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San Diego officer resigns after locking himself in patrol car with woman he arrested
(www.sandiegouniontribune.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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THE POLICE PROBLEM
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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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I think it’s a little different than straight up rape. Rape is forcing a sexual encounter on someone. In this case, the woman was not forced to have sex, she tried to use sex to get out of legal trouble. This is the definition of bribery. Here is a thought experiment - if the woman offered money instead of sex, would you say the officer robbed her? I doubt it. The woman offered a bribe, the officer accepted it. The officer is corrupt, not a rapist. Let’s not absolve the woman for offering bribes just because what she offered was sex instead of something else of value.
Now, if the woman was not in legitimate legal trouble and the officer fabricated a charge and threatened her with it unless she had sex with him, that is rape and blackmail. Doesn’t seem to be what happened in this case though. The woman was in legitimate legal trouble.
How is it not force when placing someone under arrest, putting them in the back of a locked police car, and driving them to the police station for booking?
If a police officer took money in exchange for their detainee's freedom, then yes that is absolutely robbery. There is always the implicit threat of violence and imprisonment when someone is under arrest. To refuse a police officer while in custody is to risk your own safety and life. Under those conditions, there can be no version of consent thatmitigates the crime.
You’re basically saying if anyone commits a crime and an officer arrests them for that crime, but the person offers money or sex to get out of it, and the officer accepts, then that person was robbed or raped. So, all any criminal needs to do to become a victim is convince the officer to take their bribe.
Don’t you think there is nuance in how both parties behaved?
If the officer was going to execute their duties fairly, but gave in to temptation and took the persons offer; that is bribery and corruption.
If the officer fabricated or embellished the charges and used that to make a threat against someone in order to pressure that person to give something of value, then that is rape/robbery, and blackmail.
A court and jury should review the case closely, but from the article, it sounds like the officer was doing his duty in arresting the woman on legitimate legal grounds, and then she offered sex to get out of trouble, which he accepted. I did not see any evidence that he threatened to escalate the trouble she was already in, in order to get sex out of her.
Yes, if an officer uses their position of authority to take money that doesn't belong to them, it is theft. If they use the threat of imprisonment to have sex with someone, that's rape. This isn't complicated. It doesn't matter if the bribe was offered or solicited, the officer is either using force to have non-consensual sex or taking something that doesnt belong to them. It doesn't matter if there was an actual quid pro quo agreement, or if the officer was planning to continue to deliver the detainee to jail. It doesn't matter at all if the detainee is guilty, and it's disgusting to suggest that it does so you should stop that.
It depends on the behavior of the officer. It’s the difference between these two statements:
“I’m going to make things worse than they should be for you if you don’t do what I want”
And
“Ok, I will not fulfill my duty because you offered me something to look the other way.”
In the first case, the officer IS using the threat of imprisonment to have sex with someone. In the second case, the officer is shirking his duty because the arrestee has offered a quid pro quo. These are two different scenarios and it comes down to who is instigating the act. In the eyes of the law, intentions matter. This is why there is a distinction between first and second degree murder.
No. Stop it. There is no difference between those two crimes because of the inherent power disparity between police and detainees.
almost arguable that the power dynamic goes the other way since women can get a lot done with just their boobs. I'm certain I can prove that men are mentally under performing when a girl starts seducing them to the point that they will lock themselves in their own car.