Our Department Is Being Defunded

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
484

You’re misunderstanding the concept. In the USA today you can still file a lawsuit against the police department to hold the department accountable for the officer’s actions. Or the city, or the county, or whatever other entity your lawyer can find standing to file suit against.

Just not the cop acting on the public’s behalf, however imperfectly he or she acted.

Since nobody’s mentioned this yet, can anyone explain how limiting, let alone ending, QI will help with police recruitment, retention and morale?

485

I get the feeling suing a department for any reason equates to an uphill battle as they’ll be able to afford amazing legal representation whereas the cop responsible for wrongdoing can’t

In Australia I think it’d encourage fewer guys on power trips to apply. I don’t dislike cops here, but I think at the moment they get away with a hell of a lot more than they do in the US. Sure, they can’t shoot people without serious investigations pending afterwards, but it’s far too common to be harassed by cops when otherwise going about your day and minding your business. Particularly when we are constantly in lockdown.

There is SO much shit that goes on here with law enforcement that’d never fly in America… Or most of Europe

486

They hired him.

487

I’m not sure what is informing your feelings. In the USA many many millions are paid out all of the time by many different entities for all kinds of government agent misconduct. Here’s a notable payout involving citizens who killed a federal agent in self-defense and were acquitted on all charges.

488

Look up how much nyc pays out every year. They don’t even go to trial.

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489

Look up any city. It’s not just 1990’s Get Off My Land types in Montana suing the government, either.

Generally speaking, I’m good with the status quo when it comes to the process by which people get “justice” for individual officer misconduct. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE it involves lots of payouts for bullshit. This is exactly why QI is important for the men and women who we ask to rush into the worst situations that materialize in our communities.

490

How much does fighting the lawsuit cost vs. how much is the plaintiff willing to settle for. Same calculus for which cases/crimes to prosecute, and which to plea bargain.

Anyone know if insurance picks up any part of the tab for lawsuits against city’s/PDs?

491

How difficult it is to win these cases in Aus.

It’s not feelings, law enforcement = basically an impenetrable fortress here. They can do almost whatever they want to whoever they want so long as they don’t shoot anyone and state/federal governments and our courts will dismiss any wrongdoing.

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492

It’s controversial right now because it has become a talking point on both sides with limited understanding of what QI actually is. This part that you highlighted: but a prior case with functionally identical facts seems to be a problem that could be sorted out.

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493

I agree with you here. I mentioned Tim Scott’s efforts upthread to shift QI in this direction but unfortunately the outlook for his version doesn’t look good at the moment.

494

What do you mean by shift QI in that direction? People can and do sue departments all the time, with a good chance of payout. That’s happening today under the extant QI framework.

Cops can still face criminal charges as well. We’re even getting into the anti-cop mob appeasement game with a recent notable Chau-trial. That’s just a start, apparently.

In simple terms, I’ve yet to hear any Democrat clearly explain how QI should be limited. Many Democrats including Joe Biden have explicitly called for the ending of QI.

I’ll toss the question out once again.

How will limiting or ending QI be helpful?

It seems just as easy to predict the negative effect it will have on police morale, recruitment and retention as it has been to predict the bad outcomes from the larger defund movement.

What do I know though?

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495

Shift may have been a poor word to use. As you noted, people can and do sue departments. I am in favor of limiting QI in regard to departments in those cases where it’s reasonable to assume that their personnel should have known that they were violating a person’s civil rights.

I am not in favor of holding individual agents accountable in civil cases because they can already be held accountable criminally, and because holding departments accountable in civil court makes more sense.

The Democrats weren’t the only ones seeking police reform. From the Justice Act:

Among the measure’s key provisions:

  • The legislation will increase federal reporting requirements for use of force, no-knock warrants. It also increases penalties for false police reports.
  • It seeks to encourage chokehold bans through this added transparency and by withholding funding for units without bans on chokeholds except when deadly force is authorized.
  • The effort also looks to up use of police body cameras with grant programs, and in turn penalties for failing to use the cameras.
  • It creates a database of police disciplinary records for law enforcement departments to use in their hiring practices.
  • It makes lynching a federal crime
  • It directs the Justice Department to develop and provide training on de-escalation tactics and implement duty-to-intervene policies.
496

There’s plenty of room for reasonable disagreement when it comes to any policy or rhetoric presently being advanced by Republicans. There is also wide agreement that reasonable reforms should always be on the table. Nobody is anti better policing, but only one party is anti cop in policy, rhetoric, practice and outcome.

I generally agree with that list, or at least have no major objection. As a grappler I believe chokes should be trained, not banned. That’s in the Dem bill too, but not a hill I’m ready to die on or even argue very extensively.

That said, optics matter and much of the public will be unaware that a bunch of people getting choked out by cops trained in grappling would be among the best outcomes we could hope for. Maybe in 20 years when Jiu Jitsu is more ubiquitous among the population.

Getting slept is, after all, a lot less dangerous than getting beaten into submission.

497

Here’s the problem - that’s not what I argued.

I said that QI was an appropriate concept but I didn’t feel it was being implemented the best. You said that was a reasonable opinion (thanks! I think so too). Then you said Democrats skipped the part of the discussion where we debated implementation and/or reform reasonably. To reinforce that you showed Biden talking about Floyd.

I said there’s a difference between prominent Democrats doing something and all Democrats doing something. And I specifically brought up the idea that municipal and state politics are often different within the same party from national politics. We know this is true of the GOP, and I see no reason it would not be true of the Democrats as well.

My point was that there are very probably states where this has been discussed in a reasonable manner. They may not be named Minnesota, but one has to assume that state level politics are different in many respects.

