alt.hn

5/20/2026 at 2:30:47 PM

Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit

 https://www.fire.org/news/victory-tennessee-man-jailed-37-days-trump-meme-wins-835000-settlement-after-first-amendment

by ceejayoz

5/20/2026 at 4:50:44 PM

The fact that taxpayers and not the police themselves have to pay the settlement is the worst part of this.

Every settlement against the police should be taken from their pension fund. This is something I've been advocating for decades now, because it creates an incentive not to do things like this. Right now, good cops don't patrol bad cops because it won't affect them. By aligning the incentives right, it will mean good cops will force out the bad cops quickly.

by freediddy

5/20/2026 at 8:30:37 PM

From what I could tell from the article, an officer submitted a warrant request to a judge and the judge approved it. That request was potentially incomplete because it left out the fact that the victim here didn’t actually make the meme. On the other hand I’m not sure whether omission matters since it would still be protected speech if he made it.

So I would place a good amount of blame at the feet of the judge, who should be more knowledgeable about legal questions. I think cops should have a general understanding of the law but I doubt the legality of online memes comes up much.

So I don’t think it is catastrophic that the police came to the judge with this issue. The problem is the judge rubber stamping something that should’ve been rejected.

Second problem I see is that this took 37 days to resolve, which is also incredibly slow. So it really magnified the earlier mistakes.

That said, I’m not against liability for cops in general. I just think in this particular case I blame the judge more.

by janalsncm

5/20/2026 at 10:36:17 PM

> That request was potentially incomplete because it left out the fact that the victim here didn’t actually make the meme.

Even if the man did make the meme I'd say it should qualify as free speech

by LocalH

5/21/2026 at 10:15:50 AM

Would you say the same about Alex Jones? Why not?

by account42

5/21/2026 at 11:52:47 AM

Jones lost in a civil suit. If you lie about somebody repeatedly and cause them harm you can be held accountable. It's called defamation. That is not the same thing as government abridgement of speech.

by adiabatichottub

5/20/2026 at 8:48:14 PM

> Second problem I see is that this took 37 days to resolve

"Justice delayed is justice denied " is an important principle that appears to have been forgotten in the west

by worik

5/20/2026 at 10:15:11 PM

Rereading the article, another insane detail is the judge setting bond at $2M. I think for any person who actually was motivated to perpetrate a mass shooting, no bond would prevent it. And for most innocent people, $2M might as well be $200M. They’re sitting in jail until trial.

I think there’s an amendment about that or something but I’m not a lawyer.

by janalsncm

5/20/2026 at 10:38:39 PM

I believe there are standing precedents about cash bail that state that it should not be used unless there’s a demonstrable risk the defendant will flee otherwise. The problem (one of them anyway) is that as a component of the process, it’s highly unlikely to be challenged to such an extent it makes it to the circuit courts where such precedents are made. Bonds should not be used, in and of themselves, as punishments, or as leverage for prosecution. If a person is a danger to themselves or others, they should be denied bail. If they are a clear flight risk, then the bond should be set accordingly to ensure compliance. If they are neither, they should be released on their own recognizance and afforded the right to fully participate in their own defense.

Edit: also not a lawyer

by nativeit

5/20/2026 at 9:36:53 PM

Not just the west. Posted a couple weeks back here on HN: https://sundaicity.com/blogs/getting-arrested-in-japan

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48078647

by etothet

5/21/2026 at 8:39:17 AM

When people read these links, I encourage them to assume that the author/creator left out part of the story for convenience or due to lack of knowledge (specifically the language and customs around legal issues in Japan).

Her story does not jibe with any of my experiences, direct or indirect, with law enforcement in Japan.

by csa

5/20/2026 at 10:03:43 PM

>"Justice delayed is justice denied " is an important principle that appears to have been forgotten in the west

It's also "the punishment is the process". It's often a feature, not a bug.

by joe_mamba

5/20/2026 at 5:52:28 PM

That's a lot of liability for police. They would likely buy insurance against it.

by Hnrobert42

5/20/2026 at 5:59:38 PM

And insurers doing their due diligence and charging based on potential for liability would go a long way to mitigating abuses.

