# Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread #2 **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 23, 2020, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531 "2020-06-23T20:29:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 175
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2023, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3488 "2023-05-01T12:13:03Z")
In my industry many union workers are paid more hours than they are required to work, but it’s known by the management, and management actively avoids having them work those hours if possible. For example, if you have a certain class of worker, and you keep them on after 7pm, you pay them until 9pm, regardless of how long they actually need to work. Bring them in for a shift, and some guys get a guaranteed 4 hours, some 8 hours. Management decides what pay is justified and what pay isn’t, not a federal prosecutor. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2023, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3489 "2023-05-01T13:18:43Z")
In the public sector, POLICY determines this, not management. There was no policy in place allowing this practice. I’ve been on boards and committees overseeing municipal departments for over 20 years. I’ve also been on nonprofit and industry group boards for longer than that. The legalities around policy, law and management discretion cannot be compared to the private sector, without making an ass of yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2023, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3490 "2023-05-01T15:12:28Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Management decides what pay is justified and what pay isn’t, not a federal prosecutor. > [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > In the public sector, POLICY determines this, not management. There was no policy in place allowing this practice. Right. I run a team in the private sector, and we have detailed rules in place about overtime (ensuring that we comply with both state law and company policy). If I started telling individual team members I liked to start reporting 2 hours of OT a day regardless of whether they work or not just because I like them and want them to be paid more, I’d be fired. ---
**Author:** ![mjmartin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3d9bf3/32.png) [@mjmartin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmartin)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3491 "2023-05-04T14:33:26Z")
Officers go to the wrong house, throw woman to the ground and handcuff her. It takes about 30 minutes before anyone bothers to check if its the right person, which it was not. Yet another example of use violence first, do basic investigation second. > **[JSO burst into her home and handcuffed her thinking she was a suspect. It was...](https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2023/05/01/jso-burst-into-her-home-and-handcuffed-her-thinking-she-was-a-suspect-it-was-a-case-of-mistaken-identity-she-says/)** > > A video obtained by News4JAX shows Jacksonville police entering a woman’s home and she said it was a case of mistaken identity. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3492 "2023-05-04T14:52:42Z")
> [@mjmartin](#): > > Officers go to the wrong house, throw woman to the ground and handcuff her. It takes about 30 minutes before anyone bothers to check if its the right person, which it was not So, I presume the parties involved will be prosecuted for their clear negligence that led to kidnapping and false imprisonment? ![](https://media.tenor.com/S6qFcF2D-q8AAAAM/%D0%B0%D1%85%D0%B0%D1%85.gif) Just kidding, absolutely no consequences will be faced by these dangerous criminals, because of “qualified immunity”, AKA a blank check to fuck up. ---
**Author:** ![mjmartin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3d9bf3/32.png) [@mjmartin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmartin)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3493 "2023-05-04T14:58:33Z")
HA! I will be shocked if she gets a half-assed apology. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3494 "2023-05-04T15:08:36Z")
According to the news article, they also didn’t have a warrant at all, much less for this house. So, they basically just broke into someone’s house and assaulted them. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3495 "2023-05-04T15:36:35Z")
> [@mjmartin](#): > > HA! I will be shocked if she gets a half-assed apology. It occurs to me that this kind of behavior is exactly what an Internal Affairs division is supposed to address, and it saddens me to think about the way “internal affairs” is portrayed as villainous in every cop show and movie I’ve seen. ---
**Author:** ![mjmartin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3d9bf3/32.png) [@mjmartin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmartin)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3496 "2023-05-04T15:57:24Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > It occurs to me that this kind of behavior is exactly what an Internal Affairs division is supposed to address, “hey Bob, I know we golf together every weekend, and that our wives are best friends, but I have to investigate you now. I’m sure I can be impartial. Oh, you didn’t do anything wrong? Ok, good enough for me.” - Every IA officer, ever. ---
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3497 "2023-05-04T16:04:13Z")
I’ve been told on this very board\* that it is simply beyond the pale to expect law enforcement to ensure they have the correct house. \*By a since banned poster ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3498 "2023-05-04T16:09:15Z")
> [@mjmartin](#): > > “hey Bob, I know we golf together every weekend, and that our wives are best friends, but I have to investigate you now. I’m sure I can be impartial. Oh, you didn’t do anything wrong? Ok, good enough for me.” - Every IA officer, ever. I agree, that’s definitely a major issue. You’d think that, considering how much all these settlements are costing cities, they’d do an external audit of their police departments, to ensure that nothing fishy is going on. And you’d think this would be a smart thing for the federal government to mandate. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3499 "2023-05-04T16:10:42Z")
> [@Wolf333](#): > > I’ve been told on this very board\* that it is simply beyond the pale to expect law enforcement to ensure they have the correct house. If that’s the case, it’s simply beyond the pale to view police departments with any sort of legitimacy. ---
