Police need reform. Police unions need to go entirely. Police unions exist primarily to prevent police from consequences of their abuses of power. The State doesn't need unions to protect itself from its citizens.
Why wouldn’t this logic apply to all unions? Teachers unions often fight to prevent measurement of their effectiveness for example. It’s just as bad because we don’t have choice. You’re stuck with one police force and one set of teachers with no competition and no accountability.
This logic absolutely should apply to all unions, including both police and teachers unions. You can tell a lot about whether someone has impartial judgement by seeing whether they consistently support/oppose both
Sure, that makes the case for reform stronger for police unions, but why should bad union behavior (ie. protecting criminal or incompetent members) be tolerated at all?
Back in 2019 the police in Fresno stole a bunch of rare coins during a search of a house where the warrant did not cover anything like said coins, valued at $125,000, by reporting that they seized $50,000 when they actually took twice that much in cash and the coins. The 9th Circuit ended up deciding that while it was obviously morally wrong, qualified immunity applied because there's clearly established case law that stealing property that was specifically targeted for a search does violate the Constitution, because there's no analogous case regarding property stolen by police that the police did not know was there and are not covered by the warrant, there's no clearly established violation of the 4th Amendment even though it is literally an unlawful seizure of property. Supreme Court denied cert, allowing the decision to stand. I wish I was joking.
No, but they go on strike when negotiating their collective contracts, and put terms in the contract that govern how failures like this are investigated and punished.
Apologies if I misread/misinterpreted you, but police can't (generally) strike in the USA. Most states have a specific laws against police and firefighters from going on strike. Federal law enforcement cannot strike
Police Unions engaged in collective action beyond striking to support other police who shoved a senior citizen to the ground and gave him brain damage, so stealing is nothing.
That's seemingly contradicted, or at least cast in doubt by your own article:
>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests. [...] All 57 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department emergency response team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department.[45] According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers.[46] However, his account has been contradicted by two of the resigned officers, who stated they resigned because of a lack of legal coverage. One of these officers said "many" of the 57 resigned officers did not resign to support the two suspended officers.[47]
Either the officers resigned in protest, or the union withdrew legal support in protest and the officers resigned as a result of that. Either way, the resignations were a result of union support for the criminals in their ranks.
We need to remove immunity for everyone. Cops, judges, politicians. Otherwise the most justice you get is taking money from taxpayers with a lawsuit, rather than from the corrupt people doing the crime.
And you'll end up with no reasonable person wanting to do those jobs becausr any day any bs complaint or lawsuit could cost you your livelihood, no thanks.
And this is why most cops should be tarred with the brush of corruption - it isn’t that they broke the law, but too many are willing to cover up, defend and sweep under the rug those that do.
Engaging in a cover-up is in fact a crime. Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy!
Nobody should put up with that.
>Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy! Nobody should put up with that.
What does sending "sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers" have to do with cover-ups? Anyways my guess is that it's general policy for police/courts to not release evidence unless it's part of a trial, similar to how the Epstein files weren't released across 3 administrations and took an act of congress to get released.
So they railroaded a guy on some crap and the problem was the officers' dank memes groupchat?
This sort of character based BS is exactly the problem. The amount the victim got screwed is completely tangential to how upstanding the cops are/were. Justice is supposed to be blind. Punish them for their actual material conduct.
This is, to a large extent, a US problem, because of the qualified immunity. Yet another cultural abomination that nearly doesn't exist anywhere else in the "developed" world.
The impact of qualified immunity is greatly exaggerated. All it means is that an officer can't be sued for performing their duties. They can still be sued for acts outside their authority. And more importantly, qualified immunity has nothing to say about criminal prosecution.
The real problem isn't the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, but the informal doctrine of "police don't get prosecuted for crimes, and if they are, they don't get convicted."
But it’s not one bad apple. It’s one cop who stole someone’s laptop while arresting them and entire system that looked the other way and let the theft go unpunished.
No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. People are confused by this because most municipalities have multiple taxing bodies; schools and municipalities work from different budgets, and the police are the largest line item in a budget that basically captures only police, fire, and public works.
My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units”
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
Incidentally, that's a big part of the argument behind "defund the police" (which is poorly named, at best). Instead of having police do everything, almost none of which they have any training in, and making any situation potentially lethal just by virtue of them having guns, there should be specialized units for their various responsibilities.
Where I live this has also created a secondary debate. Due to union laws, when these jobs are handed off to non-police, the municipality must still pay the prevailing wage, aka what the cops were getting paid.
Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it.
And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.
What are the risks? Even among public employees I'd imagine firefighters are in dangerous situations more often. The data doesn't show that policing is an especially high-risk profession. EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095469
The irony is that the municipalities that pay the most are typically the lowest risk. The most dangerous thing they will do is pull someone over on the side of the highway. Sure, not exactly safe, but also not exactly gunning it out with the bad guys.
Pizza delivery drivers face about twice as much risk of on the job injuries via violence when compared to cops. Also twice as much risk of fatal injuries. This mythos the US has with cops does not match reality.
Police aren't in the top 10 of most dangerous professions in the USA[1], and when they are injured, it's overwhelmingly the result of traffic accidents.
The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.
It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like ones requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours, so the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check. Everyone is happy.
Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".
That's because field sobriety tests aren't designed to find out if people are actually impaired, they are designed to give cops a reason to arrest people purely on their own discretion even when they otherwise lack any evidence of wrongdoing. And in doing so it boosts both the local cops and court's funding through mandatory court fines and fees and programs when they hammer down on people too poor to afford a lawyer.
So whats the solution? 37 people die every day in a crash involving an alcohol impaired driver. Do we think if we inhibit the police's ability to arrest drunk drivers, the world will be a better place? People are clearly not going to stop drinking and driving.
I am neither left nor right, but I feel like I need to say this much more in spaces that heavily lean left -- I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
> inhibit the police's ability to arrest drunk drivers
They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The U.S. is one of the most punishment-happy countries in the world. Nearly every politician vows to be "tough on crime". This is an incredible thing to say given the past 50 years of policing and justice in the U.S. Won't somebody please think of the children!?
> I am neither left nor right
The "center" is constantly moving and has been, on average, shifting far to the right over the last 20 years. Anyone who claims to be a centrist is therefore either changing their politics with the wind, or was far right all along.
Two things can be true:
- police should enforce the law to reduce or address crime or infractions
- police should have a standard of enforcement that corresponds with the way the court system should operate, which is that the state carries the burden of proving the crime
The right to demand a blood test or other mechanism of having the state own the burden of proof might be inconvenient but it's integral to a fairly operating system, just like the right to demand a lawyer or representation.
The police aren't stopping the crime, therefore the police need to be reformed.
And note that “involving” is very much not the same thing as “caused by”. Yes, “caused by” will be a big chunk of it, but there's a reason the latter term is not used.
I don’t think this it’s worth being reported for asking for a source on this kind of claim. I would argue of a middle ground though. I think field tests origins came from a good intent of trying to distinguish intoxicated drivers but has morphed over the years and used to give reason to search your belongings. I think the original post is wrong, the intent is not to arrest people but they are commonly used as a means to get cause to search your vehicle.
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
A field sobriety test is distinct from a chemical analysis (breathalyzer or otherwise).
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
I was under the mistaken impression you could refuse and then would get a blood test, seems that was wrong/out-dated (also wrong!). The backup test at the station is also usually a breath test apparently. And it seems we have field sobriety tests but it looks like they're for drug-driving.
It's also an offense in most (all?) of the US. Even then, if someone is pulled over for DUI, at that point the officers are just collecting evidence. If someone has had anything to drink, it's in their best interest to say they want a lawyer and refuse all tests. Then there will be less evidence to argue against in court.
I don't understand how simple DWI testing is like that in your country. 3 seconds of a certified calibrated breathalyzer is sufficient, this walking in a straight line and saying the alphabet backwards sounds like a joke.
As others have said the intent is not to document sobriety but to have a subjective reason for an arrest which looks good in the scorecard.
Look for “if cops say I smell
Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
The portable breathalyzer is inadmissable in court in my and most states. The Simon Says game is though (but it can be refused without penalty, hypothetically).
Why would a certified calibrated breathalizer test be inadmissible in court? How is it any different from catching speeders with a laser gun, or doing a DNA test?
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
This is changing. Most states have “permanent” properly calibrated breathalyzer at every dui checkpoint now. And in an increasing number of regular vehicles
He refused a blood test as was his right, and probably the correct decision given that this "top cop" (ie, the one they say had by far the most DUI arrests) was a criminal and shown to break the evidence chain of custody.
It’s an interesting aside in the story but if you’re under investigation for a DUI you can just refuse the field sobriety tests and it appears they don’t follow up so you’ll be declared innocent even if you were arrested for felony DUI.
