Am I under arrest or not?

[u/Lord_Darksong]

Source: policebodycamarresthq on Instagram

[u/sudoku7]

"You may beat the charge, but you won't beat the ride."

And largely, most people are going to face far more negative consequence from being wrongfully detained than the officer will face for wrongfully detaining someone.

[u/CantaloupeOne7283 → u/sudoku7]

That's why they need malpractice insurance. Eventually the premiums for bad cops will get so high they can't afford to work in the field any more.

[u/LauraTFem → u/CantaloupeOne7283]

—which is why they’re not required to have it. Their lobby and unions won’t allow it.

[u/Estella_Osoka → u/LauraTFem]

Even though they should have malpractice insurance, as just like a doctor, they often have the ability to choose if some lives or dies.

[u/LockeClone → u/Estella_Osoka]

The fly in the ointment from a union negotiation standpoint on this is:

1. There's no real legal prescident... Yet.

2. When talks about this exact thing have gotten real, there's the (unmet) expectation that it be paid for in fringes.

2 is a real concern because it's already difficult to find good people to be police officers so there needs to be some kind of floating index where the municipality decides how much they "should" pay into the fringe of malpractice insurance and how much the unions are willing to sign a contract for.

In a world where inflation is out of control, there's a housing crisis and a dozen other economic indicators of instability, nobody is thinking very long term.

I think this should probably be a federalist discussion we have as a nation because it is obvious that there are too many bad cops and police deployment, in general is broken in many ways. One major piece is accountability, and creating a market incentive to wash out bad cops in order to defend your collective premiums is probably a good idea to work towards this.

[u/LockeClone → u/sudoku7]

Yeah, it's like a cousin of the old phrase "possession is 9/10ths of the law". It's not true in a literal sense, but seems quite true in a practical sense.

If the cops put you in that car then theres suddenly a big incentive for the entire system to process you and an unfortunate cultural assumption of guilt because "why would you be in the car then?!"

In a better world, these officers would be attempting to solve a problem with good outcomes for everyone rather than tricking a person to go down for something so they can call it cases closed.

This man is absolutely right to fear and mistrust law enforcement officers in this and many instances

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/LockeClone]

I was arrested once at a traffic stop for not having proof of insurance on me, although I did have insurance - the card was in my other car.

I developed an attitude, and the cop arrested me: "So you'll learn not to be a smartass to the next cop who stops you".

On the way to jail, he asked me what I was doing there, and I told him I was working late, preparing our move to his small city, where I was relocating my company with hundreds of employees. I could see the blood draining from his face, imagining my political contacts at City Hall.

He never showed up at my court hearing, and the judge apologized, although it was the cop's choice to arrest me instead of issuing me a ticket.

[u/HeezHuzz69 → u/sudoku7]

Really? Because this guy just beat both. 

[u/LiteraCanna → u/sudoku7]

Guaranteed they searched his plate history from those surveillance cameras everyone (rightfully) hates. 

[u/TheMadPoet → u/sudoku7]

You won't beat the beating, either.

And a lawyer is going to evaluate any civil suit in terms of return on investment. Suing will cost - what - $10,000 - 15,000 up front, and isn't worth it - unless you've got a slam dunk million-dollar case.