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Comment by Nrsolis | Hacker News Reader

I knew Sal Culosi.

He was a nice enough guy that used to hang out at Fast Eddies Sports Bar in Fairfax, VA. I saw him there often just tending a beer and minding his own business.

If you can believe it, he was an optometrist at a Wal-Mart that just measured eyeballs and wrote prescriptions. If he was a bookie (as alleged) then I never saw anything that gave him away.

I followed his story in the paper and was surprised to hear that a 17-year veteran of the Fairfax County Police was the one that shot him. Apparently, he said he was bumped and accidentally discharged his gun DIRECTLY INTO SAL'S CHEST.

The police department eventually settled with the family for negligent homicide. That was only after they fought tooth and nail to protect a cop that didn't know how to control a deadly weapon.

In the end, I think the cop got a 3 week suspension. AFAIK, he's still on the FCPD.

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It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments.

If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that!

It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops.

Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_ punishment.

Lon Horiuchi was an FBI sniper that shot Vicki Weaver in the back while holding her infant daughter in her arms: case dismissed. That cop that pepper sprayed those protesting kids at UC Davis, John Pike, was never even charged for "lack of evidence" (nevermind that video of him doing so was on every news show in the country that week). The FBI and BATFE set the Branch Davidians' home on fire, burning up the children inside.

Instead of meaningful outrage, we simply let cops get away with murder, literally.

Fuck the police.

It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. If you're accused of a crime, you deserve maximum legal effort applied for your defense.

> It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens.

Heh. First off, it's cops killing people, and then being squeamish about it (very contrary to how they'd deal with a civilian guilty of the same thing) that make people use these words.

Secondly, there are of course many factors that go into stuff like this; many benign like simple solidarity, some potentially sinister, like being involved in things you'd be shunned for by most of society - such as killing unarmed people and then lying about it - which is an incredibly powerful bonding agent.

> maximum legal effort

But here too, this means very different things on both sides of the "blue line", doesn't it.

Don't try and blame police corruption on people complaining about police corruption and hating corrupt police, its obviously neither the cause nor a contributing factor. Just deflecting blame to the victims.

No? Think about that every time you see "hackers" on the news.

When are police accounts ever questioned "on the news"? If anything, comparing the different media treatments of the two groups emphasizes the lack of accountability for police.

> It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens.

Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted.

> Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted.

What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist? Does it not have enough power? Is that what's really being argued here?

Or is this just feel-good we're-the-good-guys they're-the-bad-guys rhetoric intended to undermine what capabilities they have, cause them to feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the citizenry they're supposed to be protecting, and motivating them to develop a similar and responsive antagonistic attitude that is precisely the seed of a police state?

Is the argument "they started it"? Is that the level of discourse that a mature, educated citizenry ought to engage in?

Fuck people like sneak. All they're good for is exacerbating problems that exist, making it that much harder to fix, fulfilling their own prophecies of doom and gloom, to no useful end other than making themselves feel self-important. It's like discovering database corruption and going, "Hell, let's run DELETE in with random WHERE clauses and see what happens. Because my job title says VP of Marketing."

> What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist?

In fact yes. Many police departments do not have "Internal Affairs". Where they nominally exist, they are rarely staffed by a separate group of people, rather "internal affairs" work is handled by the same people as everything else. The same people behind the same silent blue wall...

Hollywood depictions of "Internal Affairs" are largely a "Hollywood thing".

I can support a campaign to increase staffing for more of such divisions so that they're independent and capable of successfully prosecuting cops who lie to protect cops.

One does not simply throw money at corruption.

Even if you could, that would be a hell of a lot of money. In many cases you would be damn near doubling the size of police departments.

Maybe you should avoid letting your temper get the best of you with such emotional outbursts as: "fuck people like sneak," on Hacker News.

If you can't control your temper, why are you even participating in the discussion here?

Personal attacks like that aren't acceptable here, and I'd think you would know that by now after three plus years. It's disgusting to see that level of discourse here.

Using a personal attack to rebuke an alleged personal attack is not what I'd call a convincing argument.

> If you can't control your temper, why are you even participating in the discussion here?

Because http://xkcd.com/386/ Stop being wrong and I'll go away.

