The UK has different speech laws than the United States. Presumably, the actions of the police making those arrests are within the scope of UK law. Even if 90% don't result in a conviction, the police may still be operating within the scope of their authority in those arrests.

[delayed]

Under today’s administration and courts a federal lawsuit like that was going nowhere anyway, except maybe an executive order praising the Sheriff.

One of the worst examples in the US is the consequence asymmetry for speech. Law enforcement and federal agents can lie as much as they like with impunity when dealing with citizens, but (a) it's a federal crime to lie to a federal officer (18 US Code § 1001, up to 8 years imprisonment), and (b) truly, anything you say to law enforcement when under any suspicion can and will be used against you in a court of law, even the act of pleading the 5th, regardless of (or perhaps especially because of) your innocence. "I want a lawyer", repeated ad-nauseam, is always the least harmful response, regardless of context[0].

Also, the body of federal law and regulations is so vast that smart people estimate the average person unknowingly breaks roughly 3 federal criminal laws per day[1], giving the federal government the legal ability to arbitrarily arrest anyone they want.

[0] James Duane, You have the right to remain innocent, 2016

[1] Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, 2011.

The death penalty should be reserved for people who violate a position of public trust and authority.

> In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior.

The US military is subject to a higher standard, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Penalties for US service members breaking the law or codes of conduct are much higher and much more severe than civilians. The US military makes routine example of law breakers and misconduct.

The US police force, by contrast, is civilian. They are not licensed, commissioned, or subject to additional standards. Certainly not nationwide standards that would bar police removed from their post from finding similar work elsewhere.

We should pay our police officers more, make them undergo nationally standardized training and licensing, and then hold them to a higher standard if and when they break the law.

Police court-martial.

> The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back.

The suit was filed against Perry County, TN, not the state or federal government. A quick google says that its budget is $33M, so in fact this is a very impactful settlement for the county.

Not the legislature: the Supreme Court. Qualified Immunity was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court back in the 1960's when a police officer arrested- and then a judge convicted- a group of black and white Episcopal priests for "making a disturbance of the peace"- that is, having black and white people out in public together as equals. This was Pierson v. Ray, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967.

The current implementation of it- where you need to have "clearly establish" a Constitutional right with a prior case in this region- is based on Pearson v. Callahan from 2009, and it takes a terrible Supreme Court precedent and makes it even worse. This has created the patchwork "no case in the circuit has clearly established that a police officer must not make a warrantless search on a Tuesday in May" sort of quibbling.

The work of legislatures has been to roll back qualified immunity. Colorado, New Mexico, and California have removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. LEO's can still claim qualified immunity for suits under federal law, but they cannot for any suit brought under state law or the state constitution in those states.

The Supreme Court has also, at the same time they've made it harder to hold police to account, made it harder to hold politicians to account, gutting bribery laws and expanding "free speech" to include paying politicians. And the recent idea that a President can't be prosecuted for any "official acts" is also nonsense created by the Supreme Court. This isn't Congress fault, there were laws that prevented it. The Supreme Court just decided that they didn't want to enforce those laws.

The Supreme Court at the root of a lot of the dysfunction in American politics, and somehow still has more respect than they deserve.

This is a misunderstanding. In most cases you cannot sue the federal and state governments, with very important exceptions, but you can definitely sue the police. Government officials, such as the police, usually only have _qualified_ immunity rather than absolute or sovereign immunity, and even then only when they were acting in good faith and are not being accused of violating someone’s constitutional rights.

The real problem right now is how the courts determine if an official was acting in good faith. Right now they are assumed to have acted in good faith unless it has already been “clearly established” that what they did was illegal. This means that the official can argue that they didn’t know that their actions were illegal because no prior case ever dealt with that exact fact pattern. This works far too often and has let a lot of very guilty police get away with their crimes. Still, some police officers _are_ held to account, so it is not actually impossible.

It is a weakness, but yes, an intentional one. Why a weakness? It leads to structural instability.

> US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police"

I don't think this is true, or at least it's not entirely true.

Various states and law enforcement agencies have an office of the inspector general which at least should provide some oversight. We also have the courts and individual officers and agencies can be sued in the court of law which also provides a means of oversight. You seem to be suggesting that everything is corrupt, corrupt local authorities, corrupt feds captured by the party. I think that level of perceived corruption is not reflected in operational reality.

