In my own city, I was appalled by the spectacle of hundreds of police officers protesting in and around a courthouse where officers and union officials involved in a ticket fixing ring were being arraigned.

Ref: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/officers-unleash-...

I completely agree, whenever politicians, CEOs of megacorporations, field-grade military officers and senior noncommissioned officers, local government officials, district attorneys, and intelligence agents break the law, the punishment is ALWAYS extremely severe isn't it? I mean, it must really suck to have to retire and collect a gigantic paycheck every month or a multimillion dollar severance package. And then have everyone forget about it a few weeks later so you can make a comeback in the political arena.

Your average cop and his buddies are of course going to look out for each other, they are usually the ones under the bus when the higher ups go on a witch hunt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

This ruling, and others like it hint at a fundamental flaw in constitutional law and how most people perceive their relationship with the state, particularly in regard to social contract theory. These rulings call into question the very legitimacy of state authority.

Let's assume for a moment there is a social contract with the state. Then, as in all contracts, there is a reciprocal obligation. Specifically, as a citizen, I have a duty of allegiance (obey state laws, pay taxes, etc.) in return for the duty of protection, from my government. Since the state itself has ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect, then the contract is inviolate, and long since void. In other words, there is no duty of allegiance to the state per the rulings of the courts if one takes social contract theory to be valid.

In my opinion, police corruption is one example of a foundational flaw in our current institution of governance: rule by means of coercion.

I think you are assuming Warren has a broader impact than it does. The state does have an obligation to protect the public at large, and to do so uniformly (unless a special relationship is created). The state has not ruled it has no constitutional duty to protect you, it has ruled it has no constitutional duty to prevent every crime that occurs. Again, if the opposite were held true the state could be sued out of existence in its own court. There was no other way for this case to be decided.

Essentially the state has ruled it cannot be perfect in terms of crime prevention, and considering the backlash against the NSA wiretapping that much of HN has been extremely concerned about, it seems that the state is not frequently rewarded for attempts to get closer to proactively preventing crime. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I don't disagree with you about police corruption, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Warren.

The public is caught in a catch-22: it is illegal to defend ourselves physically against attackers (we can be held liable for harming an attacker, and often for posessing a self-defense weapon, and so criminals are emboldened, knowing we are defenseless), and yet the police provide no guarantee of protection against crime, and in fact are frequent perpetrators of violent accidents against civilians.

Like sheep to slaughter we go.

State protect property. There's nothing ambiguous about that.

Only problem with society is that you watch much super man cartoons and thing the state is there to protect the oppressed.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/to_serve_but_not...

Nah, never happens.

Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physical reality, watching people constantly debate the edicts of hopelessly out of touch political figureheads and their bureaucratic lackeys as if it had an effect on fixing the problems they cause constantly mystifies me.

The police do not have a duty to protect you specifically unless they have told you they are going to protect you. This means they are not liable for preventing a crime from happening to you. That's all it means. It does not touch on the issue of whether or not an officer who witnesses a crime being perpetrated upon you is responsible for intervening, which is what the case you linked to is about. I don't know much about that, and from what I understand that particular case has not been decided yet.

>Politics and law are sideshows to the material facts of physical reality, watching people constantly debate the edicts of hopelessly out of touch political figureheads and their bureaucratic lackeys as if it had an effect on fixing the problems they cause constantly mystifies me.

I agree with you that it is a frustrating situation. I would ask you, as an engineer, to consider the enormous complexity of a system required to provide social structure for 300 million people, and that doing so may require some very specific decisions to be made, that while seemingly small have a massive impact.

But guess what cops are human too ergo they will on occasion make mistakes, lie, steal, cheat etc.

That's not to say that any of the things you mentioned are ethical or that I agree with them at all, but it's not too difficult to see the difference between being victimized by an external force (which is essentially just garden-variety "humans are shitty"-ness) and being victimized by an entity that is supposed to represent you.

They can construe, manipulate and torque that to mean whatever they want or rather the lack of whatever they want.

Then we must update the motto: <strike>protect and</strike> serve.

I love the "bad apple" metaphor because when you remember to say the whole thing it becomes clear that it is actually an argument against ignoring issues in an organization because only a few people are the "cause". If a police department "only has a few bad apples" then (according to the metaphor) those bad apples must be removed swiftly and decisively or the integrity of the entire department will be compromised.

I love this "bad apple" tidbit, it's going in the top drawer of the toolbox. :D

Relevant SMBC http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3025#comic

Prove that. You can't, cause it's a negative. It seems much, much more likely that "The times these things are uncovered and get national press attention is rare." For the few times that are, how many are not, 10x? 100x? I can't know, but I 100% doubt we catch 100% of these things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y

Heh. First off, it's cops killing people, and then being squeamish about it (very contrary to how they'd deal with a civilian guilty of the same thing) that make people use these words.

Secondly, there are of course many factors that go into stuff like this; many benign like simple solidarity, some potentially sinister, like being involved in things you'd be shunned for by most of society - such as killing unarmed people and then lying about it - which is an incredibly powerful bonding agent.

> maximum legal effort

But here too, this means very different things on both sides of the "blue line", doesn't it.

Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted.

What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist? Does it not have enough power? Is that what's really being argued here?

Or is this just feel-good we're-the-good-guys they're-the-bad-guys rhetoric intended to undermine what capabilities they have, cause them to feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the citizenry they're supposed to be protecting, and motivating them to develop a similar and responsive antagonistic attitude that is precisely the seed of a police state?

Is the argument "they started it"? Is that the level of discourse that a mature, educated citizenry ought to engage in?

Fuck people like sneak. All they're good for is exacerbating problems that exist, making it that much harder to fix, fulfilling their own prophecies of doom and gloom, to no useful end other than making themselves feel self-important. It's like discovering database corruption and going, "Hell, let's run DELETE in with random WHERE clauses and see what happens. Because my job title says VP of Marketing."

In fact yes. Many police departments do not have "Internal Affairs". Where they nominally exist, they are rarely staffed by a separate group of people, rather "internal affairs" work is handled by the same people as everything else. The same people behind the same silent blue wall...

Hollywood depictions of "Internal Affairs" are largely a "Hollywood thing".

Even if you could, that would be a hell of a lot of money. In many cases you would be damn near doubling the size of police departments.

If you can't control your temper, why are you even participating in the discussion here?

Personal attacks like that aren't acceptable here, and I'd think you would know that by now after three plus years. It's disgusting to see that level of discourse here.

Don't sweat it. I don't.

> If you can't control your temper, why are you even participating in the discussion here?

Because http://xkcd.com/386/ Stop being wrong and I'll go away.

Seriously, if you want to whine about the level of discourse, then you're welcome to start with the person I originally responded to. But you won't, will you? Because you agree with him, so his emotional outburst is okay.

It's about as far from an emotional outburst as one can get.

[1] http://youtu.be/1M8vei3L0L8

Are we still railing against rhetoric? The argument isn't they started it, it's "they have been granted tremendous power, so they need to accept accountability."

Yes. "Fuck the police" really captures that argument well.

Fuck the police."

What you read: "Fuck the police."

Is it really any wonder that you are having problems with this conversation? There is a lot of content in that comment; you appear to have ingested none of it.

I smell bacon!