“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?”
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.
The way I’ve understood the “defund the police” movement’s point is that they’re saying police funding is excessive because a lot of the things cops do should be handled before the cops have to get involved, eg. with higher funding for mental health and social services, housing for homeless people etc. So the point is that you wouldn’t need as many cops in the first place if things were handled more humanely “downstream” so to speak, instead of just letting problems fester until things go sideways
This is exactly it. But it doesn’t fit on a hat or bumper sticker so the details get ignored.
The cartoon is excellent but yes the problem is that the phrasing doesn’t match the reality. “Fund the nonpolice” isn’t catchy though.
Honestly, just properly funding anything that is designed to do benevolent things for the community as a whole is a tough sell with way too many US community politicians
This seems to be a problem with at least conservative politicians everywhere. In Finland where I live we do still have the vestiges of a welfare state (and it really is vestigial at this point), but right wing politicians keep dismantling it and cutting taxes on the rich, and later on leftist politicians find it impossible to roll back any changes due to resistance from the right.
But in order to get the money for those programs, especially if their effect is to lower the workload for police, you should get the money from the police budget, otherwise it’s just wasted money. Are you just going to keep giving the NYPD a billion dollars a year to do nothing?