Seriously, if you want to whine about the level of discourse, then you're welcome to start with the person I originally responded to. But you won't, will you? Because you agree with him, so his emotional outburst is okay.

"Fuck the police", in addition to being a famous quote[1], is a well-reasoned and long considered personal policy.

It's about as far from an emotional outburst as one can get.

[1] http://youtu.be/1M8vei3L0L8

"Fuck sneak" has been a common refrain on the internet for well over a dozen years. :D

Don't sweat it. I don't.

> cause them to feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the citizenry they're supposed to be protecting, and motivating them to develop a similar and responsive antagonistic attitude

Are we still railing against rhetoric? The argument isn't they started it, it's "they have been granted tremendous power, so they need to accept accountability."

> The argument isn't they started it, it's "they have been granted tremendous power, so they need to accept accountability."

Yes. "Fuck the police" really captures that argument well.

Argument that was actually made: "It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments.
If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that!
It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops.
Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_ punishment.
Lon Horiuchi was an FBI sniper that shot Vicki Weaver in the back while holding her infant daughter in her arms: case dismissed. That cop that pepper sprayed those protesting kids at UC Davis, John Pike, was never even charged for "lack of evidence" (nevermind that video of him doing so was on every news show in the country that week). The FBI and BATFE set the Branch Davidians' home on fire, burning up the children inside.
Instead of meaningful outrage, we simply let cops get away with murder, literally.

Fuck the police."

What you read: "Fuck the police."

Is it really any wonder that you are having problems with this conversation? There is a lot of content in that comment; you appear to have ingested none of it.

::sniff sniff::

I smell bacon!

These things are still pretty rare. Unfortunately, once you start raiding barber shops and pool halls with so much heat something like this is bound to happen. I still find it to be an honorable job with honest guys that put their lives on the line; however, statistically there's always going to be some hot-headed trigger-happy guy involved. Plus even if they're not on the force they're in some neighborhood as the unofficial neighborhood watch.

People would be more forgiving to individual departments and officers if ever there was fair punishment and contrition for crimes committed by law enforcement. There is always an excuse or a legal loophole, with no admittance of guilt or evidence of self-reflection.

Also, if there were even a chance of fair punishment, police would change their tactics to favor low-risk encounters rather than the Wild West raids they favor now.

Give someone assault weapons, train them to believe that they are fighting for good, and remove all legal and moral contraints and watch how quick they turn into a "bad apple". It's not a personnel problem, it's a structural problem. See Stanford Prison Experiment, etc.

Put a bad apple in a barrel, leave it there for a short period of time, and observe that all the apples are now bad. Rotting apples release ethylene gas which is a ripening agent. Through the release of this gas, bad apples will "spoil the barrel" if they are not diligently weeded out and disposed of. Bad cops don't release ethylene gas. The mechanism that rot uses to spread through a police organization is called "The Blue Wall of Silence".

I love the "bad apple" metaphor because when you remember to say the whole thing it becomes clear that it is actually an argument against ignoring issues in an organization because only a few people are the "cause". If a police department "only has a few bad apples" then (according to the metaphor) those bad apples must be removed swiftly and decisively or the integrity of the entire department will be compromised.

Exactly my point above; I'm glad it came through.

I love this "bad apple" tidbit, it's going in the top drawer of the toolbox. :D

> Stanford Prison Experiment

Relevant SMBC http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3025#comic

> These things are still pretty rare.

Prove that. You can't, cause it's a negative. It seems much, much more likely that "The times these things are uncovered and get national press attention is rare." For the few times that are, how many are not, 10x? 100x? I can't know, but I 100% doubt we catch 100% of these things.

If you participate in a SWAT raid on a barber shop on any level, you are not an honorable or good person.

Cops have no legal obligation to protect you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

No, but they do have a legal obligation to not shoot me for no reason, or to not lie on the stand under oath, et c.

When not enforced, such obligations are meaningless.

So does everyone.

But guess what cops are human too ergo they will on occasion make mistakes, lie, steal, cheat etc.

And when they lie, steal, and cheat, they should be punished. In fact, they should be punished much more harshly than the general public, because it is their duty to prevent lying, stealing, and cheating. They should be held to a higher standard.

