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| ▲ | delecti 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I suspect it was less about the legal merits and more about punishing (whether or not they won) through the lawsuit itself. |
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| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Of course. Questioning their authority is a status challenge, and they're accustomed to having their status go unchallenged. Hence, punitive punishment. One of many aspects of improving law enforcement would be pointedly training out and averting any perception of being "above" people. "Public servant" is a phrase for a reason. | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yea it’s as simple and stupid as that. This (black) peasant isn’t respecting our authority and higher status. If we let one slide then everyone is going to think we are equal to them. In their logic, they have to fight in court. | | |
| ▲ | SaltyBackendGuy 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a common archetype when people get challenged (escalation of commitment), they effectively double down. I don't necessarily think it was racially motivated (but also don't doubt that it could have been). | | |
| ▲ | mywittyname 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > don't necessarily think it was racially motivated Growing up Adams county myself, I'll go ahead and be the one to tell you that it was absolutely racially motivated. You do not want to be a minority out there. Hell, you don't want to be perceived as being left leaning at all out there. This is the same area where a ~15 year old girl was assaulted on camera, in front of a police officer for participating in a protest (IIRC, BLM, but I could be wrong). This made the front page of reddit when it happeend. And this is very likely, corruption motivated as well. I have enough family and friends left out there who have first hand experience with the politics and policing of the area to know. In fact, I have a late friend who had this exact thing happen (though, one county over), on video and everything. He's just not a D list celebrity with money, so nobody cared. If someone wrote a documentary about this area and tried to pass it off as fiction, people wouldn't believe it, as it would be considered too absurd to be believable. | |
| ▲ | underlipton 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated. Explicit references have been removed, but a lot of the structural elements that supported those explicit references remain. I know many people recoil at the idea, because it seems like an affront to their personal self-image and the national ethos (or at least its marketing), but I generally hold that if an institution acts in a way that's consistent with historically-aligned racial prejudice, it's actually on the institution to show that it wasn't a racially-motivated outcome, not the other way around. And there is some evidence that the institutions themselves recognize this (or they did, until we elected an openly-corrupt white supremacist to the highest office): https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/us-doj-res... | | |
| ▲ | gnerd00 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > American institutions were set-up prima facie to be racially-motivated the history of the United States is a collection of States and territories, forming under very different legal conditions over 100+ years or so.. that blanket statement is without context or detail aka insufficient. | |
| ▲ | jepj57 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Joe Biden left office Jan 20, 2025. |
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| ▲ | jumpman_miya 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | macNchz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There’s a name for that, SLAPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ... Many states in the US have laws to try to limit them by making them easier to dismiss etc. | | |
| ▲ | delecti 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, the only reason I'm not quite sure SLAPP is right is that he's a fairly prominent and well-off figure and they're a pretty small department. So I guess it's an attempted SLAPP suit, but they aimed too high (poor aim not being unfamiliar to cops). | | |
| ▲ | malfist 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Cops only know how to do one thing: escalate the situation. Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was submitting and defenseless. | | |
| ▲ | ctoth 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Millions? That's... A very big number. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway902984 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Counting from the dawns of the various police forces in the country maybe? Impossible to know, but even then... Hyperbole illustrates the point pretty well though |
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| ▲ | embedding-shape 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That was what I was thinking at first too, but if I was sitting on their side, my mind would still go for "Wait, if we sue him, won't this make the news and make things better for him?" immediately, rather than "Yeah, this will suck for him". I'm not sure how they thought this would be bad for him, legal costs? | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You're assuming a rational, reasoned process, rather than an instinctive punishment of a perceived status challenge. When you observe someone acting in a way that seems obviously against their self-interest, it is always worth considering the possibility that there's some interest you don't understand...but it's also worth considering the possibility that they're doing a bad job of considering their own interests. | | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is an event that took course over 3 years! I could understand the initial actions, statements and whatnot from the department to maybe be instinctual and emotional reaction to events/messages, but during these 3 years, at least one of them must have had some still time to reflect on what they're doing. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's very easy to double down and reinforce your own past thinking rather than re-examining it. It's also very easy to "play a role", even as consequences play out; "reasoning" like "I will do X, then they will do Y which I don't want", rather than stepping back and thinking "if I do X, Y is likely to happen, I don't want Y to happen, so what should I do differently". They assumed they were going to win, and thus enact punishment for questioning their authority. | | |
| ▲ | tehwebguy 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them have already spent money in anticipation of a favorable judgement. Cops are largely immune from facing negative consequences so it was probably an incredible shock to lose. |