Assuming the best case version of this guy’s story he arrested this guy for the DUI and then forgot to check in his wallet, key, and laptop or whatever. Fine, not unbelievable. But it doesn’t look like he followed up about the DUI thing.
> It’s an interesting aside in the story but if you’re under investigation for a DUI you can just refuse the field sobriety tests and it appears they don’t follow up so you’ll be declared innocent even if you were arrested for felony DUI.
I assume it varies but for most places if you refuse roadside field sobriety tests and they feel you have given indicators of impairment they will take you into custody. Then they'll take you to the station and give you the option of taking a breathalyzer and if you refuse again your license is automatically suspended for a year.
The whole subtext here is that the cop's self-serving misconduct comes at the expense of the system.
The cop got a free laptop so of course the ball got dropped. The point is that they didn't want it dragged through court where that could be easily uncovered. $5k+ lawyer fees minimum if they decide to prosecute the DUI vs $2k at best laptop. The math is supposed easy for the accused.
So then this guy goes and gets the GPS info, confronts the cop, it spirals, whole thing comes crashing down.
And now the state is going after this cop because he's at the very least implicitly making DUI enforcement look bad.
This was incredibly dangerous of the victim. In another version of events, the officer could have shot him and plausibly (unfortunately) claimed the victim had a vendetta against the cop for arresting him.
At first I thought, "Wow, he's much braver than I am."
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
Yeah it’s a sad state. But it’s also not worth putting oneself in harm’s way. Report it to the state authorities (not all of them are crooked). Or try another jurisdiction, like the local police.
> At the gas station, Bradley accused Holland of driving under the influence. When asked if he would submit to field sobriety tests, Holland calmly refused.
Much as I hope Bradley would be fired and lose his pension for abuse of power, this part is on Holland. In my state, refusing a breathalyzer is by law an automatic penalty because of the "implied consent statute" that you accept when you get behind the wheel: automatic license suspension for 1 year, and you still have to face the officer's testimony. There are consequences to the refusal that have nothing to do with the officer.
Incorrect. Field sobriety test like walking a straight line or doing those bizarre tests can be difficult for those who haven't been drinking. Now if he refused a breathalyzer or blood sample and he was sober, that's the wrong move. If he refused a breathalyzer or blood sample AND he was NOT sober, that's the correct move. It's far cheaper to take the one year license suspension than get a DUI and deal with all of those issues. This has nothing to do with the officer, but protecting yourself.
You're confusing a breathalyzer with a field sobriety test, the latter of which no one should agree to. It's the sort of test that asks you to walk straight, hop on one leg, allow an officer to use a flashlight on your eyes, or recite the alphabet backwards. They're designed to allow the officer to use their discretion to determine if you've failed rather than use an objective reading (like a breathalyzer).
Ask yourself why an officer would want to use a set of tests that require being subjective instead of deferring to a breathalyzer.
This is not true in Illinois. Field sobriety tests before you are arrested are entirely voluntary and you can refuse them without triggering implied consent penalties.
>No. Field sobriety tests are not mandatory in Illinois. A driver may legally refuse to participate in field sobriety testing without violating Illinois law. These roadside tests are voluntary and are not part of the State’s implied consent laws.
From the article it says the officer has to appear in court for each DUI arrest...which leads to overtime pay. The officer made 319 DUI arrests of which 174 cases were dismissed. The more arrests, the more overtime pay so there's an incentive to arrest people even if they are not drunk. This is how he's making $250K.
Are you implying there's a link between having money and being immune to corruption? In the US, just look at the federal government or titans of industry, like Elon Musk.
Just HOW many stories of civil asset forfeiture, blatant theft, assault, murder, and everything do we need to see that policing in this country is a criminal gang backed by government?
And even for simpler crap that everyone gets hit by, is speed limit laws. You can be pulled over for even 1mph over 'limit'. And more gross, is that its not a safety issue, but a revenue enhancement issue. Its a way they can steal legally, AND fish for more things to screw you over with.
And naturally, any thing these pigs do "in the operation of policing" makes them immune, for <handwaving magical> reasons.
And of course the cop has sovereign immunity, meaning he can do whatever he wants without any repercussions. They should at least do this properly like they do in Africa and extend the sovereign immunity to allowing the cop to accept payments to forget whatever trumped-up charges they've come up with.
(Although it's sometimes blatant graft and corruption, it's not always the case, a lot of police in African countries are very poorly paid and this is a way of supplementing their income. They typically target people who can afford to make a small donation and it's generally a friction-free experience if you play by the rules).
