Note that the quoted laws also cover things that would be restraining or harassment orders in the USA.

Those 30 aren’t arrested for just for writing “social media posts” but for possibly “harmful communication including incitement to terrorism and violence, online threats and abuse, and unwanted communication via email and other means”

Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning

Edit: and none of those cases would involve pretrial remand/jail

It is similar in Germany, where you can be arrested for simply posting an insult (non-violent) to a politician. No police will face charges if you aren't convicted.

I don't know why HN has become full of authoritarian anti-speech apologists. The current political divisions are turning people insane.

That’s not Europe. They had a whole vote about it and everything!

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.

The UK doesn’t have free speech

Potentially winning a drawn-out lawsuit against that sheriff, investigator, and county would have been a big improvement for the rights of his neighbors and friends, but I'd wager that with even half of those settlement winnings that he could do a lot more good than one lawsuit.

For example, there are surely dozens of others who are taking plea deals because they can't afford a lawyer to bring such a lawsuit, a few hundred thousand could multiply the impact tenfold.

Maybe he should try to get compensation through the new Anti-Weaponization Fund.

> “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

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.

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 some suits 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.

Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job

I highly doubt Tennessee is going to start printing USD.

> 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.

> 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 to stop 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?