Best solution would be to simply require licensing and conduct standards to be a police professional similar to that required for Registered Nurses.

by WillAdams

5/20/2026 at 8:49:04 PM

Is privatising ethics enforcement like this a good idea?

by worik

5/21/2026 at 2:55:48 PM

It's not "privatising ethics enforcement" at all - it's just letting the free market put dollar amounts on the actual cost of staffing reckless officers. The actuaries won't be reading textbooks on ethics, they're going to look at the same thing they do for drivers: history of violations, incidents, etc.

by causal

5/21/2026 at 11:17:12 AM

Municipalities would be free to put up the money to insure officers whom they wished to hire, but which insurance agencies find too expensive/problematic to insure.

by WillAdams

5/21/2026 at 12:31:33 AM

That depends on what you think of existing liability insurance coverage, such as the one commonly sold to physicians.

The way I see it, if you are not granting immunity, and also creating the possibility of financial penalties, then you're creating an opportunity for arbitrage via pooling risk. I'm not horny for the "free market", but I think there have to be cogent reasons to ban such insurance, and I can't think of any.

by overfeed

5/20/2026 at 9:03:38 PM

Alternatively: Make the insurance come out of the collective pensions of the police department.

by solenoid0937

5/20/2026 at 9:30:40 PM

The trick is to somehow ensure all the other officers (A) care about avoiding the cost while (B) are not motivated to collectively lie for one-another.

It's not hard to imagine: Officer X does something bad through incompetence, Officer Y tells the truth about it, and then all the other officers take revenge on Y for "being a snitch" and "screwing our pensions."

Once that pattern is in place, it continues even when Officer X is committing crimes, not just making mistakes.

by Terr_

5/20/2026 at 10:30:06 PM

Except that’s how cops already act even without that incentive.

by dhosek

5/20/2026 at 11:17:58 PM

My point is that it's quite possible add the pension mechanism and make things even worse, if it isn't done carefully in conjunction with other policies.

by Terr_

5/20/2026 at 9:48:21 PM

Seems better than the status quo, where there is no enforcement at all and instead taxpayers are hosed.

by loeg

5/20/2026 at 10:37:21 PM

The public sector has been failing at this for decades. How can privatization be worse?

by LocalH

5/20/2026 at 8:52:44 PM

As opposed to doing nothing?

by HeyLaughingBoy

5/20/2026 at 9:14:28 PM

Yes, it's a good idea to try it as an a/b test in a finite run of municipalities.

Otherwise we are just doing the same things and expecting different results.

Right now in many police abuse scenarios there is no system in place that is recognizable as a working ethical system, bringing policing into some ethical system, even if just financially self motivated is definitely an improvement over nothing.

by fellowniusmonk

5/21/2026 at 1:21:51 AM

less ethics and more accountability. But a public audit committee is more than welcome to join in as well.

by johnnyanmac

5/20/2026 at 7:27:59 PM

Municipal insurers already do that

by staticautomatic

5/20/2026 at 7:57:32 PM

For municipalities --- requiring that individual officers secure their own insurance would have far more effect on behaviour and standards.

by WillAdams

5/20/2026 at 7:56:55 PM

It seems like municipalities just past the insurance costs onto taxpayers.

by anigbrowl

5/20/2026 at 8:55:24 PM

The problem is that if elected officials are not comfortable confronting police unions about their conduct then any cost you pass on to the union or the officers is potentially just passed on to tax payers. Not that I disagree with any idea to hold police more accountable. You just have to address the issue from more than one direction.

by georgeecollins

5/20/2026 at 6:09:15 PM

Or barbers.

by ubermonkey

5/20/2026 at 7:37:10 PM

The reason we have licencing for barbers is that existing barbers wanted it and persued regulatory solutions to protect their market.

