It seems suspicious to me that they do not include the "offending" Facebook post. It seems like this is it, and it seems completely in the realm of journalism,
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I was immediately reminded of this old piece on water quality issues and local politics...
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
I'm not a lawyer, but I think qualified immunity should not apply to constitutional violations. Giving an opt-out for those violations is antithetical to the very substance of our (US) constitution.
It's weird to me that courts don't at-least attempt to review if the conduct was in good faith and plausibly reasonable given the facts know at the time.
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad.
But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
I think you would find that they would make far fewer illegal mistakes if they actually had to deal with the consequences of those mistakes.
Qualified Immunity didn't exist as a concept until the 1960s, and it was put in place to shield policemen enacting racist policies and corrupt cronies of Nixon.
"Doctors and nurses will make mistakes in performing medicine. Making those doctors and nurses personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive."
> Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
Or maybe police training should be longer than a coding bootcamp... in some countries, police work is an undergraduate major and the programs are quite competitive. Similarly, there are countries without qualified immunity as a policy, and it doesn't seem to fundamentally undermine policework there.
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
Your own usage of "honest mistake" is overwhelmingly broad, so it's not at all clear what alternative definition of qualified immunity you are advocating.
yup, i think a majority of people would agree with you, so why hasn't it happened? I think the answer is that elected representatives are more beholden to public sector unions than their constituents.
yeah texas is definitely not pro-union - except that the only public sector unions that are allowed are for police and firemen... with Texas police unions contributing the the 3rd highest amount to politicians (behind CA and NY) - so its a real thing.
Yikes, they’ll have to arrest most of the current federal administration if they ever set foot in Texas if that post meets the criteria for that particular law. That’s going to cause problems.
This is dumb af. There should be an extremely small subset of things you can say online that get you arrested. This is definitely not one of them. I hope she she’s and it’s sets a precedent for cases after. I’d hate to see a ruling like the UK. While is vervently disagree with some of the awful things they post they shouldn’t be arrested for it.
Water is handled at the city level, not the federal level. If you have incompetent local leadership, this can happen. Incompetent local leaders can (and have!) bankrupted their cities.
We have more than enough resources, but a lot of people don't want to pay taxes to clean it or restrain corporations from polluting our water supply inn the first place. I'm guessing that plenty of people in this woman's own town were cheering Trump's slashing of the EPA's budget and deregulating clean air and water. Just this week the administration announced plans to kill off or delay limits in the amount of PFAS in the drinking water. They argue it's too expensive to limit or filter the poison but then give no-bid contracts out to their unqualified friends for tens of millions of dollars and spend a trillion bombing other countries for no reason so it's pretty clear where the priorities are and it isn't with us.
>How can X in the richest nation in the history of the planet be...
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/about
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
complete and utter incompetence by local elected officials. If one of the richest towns in America (average home price of >$2m) can do it - just imagine how bad it can be in "average" towns...
The country is the richest, but the money is not distributed equally. One factor to keep in mind is that the state would rather give the richest man in the world tax breaks rather than make sure everyone has safe drinking water.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
"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.
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)
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
This is newsworthy because it's a clear and flagrant violation of her rights.
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.
Not surprised. Tarrant County told the US Marshals my styrofoam cooler with vomit in it was a “bomb threat” and charged me with use of a DEADLY WEAPON. Honestly. If my public defender hadn’t colluded with the Prosecution it wouldn’t be on my record today.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
This type of treatment of citizenry by the State of Texas, and its various (and especially red) localities should be all one needs to see of where conservatives (and Christian Naitonalism) will take our country in the future -- should they get their way. Republicans hope to enable just such a future by scaring Americans with made-up visions of transsexuals 'grooming' their children, yet they cleverly hide what awaits behind the curtain. The is the same curtain that hides why Israel is supposed to be so very, very important to the U.S. but not so much that we make them state #51. This is the magical (read: Biblical) rationale that the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
It seems suspicious to me that they do not include the "offending" Facebook post. It seems like this is it, and it seems completely in the realm of journalism,
https://scontent.fcps4-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/6654022...
It's in the article. The pictured post by "Southern Belle Watch".
This link doesn't seem to load
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's quite a claim. You need to cite your sources for this one, if you want to be taken seriously.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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
I was immediately reminded of this old piece on water quality issues and local politics...
> An Enemy of the People [..] is an 1882 play [..] that [..] centers on Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who discovers a serious contamination issue in his town's new spas, endangering public health. His courageous decision to expose this truth brings severe backlash from local leaders [..]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Enemy_of_the_People
I'm not a lawyer, but I think qualified immunity should not apply to constitutional violations. Giving an opt-out for those violations is antithetical to the very substance of our (US) constitution.
It's weird to me that courts don't at-least attempt to review if the conduct was in good faith and plausibly reasonable given the facts know at the time.
