| ▲ | SilverElfin 2 hours ago |
| The craziest part is the police defending this action as a “cut and dry” case. Meanwhile the lawsuit this woman just filed will hurt taxpayers and not the corrupt city officials and police that caused this. We need to ban all forms of immunity - none for cops, politicians, or judges. They need to be personally liable for their actions. |
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| ▲ | thot_experiment 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy if you've paid attention to how cops behave at any point in the last history of the country. 100% agree about personal responsibility. You must understand that when the cops says that oversight means they can't do their job, that means they view their job as bullying, harassing and killing citizens, so yea, we should put a stop to that. 1312 |
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| ▲ | ggoo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy Imo, speaking like this normalizes their behavior - it was crazy then and it's crazy now. | | |
| ▲ | p_j_w 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | GP isn’t entirely wrong, our governing apparatus has made this something to be expected. |
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| ▲ | Bender 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I will not put the blame on the bobbies, that's too convenient. Someone had to order them to do this. That's who needs to be permanently ousted from all levels of government and their voting rights rescinded. | | |
| ▲ | abofh an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Nobody has to order people to do anything if it's in their self interest. Yes corruption flows downhill, but until they flip, just following orders isn't a defense. | | |
| ▲ | Bender an hour ago | parent [-] | | Just following orders of course does not excuse anyone but I would rather not play whack-a-mole. That is how they expect us to play "The Game" by throwing one of their tools under the bus. I prefer to work my way up the chain of command first and find the head(s) of the snake. Sure, punish the cops but don't let their corrupt chain of command play The Game otherwise we all just lost and the problem just repeats. |
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| ▲ | queenkjuul an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Lmao no this is just American police chiefs doing what they love to do, guarantee this whole thing starts and ends in that PD | | |
| ▲ | Bender an hour ago | parent [-] | | From the PDF looks like Trinidad City Councilwoman Marie Bannister and Trinidad Police Chief Charles W. Gregory, may have started this. The Texas governor [1] needs to start pruning both up and down from there. Actually the governor should take full control of that county, oust everyone and fix the water problems. [1] - https://gov.texas.gov/ |
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| ▲ | Rekindle8090 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [dead] | |
| ▲ | queenkjuul an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [redacted] all police but don't pretend it isn't crazy. Not every country is like this. |
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| ▲ | Bilal_io 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I hear you, but there has to be some balance between full immunity and no immunity at all. The one thing that comes to mind is rich and powerful people, because they have unlimited resources to sue and ruin the lives of cops, judges and politicians, which would lead to these officials avoiding to hold rich and powerful individuals accountable even when they have committed crimes. |
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| ▲ | ben_w 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not a lawyer, but what you're describing sounds to me like an example of strategic lawsuits against public participation, just where the targeted "public" isn't a member of the general public but a public servant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ... | |
| ▲ | mcdonje 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "would"? There is currently a disparity in how rich and poor people are policed. I get the point that there should be some limited immunity so they can do their jobs. Debatable, but worth the debate. The argument about the repercussions of eliminating immunity is logical. It just seems like one of those things where there are multiple factors contributing to undesirable outcomes, and that makes it necessary to talk to experts. | |
| ▲ | jghn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | These lawsuits need to be charged against the police pension funds, not the city coffers | | | |
| ▲ | thot_experiment 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're so close! Instead of patching the issue maybe let's solve the root problem of spiky power distribution among humans. We don't need to make sure cops have immunity to prosecute powerful people. We need to not have powerful people. (though realistically speaking yes there's probably some level of procedural immunity that probably makes sense, similarly with business bankruptcies not ruining the people who start the business) | | |
| ▲ | Ar-Curunir 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree with you, but most people aren’t ready to engage with basic anarchist arguments | | |
| ▲ | thot_experiment an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don't know if anarchy helps in this situation, I actually think you need robust social systems with buy in from citizens to prevent the natural accumulation of power. The fundamental problem is that there's a diminishing cost to acquiring power as you acquire power, this relationship should be inverted. The more powerful you are the harder it should be to get more powerful. This is basic engineering, you don't want runaway feedback loops, the underlying system is unstable so we need a control system. |
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| ▲ | p1esk 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We need to not have powerful people What does this even mean? | | |
| ▲ | thot_experiment an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It's very easy to get started on this, you tax the shit out of people who have a lot of money because the old adage is true. | |
| ▲ | queenkjuul an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Make currently powerful people less powerful and currently powerless people more powerful. C'mon, HN users forgot how to think? Forgot to ask Claude? | | |
| ▲ | p1esk 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | To do that you first need to become more powerful than those powerful people, right? |
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| ▲ | rightbyte 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Exactly which types of politicians, judges etc would be targeted by liability do you think? The unrighteous politicians? The judges in favour of those in power? |
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| ▲ | SilverElfin 39 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I mean that when someone files a lawsuit to defend their civil/constitutional rights and wins, the penalty must be paid by the offenders and not taxpayers. For example the police who made the arrest and their supervisors. |
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| ▲ | crnkofe 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This entire debacle weirds me out. Surely the police is aware of the water issues. They drink from the same tap as the locals do. What would a sane person call arresting people that publicly call out that your water supply is obviously contaminated? |
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| ▲ | georgeecollins 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That would not necessarily be the case in my town. We have police who don't live in the county and fireman who don't live in the state. (Los Angeles) |
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| ▲ | nozzlegear 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In my experience (I sued my town for violating my first amendment rights), the city will have insurance that will cover any damages or settlement they have to pay. Their premiums will likely go up, but the impact to taxpayers is probably minimal. |
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| ▲ | casey2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Even making them pay their own lawsuit insurance premiums would be enough to stop 90% of abuse. No change will happen until cities stop using police revenue for discretionary spending. |
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| ▲ | thinkingtoilet 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just more actions from free speech loving Republicans. Exactly like that guy in Tennessee who got $800k. |
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| ▲ | z3c0 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Nazi Germany wasn't chaos, just a lot of people following "cut-and-dry" protocol. |