To be a bit pedantic, its not sovereign immunity, its qualified immunity. It is defeatable, and there are examples of it, but its rather rare. It is an abused and obviously problematic legal doctrine
According to the Wikipedia article on sovereign immunity, there are two types: "absolute immunity" and "qualified immunity". If that's right (I have no idea) then they're not incompatible.
ICE itself as a federal agency has sovereign immunity but the individuals who make up ICE only have qualified immunity for constitutional rights violations. However they do have sovereign immunity for general torts (or more technically for general torts the USG is substituted as the defendant and the USG has sovereign immunity.
>In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
Huh, interesting. I am very dubious of that quote. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure if they actually filed that in court they would be laughed out of the room. My guess is either the reporters got it wrong or its some AI hallucination. Unfortunately they don't source this claim.
So police in african countries are poorly paid so it's OK for them to just...rob people? Wouldn't it make more sense to just pay the police better? Is it OK for a waitress or a teacher or a taxi driver to steal your wallet? They're also underpaid...
That bit of justification seems absolutely bananas to me.
I've been saying this for awhile as well. Corruption is horse-shoe, once it is pervasive enough, it becomes affordable to the common man and not just the rich. Counter-intuitively, even more egalitarian, perhaps.
Ive had police in Mexico just walk up and steal $100+ from my wallet. It was refreshing as in the US they instead police have just dragged me to jail on fabricated allegations. When Mexican police can get all they want by just stealing my money and not my time, it feels like living in a more free country, liberating comparatively.
I was billed about $1000 when US police took me to ER in cuffs and claimed (made up) I was secretly smuggling drugs up my ass.
------- re: below (throttled) ----------
They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.
I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.
All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.
As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.
Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.
> investigators determined Bradley had violated State Police policies, and he was suspended for one day.
Comically limp self-punishment- this is why police unions need broad reform.
Police need reform. Police unions need to go entirely. Police unions exist primarily to prevent police from consequences of their abuses of power. The State doesn't need unions to protect itself from its citizens.
Why wouldn’t this logic apply to all unions? Teachers unions often fight to prevent measurement of their effectiveness for example. It’s just as bad because we don’t have choice. You’re stuck with one police force and one set of teachers with no competition and no accountability.
This logic absolutely should apply to all unions, including both police and teachers unions. You can tell a lot about whether someone has impartial judgement by seeing whether they consistently support/oppose both
Teachers aren't a paramilitary force employed by the state.
Teachers don’t have guns, and the ability to tie you up in the courts or worse.
What you want to say is: teachers don't have qualified immunity
Nonsense. Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364 (2009) (citing Thomas v. Roberts, 323 F.3D 950 (11th Cir. 2003).
Sure, that makes the case for reform stronger for police unions, but why should bad union behavior (ie. protecting criminal or incompetent members) be tolerated at all?
Maybe not teachers or the DPW mechanic or whatever, but pretty much ever "enforcement" arm of the state does by proxy though.
Anyone with "inspector" in their title is just an abstraction layer above the cops and courts.
Would police unions vote to strike to support a trooper who stole a laptop?
If so, then I think you've got police problems, not police unions problems.
Back in 2019 the police in Fresno stole a bunch of rare coins during a search of a house where the warrant did not cover anything like said coins, valued at $125,000, by reporting that they seized $50,000 when they actually took twice that much in cash and the coins. The 9th Circuit ended up deciding that while it was obviously morally wrong, qualified immunity applied because there's clearly established case law that stealing property that was specifically targeted for a search does violate the Constitution, because there's no analogous case regarding property stolen by police that the police did not know was there and are not covered by the warrant, there's no clearly established violation of the 4th Amendment even though it is literally an unlawful seizure of property. Supreme Court denied cert, allowing the decision to stand. I wish I was joking.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...
Please, please tread on me.
No, but they go on strike when negotiating their collective contracts, and put terms in the contract that govern how failures like this are investigated and punished.
Apologies if I misread/misinterpreted you, but police can't (generally) strike in the USA. Most states have a specific laws against police and firefighters from going on strike. Federal law enforcement cannot strike
edit: a source (I assume lawyers.com is reputable..) https://legal-info.lawyers.com/labor-employment-law/wage-and...
Police Unions engaged in collective action beyond striking to support other police who shoved a senior citizen to the ground and gave him brain damage, so stealing is nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_police_shoving_inciden...
