If police departments are collectively responsible, and police officers individually responsible, to the point where they can be sued for nonfeasance and misfeasance if they fail to “serve and protect”, then they would always have to intervene, with force when necessary.
When a group of well-meaning anarchists set up a “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”, the Seattle police couldn’t withdraw and try to resolve the situation with dialogue. Any individual police officer who was present would have to go in and arrest any and all protesters who were blocking access, or they could lose their house when property owners in the zone sued them.
The same thing if protesters tried to topple a Confederate statue. Individual police officers would be financially liable if they didn’t wade in and use force to protect the statue.
And in the case of widespread civil unrest, police officers would have to stop any and all civil disturbances, no matter how petty. If they didn’t use force to stop someone from breaking windows during a riot, they could be sued by the store owner.
An absolute legal standard that police officers are civilly and financially liable for failure to intervene to “protect and serve” would increase police use of force.
Ah, so you only have to offer a true dichotomy, no protection, or protection in a way they will make sure I won’t like.
And it’s a wonder why some people think that the police need to go. I’m not really seeing the upside if that is the only way that they can do their jobs.
What, in your mind is the role of the police? Can you tell me how they are better than the Mafia running a protection racket?
In your post, you only talk about property damage. Do you equate property damage to be as serious as assault against a person?
I’ve got to admit, I was hesitant to step into this discussion. I am regretting it now. I’ll give it another try, though.
Of course property damage isn’t as serious as assault against a person. That was exactly my point. If police departments collectively, and police officers personally, can be held civilly and financially liable, not just for malfeasance, but for simple nonfeasance, than they will be forced to act, in all situations, including situations involving simple property damage. And its not clear to me how they can do that effectively without using force.
Policing is complicated. Of course we should hold officers liable if they use unnecessary force. Of course we should hold officers criminally liable if that use of force amounts to unjustified assault or, in the worst cases, murder. But also holding them liable if they fail to act puts police officers in a no-win situation. If you want police officers to be able to use their judgement to hold back from some situations, then they have to actually be able to do so without being legally liable for failing to act.
Any policy on police intervention and use of force is going to have to be carefully constructed and nuanced. It can’t be as simple as police are free to use however much force they want to whenever they want to. But it also can’t be as simple as police always have to act regardless if the circumstances.
I personally think police officers should protect and serve their community. What else is there? A lot of departments probably do need root and branch reform. There probably are fundamental problems with the prevalent model of policing in the U.S. that need a serious, national conversation, and serious structural policy reforms. Police accountability, both collectively and at the individual level, undoubtedly need reform. Suing them for failure to act under an absolute, blanket policy just seems like a poor way to go about it.
Well, I guess the point is that the job title gives the police the right to drag one or more of us to jail, take our stuff without cause, gas us and beat the fuck out of us for the flimsiest of excuses and kill us because, reasons. Yet, we are not entitled to ask them to try to protect us – they may offer to help us, if they feel like it, if they like us, but we cannot expect it.
Curious that, when there is a protest, they are all about teaching those fucking whiners a lesson. Buildings were torched and trashed and looted, but they did not seem to take issue with that. That vandals, arsonists and looters get minimal attention (I am not aware of many, if any, arrests for mayhem or pillaging) but those people in the street, gas them and shoot them with plastic, wood or pepper bullets.
The police appear, for all intents and purposes, to be a military organization. Using them in this way looks a lot like a violation of the US Constitution.
This is from the NY Post, so there is a very high likelihood of misrepresentation, but yep, this would be one fucked-up liberal idea. NY Dems - always trying to prove that they can be as corrupt as any Pub. And often succeeding.
This is, unfortunately, quite easy to believe. Yes, some occupations needs certain training and licensing requirements to protect public health and safety, but a whole variety of low-risk occupations across the country are excessively burdened by requirements like these. Their main purpose seems to be to limit competition, and indeed these sorts of onerous government requirements are often pushed by occupational groups that don’t want any more competitors. For example, Louisiana is the only state to require an occupational license to be a florist, and they reduced the requirements a few years back over strenuous objections from the state’s association of florists.
