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Comment by rhizome | Hacker News Reader

Firing isn't decertification and the punishment isn't even that bad.

>It's up to your city leaders to enforce this, and override the local police union's resistance, if possible.

It's only possible in jurisdictions where DAs and/or Mayors can get elected without an endorsement from law-enforcement, and look at SF for an example of what police do when one slips through the cracks.

By far, most US government is ruled by law enforcement, not the other way around, and this isn't even touching the nationwide police rebellion we've been enduring.

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> It's only possible in jurisdictions where DAs and/or Mayors can get elected without an endorsement from law-enforcement, and look at SF for an example of what police do when one slips through the cracks.

As someone who doesn't live in SF, what are some of the examples? This is a good faith question, but I'm not really sure what I would google to know what you mean.

The 1975 SF police strike, which ended when the police detonated a bomb at the mayor’s house.

Wow, I'd never heard about this, but just read the Wikipedia blurb[0]. It doesn't appear to be established fact that the bomb was indeed placed by the police, but it doesn't seem like it would have been surprising if they had.

Pretty shameful that Mayor Alioto override the Supes and caved to the police's demands rather than calling in the National Guard and taking the entire striking force into custody. But I guess people don't always make the best decisions while their lives are being threatened...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Police_Departmen...

Google "Chesa Boudin," the current DA, who is ensuring that criminals run rampant throughout the city, if not inviting them to do so, if you listen to certain opinions.

Find a news story about the current crime rate in SF that isn't framed by comments from carceral interests: the police, the police union, former police officers, former hardline prosecutors, and aspiring hardline prosecutors. Many if not most stories only talk to those people.

You may be surprised at the difficulty in finding an even-handed appraisal.

As a non-SF resident, doing useful research inspired by 'google the current DA' is pretty laborious. I found https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chesa-Boudin-San-Fra... which seems sensible on the face of it, and doesn't sound at all like he's "ensuring that criminals run rampant throughout the city".

The general problem of media assuming good-faith information from police is widespread and SF is no different from any other location in the US (or Canada for that matter).

Sorry about that, I must have assumed the story was as big everywhere as it is here (I know).

This is probably a decent start: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/bogus-bac...

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