That's seemingly contradicted, or at least cast in doubt by your own article:
>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests. [...] All 57 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department emergency response team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department.[45] According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers.[46] However, his account has been contradicted by two of the resigned officers, who stated they resigned because of a lack of legal coverage. One of these officers said "many" of the 57 resigned officers did not resign to support the two suspended officers.[47]
Either the officers resigned in protest, or the union withdrew legal support in protest and the officers resigned as a result of that. Either way, the resignations were a result of union support for the criminals in their ranks.
there's a pretty well known saying about all cops and it's never been proven wrong.
Defuck the police!
We need to remove immunity for everyone. Cops, judges, politicians. Otherwise the most justice you get is taking money from taxpayers with a lawsuit, rather than from the corrupt people doing the crime.
And you'll end up with no reasonable person wanting to do those jobs becausr any day any bs complaint or lawsuit could cost you your livelihood, no thanks.
That's already true of you and I (assuming you are not a policeperson).
Colorado has no qualified immunity for cops. Are they short of cops?
That's a false dichotomy. Those aren't the only two options.
And this is why most cops should be tarred with the brush of corruption - it isn’t that they broke the law, but too many are willing to cover up, defend and sweep under the rug those that do.
Engaging in a cover-up is in fact a crime. Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy! Nobody should put up with that.
>Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy! Nobody should put up with that.
What does sending "sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers" have to do with cover-ups? Anyways my guess is that it's general policy for police/courts to not release evidence unless it's part of a trial, similar to how the Epstein files weren't released across 3 administrations and took an act of congress to get released.
So they railroaded a guy on some crap and the problem was the officers' dank memes groupchat?
This sort of character based BS is exactly the problem. The amount the victim got screwed is completely tangential to how upstanding the cops are/were. Justice is supposed to be blind. Punish them for their actual material conduct.
Their actual material conduct was coordinating with other dirty cops which is how their phone got seized and entered into evidence.
Are you saying people need to put up with racist POS cops?
This is, to a large extent, a US problem, because of the qualified immunity. Yet another cultural abomination that nearly doesn't exist anywhere else in the "developed" world.
The impact of qualified immunity is greatly exaggerated. All it means is that an officer can't be sued for performing their duties. They can still be sued for acts outside their authority. And more importantly, qualified immunity has nothing to say about criminal prosecution.
The real problem isn't the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, but the informal doctrine of "police don't get prosecuted for crimes, and if they are, they don't get convicted."
People forget the original saying was "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel."
That’s true, but people on HN have a habit of saying ‘most’ when they really just mean ‘many.’
But it’s not one bad apple. It’s one cop who stole someone’s laptop while arresting them and entire system that looked the other way and let the theft go unpunished.
"State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year"
Holy cow.
People don't realize how well paid cops are. In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police.
And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. People are confused by this because most municipalities have multiple taxing bodies; schools and municipalities work from different budgets, and the police are the largest line item in a budget that basically captures only police, fire, and public works.
and pensions...
My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
> but it comes with significant risks
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
And they are that high just because statistically they are in traffic for such a large amount of time.
Another decent chunk is medical events. If an officer has a heart attack and dies while on the clock, that's "killed in the line of duty."
At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units”
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
Incidentally, that's a big part of the argument behind "defund the police" (which is poorly named, at best). Instead of having police do everything, almost none of which they have any training in, and making any situation potentially lethal just by virtue of them having guns, there should be specialized units for their various responsibilities.
Where I live this has also created a secondary debate. Due to union laws, when these jobs are handed off to non-police, the municipality must still pay the prevailing wage, aka what the cops were getting paid.
Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it.
And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.
> It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
Per this 2020 article, police offer is at #22 for fatal injury rate in the US:
* https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
What are the risks? Even among public employees I'd imagine firefighters are in dangerous situations more often. The data doesn't show that policing is an especially high-risk profession. EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095469
The irony is that the municipalities that pay the most are typically the lowest risk. The most dangerous thing they will do is pull someone over on the side of the highway. Sure, not exactly safe, but also not exactly gunning it out with the bad guys.
Pizza delivery drivers face about twice as much risk of on the job injuries via violence when compared to cops. Also twice as much risk of fatal injuries. This mythos the US has with cops does not match reality.
Police aren't in the top 10 of most dangerous professions in the USA[1], and when they are injured, it's overwhelmingly the result of traffic accidents.
