Fortunately, you’re not in charge of trying to reform America’s dysfunctional policing system and culture at any opportunity that presents itself. Shrugging and saying “tsk-tsk, we can’t do anything about it so it’s hopeless” only helps those who benefit from the rotten status quo.
Also, having insurance doesn’t magically remove liability – it’s a hedge against being found liable. And as others have noted, the idea that the police have no legal duty to protect anyone can be challenged in civil court and the appeals process as much as it can in criminal court. But hey, why bother, right?
IANAL but my understanding is, yes, their job is to protect but they have no duty to protect any specific individual(s) except in certain very specific situations. Here’s an example of a case where the police totally failed to protect someone who needed protection and the Supreme Court said… mehhh, no duty to protect. Also a 1989 Supreme Court case came to a similar conclusion about a truly terrible failure of the state to protect a child, which in many ways was even worse than the Parkland failure, because it was thoroughly documented harm occurring over a long period of time. In other words, the state very much knew about it, had plenty of time to take action, did nothing, and there was a terrible outcome, but no liability.
The idea is that they are controlled by elected officials so if you’re not happy with the protection you’re getting or not getting, you have to address it politically.
If he didn’t do his job, why should he get a pension? Pensions are based on having done a job, not on a duty to do a job. Why are you so sure the bill to cancel the pension of the pants-pissing coward who demonstrably and catastrophically refused to do his job would have been tossed out in court?
So civil and criminal courts shouldn’t play a role at all? I suppose the case against Chauvin and his fellow thugs in uniform for murdering George Floyd was also a big waste of time. After all, they were just doing their job and enforcing the law.
Don’t try to fob this off on the bad ol’ state and politicians, as if the cops are helpless bystanders. Police are the state’s guard labour and both support and (too a lesser extent) are beholden to any politician who’ll bow down to the demands of the police unions. They are powerful and deadly instruments of the state, and like all such instruments need to be regulated and their purposes clearly defined.
Trying to separate things out and shift the blame is as stupid an argument as the ammosexuals’ demands that we pay no attention to the easy availability of deadly weapons as a central factor in mass shootings.
Bullshit. A violent response to a violent emergency is the one thing they actually are trained and equipped to provide. It is the one thing they are (hypothetically) good at. Every other aspect of their job description, they don’t train much if at all, and are demonstratably shit at.
They are shit at animal control.
They are shit at community outreach.
They are shit at investigationg crime.
They are shit at handling domestic abuse.
They are shit at handling mental health crises.
They are shit at responding to medical emergencies.
If they abdicate the one thing they actually train to do - protect the public from violent actors, then there simply is no reason to have police around.
As for using the political process to do so - that’s completely naive. Cop unions threaten and intimidate anyone who tries, including prosecutors, judges, and politicians. LA county sheriffs are a literal, violent criminal gang.
As I said earlier, legally, the job of the police is to enforce laws. Occasionally, to prevent the violation of said laws, but mostly to arrest and charge after the fact. They have no general duty to protect anyone. They sometimes acquire a specific duty to protect certain individuals. Most commonly, the people they have arrested. If they have you in their custody, they owe you a legal duty to protect you. A cop famously failed at this in spectacular fashion last year when he left a handcuffed suspect in the back of his squad car which was left on train tracks…and the car was then hit by a train. That cop failed in his legal duty. Sadly, this motherfucker in Parkland, and all the motherfuckers in Uvalde, did not. Policing is broken in this country. It always has been. They are not there to protect you. They should be, but they are not.
Haha, no, pensions are based on years on the job and hours worked and pay rate, not job performance! At least it’s normally that way with public service union contracts. I think those are terrible type of contracts and public entities shouldn’t enter those kind of agreements, but that is what has happened all over the US. State / local public workers union contracts are notoriously lopsided to the benefit of the employees.
The way our system works right now, not really! Again, I think that public employee union contracts are very lopsided in the protection of employees, and in some cases there’s too much statutory immunity. In the case of Chauvin, he’s going to spend life in prison, so he’s punished quite thoroughly.
I’m not fobbing anything off, just pointing out a 1989 Supreme Court ruling which sets all this up. If you read the wiki about that case, it’s really pretty terrible, and yet the Supreme Court said, this isn’t going to be addressed by the courts.
And the court rulings on this basically conclude, if you don’t like the job the police are doing or not doing, you can address it politically, including not having the police around if you can elect politicians who will do that.
Thank you for explaining it more clearly than I did. Your example is right, the one time they suddenly do have a duty to protect is if it’s someone in custody.
He didn’t do his job when it actually mattered, but that doesn’t neccesarily legally erase the fact that he probably showed up to work and punched the clock for his 32 year career leading up to that day. Pension forfeiture is possible for certain public employees convicted of official misconduct but it’s a difficult bar to meet. And in this instance he wasn’t convicted.
Just to add on, this is not new. When I was in Morgantown in med school, there was a case where a guy was busted for DUI and his girlfriend was left on the side of the road alone. Trying to walk home, she was abducted and raped. Sued the cops but lost, on the same grounds. The cops have no obligation to any individual citizen, the whole “To Protect and Serve” shit is a meaningless motto, not any kind of obligation.
I didn’t say job performance. I said “having done a job”. He did not do his job in this case. He might have just as well been sitting in a donut shop out of uniform during work hours for all that he fulfilled his work expectations.
And yet people still bring criminal and civil lawsuits against bad and incompetent cops. And they sometimes win, forcing changes to how the system works. But you keep arguing that “that’s just the way things are”.
And yet cases and suits keep being brought and sometimes won against agencies and their agents that fail to do their jobs, despite your apparent insistence that it should have all stopped in 1989.
I’m still fine with their trying to deny him the pension (the bill was submitted before the verdict). He could and would have fought the decision and likely would have won, but it would have made his golden years the living hell he deserved. Meanwhile, the state would have made a strong statement about their expectations of LEOs.
We can have a better, more accountable policing system than the one we have,* but getting that requires constant pressure applied in all three branches of government at all levels.
[* assuming we want it. Cops and copsuckers are fine with the status quo]
No they don’t have to protect people. That’s been upheld numerous times by the Supremes. The duty to protect usually only applies to protecting the property of the wealthy. Getting taxpayers to pay for it is icing on the top for them.
But remember, all public sector unions (especially teachers’ ones) are greedy and evil – except for cop unions, who are just doing their job (often on behalf of members who aren’t doing theirs!) /s
Read all the way down. I addressed that. Police unions are no longer accountable or controllable by politicians or courts. NYPD has a $6B/yr budget, which is larger than the militaries of all but a handful of countries. Voters elect progressive politicians and DAs with police reform and accountability in their policy platforms and are blocked by courts or simply ignored. It’s going to take federal intervention to displace entrenched police interests. Expecting it from local voters, politicians, and small-town judges will simply get people killed.
