JudCrandall
Police departments offer massive settlements because it never comes out of police budgets and if the case is settled then they never have to address the harm they continue to cause.
Dude, Vincent D'Onofrio in The Cell. 100%.
Know this fucker's face.
The only-government-can-have-guns crowd pushes inaccurate perceptions to advance the agenda.
I'm curious about what inaccurate perceptions you think they're pushing and what their agenda is. The inaccurate perception that we're the only country in the world with this amount of resource who are facing this problem? Is their agenda... preventing needless death?
ACAB no matter where you hail from. Our "justice" system is just more adept at shielding them from consequence. If this were a US cop who fired his service weapon above a crowd he'd get two days paid vacation and a promotion six months down the line.
Who the fuck looks at the state of policing in the US and thinks "what we need is less transparency"? Or that we're holding officers TOO accountable?
... Oh yeah, cops.
That article was a wild ride.
Police chief in the mid-90's in my town was the subject of an FBI investigation for taking cash bribes to look the other way with similar gambling machines. He spent 14 months in prison and then went on to collect a police pension for two decades. 💀
The POST commission is interesting. As of 10/31 they've suspended 39 LEOs, 38 of which list the reason as MGL c. 6E § 9(a)(1), which is "The commission shall immediately suspend the certification of any officer who is arrested, charged or indicted for a felony. " So the vast majority of suspensions stem from the officers copping felony charges.
The outlier is Blake Poore with M.G.L. c. 6E, § 9(a)(4), "The commission may, pending preliminary inquiry pursuant to paragraph (1) of subsection (c) of section 8, suspend the certification of any officer if the commission determines by a preponderance of the evidence that the suspension is in the best interest of the health, safety or welfare of the public." Apparently he was suspended for taking LSD. Frankly, as long as he wasn't on the job while he was taking it, the experience would have probably made him a more empathetic and self-aware cop.
POST also maintains a csv of historical police disciplinary data that they update monthly. Right now it's available as a series of PDFs or a CSV on their website, but I've put the whole thing in a PostgreSQL database and I'm working on an API etc. Hoping to have a version you can search by officer, agency, date, etc. through a web app within a week or two.
I haven't read a lot about this, and the article linked here is pretty light on details, but it may be related to him being a school resource officer, or possibly the search they did at his home. But that's also all speculation, so don't really know.
I watched a couple really interesting talks from this past Def Con. In one of the talks, Snoop Unto Them As They Snoop Unto Us, Null Agent points out that all Axon equipment (the company putting tasers on drones) share the same organizationally unique identifier (OUI) and communicate via Bluetooth Low Energy. When you pull your firearm or taser from an Axon holster, it can be set up to signal your bodycam to automatically turn on, for example. So by snooping on the BLE data channels you can look for Axon's OUI and infer that a law enforcement officer is within your Bluetooth range (max 300ft or so in optimal conditions).
That's all this script does. If it detects Axon equipment it plays a sound, alerts on your terminal, and logs the MAC address / time of encounter. I run it on my laptop in my living room with a super cheap Bluetooth adapter and I get notified when there are cops outside. Couple this with listening to your local police / public safety radio and you'll never be surprised by a no-knock again.