Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t...
by chaps on Thursday January 30, 2025 @09:17PM
(#42884164)
You're not talking about officers being fired because it doesn't happen very often :). Your lens is from the now-world where, in any other job, you would be fired 100 times over for actions done by police on a routine basis. It's firing-adjacent, yeah?
Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t...
by Spooky23 on Thursday January 30, 2025 @10:28PM
(#42884472)
Police unions are not really unions in the traditional sense and wield alot of influence because of the nature of the job. But they aren’t a boogeyman.
All politics is local, and the creative expression of discretion is a source of power for many different stakeholders.
The reality is that giving a mulligan to some jackass cop who fucks up has benefits to many stakeholders. Investigations involve looking at things, and sometimes you see things when you bother to look.
This type of behavior is typical in close groups of people with power… see corporate boards, Catholic Church, etc.
Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t...
by aidenn0 on Thursday January 30, 2025 @10:58PM
(#42884586)
> The reality is that giving a mulligan to some jackass cop who fucks up has benefits to many stakeholders. Investigations involve looking at things, and sometimes you see things when you bother to look.
Thanks; that paragraph sums up a lot of what I was trying to say.
Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t...
by chaps on Friday January 31, 2025 @11:39AM
(#42889174)
I think you're failing to realize just how few complaints and misconduct are actually looked into in any sort of depth. It's not that "when they look they see things". It's that misconduct happens so frequently that it's trivial to find once you start looking.
https://cpdp.co is a good site to review these sorts of questions for. Disclaimer again, though - I'm a contributor to the project.
- GP was talking about a dynamic of officers resigning to avoid disciplinary actions on their record and working elsewhere.
- GP suggests this is due to union pressure.
- Indiana has much less strong police unions compared to Chicago
- My point is that there is still an incentive for departments to allow problem officers to retire before any investigation can confirm allegations of wrongdoing.
- I am more than willing to believe that lots of wrongdoing is enabled by the actions of unions, I just think that a policy allowing problem officers to resign with a clean record rather than be investigated is not solely motivated by union pressure.