This cannot be stressed enough. Anyone who enforces a rule through violence but is not subject to that rule is nothing more than a thug.

This made me laugh. Applying this rule to the US is hilarious. The collection of Gitmo detainees, drone victims, the tortured, the extraordinary rendered, bombed, shot and otherwise victimised non-US citizens that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Uncle Sam came knocking over their countries probably aren't smiling with me.

You're really surprised that citizens of a country expect to be treated better by their own government (which, in essence, is the expression of their own will) than non-citizens are? For examples of this, see literally every society that's ever existed in the history of mankind.

That's not to say that any of the things you mentioned are ethical or that I agree with them at all, but it's not too difficult to see the difference between being victimized by an external force (which is essentially just garden-variety "humans are shitty"-ness) and being victimized by an entity that is supposed to represent you.

The main difference with the US is that the public image and repeated, vehement rhetoric is freedom and peace and equality for all humankind. Yet dig a little deeper and the double standard about citizens and non citizens and how they are treated becomes very apparent, far more so than in (say) some of the european countries.

I just read this article and it blew my mind. What type of "special relationship" are they referring to in the decision?

Well that's the joke.

They can construe, manipulate and torque that to mean whatever they want or rather the lack of whatever they want.

No they can't. It's pretty defined actually. A really simplified way to understand it is: the police have specifically said "we will protect $PERSON from $THREAT." Take for instance a hypothetical domestic violence case. Say the victim reports an incident, and then is later murdered. Because the victim reported the first incident does not imply a special relationship under the law. But, if the police told the victim specifically that they would protect him/her from the alleged perpetrator of the crime and then another crime occurs they would be liable. This is why you very rarely would find an officer promising protection: it creates that special relationship. For more info check out this source: http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseac...

> This is why you very rarely would find an officer promising protection:

Then we must update the motto: <strike>protect and</strike> serve.

What is a "special relationship" in this context?

You make it sound much worse than it actually is. The court ruled "a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen." If the opposite were held true any person who was ever the victim of a crime could sue the government agency with jurisdiction for damages. Warren does not hold that the police have no duty to protect you if they are witnessing a crime being perpetrated upon you.

You mean say a cop is hiding behind a steel door while you go toe to toe with a knife wielding crazy?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/to_serve_but_not...

Nah, never happens.

My point is that Warren does not address that situation, you'd need other case law to discuss it.

So your point is not that police actually do have a duty to protect you, but the legal precedent cited to show this did not do so? I have to wonder why even bother to argue that point? It strikes me as debating whether the link currently hitting you with a 10gbps DDOS uses optic or electric signal transfer, it doesn't change the facts of the issue at all.

Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physical reality, watching people constantly debate the edicts of hopelessly out of touch political figureheads and their bureaucratic lackeys as if it had an effect on fixing the problems they cause constantly mystifies me.

I think you need to read about the case a little more before you start arguing. Warren, and many cases before it, have held that the police have a responsibility to protect the public at large, and to do so uniformly.

The police do not have a duty to protect you specifically unless they have told you they are going to protect you. This means they are not liable for preventing a crime from happening to you. That's all it means. It does not touch on the issue of whether or not an officer who witnesses a crime being perpetrated upon you is responsible for intervening, which is what the case you linked to is about. I don't know much about that, and from what I understand that particular case has not been decided yet.

>Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physical reality, watching people constantly debate the edicts of hopelessly out of touch political figureheads and their bureaucratic lackeys as if it had an effect on fixing the problems they cause constantly mystifies me.

I agree with you that it is a frustrating situation. I would ask you, as an engineer, to consider the enormous complexity of a system required to provide social structure for 300 million people, and that doing so may require some very specific decisions to be made, that while seemingly small have a massive impact.

I'm with ethereal, that's arguing a point without a distinction

I disagree.

This ruling, and others like it hint at a fundamental flaw in constitutional law and how most people perceive their relationship with the state, particularly in regard to social contract theory. These rulings call into question the very legitimacy of state authority.

Let's assume for a moment there is a social contract with the state. Then, as in all contracts, there is a reciprocal obligation. Specifically, as a citizen, I have a duty of allegiance (obey state laws, pay taxes, etc.) in return for the duty of protection, from my government. Since the state itself has ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect, then the contract is inviolate, and long since void. In other words, there is no duty of allegiance to the state per the rulings of the courts if one takes social contract theory to be valid.