[1]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.t03.htm
I've heard this statistic too but do you have a better source? The one you provided only has total injuries, not per 1000 or per capita.
Here's a chart of the top 10 professions per 100,000 FTE (basically, per capita): https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju...
Thanks!
The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.
It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like ones requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours, so the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check. Everyone is happy.
Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".
One should have right to demand a blood test.To many people can't pass field with out having a drink or smoke.To many have disabilities,old,whatever.
That's because field sobriety tests aren't designed to find out if people are actually impaired, they are designed to give cops a reason to arrest people purely on their own discretion even when they otherwise lack any evidence of wrongdoing. And in doing so it boosts both the local cops and court's funding through mandatory court fines and fees and programs when they hammer down on people too poor to afford a lawyer.
So whats the solution? 37 people die every day in a crash involving an alcohol impaired driver. Do we think if we inhibit the police's ability to arrest drunk drivers, the world will be a better place? People are clearly not going to stop drinking and driving.
I am neither left nor right, but I feel like I need to say this much more in spaces that heavily lean left -- I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
> inhibit the police's ability to arrest drunk drivers
They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The U.S. is one of the most punishment-happy countries in the world. Nearly every politician vows to be "tough on crime". This is an incredible thing to say given the past 50 years of policing and justice in the U.S. Won't somebody please think of the children!?
> I am neither left nor right
The "center" is constantly moving and has been, on average, shifting far to the right over the last 20 years. Anyone who claims to be a centrist is therefore either changing their politics with the wind, or was far right all along.
Two things can be true: - police should enforce the law to reduce or address crime or infractions - police should have a standard of enforcement that corresponds with the way the court system should operate, which is that the state carries the burden of proving the crime
The right to demand a blood test or other mechanism of having the state own the burden of proof might be inconvenient but it's integral to a fairly operating system, just like the right to demand a lawyer or representation.
The police aren't stopping the crime, therefore the police need to be reformed.
And note that “involving” is very much not the same thing as “caused by”. Yes, “caused by” will be a big chunk of it, but there's a reason the latter term is not used.
What other countries do? A chemical test on the field and a more accurate one when they get to the police station.
No other country relies on road travel to the extent of America, so I am not sure there is a good comparison to make.
source?
I don’t think this it’s worth being reported for asking for a source on this kind of claim. I would argue of a middle ground though. I think field tests origins came from a good intent of trying to distinguish intoxicated drivers but has morphed over the years and used to give reason to search your belongings. I think the original post is wrong, the intent is not to arrest people but they are commonly used as a means to get cause to search your vehicle.
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
Their obvious ineffectiveness for the stated purpose, combined with the effectiveness for the unstated, hidden purpose.
One should never take a field sobriety test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGHFpc6uiWA
In the UK it's done by breathalyser and refusing is itself an offence.
A field sobriety test is distinct from a chemical analysis (breathalyzer or otherwise).
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
I was under the mistaken impression you could refuse and then would get a blood test, seems that was wrong/out-dated (also wrong!). The backup test at the station is also usually a breath test apparently. And it seems we have field sobriety tests but it looks like they're for drug-driving.
For example, https://www.gov.uk/stopped-by-police-while-driving-your-righ....
I took OpenAI's references as correct without checking legislation as I'm on my phone.
It's also an offense in most (all?) of the US. Even then, if someone is pulled over for DUI, at that point the officers are just collecting evidence. If someone has had anything to drink, it's in their best interest to say they want a lawyer and refuse all tests. Then there will be less evidence to argue against in court.
I don't understand how simple DWI testing is like that in your country. 3 seconds of a certified calibrated breathalyzer is sufficient, this walking in a straight line and saying the alphabet backwards sounds like a joke.
As others have said the intent is not to document sobriety but to have a subjective reason for an arrest which looks good in the scorecard.
Look for “if cops say I smell Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
The portable breathalyzer is inadmissable in court in my and most states. The Simon Says game is though (but it can be refused without penalty, hypothetically).
The portable one is used as an indicator.
A positive result will get you arrested and taken to the station, where they have the (non-portable) court admissible calibrated kit.
Why would a certified calibrated breathalizer test be inadmissible in court? How is it any different from catching speeders with a laser gun, or doing a DNA test?
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
That’s what they do. The field one is inadmissible, but justifies arresting and transporting to the admissible one at the station
This is changing. Most states have “permanent” properly calibrated breathalyzer at every dui checkpoint now. And in an increasing number of regular vehicles
He refused a blood test as was his right, and probably the correct decision given that this "top cop" (ie, the one they say had by far the most DUI arrests) was a criminal and shown to break the evidence chain of custody.