Existing police officers do not want this.

by scarby2

5/21/2026 at 4:23:25 AM

They'd just refuse to arrest anyone, sort of like SF cops did when they didn't like the DA. Eventually people decide they want cops with all their problems instead. Don't underestimate the ability of police to look after themselves.

by quantified

5/20/2026 at 6:15:53 PM

For which they'd pay with taxpayer's money anyway

by koiueo

5/20/2026 at 6:19:11 PM

Right - but you are not considering that it's possible for a police department to be so bad as to be uninsurable. Even if the police continue to do misconduct, bad departments would get into situations where no insurer will cover them, and they are forced to make changes. It's not a perfect fix at all, but it would be a nice end-around for qualified immunity.

by aeturnum

5/20/2026 at 8:07:09 PM

Then the state may do what it has done for habitually dangerous drivers and either make it illegal for private insurance to deny them or create a public option that hemorrhages taxpayer money (so back to where we are now, with extra steps).

Just fire them after the first fuckup. It does not need to be this complicated.

by hamdingers

5/20/2026 at 10:29:11 PM

There is actually a federal register for LEOs that have been terminated for cause or resigned to avoid termination.

The police unions that operate in the jurisdictions that employ 70% of US police have negotiated into their CBAs that the register “cannot be used for hiring or promotional decisions”. Read into that what you will.

by FireBeyond

5/21/2026 at 10:42:44 AM

You meant NLEAD? Trump shut it down. I found no statistics of union agreements.

by pseudalopex

5/20/2026 at 9:10:19 PM

Would they, or would we just have less police?

by s1artibartfast

5/20/2026 at 7:29:14 PM

Just make them pay for the insurance out of the pension fund. Better yet, make individual officers personally liable for acts outside of their official duties such as civil rights violations and crimes. After the first few cops lose all of their money in court the rest of them will start actually policing themselves.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 7:39:12 PM

> make them pay for the insurance out of the pension fund

The pension payments will be increased. There isn’t a good solution for this other than individual liability.

by JumpCrisscross

5/20/2026 at 10:25:30 PM

So be it. I was a firefighter/paramedic. One of my state's laws about operating emergency vehicle in "emergency mode" (i.e. lights and sirens) is that the vehicle operator is permitted to disobey any and all road laws[1] provided they are doing so with due regard and with a presumption of fault in the event of any incident, i.e. you are default assumed to be at fault unless demonstrable otherwise. Such liability can transcend department or agency into personal liability against the operator.

How is that hedged against, in practice? Most departments have their SOPs for emergency mode driving, for example mine said "You can exceed the speed limit by no more than 20mph, and subtract 5mph for any confounding condition, such as fog, rain, nighttime without streetlighting" and "You must come to a stop or to a sufficiently slow speed that you can affirmatively clear your passage through an intersection without incident." Stay within those guidelines and the department and their insurer agrees to indemnify your personal liability. Outside of those, you're on your own.

That's tangential. I have no problem saying "police pension funds are responsible for these compensation claims". Then the fund itself can decide whether they want to police themselves better, seek insurance coverage at their expense, or (ideally!) both.

by FireBeyond

5/21/2026 at 2:09:11 PM

>By aligning the incentives right, it will mean good cops will force out the bad cops quickly.

Not system will ever work as intended if entire societies are either corrupt and/or stupid. Cops are no different.

by dennis_jeeves2

5/20/2026 at 5:51:26 PM

How would this work? Where do the money for their pension fund come from? Would taking money from it result in them receiving smaller pensions?

by kadushka

5/20/2026 at 6:05:48 PM

Maybe it would make officers turn in the bad apples, since they insist "one bad apple" each time these issues arise.

by bearjaws

5/20/2026 at 7:34:02 PM

Do they still insist that? My unstudied feeling is that the current go to is "The officer acted in line with established department guidelines. We commit to reviewing the guidelines in light of this situation" with no accountability on any side to actually do anything.