In my opinion, police corruption is one example of a foundational flaw in our current institution of governance: rule by means of coercion.

I disagree.

I think you are assuming Warren has a broader impact than it does. The state does have an obligation to protect the public at large, and to do so uniformly (unless a special relationship is created). The state has not ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect you, it has ruled it has no constitutional duty to prevent every crime that occurs. Again, if the opposite were held true the state could be sued out of existence in its own court. There was no other way for this case to be decided.

Essentially the state has ruled it cannot be perfect in terms of crime prevention, and considering the backlash against the NSA wiretapping that much of HN has been extremely concerned about, it seems that the state is not frequently rewarded for attempts to get closer to proactively preventing crime. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I don't disagree with you about police corruption, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Warren.

Actually, our cake was taken away, and we can't eat it, or whatever.

The public is caught in a catch-22: it is illegal to defend ourselves physically against attackers (we can be held liable for harming an attacker, and often for posessing a self-defense weapon, and so criminals are emboldened, knowing we are defenseless), and yet the police provide no guarantee of protection against crime, and in fact are frequent perpetrators of violent accidents against civilians.

Like sheep to slaughter we go.

<quote>This ruling, and others like it hint at a fundamental flaw in constitutional law and how most people perceive their relationship with the state, particularly in regard to social contract theory. These rulings call into question the very legitimacy of state authority.</quote>

State protect property. There's nothing ambiguous about that.

Only problem with society is that you watch much super man cartoons and thing the state is there to protect the oppressed.

Having no obligation to protect is quite different to having the right to shoot and kill.

>Any other person in a special position of trust and responsibility that contravenes their duty gets _extra_punishment.

I completely agree, whenever politicians, CEOs of megacorporations, field-grade military officers and senior noncommissioned officers, local government officials, district attorneys, and intelligence agents break the law, the punishment is ALWAYS extremely severe isn't it? I mean, it must really suck to have to retire and collect a gigantic paycheck every month or a multimillion dollar severance package. And then have everyone forget about it a few weeks later so you can make a comeback in the political arena.

don't forget bankers, whose punishment is a multi-Billion dollar gift from the treasury

Eliot Spizter is a grand example of this. Prosecuted mercilessly the very type of crime that brought him down, of which he escaped essentially unpunished for because he had the means to evade it.

Your average cop and his buddies are of course going to look out for each other, they are usually the ones under the bus when the higher ups go on a witch hunt

So-called professional courtesy is the canary in the coal mine. If there's a jurisdiction where police officers can speed with utter impunity, it's a good bet that a lot worse is going on.

In my own city, I was appalled by the spectacle of hundreds of police officers protesting in and around a courthouse where officers and union officials involved in a ticket fixing ring were being arraigned.

Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/officers-unleash-...

Hear hear. If you are a good cop in a precinct and you do not arrest the bad cops in that precinct, your precinct contains no good cops.

I agree with you except about UC Davis. I'm on a locked-down computer right now so I can't promise this is the correct vid, but if you see the unedited thing, those kids were 100% in the wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y

I am astonished you think spraying people with pepper spray is the correct solution in that situation. Inconvenience is not a justification for violence. And that's what the protesters were doing. Causing inconvenience. If you can't cause inconvenience, civil disobedience isn't all that effective. Civil rights protesters were urinated on!! and had bleach poured on their faces !! by shop owners in the south. This is more of the same. That sort of violence against protesters was widely condemned then, why not now?

I was trying to find out more about this case and was surprised not to find any direct Wikipedia mention for it, after digging a little bit, I found out that this case was removed from Wikipedia entry 'List of cases of police brutality' about 3 weeks ago, under the comment "no evidence that this belongs as a brutality case"

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_cases_of_p...

Although I don't know anything about the facts, and it might have been technically correct by that Wikipedia editor, this just feels as the opposite of justice.

If there is a list of cases of police shootings, add it to that!

http://copsshootingpeople.wordpress.com/ was going for a while, seems dormant.

> In the end, I think the cop got a 3 week suspension. AFAIK, he's still on the FCPD.

And this is why I don't trust cops at all.

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