**Author:** ![mjmartin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3d9bf3/32.png) [@mjmartin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmartin)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3500 "2023-05-04T16:20:08Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > You’d think that, considering how much all these settlements are costing cities, they’d do an external audit of their police departments, to ensure that nothing fishy is going on. And you’d think this would be a smart thing for the federal government to mandate. There is just no political will for this, at all. I follow the pages of some of the worst, most scandal plagued departments in the country (cough, Aurora, cough), and when a new scandal breaks there will be a day or two of complaints. Right after that, the pages will be full of people that can’t say enough nice things about the department. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3501 "2023-05-04T16:23:50Z")
> [@mjmartin](#): > > There is just no political will for this, at all. Sigh… you’re probably right. There is a very strong mindset that says that the only people who have run-ins with the police are “those people” and that they probably deserve whatever happens to them. Until we address the root cause of the issue, and have a major cultural shift to where we actually view “those people” to whom these things are happening as actual human beings who deserve the same sort of treatment that us middle class people in our cushy suburbs get, the problem will not be solved. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3502 "2023-05-04T16:34:48Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Until we address the root cause of the issue, and have a major cultural shift to where we actually view “those people” to whom these things are happening as actual human beings who deserve the same sort of treatment that us middle class people in our cushy suburbs get, the problem will not be solved. It’s like this asshole > **[Daniel Holtzclaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Holtzclaw)** > > Daniel Ken Holtzclaw (born December 10, 1986) is a former police officer in the United States. He was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, and other sex offenses while working for the Oklahoma City Police Department. > Holtzclaw was convicted of eighteen counts involving eight different women. According to the police investigators, Holtzclaw abused his position as an officer by running background checks to find information that could be used to coerce victims ... He sexually assaulted many women, and got away with it for years, and was only caught because he did so with a middle class woman with no criminal record, whose story would be believed. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3503 "2023-05-04T16:36:31Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Until we address the root cause of the issue, and have a major cultural shift to where we actually view “those people” to whom these things are happening as actual human beings who deserve the same sort of treatment that us middle class people in our cushy suburbs get, the problem will not be solved. You forgot to put “White” between “middle class” and “people” because I’m a POC who has lived in affluent suburbs for 25 years and I’ve had many interactions with the police that indicate I have no business being here. And I’m one of those Model Minority POCs who are supposed to feel grateful we are at least treated better than those Other People. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3504 "2023-05-04T16:54:51Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > He sexually assaulted many women, and got away with it for years, and was only caught because he did so with a middle class woman with no criminal record, whose story would be believed. I was just talking to my wife the other day about serial killers, and how I just don’t buy the common narrative that something about modern society is creating them. Rather, my view is that serial killers (who clearly have something seriously wrong with their brain leading to a lack of empathy and unchecked violent tendencies) have probably always been with us; it’s just that two factors prevented them from being noticed throughout most of history: 1. Before modern evidence-based reasoning and forensic techniques, it would have been nearly impossible to conclusively show that two murders were carried out by the same perpetrator if the victims were unrelated or random. Based on the Wikipedia page for “serial killers before 1900”, if they happened to catch such a killer in the act (at least in Europe), they’d often conclude he was a werewolf (or a witch for female killers). 2. Depending on who you were and who the people you were killing were, your serial killing ways could be an open secret with no one feeling bothered enough to do anything about it. There are a handful of stories about particularly egregious nobles who lured and killed hundreds of commoners before someone decided to stop them, and I would speculate that there were many others as well who were never stopped and their actions were never recorded. This tale tells us that the second category still exists today. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3505 "2023-05-04T17:14:26Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > they’d do an external audit of their police departments, to ensure that nothing fishy is going on It happens, but doesn’t result in much of anything. External oversight boards are created, the police departments refuse to cooperate with them, and there are no consequences. Or maybe the boards get to the level of making recommendations, but there are also no consequences for ignoring them. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2023, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3506 "2023-05-04T17:22:42Z")
Things will never change until there is an external agency with the power to not only fire these clowns, but effectively ban them from ever serving in law enforcement in any capacity in this country again. Like that will ever happen. ---
**Author:** ![mjmartin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3d9bf3/32.png) [@mjmartin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmartin)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2023, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531/3507 "2023-05-05T13:27:07Z")
Alabama man “talks back” to the police, and then starts to walk back inside his home. They sic their dog on him. I am surprised that I haven’t seen any more reporting about this one. I can’t post the youtube video, but here is the link. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfJodVHKu\_w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfJodVHKu_w) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531.md?page=174) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread-2/912531.md?page=176)