by saratogacx

5/20/2026 at 7:51:50 PM

How do you "turn in" a sheriff? It's an elected position

by breezybottom

5/20/2026 at 8:36:58 PM

Recall or arrest them. Once workers realize how poor leaders effect their livelihood explicitly, the problem tends to solve itself. Doubly so when we're talking about police unions here.

by shimman

5/20/2026 at 11:21:03 PM

You report them to state police or the FBI?

by ceejayoz

5/21/2026 at 11:11:13 AM

Report that he arrested someone? That's already public information.

by breezybottom

5/21/2026 at 12:22:32 PM

Report that he committed misconduct - in this case, a clear civil rights violation. Are we playing dumb?

by ceejayoz

5/20/2026 at 7:54:19 PM

You take it to the public, and the public recalls the sheriff.

by stonogo

5/20/2026 at 9:32:52 PM

The indictment was already public, it's national news. That's why we're talking about it. I don't see any recall election planned.

by breezybottom

5/21/2026 at 4:36:25 AM

Well many government pension funds are horribly underfunded, so likely it would just add to the underfunding till eventually the government would bail it out. It is an expensive, inefficient way to try and solve the issue - when they screw up this bad, you fire them - this is how every other organization works.

by opo

5/21/2026 at 3:45:26 AM

Their pension is funded by tax dollars, this doesn't change the incentive structure.

You'd need to have it either impact their pension payments in a way that cannot be backfilled or more directly force the police officers themselves to carry liability insurance (far better).

Of course tax dollars pay their salaries as well, but if an officer became uninsurable then it weeds them out eventually.

by cco

5/21/2026 at 8:43:36 AM

Right, but taking from their pension directly reduces their payout when they retire. Not sure what you mean by "cannot be backfilled"; the budget is the budget, and the tax dollars only go where the (non-police) elected officials say.

by kelnos

5/20/2026 at 6:10:27 PM

What if a majority of taxpayers voted for that sheriff?

by nyeah

5/20/2026 at 8:58:40 PM

Another huge problem with our times is that local media is completely hollowed out. Voter awareness was never amazing but now there is no local paper to highlight abuse or corruption. Every problem becomes a national problem with no accountabillity. Lots of people in the state I live in vote for their sheriff. I would be shocked if one in one hundred even knew who that was.

by georgeecollins

5/21/2026 at 5:40:30 PM

> but now there is no local paper to highlight abuse or corruption.

There's indie journalists on Youtube and X exposing fraud and corruption. Follow them there.

by joe_mamba

5/20/2026 at 10:19:17 PM

most local tv news stations being owned by two right-wing conglomerates doesn't help either

by geekone

5/21/2026 at 5:41:22 PM

Minnesota childcare and hospice scams operated under Democrat leadership and under the noses of local media. Same in California. If that media was left wing conglomerates(if it wasn't already), do you think they'd have bothereds harder to expose democrat scams?

by joe_mamba

5/20/2026 at 7:31:23 PM

Recent history has shown that sometimes people will vote for incompetent criminals but, elected or not, that doesn't mean we shouldn't still hold them accountable for what they do.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 10:32:57 PM

Being elected by a majority doesn't negate crimes committed, as much as a certain president would love everyone to believe that. Being elected shouldn't have anything to do with being punished, whether they won by 1% or by 99%

by foobarchu

5/21/2026 at 12:20:47 PM

Sure, elected criminals should tried, convicted if guilty, and punished for criminal actions. The votes don't change that. I'm saying something else: Maybe it makes some sense after all for the taxpayers to pay civil damages due to actions of a government officer.

by nyeah

5/20/2026 at 8:03:53 PM

I agree, and any time there is a security breach, bug or other employee-caused calamity at a tech company that results in a lawsuit or settlement, the money should come out of employee 401k accounts, stock options, etc. These people need to police themselves. By aligning incentives it will encourage the good developers and force out the bad ones.

