If police forces were organizations of justice, they would compensate victims of false imprisonment as a matter of course. Say you spend a night in jail for an errant arrest, you get an immediate $2k for time lost and distress incurred. This way, they wouldn't be able to shuffle the damages from their run-roughshod approach onto innocent people.
But instead, they do everything they can to stick with and make-proper the mistake, and pettily punish those who don't just submit and take it. They know full well that time in their jail is (an extrajudicial) punishment in and of itself. This entire blue-shield assume-everyone's-guilty mentality makes them just another gang of thugs to be avoided. The fact they're given a fancy costume by the out of touch populations of whatever jurisdiction they're in ceases to be relevant.
While still extremely callous, one would take far less issue with what I said if it were explicitly about "violent gangbangers". And given that the problem is institutional yet new recruits are still signing up for the trip, I have little empathy.
edit: and I will admit that short of things like automated home-defense turrets becoming commonplace, empathy is the only thing that is going to fix anything and what I said actually hurts that. But given that the problem stems from police getting things mostly right (because most of who they interact with are criminals), I don't see reforms to make them impartial justice organizations ever gaining much support, as the sheer majority will always see them as doing a good job.
> Say you spend a night in jail for an errant arrest, you get an immediate $2k for time lost and distress incurred.
There are a lot of people who would instigate an officer for that kind of money.
Besides, having served on a Jury, I know what they think my time is worth. Getting a check for $200 (a more realistic number) would be an insult after getting stuck overnight in a jail cell.
> But instead, they do everything they can to stick with and make-proper the mistake, and pettily punish those who don't just submit and take it
This could be said about the first group, but he even admits that his own actions are what got him put into solitary confinement. If he hadn't made a ruckus they wouldn't have put him there. Note that they did overstep by doing that, but not massively.
This amount wouldn't meet what I said, as they'd still clearly be externalizing the collateral damage from their approach (just like the jury theatre, as you point out).
> If he hadn't made a ruckus they wouldn't have put him there
Which stemmed from them denying him access to medical care, outside communication, and due process. I covered this under "pettily punish those who don't just submit and take it".
> If police forces were organizations of justice, they would compensate victims of false imprisonment as a matter of course. Say you spend a night in jail for an errant arrest, you get an immediate $2k for time lost and distress incurred. This way, they wouldn't be able to shuffle the damages from their run-roughshod approach onto innocent people.
Oh yeah, this would not cause more problems than it solves.
Correctness is more important that expediency. If you start off trying to be good, you can learn to be fast. If you start off trying to be fast, you will never learn to be good.
But instead, they do everything they can to stick with and make-proper the mistake, and pettily punish those who don't just submit and take it. They know full well that time in their jail is (an extrajudicial) punishment in and of itself. This entire blue-shield assume-everyone's-guilty mentality makes them just another gang of thugs to be avoided. The fact they're given a fancy costume by the out of touch populations of whatever jurisdiction they're in ceases to be relevant.
While still extremely callous, one would take far less issue with what I said if it were explicitly about "violent gangbangers". And given that the problem is institutional yet new recruits are still signing up for the trip, I have little empathy.
edit: and I will admit that short of things like automated home-defense turrets becoming commonplace, empathy is the only thing that is going to fix anything and what I said actually hurts that. But given that the problem stems from police getting things mostly right (because most of who they interact with are criminals), I don't see reforms to make them impartial justice organizations ever gaining much support, as the sheer majority will always see them as doing a good job.