The idea that officials aren't personally liable for mistakes made in good faith isn't bad. But somehow the US tends to produce a lot of cases where good faith requires a lot of faith :)
Qualified Immunity should not apply ever. Period. No one should be above the law for any reason ever.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Qualified immunity, as a concept, makes perfect sense. Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
The issue isn't qualified immunity itself, but rather the maximalist interpretation that seems pervasive in the US justice system, and the overwhelmingly broad definition of "honest mistake" that seemingly applies to the police, and the police alone.
I think you would find that they would make far fewer illegal mistakes if they actually had to deal with the consequences of those mistakes.
Qualified Immunity didn't exist as a concept until the 1960s, and it was put in place to shield policemen enacting racist policies and corrupt cronies of Nixon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
I think we would see far fewer actions at all for fear of being sued.
They could just buy insurance. You know, like doctors, lawyers, and a wide variety of other professionals that deal with liabilities in their field.
Regardless, the police get sued all the time anyways. It's just that the burden currently falls on the taxpayers.
"Doctors and nurses will make mistakes in performing medicine. Making those doctors and nurses personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive."
How many other jobs can we apply this to?
> Police officers are not jurists, and they will make mistakes in enforcing the law. Making those officers personally liable for honest mistakes is, IMO, excessive.
Or maybe police training should be longer than a coding bootcamp... in some countries, police work is an undergraduate major and the programs are quite competitive. Similarly, there are countries without qualified immunity as a policy, and it doesn't seem to fundamentally undermine policework there.
yup, i think a majority of people would agree with you, so why hasn't it happened? I think the answer is that elected representatives are more beholden to public sector unions than their constituents.
Texas: Famously pro-union
yeah texas is definitely not pro-union - except that the only public sector unions that are allowed are for police and firemen... with Texas police unions contributing the the 3rd highest amount to politicians (behind CA and NY) - so its a real thing.
https://www.pelrb.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Public-S...
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/06/police-unions-spend...
The charges have already been dismissed: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/charges-dismissed-against-...
Good for the grand jury for not indicting this ham sandwich.
That town now has not just a bad water problem, but a large free speech lawsuit problem.
Maybe they could dock the Chief's retirement account?
Should be a “cut and dry” decision just like how he described the arrest
The chief of police stands proudly by his decision. This will happen again.
Yikes, they’ll have to arrest most of the current federal administration if they ever set foot in Texas if that post meets the criteria for that particular law. That’s going to cause problems.
Oh don't worry, the enforcement is extremely selective.
Never heard of Ken Paxton, I suppose?
who?
The city issued a boil water advisory about about 13 or 14 days after her arrest.
they said to make sure you boil it slowly though, so the local frogs don’t jump out! /s
Somewhat similar premise to the recent settlement that came out for the man arrested for posting a meme in Tennessee https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-tennessee-man-was-ja...
upon inspection of images pertaining to water at the point of usage, i declare said water to be Alaskan well water.
use a 5micron, and 1micron particulate filter in series, and it looks like it came from a bottle.
you would be well advised to test for heavy metals, esp. arsenic
most people here dont use softening or reverse osmosis
Apparently people here will also censor speech that doesn't align with their narratives, but will complain loudly when speech that does is censored.
This week, there was two different settlement close to $800K related to someone posting and getting arrested about what charlie kirk said.
This woman shouldn't settle for anything less.
Do you have information on this? I’m curious to see.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...
This is dumb af. There should be an extremely small subset of things you can say online that get you arrested. This is definitely not one of them. I hope she she’s and it’s sets a precedent for cases after. I’d hate to see a ruling like the UK. While is vervently disagree with some of the awful things they post they shouldn’t be arrested for it.
How does a town in the richest nation in the history of the planet not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Presumably because they are spending their money prosecuting people complaining about bad water.
Money does not grow on trees, you know!
Water is handled at the city level, not the federal level. If you have incompetent local leadership, this can happen. Incompetent local leaders can (and have!) bankrupted their cities.
Texas also is all about no/low taxes.
You must not own property in Texas
Meanwhile in Flint Michigan…
We have more than enough resources, but a lot of people don't want to pay taxes to clean it or restrain corporations from polluting our water supply inn the first place. I'm guessing that plenty of people in this woman's own town were cheering Trump's slashing of the EPA's budget and deregulating clean air and water. Just this week the administration announced plans to kill off or delay limits in the amount of PFAS in the drinking water. They argue it's too expensive to limit or filter the poison but then give no-bid contracts out to their unqualified friends for tens of millions of dollars and spend a trillion bombing other countries for no reason so it's pretty clear where the priorities are and it isn't with us.
You are mixing local and federal politics. This is a town issue and would likely have happened regardless of who occupied the Oval Office
>How can X in the richest nation in the history of the planet be...
I've honestly grown absolutely sick of this type of comment as I get older. If you're not from the states, it's maybe understandable, but throughout my life most of the folks with me on the left that make these statements are completely ignorant of how their own government works and just assume "shit should be taken care of" without actually having to put any work in. It drives me crazy.