Some states or local police organizations do in fact look at past police records for applicants. There's a bit of variation here, but it's probably a bit better organized than, say the EU where outside of other bureaucratic hurdles I don't believe there is any real way of some German citizen who should be banned from being a police officer from moving to Estonia and being a police officer. Though perhaps I'm wrong and there is an EU-wide database that all countries and their police forces use?

I know the UK isn't in the EU, but I just bring that up as I think it may be a bit closer of an example.

Yeah. Did any meaningful consequences befall anyone for the Horizon IT scandal?

I'd vote for that in a heartbeat.

I think part of the problem here is that this is usually hidden from visibility (intentionally) by officials because it reflects negatively on them.

It may make the news for a day or two, never get seen by the majority of voters, and get swept away later under the deluge of distraction most "infotainment pretending to be news" provides.

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Go further and just list all government settlements/court judgements underneath the elected official in charge of the branch responsible.

This is a country where people are fine with more of their taxes going into police budgets every year.

Adding a line item to their property tax bill showing how much is paid into settling lawsuits will not make people think that they should demand more accountability. They will think that it should be harder to take legal action against the police.

> the offending employee likely can't pay the judgment in full

My doctor is required to carry malpractice insurance. Those who commit repeated egregious mistakes become uninsurable.

Make cops do the same.

The system needs to change so pursuing frivolous or weak charges doesn't work. We also need to reform bail, which has gone way outside of historical/constitutional norms.

Turning it into an escalating back and forth of each side trying to imprison the other, is not conducive to the kind of change we need. To take a recent example, while I don't particularly like James Comey or Letitia James, I don't think they should have been targeted. That kind of stuff is what happens when it escalates to each side calling for the other side to be locked up.

Nobody should have that power.

What kind of mindset do you need to have where you think the only way to prevent someone from doing something is via the threat of imprisonment after the fact? The vast majority of people don't do this, and that's because they don't have the power to do it, not because they don't want to.

We should start by removing the ability of prosecutors and police to bring such cases in the first place.

Where does this idea come from that we somehow can't take power away from people without criminal punishment after the fact?

Nobody should have this power, and then abuse of power wouldn't be an issue.

Not just scott free, but they might be getting a million dollars each from tax payers due to that asinine "settlement" from Trump suing the government.

False imprisonment generally doesn't apply when due process is followed, like getting a warrant.

You'd have to change the law to allow for prosecutions in cases like this, and that change would likely be weaponized in other cases.

Yes. (And an accurate quote, too.)

He wasn’t jailed for 37 days. He was jailed indefinitely. Every day he didn’t know if things would get worse. He didn’t know how long he was staying. He was already in the absurd scenario for being jailed for a meme so anything was possible at that point. He happened to get out after 37 days.

Would you do that if you were an ex-law enforcement officer who's racial profile puts you under the protection of criminals on the yard that largely support the person you heckled while not knowing that it was only going to be 37 days?

Would you live through the stress of a legal case with unknown legal costs and unknown incarceration time for that amount of money?

I wouldn't, but that does really put some perspective on it.

His trouble isn't just from the time in jail, though. It's from all the Trump supporters who harass him as well. Previously, and in the future.

This was settled out of court. Nothing was proven. For the county to settle for this much, there must be some things going on behind closed doors that the people involved do not want to be made public.

Indeed. Qualified immunity is a stain on American jurisprudence.

You can almost never hold anyone in government accountable. You are forced to sue your own community to get some shred of justice while the actual people who violated your rights face zero accountability.

Tell lawmakers who want your vote this November that you want an end to qualified immunity. Agents of the state should not be less accountable to the laws of the land than regular individuals.

Did this guy campaign on "I'll violate the First Amendment" or something?

What level of taxpayer due dilligence are you envisioning here?

What a ridiculous argument.

Basic responsibility sits with those who commit the act.

Sometimes I feel like I live in an alternative reality because I very clearly remember thousands of people saying shit like that.

In one case, the meme was accurate - the photo, the quote, and its attribution were all accurate, and the cops knew that. It never made it to trial, for obvious reasons.

In the other, it was false information, a grand jury indicted, and a jury convicted. The appeal rested on the government struggling to demonstrate a) anyone actively fell for the information and b) the conspiracy element. (https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/OPN/23-7577_opn.pdf)

Somehow, this distinction is... bias?

Well, his conviction was eventually overturned on appeal.