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Discussion (90 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
A: It’s actual justice, and
B: Otherwise it just becomes another way for insurance companies to make money - in this case by charging swingeing fees that will come out of public coffers.
I believe doctors pay out of pocket (At least the ones that setup their own private practice do), so it would incentivize them to keep costs low so they can pocket the money.
For reference for anyone who hadn’t heard of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_County_Police_Departmen...
Could also just give the death penalty for any attempted or successful swats (though finding the perpetrator might be difficult). And maybe improve legislation and technology related to it.
VPN service providers might be thrilled if using a VPN for gaming became mandated by law. Game developers less so if P2P becomes outlawed.
Per the article, one of the officers was evidently particularly stupid—he failed police academy once and was disciplined for entering a women's restroom because of crimes he imagined could be happening in there. No one wanted to say "you're too stupid to be making high-stakes judgment calls", so they let him keep trying until he was running into an alleged emergency "with no plan," where he shot an innocent person eight times...and then handcuffed him...
I think actuaries have a way of employing statistical realities that would, in a legislative context, precipitate too much defensiveness and bickering to ever be the basis of a rule. Like I think it was quite a while before neuroscience could fully explain why insurance companies wouldn't cover rental car drivers under 25, instead of 16 or 18.
An insurance company would give departments a reason to say "anyone who has ever failed police academy gets pepper spray and that's it." Departments can decide how to deploy that person.
(Ideally that person wouldn't be a cop at all, but departments will probably always be pushing to hire. This way the argument is between departments and the comparatively highly-informed insurance market, and not voters)
If police are doing this without a warrant or hard evidence, then that's part of the problem.
The other thing that would help immensely would be to revisit qualified immunity. Conceptually its perfectly understandable -- failures can happen that are not their fault and they should not be on the hook for that.
But in these times, it's just full immunity. They can do whatever they want and only in the most heinous crimes where they didn't have the opportunity to destroy the evidence they only then do time.
One last thing should be noted: the War on Drugs is designed to create crime and is weaponized against the citizenry. "Dangerous" drugs aren't illegal to protect you, they're there so they can fuck you over.
Come to think of it, this is America dammit. Cops should be licensed, bonded and insured, and if their training or records aren't up to standards they don't get covered. We have higher standards for plumbers and pest control than we do police.
If it's one cops fault, charge the cop. If it's multiple cops fault, charge them AND the department. This makes it fiscally prudent to make sure cops in the department are well trained and educated on enforcing the laws and respecting rights.
If they don't want to foot the bills for police misconduct, maybe the taxpayers should elect someone who actually holds the police accountable and doesn't just blindly approve any policing budget and look the other way when the police wrongfully harms someone?
Right. The real justice comes from treating this incident like you would if there were no municipal coffers at play, and simply punish criminals for criminal action.
Sure, the person making the bogus call to police should suffer some consequences vis a vis jail time.
However, swatting only works because police regularly take a shoot first and ask questions later stance. They go from an anonymous tip about an ongoing crime at an address to shooting up said address in short order without any effort to verify a crime is actually taking place, perhaps in no small part due to the fact that qualified immunity ensures they'll never see any consequences for any property damage and/or casualties which occur as a result.
I'd liken it to initiating a gang hit, except at least in the gang hit, the gang members responsible for carrying it out have a chance at facing some accountability.
Cops need to face the possibility of (at minimum) termination and even jail time for recklessly endangering civilians, and cop training needs to be fundamentally changed to eliminate this "us vs. them" mentality seen in so many of those in blue.
The public would probably be served by the shooters not carrying a badge anymore, but it doesn't take jail to accomplish that.
The man is 24 years old.
These are the kind of people who shoud be strongly filtered out from jobs that require carrying firearms. They could enlist as infantry in whatever invasion USA is doing that year, but they're actually scared of guns if they can fire back.
The irony is that soldiers in the US military are usually better trained than the cops, and aren't going to magdump when an acorn hits their patrol car.
Unless you live in a community where the median income is $200K+, the primary funding for cops is through charging people with the easy crimes that they can't afford lawyers to fight, often drugs because they have massively inflated fines and fees. And the next best source of funding they have is special grants and programs which are often doles out based on how "dangerous" an area is, and killing "criminals" makes an area seem more dangerous and deserving of special funds and recognition and fancy armaments and killing toys.
cuts to 6 cops beating a guy with clubs
Special note: that includes cases where protective orders like restraining orders are concerned. The Castle Rock v. Gonzales ruling specifically states that police have no obligation to enforce them.
So while Pima PD should be held responsible, and those cops should face criminal charges, it's logically non-nonsensical for this to make you terrified of police (or the other 5-10 similar stories annually). I mean cars are genocidal military dictators by comparison.
The downstream effect of this is people doing incredibly rash and stupid things because they think the cops are just going to start blasting them during a traffic stop ("I need to shot them/run away because I am dead anyway").
1. Come up with a beautiful story about how they need to have guns to defend themselves.
2. Come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who improperly uses violence in such encounters.
Encountering a cop is one of the most dangerous 'mundane' things that can happen to you. ~One in 50,000 encounters ends with someone dead.
Going on 50,000 drives is unlikely to send you to the morgue.
It's something like 1000 people killed by police annually, but it's childishly dishonest (or ignorant) to ignore that ~995 of those are people actively trying to kill the police.
I wouldn't call shooting out your back window because you're getting pulled over "mundane".
Also, if each drive is ~20 miles, you have around a 1% chance of dying. That's 500x greater than even the dishonest 1 in 50k stat. Just further driving my point home for me, thanks.
To anyone unfamiliar with the concept of warrior cops, it may behoove you to start with the following Harvard Law Review article: https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-128/law-enforcements-...
The whole point of swatting is to make up a dangerous scenario where the threat to life is so high and immediate that the police are allowed to forgo many procedures and processes that would prevent accidental injury or death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance
Feel mad if this is a pattern and the citizens don’t do anything about it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-dev-swatte...
Just fix the real problem which is the disproportionate police response.
Take the call seriously, but be prepared it's not what you think it is, especially if you see a shocked gamer sitting at their computer monitor with no apparent hostages
Additionally consider what would have happened if this had been an active shooting and they simply disregarded the phone call.
A gun that he legally owned and had every right to have on his person as an unknown individual was breaking into his home. If police don't identify themselves they should expect an armed population to meet them with guns in hand. It's their responsibility to assess the situation, understand who the occupants are, and respond appropriately. Smashing a bedroom window with a shovel and then "indiscriminately" firing into it is not a reasonable response.
If you’re going to mention the gun fact, why not provide the whole context?
You must be new to The Internet. :-)
> I fail to see what additional that context that adds
You may not have intended it sound like that, but your comment felt like classic victim blaming, which is all too common in the cases of police incompetence.
> Melendez did grab a "legal, registered" gun once he heard the glass shatter, Sethi said, but he ducked behind a partially closed door.
> He believed someone connected to the hackers was breaking in, Sethi added.
And please, stop blaming the victim.