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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

We really need someone to watch the watchers. Like internal affairs but not part of the police. A group that has police powers over the police but not over the citizenry, and who is not subject to police authority. Give them legally mandated access to all police records.

It seems obvious. Which probably means I'm missing something. Or it could just be that the police apparatus is so deeply embedded into the state political system already that it's not possible to put a check on their power. Although some US states have citizen initiatives, so we could force the issue. But then again, many citizens like a strong, unaccountable police force, so that is hardly a guarantee of success.

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>who is not subject to police authority

How would you police these people? They would be like diplomats, only without a home country to keep them in line.

I assume this meant only that their org chart didn’t eventually merge with the police’s. Kind of like SREs at google.

That makes more sense. I get that it is mostly a states rights issue, but I have always thought that Police crime should be handled by FBI + Federal courts.

I think that at least in theory that is how it is intended to work. But it doesn't really solve the issue, because it's still a strict hierarchy. So the top enforcement organization is hard to force accountability on.

And like you said, states rights and all that, it might be outside the Constitutional powers of the federal government to actually do this. On the bright side, I suppose, getting at least one state to build a model of a working checks & balance system on police is a lot easier than making it happen federally.

There are several of different options. The most obvious is an independent line of authority delegated from the state's legislature or governor. This is where the police get THEIR authority. Other options include close supervision by the courts, private rights of action (i.e., citizen lawsuits), strong FOIA-like transparency rules, etc...

I don't know how I'd make it work exactly, just in principle. I envision a group of people who have enforcement powers over the police, but nobody else. But in order to have enforcement power, they need to be immunized against retaliation from the police. Part of why I think they should have no power at all over anyone other than the police is to reduce the damage potential.

Clearly there are details that a policy expert would have to work out, I'm just a rando on the 'net philosophizing about how we as a society can stop the slide into a police state and preserve a healthy democracy.

Maintaining a liberal democracy seems hard, like it's an unstable creation that can only be sustained through deliberate effort.

In NL, the authority watching the police (Marechaussee, [1]) is organizationally a branch of the military, next to the army, navy and air force subdivisions. I guess it would be similar to having the National Guard be the police watchdog in the US.

The Marechaussee are also involved with other police duties such as fighting organized crime and riot control. NL police doesn't have SWAT teams like in the US, they would be part of the military hierarchy, not the police hierarchy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Marechaussee

NL Does have DSI which is pretty close to what SWAT does as far as I understand it. DSI is a police branch that specializes in things like terrorism and armed standoffs.

They keep trying this, especially in Chicago. But then they have to dismiss everyone after a couple of years because the whole thing is infested with ex-cops and cop family members and they never find a single cop guilty of any infractions.

NYC has exactly this, it's called the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board. I'm not that familiar with it, but I think this is hard to implement right - either it's toothless or makes cops too reluctant to act when they are needed.

In the UK, this is between HM Inspectorates of Constabulary: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-inspectorate-... (splendid name) and the police complaints commission https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/independent-poli...

> many citizens like a strong, unaccountable police force

Indeed.

Unpopular opinion?

The military. "I feared for my life" just doesn’t have the same ring to them.

But who watches the watchmen's watchmen?

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