I assume she will get a settlement, the city (the taxpayer) will pay for it and nothing else changes. There will be even less money for infrastructure repair and people will keep voting for the same people.

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ryandrake 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.

Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.

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cortesoft 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is why the saying “you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride” exists.

They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.

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obsidianbases1 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Mostly this

> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.

That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.

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john_strinlai 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.

some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.

i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.

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ryandrake 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yea, an arrest on your record, even if you're acquitted and/or get a settlement for police wrongdoing, can still mess you up. There are employers and landlords who will ask you / check whether you were ever arrested, regardless of the outcome of the arrest. Mere involvement with Law Enforcement puts a permanent black mark on your record and can interfere with basic things for the rest of your life.

	▲	beepbooptheory 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		As someone who lives this reality (arrest but no conviction), it's in practice not really so bad. It's never come up with a landlord. The last time it came up was after being accepted to grad school and I had to fill out a form about it. You do just carry with you the knowledge that if you ever get pulled over the cop can pull it up about you and have reason to hassle you more.

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ponector 20 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Students are young and often have nothing to lose, aside from missing opportunities.

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efitz 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The process is the punishment.

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eduction 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Much like peter thiel’s lawsuits against Gawker, which included funding a guy who dubiously claimed to have invented email and sued Gawker for pointing out this was absurd.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_...

YC and its founders worship him like a hero.

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epistasis an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not a fair assumption in the current political environment.

Those who have lots of money will get fair hearings under the court, but those with less power might not. There's a reason people like Elon Musk write into agreements that they must be settled in particular Texas courts.

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aliasxneo 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

I don't think that's the full picture. Activist judges have been a problem for awhile now, and it seems to be mostly influenced by ideology rather than purely money.

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majormajor 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It's certainly obviously true that one political party used "we will find judges who will overturn one particular court case" as a fundamental part of their campaigning for decades...

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epistasis 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can't really venue shop for an "activist" judge but you can for one who will side with the powerful over the weak. Your comparison is itself not a full picture.

	▲	35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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cjkaminski 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

That's quite a claim. You need to cite your sources for this one, if you want to be taken seriously.

	▲	aliasxneo 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sitting on a precompiled list I can just drop into a comment. But I do have a pretty hard rule about investing more effort than someone else already has. So this would be an unequal trade for me to go spend the rest of my Saturday building a list for someone who wrote two sentences on the internet. To add slightly more flavoring, I think its a pretty reasonable view to assume that the massive fracturing happening in the American political scene is most likely affecting the judicial branch. Perhaps you disagree. Take it as an opinion. Don't take it seriously. Whatever floats your boat.

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snazypaparazzi an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think everything is consistent with the perspective Texas represents toward the united states. It's fine if Texas doesn't implement reforms and fails. (There are 49 other states and may the ones that invent or adopt the best practices survive.)

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smt88 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

What do you think “fails” means exactly? How does Texas fail in a way that doesn’t harm innocent people in both Texas and the rest of the country/world?

Texas is larger (in both population and economy) than most countries in the world.

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snazypaparazzi an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The Federal government enforces a few rules and then leaves things to the state and people. Obviously that means the state and people have no nanny to protect them from consequences of their decisions. If they drain their budgets fighting the civil rights of their population instead of fixing a problem then they might look like a lot of bankrupt municipalities. The US is obligated to let that happen.

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autoexec an hour ago | parent [-]

Not really. The federal government bails Texas out of the messes they get themselves into all the time (like their shitty power grid). Historically, Texas has often received more in federal funding than it contributes in federal taxes.

	▲	golem14 5 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Is the Texas power grid shitty? Say, compare to California’s?
	▲	snazypaparazzi an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sure, most of the South is in a hypocritical position of claiming to want the federal system I described, I want them to get it..

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fzeroracer an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is true, but Texans as a whole keep enabling these outcomes by both voting and supporting politicians that create it, as well as the state as a whole generally refusing aid.

It's one of the (many) reasons why I immediately moved out of the state when I had a chance. There's only so much that can be done when a lot of the states politics and environment is wholly self-destructive.

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luxuryballs 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

fine for who? Texans? this is a silly mentality, no need to compare any other location, Texas as a standalone entity and the many stakeholders wouldn’t reasonably think it’s fine