingly quickly if the DA's boss feels the pressure. If you have another idea, please propose it.

Jurors don't help unless the DA actually prosecutes. And that doesn't seem to happen that often?

tagging @Dang Dang

could you check if the comment limiting on that user was a mistake?

So it’s common to censor posters this way?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

HN is a moderated site. Whether that's censorship or not is mostly a word game; people use that word when they don't like a thing and different words when they do.

It's not an easy job. Thank you.

It doesn't feel right for me to comment about an account in response to someone else's post. Maybe I'll say a general thing instead:

We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars—and we're happy to remove the rate limit when people commit to following the site guidelines in the future. hn@ycombinator.com is the best place to contact about this.

I have always found that it is helpful to put up sign outside your house that you are a gun owner or perhaps even an NRA sticker (even if you abhor guns and NRA). As a person of color living in an area which had too many people who would deliberately pickup fights with me (especially related to parking) all that ended once I put up a big NRA logo on my car. I do not even own a gun.

And if you dislike the NRA, you can always rep an SRA sticker instead. Although it's probably less recognizable and the "S" in SRA may bring some issues.

I'm not affiliated with either organization.

Self Referential Acronym?

Is this a human example of Bayesian mimicry?

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

>A policeman can easily say "I was worried for my life!" when shooting an unarmed person but a civilians can't say the same thing if they shoot a cop that invaded their house, or even another civilian.

Isn't that what stand-your-ground law enable people to do?

See this very case! Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired at police officers breaking into his girlfriend's house; he was arrested and charged with attempted murder, and is currently under house arrest. The police union, of course, is screaming bloody murder that this "threat to the men and women of law enforcement" is even in house arrest, rather than in a facility. (https://twitter.com/KYFOP614/status/1243557106487361536)

We'll see what happens after the case works its way through court, but he's already losing several months of wages and the stress of a court battle, which is more than most cops have to go through after shooting someone.

Mr. Walker should get off...eventually.

Unfortunately, while it appears the law is on his side based on the facts currently known (Kentucky is a castle doctrine and SYG state), these doctrines are affirmative defenses that must be argued in court. Under most state criminal procedure codes, Mr. Walker can be held until trial (unless freed on bail, or placed under house arrest).

Note that placing someone under house arrest in a conservative state like Kentucky is the judge's way of saying that he expects the defendant to prevail in court and thus won't subject them to the indignities of the prison system, but can't simply release them without bail or restriction due to the nature of the charges.

Yes, if a cop invades your home without following proper procedure (i.e., by announcing "this is the police" or by wearing police uniform), in a state with castle doctrine you can shoot trespassers without attempting to flee.

Both the castle doctrine and stand-your-ground doctrines let people shoot attackers without attempting to flee. One of the big differences is that castle doctrine only applies in your home (but is a very strong defense that is generally acceptable in almost every state), while stand-your-grand would apply outside your home, but is more limited--not every state allows for a stand-your-ground defense. For example, California allows for the castle doctrine but not stand-your-ground, so you would have to reasonably attempt to flee before engaging in deadly force.

That's what they are supposed to do - but these aren't things that are applied fairly.

Not so long ago, there was a woman arrested for firing a warning shot at her abusive spouse or boyfriend. She was jailed. Unsurprisingly, she was African-American. Women, in general, can't use this defense as often and minorities rarely can.

And few folks can use this against cops - you'd need someone to come to your aid and prove the cop did something wrong.

You left out the most important fact of the Marissa Alexander case: she left the room in which the confrontation was occurring, went to the attached garage, retrieved her handgun from her car, and then went back. There's also a question of whether it was a "warning shot" as she claims, or just bad marksmanship in trying to kill her husband, the facts strongly support the latter, and that's generally something for a jury to decide. Warning shots are also very strongly frowned upon for reasons that should be obvious.

So Florida's stand your ground law provision had absolutely nothing to do with the case. Plus there's one now pretty old study out there that shows in Florida that blacks successfully used the stand your ground provision of Florida law as part of a self-defense affirmative defense more often than whites. The claim that women are disfavored in claiming self-defense is literally something I've never heard of.

So stand your ground doesn’t allow you to get your gun to defend yourself against an abusive spouse?

I imagine it would be seen as having left (given up your ground) and then returned thereby entering the other person's ground. I'm pretty sure even without stand yiur ground if you are in an altercation, leave, and return, it's seen as you are now the aggressor.

I've seen this happen with fights without weapons involved (both in real life and shows like Live PD), and the charges are always serious if they left and came back, most especially with a weapon.

Are you arguing that stand your ground should protect someone who leaves a dangerous situation coming back with a gun?

I’m arguing if you are bring threatened in your own home you should have the right to go to another room to get a weapon to defend yourself.

It's worse than that, even. :(

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-georgia-deputy-acqui...

Sounds like a good idea if you don't mind partnering every officer with a paralegal to ensure it's okay to discharge their weapon. Otherwise, no sane person would be a police officer.

Or they could know the law themselves.

Weird how for everyone else ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, only for the ones enforcing it.

A private citizen enjoys the right to self-defense, and in cases where killing the assailant is the only means to end the fight and preserve one's life, that is generally held as justifiable. Law enforcement officers enjoy the same right.

There are internal investigations every time a police officer discharges their weapon. They don't enjoy immunity against any crime they commit. If there is no evidence of a crime, then there cannot be any criminal charges.

Honest question, how many cops have been charged for manslaughter/murder while on the job in the last 10 years?

How would I know that off the top of my head? Do you expect such a local event to always be national news?

Edit: https://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+many+police+officers+were+charged+...

True not fair to ask off top of your head.

I did find one: https://abcnews.go.com/US/houston-police-officer-gerald-goin...

Meta: It's a solvable problem that something like Pacer isnt open. Running stats on the law and how it's applied could be easier.

Why aren't there easily available statistics for this well-defined social function? I can get medical malpractice statistics very easily, why not law enforcement malpractice?

You are correct, except you skipped over the critical "entering a domicile without a Constutional reason" part. There is no way for the occupant to know it's lawful or even the police.

If it's done because of a immediate threat to life situation, then the people involved are rightfully risking their lives, to save another, and they know that.

If it's done to prevent the flushing of evidence down a toilent, then that's a bad trade for everyone, and the Senator from Kentuckey is right.

Completely agree.

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