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| ▲ | evan_ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They thought they were going to get a payday at the end. That tells you how d much they actually cared about their privacy/the privacy of their families, they were willing to sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars. |
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| ▲ | shadowgovt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is a key insight. Most "rational actor" theories of human behavior actually only work in the large (where the average can dominate outlier behavior) and in systems where rational action is a positive feedback loop ("a fool and his money are soon parted"). If those assumptions break down (especially the second, i.e. if foolish use of money results in more money accruing, not less), what we perceive as rational behavior should not be expected. |
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| ▲ | sixothree a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't think this is "better" for him really. He didn't win any money afaik. He spent a lot of time defending himself against something that could have easily gone in a different direction given a different jury. | | |
| ▲ | dplgk 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's publicity and positive public perception for a guy who had one hit song decades ago. This is good market for him. |
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| ▲ | mwigdahl 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "The process is the punishment" | | |
| ▲ | johannes1234321 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This may be true in many cases. In this case however the story currently is two times(!) on the front page of haackernews (which isn't a music celebrity gossip site), bringing a musician into spotlight who's career was far from its peak. Hardly any better Marketing campaign one could imagine. |
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| ▲ | throwaway27448 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Billed to the public, too. | | |
| ▲ | Rebelgecko 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Adams County paid for their civil suit??? | | |
| ▲ | throwaway27448 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Foreman was sued by the Adams County Sheriff’s Office I presume this isn't coming out of the officers' paychecks.... | | |
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| ▲ | TallGuyShort 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If the police possessed the self-control and critical thinking to not drag this whole thing into a lawsuit, I think the raid would likely have never happened in the first place. |
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| ▲ | busymom0 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I suspect that either this was some confidential informant who just reported false claims about Afroman and the police used it to get a warrant. Or the whole department is just corrupt and make up stuff to get a warrant in order to raid his house hoping to forfeiture his money. | | |
| ▲ | TallGuyShort 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | So yes, there was an informant who was cited as the reason for the warrant, but the credibility is questionable. The informant referenced a basement that county records would show should not have existed - presumably the SWAT-like team doing the raid didn't bother to consult building plans for any planning, because that would have cast all the testimony into doubt. This part I've heard from social media sources and haven't seen in reputable documents, but some of Afroman's claims about the police officers and their history of sexual abuse is apparently based on claims from the same informant that were never investigated. The whole thing stinks and I'm glad attention has been thrown on that department. | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | They also claimed that they're received hundreds of calls one day, with violent threats from some anonymous individual, and when they tried to track the number, it didn't work, "the numbers didn't actually exists" or something like that, and there is no way of proving the calls actually happened, except for the call log at their police station. |
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| ▲ | atmavatar 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I know cops aren't known for being smart Not only aren't they known for being smart, but they're known for explicitly filtering out smart people. The 2nd court of appeals ruled in favor of a city (New London, Connecticut) which rejects police applicants for having too high a score on intelligence tests. See: https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story... See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-smart-to-be-a-cop/ |
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| ▲ | lukan 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They would have individually gotten lots of money in compensation if they would have won. So maybe the motives on their side are a bit more materialistic. |
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| ▲ | nitwit005 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You forgot that they stole his money. When he went to get the cash, it was $400 short. They blamed a counting error, but it was supposedly in a sealed evidence bag, so how did it escape? That generated a whole slew of extra stories, because it elevated the whole thing to a deliberate crime. |
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| ▲ | ncr100 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In my view it's because the city or locality which those cops protect has been remiss, the community has been remiss in making sure that their police actually police in the way that the community wants them to police. So obviously the community is getting exactly what it deserves by having its police force be legally liable for incompetent malfeasance behavior. Ultimately it will cost the community, Afroman himself, in tax used to fund the police, And then route that money back to afroman and his attorney for his legal fees. An embarrassment. Humiliation of the community. Reinforcement and debasement of the community. Suppressed business attractiveness of the community for its plain lack of oversight. |
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| ▲ | throwaway27448 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not saying that the public has no control over the police, but it does often feel like that. |
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| ▲ | athrowaway3z 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| US Police are trained such that their first impression in any situation is to see how people are reacting to their authority, and if it's not acquiesced to go on high alert. It's not that they couldn't understand; It's that it's a faux pas to question this way of thinking so nobody does. Play that out long enough and you get clown shows like these. |