The vast majority of our electorate doesn't pay attention to politics, and then votes for feel-good measures (often very expensive), and almost universally avoid actual long-term net positive investments, like urban density and avoiding bond issuances wherever they are impractical.
As you see small towns welcoming -- even courting -- data centers while everyone in the town hates and protests them... yea, it's almost certainly because the town is broke, and the only folks who realize it are the city officials.
>How does a town ... not have the resources to get clear drinking water flowing through their taps?
Many, many, many, towns in America functionally insolvent! The amount of cost it takes to maintain our road/sewer/water/refuse/emergency/energy systems is very often more than the tax revenue that the town can bring in. This is literally the entire point of the Strong Towns organization: https://www.strongtowns.org/about
Rebuilding a water system is one of the most significant municipal finance events that a city will have to deal with, and more and more cities across the nation are requiring federal bailouts; e.g., the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi,_water_cr....
It's just so frustrating as someone who cares about municipal finances that American cities' sustainability that most people think that it's just supposed to work itself out when cities are just lighting money on fires... often to the cheers of the electorate who voted for it.
complete and utter incompetence by local elected officials. If one of the richest towns in America (average home price of >$2m) can do it - just imagine how bad it can be in "average" towns...
https://observer.com/2010/07/the-collapse-of-east-hampton-ho...
The country is the richest, but the money is not distributed equally. One factor to keep in mind is that the state would rather give the richest man in the world tax breaks rather than make sure everyone has safe drinking water.
Cuz all that wealth belongs to about 14 people and everyone else gets police harassment and poison water
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.
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
> It's absolutely not the slightest bit crazy
Imo, speaking like this normalizes their behavior - it was crazy then and it's crazy now.
GP isn’t entirely wrong, our governing apparatus has made this something to be expected.
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.
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.
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.
Lmao no this is just American police chiefs doing what they love to do, guarantee this whole thing starts and ends in that PD
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/
[redacted] all police but don't pretend it isn't crazy. Not every country is like this.
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.
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...
"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.
These lawsuits need to be charged against the police pension funds, not the city coffers
I agree with you
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)
I agree with you, but most people aren’t ready to engage with basic anarchist arguments
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.
We need to not have powerful people
What does this even mean?
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.
Make currently powerful people less powerful and currently powerless people more powerful.
C'mon, HN users forgot how to think? Forgot to ask Claude?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Just more actions from free speech loving Republicans. Exactly like that guy in Tennessee who got $800k.
Nazi Germany wasn't chaos, just a lot of people following "cut-and-dry" protocol.
Imagine the town of flynt getting arrested for having your government fail you.
Land of the free
This is newsworthy because it's a clear and flagrant violation of her rights.
Source: I was threatened with a lawsuit by my own town for criticizing them online, but the ACLU helped me counter sue and win a settlement for violating my first amendment rights.
Was the comment you are replying to edited?
I assume you mean "Land of the fee"
Yea compared to Europe where you get arrested for memes
'Equal Justice Under Law'
World Cup Tourists about to get some “civic lessons” if they buy that too much, mmmhmmm.
Not surprised. Tarrant County told the US Marshals my styrofoam cooler with vomit in it was a “bomb threat” and charged me with use of a DEADLY WEAPON. Honestly. If my public defender hadn’t colluded with the Prosecution it wouldn’t be on my record today.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the US. I’m a nonviolent cripple. Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged. Totally depends what team you’re on right now.
"Meanwhile a pardoned Jan 6 rioter just told a City Counsel “they should be strung up” and isn’t even being charged."
A great candidate to get some money from the lawfare fund.
This is a textbook free speech issue, versus not being able to post your conspiracy theory on some web site which has nothing to do with free speech.
Who decideds what is free speech and what is a conspiracy theory?
For a long time saying tabaco creates lung cancers was basically a conspiracy theory and saying it is healthy was free speech.
This type of treatment of citizenry by the State of Texas, and its various (and especially red) localities should be all one needs to see of where conservatives (and Christian Naitonalism) will take our country in the future -- should they get their way. Republicans hope to enable just such a future by scaring Americans with made-up visions of transsexuals 'grooming' their children, yet they cleverly hide what awaits behind the curtain. The is the same curtain that hides why Israel is supposed to be so very, very important to the U.S. but not so much that we make them state #51. This is the magical (read: Biblical) rationale that the U.S. makes excuses for Israel's attack on its own USS Liberty in 1967.
Saying nothing of the future of abortion & contraception, U.S. conservatives base their worldview on sexuality & reproduction and seek to burden it with fixtures that we have already spent hundreds of year to free ourselves from. At the same time, they take their eye off the ball of keeping our country competitive in the world. How embarrassing it is now to have the Chinese president suggest that the U.S. is in decline and that it shouldn't get caught in a Thucydides Trap.
Yet, that is where Trump has put us indeed.