News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Who was harmed here to the tune of $175k? The ACLU should have settled for something much less.
Can you put a dollar figure on the violation of your constitutional rights? The settlement should have been much higher. Sometimes it's the only way to get power tripping cops to stop breaking the law.
I think we're still missing the mark because it's tax payer money.
Rip immunity from that fucker and let it come out of his pension (if he's got one) or garnish his wages like everybody else.
Hit the individual, but also pull funds from the department. Make it hurt everyone and maybe they will start hold each other to some semblance of accountability.
Dude was deprived of his freedom, put in a life threatening position, etc.
Those are serious things
If you read the article, you'll learn that he was wrongfully arrested and the legal fees involved in clearing up the whole matter were pretty high.
In law it is the defense who is supposed to argue the amount is too much, and the plaintiff should ask for as much as possible because at that point it is punitive. Second, while you may not feel threatened by any single interaction with police, this officer was angry and had to have exhibited aggressive behavior. These ingredients have resulted in lots of interactions going south.
Thirdly, let's put you in this man's position, we will make one assumption - that you know flipping a cop off is settled law and protected free speech. You're driving home and you get pulled over. For what? You were just driving and not speeding, what gives? "Licence and registration. Do you know why I pulled you over? Because you flipped me off". This is not a first level offence. This isn't being on your phone. This isn't driving without a seatbelt or speeding. This isn't driving erratically. This cop just told you he's going to ticket you because you flipped the bird, but you didn't. You try to explain you didn't and he's going to get mad because you called him a liar. Now you have a citation in hand and you try and NOT swear and actually flip him off. He has deprived your freedom of speech and given you a ticket for it and you know it. If you're gonna get a ticket you may as well do the crime right? So the officer, rather than writing another citation you know will get thrown, has your car towed. He settles you with a $300 tow AND a citation OVER A GESTURE that he is legally and constitutionally WRONG about, and you know he is. He then arrests you for it, and you spend an hour at the precinct settling this. Then when you're free to go, you have to bum a ride to go get your fucking car. A month or so later, you have take time off work to go to court. You miss making probably another $300 because a day off. It gets dismissed because it's a first amendment issue - you knew this would be the result all along. A minor feeling of vindication because you are now out $500 for missing work and other legal fees, maybe an Uber to go pick up your car, and have been harassed by a state patrolman, spent an hour in jail instead of whatever you were driving to go do. 3 years later the ACLU says "hey so you were right, and we want to sue over it. Would you NOT say "yeah fuck that dude" and sign on for it?
Minor footnote, he won 100,000, and 75,000 went to the ACLU
Legal fees can easily reach into the thousands...
You right they quickly get prohibitively expensive. But because of the 3 year gap idk if he asked them to sue or they thought they had a good case or what that arrangement looked like.
You're making my point for me. If you're super generous about paying this man for all his trouble, loss of freedom, court costs, etc. (and we should be) ...and then you double that for good measure... and then you double THAT for punitive purposes (and yes we should)... You still are far short of $175k.
I'm only bringing it up because it's our money as taxpayers. The ACLU should not be another piggy at the public trough.
The defense would be the state, the state failed to argue he didn't deserve it, and the ACLU their cut. I don't remember if the article said it was by judge or jury, but even when a jury comes out with X number a judge can still say "yeah no that's too high, I'm awarding Y instead." So either way it was achieved, a judge felt that this was a fair number. Idk what to say beyond that other than I wish I could make 100k off something so silly but that is a lot of bullshit to put up with to be right. ACLU deserves some cut for doing probably all this man's legal grunt work and legal time since he likely didn't pay out of pocket for a retainer.
But I get what you mean about tax dollars. It should have come from the department something more tangible for the state patrol to not do this again
What gives you the right to measure any of that?
Well obviously the snowflake cop who didn't understand laws.
I would argue violation of our constitutional rights is worth more, and if you have a problem that it's tax payers paying it and not cops, end qualified immunity, make cops carry liability insurance so when cops do fucked shit like attacking fundamental rights our country was founded on its not tax payers paying. The best way for the aclu to get that from government is by getting as much money from the tax payers as possible so when their state our county cant fix roads or keep schools open they can point to all the money spent settling lawsuits from shit cops and then maybe tax payers might start wanting cops to be liable for their shit behavior