Quite a few states have, over the years, had burdensome educational and licensing requirements for beauty-related occupations like African hair braiders, demanding that they take lengthy and costly courses that teach a lot about things that have nothing to do with African hair braiding, and that don’t teach (or test) anything at all about the skills required for African hair braiding. This New York requirement for shampoo assistants sounds like a similar scam, and if you look behind it, I’ll bet that one of the main groups pushing for this legislation is the cosmetology schools that stand to benefit from forcing shampoo assistants to spend thousands of dollars on their courses, not to mention the state, which will receive licensing fees, and also (no doubt) fines from enforcing the regulations.
The non-profit law firm, The Institute for Justice, takes on a lot of these occupational licensing cases, and it has a really interesting study that looks in detail at the nationwide burdens of excessive occupational licensing. They won a case over the training and licensing requirements for African hair braiding in California in the late 1990s, and are still working on the issue in other states.
Iowa had a problem with this, too (and may still?). The beauty schools, owned by a near monopoly, got the lawmakers to enact ridiculous requirements, giving the schools/salons tons of basically free labor.
Yeah, while it might be mainly Democrats pushing this particular legislation through in New York, excessive and burdensome occupational licensing seems to be a stupid idea that is embraced by both liberal and conservative politicians.
In Buck_Godot’s list of Idaho training requirements, I’m rather surprised massage therapist is among the lowest when it looks like the one where an inept practitioner has the greatest chance to cause serious physical injury to a client.
Pretty sure it’s only libs posting, as any shit previously posted by “conservatives” was laughably inept, so they gave up (or were banned for being trolling asshats).
Certainly for the OP, the problem was that his outlook assumed everything a liberal does is stupid and therefore he had no filter for things that were genuinely stupid versus things he didn’t like because a liberal was doing them. This excessively tribal approach makes it harder to apply critical thinking skills, particularly when (again as in the case of the OP) the information sources used are at best grossly biased and at worst blatantly lying. As for why other less blinkered board conservatives don’t contribute more, I presume they simply don’t want to. Nothing wrong with that.
I’ll admit I’m surprised there aren’t more examples of liberal stupidity to post - I mean, politicians and media types of all ilks often say and do dumb things - but “it is what it is”.
Probably I should have made clear that anything new posted is by libs facepalming at the stupidity of liberal politicians and other public figures (as opposed to simply railing at stupid people on Twitter). The OP and his ilk are just a special breed of evil stupid.
And, just for the record, I did realize (and the article also pointed it out) that restrictive licensing is often (if not always) money-driven, and that being open to having ones votes purchased is not the provenance of any one party.
While we’re on occupational licensing, Tennessee’s Chancery Court just struck down a state regulation that you must have a high school diploma to be licensed as a barber in the state. It found the law to be “unconstitutional, unlawful, and unenforceable.”
The court noted in the decision (PDF) that cosmetologists require only two years of high school, while barbers need a high school diploma, and that this violates the principle of equal protection, since the Tennessee Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners could offer no reasonable justification for the different treatment.
Interestingly, the state argued that requiring a diploma would ensure adequate levels of reading comprehension and math among barbers, and would also ensure “that barbers will understand and comply with federal and state rules and regulations.”
You know who isn’t required to have a high school diploma in Tennessee? State legislators. You know, the people who actually write the state rules and regulations.
“A business professor at USC is no longer teaching his communications course after Black students complained that a Chinese-language example he used during class sounded like a racial slur and harmed their mental health.”
“Sounded like”. Not was. From the context of what the professor said, it was clearly a Chinese word, and in no way, shape, or form could have been construed as the actual slur. There is no indication whatsoever that this was a pretext or that the professor harbored any kind of desire to harm others.
From the letter some students sent to complain about it: “Our mental health has been affected. It is an uneasy feeling allowing him to have the power over our grades. We would rather not take his course than to endure the emotional exhaustion of carrying on with an instructor that disregards cultural diversity and sensitivities and by extension creates an unwelcome environment for us Black students. His careless comment has impacted our ability to focus adequately on our studies.”
I do not mean to question the harm or negative impact the use of the actual slur has on Black people. Beyond any doubt, the use of the slur causes harm. And I do not doubt in the least it is jarring and likely a bit disturbing to hear a word that sounds like that word. But the extent of their injuries and the extend of blame (again, the professor clearly never intended to cause harm) they place on the professor is just silly.
I am all for political correctness and, by and large, the right wing have been ignorant about the whole PC movement, but it’s examples like this that make it so much harder to take things seriously.