In response you said “name me one prominent Democrat who is calling bullshit on the white supremacist police force.” I left out the part of dramatic reform because well… Reforming qualified immunity is police reform. And I made no mention of white supremacy.

Not the same thing being argued, I don’t think.

And you go on to talk about CRT and a bunch of other issues, but those also weren’t ones I was addressing either, even if I agree with you about CRT and some of the absolute BS happening.

Once again there’s a difference between the national representatives and those in states and cities nationwide. It’s very common for state GOP representatives and indeed party caucuses to take stances on issues that may not directly align with McConnell’s national talking heads. That’s because they’re in the states that they are dealing with, and they are local issues. Thus it makes sense to draw a line between national party and local party.

I hear all the same BS you’ve heard. But if you want to argue that people shouldn’t attribute some asinine policy choice to the GOP as a whole when state and local governance is what matters and is more easily influenced by voters… which I’ve seen you make before, and which I agree with… Then you have to be willing to extend that same concept to the Democrats.

Edited - for some basic speech-to-text typos

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498

You may be quite right on that. I’m not operating at my full capacity right now lol.

Yes I do know this as well. But the tricky part is that “violates clearly established law” part. This was a change from the previous legal test applied to these cases. In reality the courts have most often dictated that a plaintiff show a pre-existing case with substantially similar facts to the ones being argued in the present case. Basically if no precedent or case is on the books, your shit out of luck no matter how reasonable your case is. I do not think this is okay. I do not think that is the appropriate barrier to hold up in an affirmative defense case around QI.

Here is an article I think describes some of the problems… What Is Qualified Immunity, and What Does It Have to Do With Police Reform? | Lawfare

In practice departments are not held liable for many things that I think should be able to be argued. Now note I am thinking about dcb’s mention of Tim Scott’s proposed solution.

499

This is one of the things I am specifically referring to in my objection to how QI is implemented currently.

In this list the one I am opposed to is the ban on chokeholds. The other listed points you have are reasonable IMO.

500

Is it for the same reason that 2MS mentioned? That’s out of my wheelhouse so I’ve no strong opinion on it one way or another. What I would say about it is that from a law enforcement perspective it should just be renamed. At this point in time I don’t think anything called a choke will go over well even if someone explained that it could be applied safely. Call it a butterfly hold.

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501

@Aragorn Thank you for the thoughtful post. You brought some needed perspective to consider against the points I tend to hammer at. I’m not necessarily talking about your friends, neighbors, family members, local ANTIFA chapter, which may be people I play Magic cards with, or even local or regional representatives who may be Democrats and actually awesome people.

I am, to be clear, attributing these actions to national party leadership, up to an including every Democrat in the US House of Representatives, probably all but several Democrat Senators, the President, Vice President, and my sister-in-law. Even Tulsi Gabbard, who LOST MY CRUSH ON HER with this vote.

The issue of LEO policy, as well as an examination of someone’s record on it, should absolutely be at the fore-front of what people consider when they decide who gets their vote. I encourage everyone to remain on guard for any politicians who might be advocating for stupid and sociopathic policies, including but certainly not limited to advancing anti-cop rhetoric and policy. Anyone seeking out a career in politics should, in fact, be viewed quite skeptically by default, in my opinion.

Speaking of which…

Guilty. These are unrelated to the thread topic, but public policy does not unfold like a thread topic. The anti-cop campaign is not taking place in a vacuum, but as part of a tapestry of awful policy being advanced and implemented by Democrats.

In my opinion, our present territory is markedly different than discussing imagined harm that imagined Trump actions might have produced if the imagined scenarios might have unfolded. He came, he went, and some guy with horns made a big scene during a riot at the Capitol, where a woman was unfortunately shot and many other sustained injuries. Two hours later, government business was finished.

And Joe Biden wants you to believe that this is the Greatest Crisis for the USA Since the Civil War. His words, not mine.

Thread topics should continue to unfold like thread topics, so I’ll elaborate on those points elsewhere.

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502

My pleasure. I find that perspective is usually hard to come by, but also that a lot of misunderstandings end up happening just by not being sure what is being conveyed (I’ll return to this in a sec).

Sure, and I totally agree however bonkers I think their politics.

See, to me this is perhaps a hard sell but it is something that can definitely be discussed and I feel there’s some accuracy. When I read your previous posts this distinction wasn’t something I picked up on, and was the biggest reason I was posting the way I did. When you attributed something to the “Democrat party” in such an overarching manner it wasn’t clear to me that you were specifically referring to national party leadership.

Could be perhaps that I’m just around people who do the same thing with Republicans and so overly tuned to it, but this is what I was referring to with my first comment.

In any case I appreciate the clarification and I think it makes more sense as a criticism of national party leadership instead of “Them” with a capital T.

I think so too, but sadly it seems not to be

Absolutely

Sure, no doubt about that. I agree that context is important, I was just at a loss as to how those particular points connected with my particular post lol.

No question, but I think of it more like a collage than a cohesive tapestry lol. But now we’re splitting hairs.

503

But, Biden has come out and said on numerous occasions that he is not only against defunding the police but he wants them to get more money. AOC is not part of leadership.

The white supremacy rhetoric is stupid because it means different things coming from different people and means different things to those who hear it. If Biden mentions it, he isn’t talking about dudes in white hoods or skinheads running things but a power structure in this country that favors whites. However, many people do picture David Duke or Hitler when they hear that term and therefore can’t take it seriously. But this is what we get in a nation where nuanced discussion cannot take place. A better question than is there white supremacy in policing would be is there racial bias in policing.

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