“So the cop was tracking random people off social media using this incredibly invasive technology, on a pretty regular basis.”
“That’s bad.”
“But, an audit detected his abuse of the system and he was slated for termination.”
“That’s good!”
“But the system still exists, and can be used for nefarious purposes as long as those are state-approved uses backed by a case number, which is honestly a bigger deal and concern than one random officer using it for, presumably, stalking.”
“That’s bad.”
“And, from the description of the nature of their auditing, it would be pretty easy for an officer to use the system abusively as long as they were more careful to disguise the nature of their access than this guy was.”
“That’s… also bad.”
“And, it’s notable that the auditing in question was done by his department, not ClearView itself. It sounds like it’s up to each individual law enforcement agency to make sure its officers are using it ethically, without centralized oversight from ClearView let alone any type of judicial or legal oversight, which sounds like a recipe for abuse even leaving aside the issue of state-sanctioned abuse of the system and the general increase in police powers it represents.”
“… Can I go now?”
Do. Not. Trust. The. Police.
100% agree with this
I should make clear I am not an ACAB person by any means. The whole mentality that the police are automatically the enemy makes just as little sense to me as that the police are never the enemy.
But no one in the world should simply have unaccountable power. Body cams, judicial oversight, warrants, charges when they abuse their power, get rid of police unions or anything else that makes it difficult for a department to fire an officer who they feel is causing problems. Just like some percentage of non police people do bad stuff and we need a system to watch them and try to protect everyone else from them, we need it 10 times more for police people.
That’s what ACAB means though. You cannot trust cops, because there’s no real accountability for them. Why is there no accountability? Because their colleagues lie for them, their bosses lie for them, the prosecutors decline to prosecute them, judges trust them implicitly, their unions intimidate mayors and lobby politicians for more funding, tougher laws (for non-cops) and less accountability for themselves.
The system is so fucked up that reforming it seems like a waste of time. Actual “good cops” get squeezed out or worse. You might as well assume that ACAB, because the stakes are too high to assume otherwise.
I completely agree with you. They need to be made accountable.
That’s the real root of the problem. ACAB/defund/whatever, if they were actually held accountable for their insane actions a lot of the problems would go away.
“You killed three peop- oh you resigned? Nevermind then. Have a good day Officer.”
Yeah. The frustrating thing is that the blanket “defund the police” attitude actually makes the problem of department-hopping bad cops, or tolerance for bad behavior by cops, worse a lot of the time, by starving departments of resources which makes it harder to hire as many cops as they need which makes them more desperate for employees and makes it harder to be selective about who they employ.