San Bernardino will pay $390k to settle suit against cop who arrested 7th graders "to prove a point"

US cop fascism is to pervasive to underwrite?

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I’d argue with you, but you doubled-down on equating a class of 7th graders with a dysfunctional police department. That kind of density can’t be reasoned with. So I’ll just enjoy the others dragging you over your own gormless coals.

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The First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteen Amendments aren’t hard to understand. You should check them out.

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One is a group of citizens having their rights violated, the other is the group of government officials doing the violating. Can you really not see the difference?

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Good point, I guess normally the way you account for that is by making sure that both the insurer and the insuree will still face adverse effects if the event being insured against happens. I would be compensated if my house burns down, but I would still suffer enough hardship that I really want to prevent a fire.

Ostensibly, the cops face other consequences from civil suits, like bad publicity or political sanctions. So we might imagine they’re still strongly discouraged from violating rights. But when police departments have also already sunk resources into building up mechanisms for neutralizing those political or media consequences (like PR professionals, advocacy organizations, police unions and backchannels), we’re left with very little to counterbalance the moral hazard.

It’s almost as though the police institution has taken as its starting point that violating our rights is a necessity, and then organized the rest of its operation around making that as smooth as possible.

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It is precisely that we are talking about punishing a department for the illegal actions of an employee rather than individual citizens who were punished for an imaginary and totally invented crime that should inform you of the difference. But since it’s not clear to you, let me help.
When an employee of a business commits a crime, we need to look to see if that crime was individually motivated or if it is part of the policy of that business. In this case, the city defended the actions of this cop which tells us they stand behind his actions. From this defense and the doubling down of it under appeal, we can conclude that his actions were consistent with department and city policy. So, if we were to punish the individual for performing in a manner consistent with department and city policy, we would be in the wrong for singling him out for punishment. Indeed, the only reasonable course is to apply punishment to the city and police department for fostering this kind of criminality and why it is appropriate that everyone be punished equally since no one did anything to correct the problem.

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First you would have to show that this deputy’s actions were indicative of a systemic problem, and not just the actions of a man that can not handle the stresses of his job. Has this problem, or one like it, occurred in the past? Were other deputies aware of it? Was leadership? If city government decides to pursue a legal course of action, perhaps in the hopes of overwhelming a citizen without legal resources in the hopes of a cheap settlement, the responsibility of the rank and file police officer? How will robbing them of a pension cause leadership to revise their actions?

I believe the city and department defending his actions at the trial and at the appeal is sufficient evidence that the city felt his actions were justified which is pretty much the definition of systemic. How could you not see that? Seriously, please address how this is not overtly systemic. I’d really like to know how one could view the system defending a criminal act against the citizenry as anything other than a systemic problem.

It is not the city perusing legal action but rather the victims of the policy of arresting people without specific and articulable cause.
By “robbibng” aka levy fine against the officers and their leadership of a small percentage of their pension, they suffer, as a department, for “robbing” (aka taking from without legal cause or reason) these children’s freedom and protected constitutional rights. This direct effect will almost certainly put an end to police violating the rights of the people whom they have sworn to protect or at the very least it will put a chilling effect on the defense of such actions.

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