> He refused a blood test as was his right
Per the article, he refused the old walk-along-a-straight-line-without-swaying, not a blood test (nor even a breathalyser).
Blood tests are not administered in the field, they would be administered at a nearby medical facility, later in this process.
It’s an interesting aside in the story but if you’re under investigation for a DUI you can just refuse the field sobriety tests and it appears they don’t follow up so you’ll be declared innocent even if you were arrested for felony DUI.
Assuming the best case version of this guy’s story he arrested this guy for the DUI and then forgot to check in his wallet, key, and laptop or whatever. Fine, not unbelievable. But it doesn’t look like he followed up about the DUI thing.
> It’s an interesting aside in the story but if you’re under investigation for a DUI you can just refuse the field sobriety tests and it appears they don’t follow up so you’ll be declared innocent even if you were arrested for felony DUI.
I assume it varies but for most places if you refuse roadside field sobriety tests and they feel you have given indicators of impairment they will take you into custody. Then they'll take you to the station and give you the option of taking a breathalyzer and if you refuse again your license is automatically suspended for a year.
The whole subtext here is that the cop's self-serving misconduct comes at the expense of the system.
The cop got a free laptop so of course the ball got dropped. The point is that they didn't want it dragged through court where that could be easily uncovered. $5k+ lawyer fees minimum if they decide to prosecute the DUI vs $2k at best laptop. The math is supposed easy for the accused.
So then this guy goes and gets the GPS info, confronts the cop, it spirals, whole thing comes crashing down.
And now the state is going after this cop because he's at the very least implicitly making DUI enforcement look bad.
This was incredibly dangerous of the victim. In another version of events, the officer could have shot him and plausibly (unfortunately) claimed the victim had a vendetta against the cop for arresting him.
At first I thought, "Wow, he's much braver than I am."
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
Great, so they steal your stuff and you can't even confront them about it
Yeah it’s a sad state. But it’s also not worth putting oneself in harm’s way. Report it to the state authorities (not all of them are crooked). Or try another jurisdiction, like the local police.
Think of all the things stolen from people who can't afford this technology. The US system really is two-tiered.
It has long been official policy. And not one “freedom” loving legislator will speak out against it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
See this post elsewhere in the thread too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095493
> At the gas station, Bradley accused Holland of driving under the influence. When asked if he would submit to field sobriety tests, Holland calmly refused.
Much as I hope Bradley would be fired and lose his pension for abuse of power, this part is on Holland. In my state, refusing a breathalyzer is by law an automatic penalty because of the "implied consent statute" that you accept when you get behind the wheel: automatic license suspension for 1 year, and you still have to face the officer's testimony. There are consequences to the refusal that have nothing to do with the officer.
Incorrect. Field sobriety test like walking a straight line or doing those bizarre tests can be difficult for those who haven't been drinking. Now if he refused a breathalyzer or blood sample and he was sober, that's the wrong move. If he refused a breathalyzer or blood sample AND he was NOT sober, that's the correct move. It's far cheaper to take the one year license suspension than get a DUI and deal with all of those issues. This has nothing to do with the officer, but protecting yourself.
You're confusing a breathalyzer with a field sobriety test, the latter of which no one should agree to. It's the sort of test that asks you to walk straight, hop on one leg, allow an officer to use a flashlight on your eyes, or recite the alphabet backwards. They're designed to allow the officer to use their discretion to determine if you've failed rather than use an objective reading (like a breathalyzer).
Ask yourself why an officer would want to use a set of tests that require being subjective instead of deferring to a breathalyzer.
This is not true in Illinois. Field sobriety tests before you are arrested are entirely voluntary and you can refuse them without triggering implied consent penalties.
Stop spreading misinformation.
>No. Field sobriety tests are not mandatory in Illinois. A driver may legally refuse to participate in field sobriety testing without violating Illinois law. These roadside tests are voluntary and are not part of the State’s implied consent laws.
https://dohmanlaw.com/refusing-a-field-sobriety-test-in-illi...
field sobriety test != breathalizer
If he was the 'Top Cop' how bad are the others?
It would seem that he was the top cop because he was this bad.
> State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year.
> That's more than the salary of the Illinois State Police director.
