[HN Gopher] Grandmother sues cop who wrongly targeted her home u...
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       Grandmother sues cop who wrongly targeted her home using "Find My"
       app
        
       Author : mikestew
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2022-12-05 21:49 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | mikestew wrote:
       | The Ars article does leave out one detail that will probably come
       | as a shock to no one: Ruby Johnson is black.
       | 
       | https://www.aclu-co.org/en/press-releases/aclu-sues-denver-p...
        
         | mindslight wrote:
         | What would be the point of including that detail, besides
         | creating division where half the readers go "of course, the
         | police are so bad to Black people" while the other half go "who
         | cares" ? We need less stoking of racial divisions, not more.
        
       | mindslight wrote:
       | Second page:
       | 
       | > _Training more cops on "Find My" app_
       | 
       | And there it is - the fallback to this disempowering narrative
       | that cops need more "training" to behave better. Rather, the
       | incentives need to be drastically reformed, so that cops are
       | bound by the same laws as everyone else.
       | 
       | Are there written department policies saying that police officers
       | can use an ambiguous "find my" to guess at a location, are
       | allowed to deny arrestees access to medication, and can
       | needlessly wreck up their house and their possessions for their
       | individual convenience? If the answer to all of these is "yes",
       | then the police department should be paying the victim for
       | damages and emotional distress. If the answer to any of these is
       | "no", then the individual cops also need to be held jointly
       | liable for where they exceeded their authority (both civilly and
       | criminally). These compensations need to happen mechanically
       | after an attack on an innocent civilian, and if the police
       | department holds back on compensation, then the damages need to
       | be tripled.
       | 
       | To see the inequitable treatment and framing here, the only
       | question you need to ask yourself is "what would happen to a gang
       | of non-cops who committed a similar home invasion?" In our
       | society the government is supposed to be subservient to the
       | People, so the only difference between a cop and a non-cop should
       | be that a cop gets paid to professionally perform the job. This
       | should result in a higher standard of behavior than an average
       | group of yahoos performing vigilante justice. But instead, cops
       | have been foolishly given immunity from the laws they claim to
       | uphold, creating the perverse incentive where they simply don't
       | care how much damage they cause. This is the key dynamic that
       | needs to be reformed, and the rest will fall into place.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-05 23:02 UTC)