In some (EU) countries, as a public officer/agent you can actually get prosecuted (civil or criminal proceedings per case), in cases of blatant or willful incompetence. (Think of the levels of gross wanton disregard/negligence.) (There is also the legal vehicle of insubordination.)

For instance, in Greece https://www.lawspot.gr/nomothesia/pk/arthro-259-poinikos-kod... (N.B. the bar of wilfulness in this section in the Greek criminal code is much lower than the corresponding notion of wilfulness in the U.S.)

The bar is high, of course, and yet people have historically managed to get prosecuted, lose their jobs, and go to prison.

I think the problem in the U.S. is, ironically, the power of police unions in a fragmented police force (city, territory, county, etc.) ecosystem, coupled with the lack of unified, express state and federal statutes to enforce a standard of care and competence.

Add to that that peace officer-specific state statutes (e.g., describing manslaughter while on duty) are written in such a way that, as a matter of law, it becomes a herculean task to tick all the boxes to successfully preserve a conviction on appeal. It is truly troubling. (I am hopeful, as this can be solved by the U.S. legislature, which I think we have a lot of reasons to demand to be done.)

The case in NY was police setup a sting on the subway to catch a serial stabber. Instead of stopping him they stood by and watched him attack several innocent bystanders.

They were sued for incompetence. For the failed sting.

The two police officers who stood and watched him get attacked were ruled to be immune because they had no duty to protect him.

Point being, if police see you getting attacked, they have no duty to /stop/ that from happening. Their only duty is to take a report once they feel safe enough to approach.

If you see two police on the corner and think "this is a safe area" you'd completely be operating on faith in their character.

That only punishes the taxpayers after all.

I am sick to the back teeth of this narrative that all grievances can be resolved into currency and that paying this hurts taxpayers. We can jail negligent or reckless public officials, the financial costs of investigating and compensating people are an economic incentive to promulgate better standards in the first place.

Unfortunately the courts have repeated ruled that "aware of the Constitutional violation" means knowing that the exact action being observed had previously been ruled a violation of Constitutional rights. It's essentially impossible to prove, which is one of the reasons we don't see that offense prosecuted.

Who represents the government in these cases?

Their main method of "Protecting" people in custody has been deemed a form of torture called Solitary Confinement.

They certainly seem to be willing to spend a lot to keep Luigi Mangione safe.

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.

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.