From the article it says the officer has to appear in court for each DUI arrest...which leads to overtime pay. The officer made 319 DUI arrests of which 174 cases were dismissed. The more arrests, the more overtime pay so there's an incentive to arrest people even if they are not drunk. This is how he's making $250K.
Why is someone making that much money stealing a MacBook?
That’s how they have that much money.
It’s like saying why does the drug cartel leader keep selling drugs, he’s swimming in cash (literally).
Probably started stealing shit before he was making $250k/year, and then just continued to do so because it works.
That's the fun thing about greed, it is rarely satisfied :/
Here's a radical idea... you could... read the article :-O
I did. Where in the article does it answer my question?
Are you implying there's a link between having money and being immune to corruption? In the US, just look at the federal government or titans of industry, like Elon Musk.
Psychopathology.
Oh look, the pro "law and order (and theft and assault and murder)" folks are flagging my comments.
Gotta love voting/flagging rings.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095123
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095098
Just HOW many stories of civil asset forfeiture, blatant theft, assault, murder, and everything do we need to see that policing in this country is a criminal gang backed by government?
And even for simpler crap that everyone gets hit by, is speed limit laws. You can be pulled over for even 1mph over 'limit'. And more gross, is that its not a safety issue, but a revenue enhancement issue. Its a way they can steal legally, AND fish for more things to screw you over with.
And naturally, any thing these pigs do "in the operation of policing" makes them immune, for <handwaving magical> reasons.
Should have stuck to shaking down illegal immigrants and drug dealers.
acab
ACAB
And of course the cop has sovereign immunity, meaning he can do whatever he wants without any repercussions. They should at least do this properly like they do in Africa and extend the sovereign immunity to allowing the cop to accept payments to forget whatever trumped-up charges they've come up with.
(Although it's sometimes blatant graft and corruption, it's not always the case, a lot of police in African countries are very poorly paid and this is a way of supplementing their income. They typically target people who can afford to make a small donation and it's generally a friction-free experience if you play by the rules).
To be a bit pedantic, its not sovereign immunity, its qualified immunity. It is defeatable, and there are examples of it, but its rather rare. It is an abused and obviously problematic legal doctrine
According to the Wikipedia article on sovereign immunity, there are two types: "absolute immunity" and "qualified immunity". If that's right (I have no idea) then they're not incompatible.
When it's ICE it's both :-(
ICE itself as a federal agency has sovereign immunity but the individuals who make up ICE only have qualified immunity for constitutional rights violations. However they do have sovereign immunity for general torts (or more technically for general torts the USG is substituted as the defendant and the USG has sovereign immunity.
Quoting the article:
>In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
It’s just a sloppy article.
The concept is right but sovereign immunity is about states and between states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
I know it's less likely, but I think the party who made the error may have actually been the attorneys representing the state and Bradley
Huh, interesting. I am very dubious of that quote. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure if they actually filed that in court they would be laughed out of the room. My guess is either the reporters got it wrong or its some AI hallucination. Unfortunately they don't source this claim.
So police in african countries are poorly paid so it's OK for them to just...rob people? Wouldn't it make more sense to just pay the police better? Is it OK for a waitress or a teacher or a taxi driver to steal your wallet? They're also underpaid...
That bit of justification seems absolutely bananas to me.
How are you going to tax them for salaries? There's not much formal economy in most of central africa.
If there's no way to charge the public for policing besides corruption, that's not a police force, it's a gang.
Still a gang, yes, though one with aims more accessible to the common man who can bribe them. Instead of purely the ruling class.
> and it's generally a friction-free experience if you play by the rules
That is horrible anti-american behavior. It's the definition of corruption; and goes against the fundamental principles of the founding of the US.
And, to put it quite bluntly: Cops walking around demanding tips from affluent Americans will quickly get shut down because no one will stand for it.
I've been saying this for awhile as well. Corruption is horse-shoe, once it is pervasive enough, it becomes affordable to the common man and not just the rich. Counter-intuitively, even more egalitarian, perhaps.
Ive had police in Mexico just walk up and steal $100+ from my wallet. It was refreshing as in the US they instead police have just dragged me to jail on fabricated allegations. When Mexican police can get all they want by just stealing my money and not my time, it feels like living in a more free country, liberating comparatively.
search for eminent domain in the us, it can be much worse than just $100
I was billed about $1000 when US police took me to ER in cuffs and claimed (made up) I was secretly smuggling drugs up my ass.
------- re: below (throttled) ----------
They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.
I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.
All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.
As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.
Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.
Did they have a warrant?
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.