If you're walking down an alley one night and someone grabs you and you punch them any reasonable court will find assault charges levied against you completely bogus.
Unless... that person is a police officer, then you could be charged with and likely be convicted of assaulting an officer. Police officers in America, and most other countries, need to adhere to a completely different and much more lax set of rules than most people - that's partially for a good reason due to the line of work they're in - but some people do abuse it and leverage law enforcement privileges and equipment to abuse random folks. Like, for instance, planting a tracking device on your partner to see if they're cheating on you - probably illegal and IA will probably come down on that officer - but they're much more likely to get away with it scott free.
There really don’t need to be special exemptions for police. Cops as an institution abuse whatever privileges they get, and then lobby for more privileges. They are barely accountable.
Not that cops everywhere else are just dandy. But, as for one example, compare the use of firearms in the US by police with just about every other civilized country.
Said with no real understanding of the subtleties of the issue and all the places where having special exemptions is critical to the police being effective in their job.
Yeah, it's not perfect. But you can't just say it's completely unnecessary without a fucking PHD thesis on the subject going into each and every one of the edge cases and explaining why it's not necessary.
We need proper checks and balances and accountability. Not to pretend we live in a fairy land.
How effective are police at stopping crime? Do we have any evidence that giving the extraordinary rights to regular run of the mill law enforcement makes a difference?
I'm not talking about federal agents working on large cases, but the city and county police who often can't be bothered to show up in person to take reports of robberies or assault.
How effective are those officers at using GPS trackers, drones, MRAPs, and other extraordinary equipment to stop crime? If I had to hazard a Gus's it would be not at all.
That's likely confirmation bias. You'd also want to look at places where crime skyrocketed, as well as other factors likely to have an influence, like alternative support systems
To be fair you are the one claiming special exemptions and lack of accountability for the police. Maybe you can share some more details on why you think it should be like that, so that we can better understand.
Burden proof goes the other way. The police having ability to get physical with you without being charged with assault would seem to be critical to doing their job. Which is why they have that ability and citizens don't. You want to argue the widely accepted rules are wrong, sure, but the burden of proof is on you then.
> "Unless... that person is a police officer, then you could be charged with and likely be convicted of assaulting an officer."
Well, you can be charged for anything, and criminal charges themselves do a lot of damage, but whether you get convicted is a completely different matter. That depends on the court; there have been cases of people shooting police who burst in unannounced, and having the charges dropped, or being acquitted.
honestly we should treat any cop without his camera on as a regular civilian. Arrest and handcuff someone with the badge cam turned off charge them with unlawful imprisonment. shoot someone with it off murder or manslaughter.
I've said this before, but I think LEO should be treated like regular civilians in almost all situations. I think that if there was some path for regular citizens to get any particular privilege granted to LEO, we would be much more cautious about what we grant to LEO.
There are obviously some situations you would not want to allow for anybody but LEO, but I think those are rare. In all other interactions with the public, LEO should be accorded the exact same privileges as a civilian. It just drives the point home when you reverse that sentence and say civilians should have the same privileges as LEO.
require them all to be uploaded to; a local, a state, and a federal servers before clocking off every day. and all to be interned into the public record within 90 unless it a court order says other wise and then must have a public release date given within 5 years
The details of how this is done seems to matter quite a bit, and if I'm reading this[0] right, if the officers have the discretion about when to turn them on or off use of force might be higher compared to no body cams.
> Unless... that person (who grabbed you while you are walking down an alley one night) is a police officer
You see, this is the wonder of due process. In a mostly-reasonable jurisdiction, police officers are required to, first and foremost and at the very least, identify themselves clearly as law-enforcement, and with that carries the implicit suggestion that "you need to cooperate and not fight back". No identification and they might as well have arrested you without reading you your Miranda rights.
> Police officers in America, and most other countries, need to adhere to a completely different and much more lax set of rules than most people
I wouldn't call it lax but I'd settle for slightly different. Of course, a lot can be said about abuses of this "privilege to be different", which is maybe why observers would say law-enforcement is held to a relaxed standard.
It is different but not lax because:
- ordinary citizens can't break down doors into private property but law-enforcement can if they have probable cause (Have you watched Breaking Bad?) or a search warrant. Good luck obtaining a search warrant as an ordinary citizen, if that's even possible.
- ordinary citizens are not ever expected to result to fisticuffs and if they do so, they would face fees or even jail. But law-enforcement can do so except there's gonna be a fuck ton of paper work afterwards and, should their reason for resorting to force be successfully challenged, face suspension or dismissal but hardly ever fees or jail time.
Of course the MOST IMPORTANT caveats here are (a) law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, even for reasonably-democratic territories and (b) this is HN playing r/legaladvice, which is fun but not as productive IMO.
The most important caveat is if the cop lies about you doing something and you don't have video evidence that he's wrong, you're fucked. That's more than lax, it's willfully regulating for a system that attracts and defends oppressive corruption.
A police officer is treated as an expert witness in a courtroom. If it's just you and the police officer in that alley, the officer's word will be taken over yours. Officers have a strong incentive to lie about the incident since they will always be believed.
I think in one of the Scandinavian countries, people cannot be charged or punished for attempted or actual escapes from prison, jail, or custody, as the desire for freedom is assumed to be a natural human motivation.
Trying to escape from prison is victimless. Scams, thefts and rapes have victims. Some argue that crimes without victims like using drugs are not crimes. They, of course, could be illegal and result in fines and related but not in restrictions of liberty like imprisonment.
In this framework, yes. But see, even if no time is added to the sentence he may lose eligibility for early release. And he will be prosecuted for any crime committed in the process. Look, I'm not advocating for A or B. Just being descriptive.
This is true in the US as well, at least where I live. Judges specifically inform the jury that they cannot treat a police officer’s testimony with any more weight or as any more correct than any other witness.
Whether juries actually pay attention to this or not I cannot say.
I just had jury duty in one of the most liberal states in the union.
I had the prosecuting lawyer explicitly ask us during jury selection if we would "take into account that police officers have training which [we] wouldn't have access to as a civilian." And repeated it during the trial. All without a peep from the judge. So YMMV on that.
On an unrelated note, the prosecuting lawyer then proceeded to systematically eliminate exclusively women and minorities from the jury, and specifically removed every woman of color. Which I'm sure was a total coincidence.
Unless... that person is a police officer, then you could be charged with and likely be convicted of assaulting an officer. Police officers in America, and most other countries, need to adhere to a completely different and much more lax set of rules than most people - that's partially for a good reason due to the line of work they're in - but some people do abuse it and leverage law enforcement privileges and equipment to abuse random folks. Like, for instance, planting a tracking device on your partner to see if they're cheating on you - probably illegal and IA will probably come down on that officer - but they're much more likely to get away with it scott free.