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Comment by save_ferris | Hacker News Reader

Not just that, but much of the hierarchy above police forces is opaque if it exists at all.

The Austin PD chief has come under intense scrutiny for his department's handling of various arrests and protests over the past few months, and after roughly half of the city council called on him to resign, it was reported that neither the city council or the mayor could legally fire him.[0]

The city manager, which is appointed and not elected, has the power to demote the police chief, but the state does not permit a police chief to be terminated.

Long story short, none of Austin's leaders have the power to fire the police chief.

0: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/18/austin-police-chief-...

edit: added reporting

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County sheriffs are similarly "protected", in that they have to be voted out in most cases in the next election.

That's fine. They are accountable to the electorate who can recall them.

It’s less fine when the electorate consistently delivers a mandate to brutalize a minority population, or just isn’t paying enough attention to such down-ticket races to care.

Criminals are a minority population (by number and temperament, not by race or anything). There structurally can't be any unbiased mechanism for effectively protecting minority populations or the criminals would use them.

Look at the taxes-are-theft crowd; they think the electorate consistently delivers a mandate to brutalize their finances. They aren't totally wrong. They'd love a mechanism to avoid arrest if they don't pay taxes.

So fine or otherwise, it is probably systemically optimum.

What does this have to do with systematic abuse of specific groups? Criminals are people who break laws, they aren't a cultural group. They aren't some collection of people that are oppressed. I'd be impressed if you could show me some data showing that criminals (not prisoners) are systematically abused. What are you arguing for?

Thread ancestor said that the electorate was consistently handing out mandates to "brutalize a minority population".

The electorate's power to hand out such mandates is also the power that it uses to define who criminals are.

There can't be a check on that power without also opening up a huge can of worms for general law enforcement.

> Criminals are people who break laws, they aren't a cultural group.

If a majority hands out a mandate to oppress a minority group they can probably define the minority group to be criminals. In fact, there is a persuasive argument that that is happening.

> or just isn’t paying enough attention to such down-ticket races to care

The Open Society Foundations has had a ton of success in changing how crimes are prosecuted at the local level by pouring money into district attorney elections across the country. That's a major reason the BLM protests have been successful: most people are not being prosecuted because the local DA is a "friendly." Since many people don't pay attention, money spent at this level has been very effective.

Presumably the OSF could target county Sheriffs races next, which would stop those cases from even reaching the DA's desk. Then the police wouldn't need to be abolished per se, they could simply stop enforcing laws that disproportionally target minorities, while simultaneously ratcheting up enforcement on the people who voted for those laws.

Hence "defund the police": they may not be able to fire the police chief, but they can give him an ultimatum to quit or have the budget from which his salary is paid reduced to zero.

> ... or have the budget from which his salary is paid reduced to zero.

That doesn't sound legal -- at the least, he could sue the city/state for those wages

On what grounds could "he" sue?

That's not even remotely how it works. You can't legally do that.

The city could absolutely cut the police budget to $0.

Can do all sorts of things, but when somebody turns up with a gun there has to be some physical mechanism to stop them from seizing control of the local supermarket.

The city can defund the entire police force, but it will have to set up or allow an alternative which will end up the same as the current one if the incentives don't change. Resetting the entire system every time something goes wrong isn't really a viable strategy. It'll work every so often.

Of course. This isn't controversial.

If someone takes a bunch of hostages then we need people who can de-escalate and rescue them, but that isn't what most cops spend their time doing every day.

In my childhood, I was in an area with so-called community-policing (not in the US). It was a living nightmare. Our family was glad to get out of the area.

Even knowing that US police are harsh and trigger-happy, I find it deeply amusing that first world citizens protected by the world's strongest military will talk about community policing.

Pass laws to reform the police. Abolishing them will just ensure that power hungry and petty tyrants fill the void. And these folks will happily beat and murder any and all who act against them, tax/toll all economic opportunities (roads/bridges/vendors, etc), keep the local politician and bureaucrats in their pocket, assault/abuse any woman on the streets - and no-one will dare to report anything.

You haven't added any reasoning or even anecdotal evidence to the discussion, only that you had a "living nightmare" experience, and then you went on to fantasize about some dystopia and why our only option is to pass reforms.

The police aren't following the laws now. Why would you think that adding laws would make them follow the existing ones? Police reform isn't the only tool we have available, and it feels very silly to hear people continue pounding the reform drum in 2020.

Not really a discussion for HN. I can't offer you any evidence. This was in the 80s in a somewhat backward region in a specific state in India ruled by "Panchayat" when I was a child far before the advent of the cellphone. There is no evidence apart from the memory of a lot of beatings. My sister getting assaulted. Folks going missing. And frightened shopkeepers.

Of-course things are far different today since someone or the other carries a cellphone and in modern India, law and order has far improved - thanks to more effective policing and prosecution. (Still have a long way to go)

You are a protected first world citizen. I suspect you will need to learn for yourself what living without the police means. I assure you there is no fantasy "dystopia" made up here. There are real consequences to not having an armed force enforcing the law.

Not if it means you can't pay officers their salaries, and those salaries are protected by a collective bargaining agreement. Now the city is in violation of a contract and is going to end up paying more in litigation costs plus punitive penalties. That's the difference between "technically can" and "can, but will open up the municipality to so much liability it probably constitutes gross negligence on the part of anyone who votes for it."

Collective bargaining agreements aren't contacts. You can still fire everyone.

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