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Comment by alephnan | Hacker News Reader

Well if the suspect was wrongly accused, they'd have to reimburse the damages. Does the FBI have a budget for such things? Does it involve extra paperwork if it passes a certain threshold? Is the issue here profiling of the demographic or the risk ( in terms of cost ).

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We have cases of just regular-ass police in the US breaking through the door, shooting the family dog and dragging people out in their underwear.

Wrong guy? Whoops. Sorry.

No reimbursement.

Well, when there is reimbursement (via lawsuits) it is the city that pays for it.

The police should be self-insured, backed by their pension fund. They are granted incredible power with no real accountability.

They should be at risk of losing their jobs for poor behaviour like this (and if they senior figures within the police forces don't deal with it, then they should be at risk of losing their jobs).

They should risk well more than their jobs for their criminal behavior. I'm so sick of qualified immunity I could convict a cop for chewing gum.

I agree in general, although I'm not sure criminal prosecution would be worthwhile/appropriate for breaking a door down. For more serious crimes absolutely.

I think they should experience the MORE legal risk for a trespass and property damage that I do. You seem to be arguing that they should still have qualified immunity, but maybe not so much of it, if I'm understanding?

I guess I feel like there are pretty much no circumstances in which I would need to break down a door. Whereas police officers are likely to find themselves in circumstances where breaking down a door is legitimately the right thing to do quite a bit more often. So perhaps some allowance for that is merited.

I'd like to live in a world where lawsuits aren't necessary to achieve justice, except in extreme cases.

Ok, so let's say there is a circumstance and a process by which they obtain justification from a judge, in the form of a warrant.

Then they execute the warrant on the wrong address.

Why should a cop enjoy immunity for an unjustified felony trespass and property destruction just because they were justified at another address? That's the kind of problem we have now. It's not that cops can't get a warrant for what they do. It's that they are not punished for the stuff they do without a warrant, that you and I would (and rightly should) be punished for.

This, exactly this.

Police pension funds should be the source of all police misconduct payments. The older guys would _immediately_ weed out the bad apples when it starts hurting their own wallet badly enough.

Paying for misconduct from city funds is a joke.

This. It is indeed a joke.

I highly doubt there'd be any immediate weeding out, but it would begin to restore some accountability and make it less police vs the world and more about police vs incompetent/corrupt police.

> Well if the suspect was wrongly accused, they'd have to reimburse the damages.

Do they? I'm honestly asking, but I would be surprised if most of the time the police (or any 3 letter agency) reimbursed victims for their negligence.

Nobody ever brought Breonna Taylor back to life for her wrongful shooting.

It doesn't happen. You could have your car torn to shreds by cops looking for drugs that don't exist and they won't owe you a dime for the damages.

I don't think that is true that the government must reimburse for damages.

They can literally blow your house up and not pay for it. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-...

> Well if the suspect was wrongly accused, they'd have to reimburse the damages

No, they wouldn't.

maybe it's a grammatical issue here, maybe it means if the subject was wrongly accused they (the subject) would have to reimburse the damages in which case, yeah that's how it works in real life.

If the FBI is considering busting down your door, they do not have the wrong person.

https://www.nwahomepage.com/river-valley-news/fbi-executes-w...

Law enforcement (to include the FBI) mistakenly search the wrong address all the time, and frequently kill animals and people. Despite the fact that they are literally breaking into people’s homes unlawfully and often shooting them to death for no reason, there are basically no consequences to any LEOs involved.

Wow, you are naive. I guess they may as well execute them on the spot too. Judge and jury and the fifth amendment be damned.

Or comment has a missing /s

Yeah, I forgot I was on HN. I keep forgetting how many people here have extreme difficulty detecting subtle sarcasm. Even a casual perusal of my comments would have uncovered that I have a, probably unhealthy, distrust of most things government.

I hope this is sarcasm.

Don't hope too hard. Lots of our dear readers think like this.

Lots of our readers would be agreeing with him if the case in question was someone with an FFL side gig getting their door kicked in for selling stuff that threads the needle of legality or some low margin small business owner getting his door kicked in over dodged taxes.

But because it's white collar fraud, the readers can empathize.

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