You have a massive societal problem that your society has not been adequately dealing with, and to a significant degree actually supports.
Individuals should not suffer the cost (false arrests, beatings and deaths) of institutional change – that cost should be shared by society.
Want to cut back on the cost to society of punitive damages? Cut back on the incidents of abusive police conduct by getting tough with the police through changes in their policy and procedure affecting how they go about their jobs, and by vigorous prosecution of them when they act improperly or stand by while their brothers act improperly.
Anyone who thinks that police violence is appropriate to the degree that is has been normalized in the USA should spend a few hours watching the Beeb’s version of “Cops” to see how real police, rather than goons in garb, get the job done.
Anyone who comes back with the “but the baddies have guns in the USA”, remember that your national gun fetish is a societal problem, so once again individuals should not suffer the cost of that societal problem. The rest of the first world is not awash in guns and suffering absurdly high gun deaths, so get on with it and start dealing with your cultural gunddiction, seeing as your toxic police culture has partly arisen from the police having to face the very real possibility that anyone they confront will blow them away unless the police have them “comply” immediately.
Remember, the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the victim – compensatory damages are for compensation. Punitive damages are awarded purely as punishment, in hopes of getting the wrongdoers to recognize that what they did was wrong, and in hopes of reducing the frequency of such wrongdoings by those and other future wrongdoers by getting the word out that similar wrongdoers will be sued into oblivion.
If society does not like the cost of punitives, it is up to society to break the culture of the police that society empowers and employs. For punitives to be effective, the dollar amount of the punitive damage awards must be high enough to apply pressure toward a change in behaviour.
Here’s a youtube link to that BBC Traffic Cops show. They get results primarily from de–escalation rather than immediate brutality, including compliance from patient conversation rather than immediate “COMPLYCOMPLYCOMPLY!!!”
One incompetent cunt cop yells: “Put your hands up” The other incompetent cunt cop yells: “Get down!”
And of course, the cover for their unjustified brutalization of the man - both yell in unison: STOP RESISTING STOP RESISTING! while they punch and kick the guy on the ground.
Fuck police. Fuck eveyr last fucking cunty thug, inbred one of them.
That’s not incompetence, that’s strategy. One cunt shots’ “Hands over your head!” the other cunt yells “Hands behind your back!”, and whichever you do, the other one tees off on you with a nightstick, You’ve got half a dozen of these cunts shouting contradictory commands simultaneously, and whatever you do you’re getting a beatdown from these assholes. Fucking police, too lazy to work, too cowardly to steal without the color of authority.
Christ, I hope some of you idiots someday end up a victim of serious crime when there’s no cops to protect you. “Cunts, the lot of them” to people who are risking their lives every day to protect you… it’s absurd. Most people grow out of fatuous anarchism by their late teens.
Read the fucking articles. The force used was note excessive, but the departments have changed their policies to use even less force. That’s somehow a bad thing, that means all cops are evil and should be got rid of? It’s no wonder people voted for Trump when this idiocy is the opposition.
If you like how British Cops deescalate you will love how Japanese society rejects guns.
A brief BBC article on the Japanese approach to gun ownership and policing in general. The highlights include most Japanese police have a black belt in judo. On meeting a violent citizen the usual response is to wrap them in a futon and take them back to the station to cool off. Plus they are so anti weapons that a police officer who committed suicide by shooting himself with a service weapon was posthumously charged with a weapons offence.
If the gun rights crowd are to be believed, it is not the job of the police to protect you. Their job, it is argued, is to catch wrong-doers. And quite frankly, it looks like there is more than a morsel of truth to that. It almost looks like the police are creating criminals, perhaps for the sake of job security. They support the worthless DARE program and the disastrous “war on drugs”, because that keeps them duly employed, busting heads.
Really, the line between officer and criminal is barely discernible. Not much more than a badge and a paycheck.
Protect me, like they protected that guy… from driving his own car and not being beaten for absolutely no reason. Yeah, no thanks.
The issue is that you never know what you’re going to get with your average idiot cop. Properly trained, competent, not a bully looking to beat on the poor or off-color person? Ha! I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance. So you get a cop yelling at you to get down, and jump up, and put your hands down and to the left, and shuffle your feet, and god help you if you don’t do all of those things immediately, no matter how contradictory. MANY people have been shot, not because of anything they did wrong, but because the cop is just, a poorly trained imbecile, better fit to fill your bags at the the local warmart. Scare shitless or everything and everyone and ready to pump bullets in the general direction of whatever non-white blob is nearest him.
Some Americans, who have never done anything criminal, have only experienced brutality and unfair treatment, and never protection or fair treatment, at the hands of cops. This is a real thing that some Americans have experienced (and it used to be nigh-universal with certain groups). In light of this, how can you be surprised that some people see cops as dangerous enemies, not allies? That’s why these instances of mistreatment and brutality, like this Evanston example (are you really defending this one?), are so damaging to society – they just continue to reinforce this narrative that has always existed in America based on some groups’ experience with cops that arose from real people’s experiences. It’s a multiplier for bad effects, since the history (including living history) is so awful. It’s not an easy thing for cops to change in such a big way, but until it happens, big groups will continue to reasonably see cops as dangerous and potentially deadly enemies.
So, you didn’t read the article. The use of force was justified, but despite that the department has changed its policies to reduce the amount of force their officers are allowed to use. There isn’t even a problem here that needs to be solved.
I agree. more needs to be done to stop the police mistreating trans people and the mentally ill, I assume they are the groups you’re talking about. And in the latter case, people who actually can’t avoid breaking the law should be being treated, and not coming into contact with the police in the first place.
Hopefully it won’t be too long before trans people get the equality that black people have had since the 60s, and gay people for a couple of decades or so.
I’m sure you can point me to a law or court decision that would show that it wasn’t, then.
I feel like I’m stating something here that’s so obvious that it’s absurd that I need to, but do you really not grasp that attacking the police for following the laws and procedures they are told to operate under is counterproductive? That it will make the average officer look at the criticism, see that it’s unfounded, and then dismiss all your complaints as nonsense?
So the **politicians **decided a man driving his own car was deserving of being beaten? A man who exited HIS car with hands up?
He was driving his own car and was taken the fuck down for it. He exited the vehicle, hands up, and this is somehow either the fault of the politicians or the fault of the victim himself?