Originally published at: Uvalde survivors file $27bn class-action lawsuit against coward cops | Boing Boing
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It would be nice to think that the Uvalde Bastard Department will be stuck with the bill; though, I guess they will continue to be over-funded; and the money will come from the education system instead.
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Unfortunately, they will lose. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html
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Sadly the cops won’t be held personally liable nor will they have to pay a single cent. It’ll be tax payers that will bear the brunt of this.
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Sigh
what a no win situation, they win (which they wont, as Frances has pointed out) and they themselves and all their neighbors tax bills go up double to pay for the bond that needs to float to pay the settlement.
Meanwhile, even if they win… the police wont suffer any repercussions at all, the union will make sure to insulate them from any accountability and dump all the responsibility on a faceless government entity (the city of Uvalde, the uvalde PD, etc) that cannot be jailed and really cannot be held accountable.
And lets see what happens if they LOSE, hey guess what happens when you sue a local PD? they start harassing you and yours;
so not only are they going to be dealing with the uphill struggle trying to get accountability from cowards and thugs; they have to do it all while said cowards and thugs still have ultimate authority over them.
What a shitshow.
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As they said at the time, “Are you nuts? I’m not going in there. That guy has a gun!”
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“The City of Uvalde Police Department serves the community by protecting citizens and property, preventing crime, enforcing laws, and maintaining order.”
Apologies to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise:
First, your children are not full citizens and own no property so we must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a cop for the cop code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. Welcome to Uvalde!
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Sit, Wait And Tremble.
fuckers all
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I think all of us in this state end up paying it through taxes. Sucks. I wonder if any of those tax hating republicans I share this place with will ever stop and consider how fucking much we pay for bad policing and whether it’s worth it really when the numbers come out. So many problems like this in the state have had clear paths to improvement for years but the culture wars keep people from even considering for a second whether it might be good to have fewer millions spent on drunk cops, murderous cops, cops in periods of crisis, white supremacist cops, cops who shoot up people at the wrong place, cops who sit around and listen to children being murdered because they have no plan, etc etc etc. Better just keep giving them money and lives or criminals will… Take your money and life.
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This isn’t going to have a happy ending, no matter what. As mentioned, there’s no basis for the lawsuit in established law - cops have no duty to protect, and violating their policies would be an internal matter, I assume, not the basis for a lawsuit. And as everyone points out, if somehow they overcame Supreme Court rulings to miraculously win the case, the cops don’t pay it, the community does - which means, if they manage to get any money at all out of this, all services in that community get destroyed (not that they have $27bn anyways). It’s happened to other small communities with bad cops that got hit with lawsuits. Everyone suffered but the cops, to the point where communities were destroyed.
But the lawyers and plaintiffs surely must know all this. They’re talking about providing support for the traumatized survivors and family members (which, in a civilized country, the state would be providing), but I wonder if anyone really expects to get any money out of this, and they’re actually doing it because this is the only kind of public accounting they’re going to get. Or they could just be asking for this absurd quantity of money while they actually plan to settle for an amount that the city will go along with because it’s cheaper than the court battle and black eye to their already damaged public opinion. I guess we’ll know if they settle for a few million dollars.
Stay
Where it
Ain’t
Too dangerous
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If you want an excellent, depressing, and darkly funny detailed breakdown of the whole thing:
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It’d be nice if there were a criminal trial and all the officers were sentenced to community service, as opposed to what they’d been doing.
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