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| ▲ | lenerdenator 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Generally, municipalities have at least some sort of attorney on retainer for this sort of thing. Generally. I don't know if that's the case where he lives. Either way, the police have to be smart enough to listen to that attorney, and have to be given a consequence for not doing so. If you can brush off everything as qualified immunity and say you were acting under color of law while a part of a union that would raise absolute hell for any sort of corrective action taken against you, you might not be introduced to said consequence. |
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| ▲ | SpaceL10n 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I have no evidence besides my own experience, but I think that the "back the blue" mentality might skew their support staff's objectivity a bit. Especially in smaller cities and towns where cops aren't just law enforcement, they are foundational pillars of morality and governance. The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons. | | |
| ▲ | cucumber3732842 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > The point I hope I'm making is that they are getting bad advice not because they are stupid, or the people around them are, but rather because it's inevitable due to complex social and psychological reasons. Which basically boils down to when the men with the guns and the violence (or their string pullers) set down a dumb path nobody is going to say "that's fucking stupid, you're stupid, good luck with that". It's gonna be a bunch of tepid "well the odds are long but here's how you could prevail" type criticism that lets them think their path of action is fine right up until it hits reality. |
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| ▲ | cucumber3732842 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This. The cops don't care if they "look bad" because looking bad doesn't cost them anything. They don't lose any money. The populace is no more entitled to resist them so their jobs are no harder, their KPIs are not imperiled. Etc. etc. At best the municipality will scold them because the municipality cares very little, but not zero about police optics because it impacts their ability to do things that are unpopular. | | | |
| ▲ | sneak 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | AIUI they sued him in their personal capacities, not as the police department. Any taxpayer funded lawyer to defend the PD from such a thing would presumably not be authorized to work a civil suit for a person who happened to be employed by his client. |
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| ▲ | thinkingtoilet 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >I know cops aren't known for being smart Even worse. Police departments can actively reject you for being smart. https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story... (granted this is a one off case, but it is astonishing and speaks to the larger issue) |
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| ▲ | busymom0 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I had never even heard of Afroman until 3 days ago when I saw some lawyers livestream the trial on YouTube. The whole thing seemed so bizarre and I was surprised why the case wasn't even summary dismissed by the judge in the first place. Now Afroman has even more material to make YouTube videos of and humiliate these cops for eternity. |
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| ▲ | renewiltord 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Tin foil hat version is that they’re looking for a payday where they can and if this didn’t work they can always check whether the police department failed them as an employer. |
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| ▲ | ngc248 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Mega-streisand effect ... they stacked together so many of em |
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| ▲ | busymom0 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I hope they appeal this case just to stack together one more humiliation. |
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| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I hope he makes another song with additional material from the court case. |
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| ▲ | shevy-java 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves. It is not even that rare; some cases covered by Audit the Audit or Lackluster (same guy), or the civil lawyer. The amount of incompetence among many cops is surprising. They really literally don't even know the law or constitution. Just about anyone is hired. Quality standards are mega-low. |
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| ▲ | plagiarist 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If I were in a gang such that I routinely committed theft and violence without consequence from the government, I'd probably have internalized that I am superior to the plebs. So I would expect what is obviously SLAPP to actually come out in my favor. |
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| ▲ | mmooss 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | ProjectArcturis 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Not very smart itself. How sad to reduce the whole thing to ignorant stereotypes It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy. https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story... | | |
| ▲ | mmooss 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > some police departments There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype. |
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| ▲ | Moomoomoo309 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To be fair, there is legal precedent for cops not being too smart. https://ny.prelawland.com/post/719662253773832192/too-smart-... They're allowed to not hire someone if their IQ is too high. The stereotype is at the very least based on truth, and has been affirmed legally. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago | parent [-] | | People keep saying this and this case from 2000 is the one instance anybody has been able to cite. Most police agencies use standardized domain-specific written exams --- the PELLETB, NTN, IOS --- that are both not general cognitive exams and have no ceiling score. This really seems like one of those too-perfect Internet myths that just isn't ever going to die. I think the balance of evidence is that if you picked any police department in the US out at random, it would have the opposite of the incentive claimed in your comment, and no ceiling on general cognitive ability whatsoever. |
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| ▲ | Tostino 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Have you watched any of the video from the raid, depositions, or the trial? They are not smart people. |
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| ▲ | echelon_musk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > way less people (including myself) would have never heard about it I think the never here is a typo. |
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