Originally published at: Colorado police bind woman on railroad tracks, let her get hit by a locomotive | Boing Boing
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19 Likes
What the actual fuck?!
The multiple layers of stupid are mind boggling!
57 Likes
Isn’t it great that it’s just as impossible to fire incompetent cops as evil cops in this country
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Repeat after me: All cops are bad. And some are criminally STUPID, to boot. I hope the coming lawsuit causes much, much pain. So much pain that the taxpayers rise up and fire these idiots.
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What the everloving, moustache-twirling fuck?
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I imagine that Union Pacific will sue and cause extreme pain.
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They had gone full Red Dead Redemption. You never should go full Red Dead Redemption!
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Fire them? How about arrest them. If anyone other than a cop did this, they would be arrested. I don’t think qualified immunity necessarily protects them here because their conduct wasn’t simply negligent, it was reckless. They should be in jail.
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Officer Snidely Whiplash was not available for comment at time of publishing.
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I always though, “Everything I Need To Know, I Learned in Kindergarten” was a silly name for a book. There’s a lot of important stuff in my life that I’ve learned since kindergarten. But for fucks sake, “never stop on the train tracks” is a pretty important lesson that I definitely learned at least by kindergarten.
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I’m expecting followup charges for the poor lady as it could be argued (in bad faith) that she was the one “in control” of the vehicle when it was parked on the rail crossing. (thinking of another story where a woman was arrested for drunk driving while in the passenger seat of a parked vehicle that was idling and she was inebriated.)
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sadly, the way Q.I. usually works in this country makes prosecuting these idiots for gross/aggravated negligence very difficult…
since there is no(unlikely to be) clear legal precedent specifically about police cuffing you throwing you into a cruiser and then letting you get hit by a train.
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My point is that the actions of the police here are arguably criminal, and qualified immunity only protects them from civil suits.
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From reading the sources linked, it seems this was legitimately an accident, not malicious. But that said, the incomprehensible incompetence of leaving your patrol car parked on railroad tracks is hard to grapple with.
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No “silver lining” in that cloud.
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criminal negligence might be a thing the state can push for i suppose, Colorado does have laws about it that 100% apply in this case.
But the wont help her get made whole again, it will be the state v. police.
It would be a punitive trial, she wouldnt get any damages to pay for her medical bills if this happens.
So her best outcome here is they jail him for a while and she gets emotional catharsis… It takes a LOT to get the state to jail a cop.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/qualified_immunity
Qualified immunity only applies to suits against government officials as individuals, not suits against the government for damages caused by the officials’ actions
so she may not be able to sue the idiots, but she can sue the local government the idiots work for…
so… she can sue the town she (likely) lives in, making an enemy of the entire small town by forcing all her neighbors to pay for the municipal bond they will likely have to issue…
or TRY to sue the idiot cop(s) under the idea that OBVIOUSLY you dont have qualified immunity for being such an obvious idiot and get nothing for her medical bills.
theres really no resolution for this in the courts(assuming QI) that helps this victim. Sigh… two tiered justice systems
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What’s even more galling (if possible) is that if they do fire (evil) cops then these cops can fairly easily move a county or three over and get hired (as ‘experienced’ police officers, no less). Always wanted a national database of bad cops, so that: “Mayor, your police department hired three cops who were on the national database of negative police conformance. Would you care to explain that?” …alas, i’m sure there are plenty of judges who could be convinced that such a database would be unconstitutional (“permanent records are fine for school children - but we’re talking about members of a police union here!”) -sigh-
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Someone wasn’t paying attention to the filmstrip in ~2nd grade about staying away from train tracks!
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It was the cop car on the tracks, she was being held in the back. Probably didn’t see where the tracks were
