News

Cops gonna cops

Exactly. Is this the ‘good guy with a gun’ that Conservatives want in our schools? I wish I could say that this story is unbelievable, despite the shock I felt reading it.

You said it: ACAB. Fuck them all.

This is sad.

I think this is more. This is justified anger over a crying injustice.

Qualified immunity.

A grand jury decided that there wasn't enough evidence to convict.

My suggestion (though I’m open to any idea that works) is fines/penalties/settlements for shit like this comes out of their retirement funds.

My favorite reform approach is for law enforcement officers being required to carry professional insurance. Police are often referring to themselves as professionals. Let them carry insurance like doctors do for malpractice or professional engineers do.

To ease the transition, I propose that the department cover the base insurance premiums for each officer. If an officer has a judgment against them that raises their insurance premiums, the officer is now responsible for paying for the overage out of their own pocket. If the officer continues to exhibit behavior that results in judgments against them, their premiums will continue to rise eventually to the point where the bad officer cannot afford the overage premiums and will then have to stop working as police because they are not carrying the required insurance. So bad officers will self select out.

There's also another angle where the base premiums will likely be calculated based upon the entire department. If there is a badly behaved officer, this will raise the base rate of all officers too, so the department has a financial incentive to get rid of bad officers because they are too expensive.

Another tact is to insure the police. There was an NPR journal on that a long time ago and it worked wonders where a police department was basically the gang that couldn't shoot straight, running up all kinds of crazy legal fees for the city. Insurance compliance drove 100% of the needed departmental changes in a way that kept behavior, budget, and the city council in check. In exchange, the insurance policy was there for any mishaps or gross mistakes that would require a payout of any kind.

Foisting change politically by top-down policy was woefully ineffective in comparison. While this doesn't fix the underlying problems with qualified immunity and how the cops can still fuck up anyone's day on a whim, this does help.

The medical industry solved this a century ago. Just do that same thing again.

Police should not have lethal weapons at all. Traumatic pistols are well enough by stopping power. Not even shockers - they regularly misuse them for torture and murder.

Speaking of stopping power - for police use traumatic weapons are actually better than lethal ones.

When you think about it, carrying weapons in peacetime was a civilian thing for much of modernity in much of the world. Soldiers would be armed when posted, and in other situations it would depend on many things, often armed, but without ammunition. Gendarmes would be armed on service - and that's not people doing usual police work. Policemen, like boring peelers, would not, batons and sticks are enough.

Civilians would carry weapons to defend against criminals and for other civilian things, like duels.

I've mixed, of course, different countries and traditions, but what good does it do to arm police with lethal weapons if it's not their responsibility to go after really dangerous offenders and, say, mass riots, they have SWAT teams and national guard for that? Talking of USA. Anyway, I live in Russia, here it'll soon be worse. Right now at least police doing what's in the article is uncommon, but that can be explained by a system different from USA, static units instead of patrols.

Bumbling trigger happy halfwit goons are a feature, not a bug. The police, as an organization, exist to guard private property not human life. They are supposed to be a source of social terror and stochastic violence. They are supposed to horrify people they patrol, not help them.

Plato designed that 2.400 years ago. We still seem to prefer police brutality.

A number of cities do... it doesn't change things.

I called the cops to break up a fight between my husband and I where I thought he'd kill me, I got a domestic with intent charge because they don't know how gay couples work, and someone has to go to jail. Also there was a "ridealong" bitch who basically sat there like she was a tourist, having the time of her life with the whole thing. Just some chick the cop knew. So yeah even overprivileged white men learn their lesson on cops.

They didn't call 911, the school "security" officer followed the kid home, escalated the situation, refused to leave after the kid and parents told her to, then just walked into this families home, escalating it even further before her backup decides to shoot the child 9 fucking times.

Meanwhile, the kid only ever picked up the knife because he felt threatened by the cops, which... he was. Stalking someone to their home and verbally accosting them while doing so, making vague threats; "you better not hit me," is seriously fucked up. She goaded an emotionally distressed teenager into having a reaction, and then killed him for it in front of his parents.

Jodi Hefti and Kyle Blunck should be in prison.

Grand juries are just a puppet of the prosecutor. The rules regarding evidence are much less strict for a grand jury, and the prosecutor has full control over what evidence the grand jury is allowed to see.

The district attorney is typically an elected position, so the job has to consider politics when deciding whether or not to press charges. And some cases are politically inconvenient. The public wants to see a corrupt cop charged… But the police union has privately told the DA that if they bring charges against the cop, the police will stop cooperating as witnesses or collecting any crime scene evidence until the charges are dropped. Making the DA’s job impossible in other cases.

Essentially, if it would be politically inconvenient for a prosecutor to press charges, they can simply refuse to bring any evidence before the grand jury. And then when the grand jury refuses to indict (because they had no evidence) then the DA can hop in front of a news camera and go “oh sorry people, I wanted to press charges on this cop, but the big mean grand jury refused. But remember I tried! I’m tough on crime and am constantly fighting to keep our streets safe. Vote for me!” The grand jury is a very convenient scapegoat. They’re a faceless blob that can’t defend themselves in the news headlines.

Or inversely, if the prosecutor wants to press charges, they could literally just scribble “lmao yeah I did it, signed {defendant}” on a fast food napkin and present it to the grand jury as “evidence”. There also isn’t any defense lawyer at the grand jury proceedings, because nobody has been charged with a crime yet. So there’s nobody to go “hey the DA literally just wrote that confession themselves. That evidence wouldn’t stand up in court.” The old joke among lawyers is that the grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for murder if the DA wanted them to.

Make no mistake. If the DA wanted to prosecute this, the grand jury would have voted to indict.

I know people who literally worship police. Like, the crying and reaching out to touch the sheriff during a parade type.

The cult is widespread and deeply entrenched.

From what I understand the Grand Jury reviews whether there is enough evidence to go forward with an indictment, not whether someone is guilty or not. I did a bit of digging and this event occurred Feb 6, 2024, and the Columbus Nebraska police did not start regularly wearing body cams until March 30, 2025. So that's what, 3 officers word vs 2 parents of the deceased? At the end of the day there probably just wasn't enough evidence. The Grand Jury trial was for prosecution by the State AG's office against the Columbus Police officers. Government prosecutors typically won't take a case to trial unless they are certain they will win, that's why they have something like a 95% trial success rate, not because they are good prosecutors but because they drop any they aren't certain of.

At this point if I have a problem I’ll talk it over with a person myself if i can. Less likely to be killed doing so.

Ah, yes, remembering that time when I walked to a Russian police station to report a missing person (my mom likes to just vanish without warning anyone, and I was too nervous that particular time, got worried), by the morning thought I'll remain there, they clearly decided I killed her.