Whenever these people ask for more power in order to "stop/prevent crime", there should be a bot that replies a list of times when the police didn't act to stop crime, despite having full knowledge of the crime occuring and potential to stop it from happening.

EU member and supporter of Chat Control, Romania, had a massive scandal where a kidnapped 15 year old girl called emergency services multiple times to report she was being kidnapped, every single time, the operators and the police officers spoke to her in an ironic and condescending tone. It took 19 hours to locate her, by which time, she was already dead. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%8...

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atmosx 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Two years ago a woman in Greece phoned the police, begging for a patrol car because her ex was about to “kill her.” The officer mockingly replied, “Police cars aren’t taxis”. Seconds later she screamed, “He’s here! He’s going to kill me” (screams). She was murdered outside the police department moments later.

https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/ag-anargyroi-plirofor...

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alistairSH 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even better, in the US, the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime (unless that person is in government custody). The courts have upheld this time and again.

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Aunche 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime

This gets misrepresented on the Internet all the time. What this really means is that you can't sue the city for incompetent policemen, which is the case is basically every country. That only punishes the taxpayers after all. What is different about other countries is that they are much better at firing incompetent police.

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JasonADrury 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Per the DOJ, there's also this:

>An officer who purposefully allows a fellow officer to violate a victim's Constitutional rights may be prosecuted for failure to intervene to stop the Constitutional violation.

>To prosecute such an officer, the government must show that the defendant officer was aware of the Constitutional violation, had an opportunity to intervene, and chose not to do so.

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direwolf20 an hour ago | parent [-]

Who represents the government in these cases?

	▲	cogman10 19 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Generally speaking, the way it's supposed to work is the local prosecutors will start the process. That, unfortunately, isn't something they like to do because they have to work with police departments. If they fail to do their job, theoretically the next step is that the FBI gets involved. But, doesn't seem like today's FBI is doing much beyond prosecuting Trump's political enemies. This is the reason why I've long believed we need a check both federal and local to police that is completely divorced from regular prosecution. We need lawyers/investigators whose sole purpose is investigating and prosecuting police at pretty much all levels of the government. The federal government theoretically has that with the office of inspectors general.
	▲	mothballed an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The government prosecutes the government and is judged by the government and a jury screened under voir dire by two government lawyers? Kind of like when a robber comes to your house, you have him arrested, and when you go to court you look up and he is the one swinging the gavel. Of course, interesting the cop has to know there is a constitution violation. Somehow ignorance of the law is always an excuse for the cops but the citizenry must know all 190,000 pages of federal regulations and 300,000+ laws and by god if they forgot one they are fucked.

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mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the fact they do have an obligation to stop anyone from protecting other people from crime (see Uvalde, where orders from above were to block parents from saving their children).

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NoMoreNicksLeft 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> (unless that person is in government custody)

Someone please correct me, but do they ever much bother to protect those in custody?

	▲	foxyv 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Their main method of "Protecting" people in custody has been deemed a form of torture called Solitary Confinement.
	▲	JasonADrury 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		They certainly seem to be willing to spend a lot to keep Luigi Mangione safe.
	▲	alistairSH 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		That's tangential... they can be held liable if they fail to protect somebody that is in custody. They generally cannot be held liable for failure to protect a member of the public.
	▲	freedomben 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Generally speaking, yes. I have worked with the corrections side of law enforcement in the US and don't internationally for quite a few years at this point. The correction side is a different beast than the police side in many ways, so I definitely want to meet clear that my personal experience is limited in scope to that. However, generally speaking I have seen that the majority of corrections staff take protection very seriously. There are individual officers that can be scum, and ideally they should be bounced out of there. But realistically, it's a human problem. I've known plenty of software engineers that were cavalier with people's personal information in ways I think can be just as damaging. On the whole though, the majority of software engineers I know take protecting that information quite seriously.

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simion314 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From my memory this case can actually be used to support spyware, I remember all the media complaining "how is it possible that the police or the secret service can't instantly locate a phone very precisely" , same when that airplane crashed and the people were calling for help but the authorities could not get the coordinates and searched for hours , the media was demanding that the police or other services have the technical ability to locate any person in distress.

	▲	jeroenhd 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It is rather jarring to be stuck in the woods with Google Maps offering turn-by-turn navigation back home while the emergency room only gets a vague triangulated position (which might be wrong entirely if the signal gets reflected off of something). Of course these days such a system has been added. Bonus feature of the (at least American) feature: the system can be activated remotely, even if you're not actually calling in an emergency. The European ETSI spec is pretty funny, it basically comes down to sending an SMS to a Secret Number with a Secret Format containing your coordinates to prevent abuse (both can be found very easily); at least that supposedly only activates when you dial the emergency services.
	▲	budududuroiu 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Of course it would've been spun that way, and maybe it would've worked had it not been for the police mocking the victim in the phone logs

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mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In some parts of the world it's well known if you actually want the police to show up, just claim there are lots of drugs or cash at the location. That will actually get the police excited since they stand to gain from it. It's not clear why the police would care someone is being raped/murdered since they cannot profit from that. Although at 15 I would not expect someone to be wise enough to the world to figure that out.