by whyenot

5/20/2026 at 8:13:27 PM

Not sure if you're trying to be clever (in which case I'd encourage you to just say what you mean next time), but financially penalizing a company for bad behavior absolutely is one way to pierce the corporate veil and ensure workers aligned with corporate health (through things like stock, continued employment, etc) are also aligned with societal health.

by magicalist

5/20/2026 at 8:46:10 PM

One benefit of a 401k account over a pension is that the individual beneficiary controls the account, and not some other entity who can be sued for something an individual employee had nothing to do with. Indeed, pretty much every personal financial advice thinker would advise an employee not to put their own company's stock in their 401k, in order to avoid a source of company-specific risk.

by JuniperMesos

5/20/2026 at 9:32:06 PM

We already have a system for this; it is used by doctors:

- Individual Officer liability insurance.

You scrap Qualified Immunity; and instead claims could be made against the specific Officer's insurance. This would be a nationwide insurance system, and their premiums would follow them as an individual from job to job/location to location.

If departments want to compensate Officers for liability they CAN, but ultimately it would come out of that department's payroll/budget unlike now where lawsuit settlements don't even hit the police department's balance sheets at all.

by Someone1234

5/20/2026 at 8:30:30 PM

Accountability for police in the United States? That'll never happen.

by cdrnsf

5/20/2026 at 9:49:29 PM

Those taxpayers are free to elect people who will hold the police to a higher standard.

The police are an organ of society (if you don't live in an authoritarian shithole), so the society that gives them the power of pit and gallows is ultimately accountable for their behaviour.

by vkou

5/20/2026 at 9:43:58 PM

Exactly, what's to stop police officers and judges from giving each other retirement payouts by locking each other up?

by jongjong

5/20/2026 at 7:54:35 PM

> By aligning the incentives right, it will mean good cops will force out the bad cops quickly.

While that would be nice, it seems like extremely wishful thinking.

Maybe ask a wrongful termination lawyer how things would actually play out?

by bell-cot

5/20/2026 at 8:46:13 PM

US police absolutely hate accountability and fight any effor to impose it very hard.

by UltraSane

5/20/2026 at 5:52:59 PM

What does your username mean?

by kvnhn

5/20/2026 at 8:05:24 PM

> The fact that taxpayers and not the police themselves have to pay the settlement is the worst part of this.

Oh boo hoo. The official in question here isn't some rank and file rando, it's the sheriff who the taxpayers in question duly elected.

I guarantee you they'll elect him again. $91 per resident is a small price to pay for a guy who's willing to arrest their political enemies.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

by JeremyNT

5/20/2026 at 8:10:45 PM

> I guarantee you they'll elect him again. $91 per resident is a small price to pay for a guy who's willing to arrest their political enemies.

in some sense you might be right because instead of this 91$ being taken per resident directly from their wallets, what would happen is the de-gradation of the services because of lack of funds, so your roads,clean drinking water and everything needed for a govt would have 91$ less per resident.

and then when those same quality of roads decline and other negative things happen, the same community might find scapegoats of its the problem of X,Y or Z and the sheriff is their vocal voices against the X,Y or Z.

So you might be right, also y'know what's the worst part is? It's the assymetry, these sheriffs might continue to get re-elected because of the above reasons I gave and they would continue doing un-just things.

And then it is upon the onus of the person (in this case the tennessee man) who was jailed unjustfully and who would have to file a lawsuit and win. Things perhaps could've turned out differently or taken more longer and imagine the man who might've been jailed for more time.

Either way, I think because of all of these reasons, its a systemetic problem but the result of it is that the society has become too polarized and so weirdly incentivized that you can get thrown into jail for memes. I imagine these things might continue to happen but atleast a legal precedent might've been set now (not sure about how American law works).

by Imustaskforhelp

5/20/2026 at 8:19:33 PM

> Either way, I think because of all of these reasons, its a systemetic problem but the result of it is that the society has become too polarized and so weirdly incentivized that you can get thrown into jail for memes. I imagine these things might continue to happen but atleast a legal precedent might've been set now (not sure about how American law works).

It would've been pretty clear to anybody that there was no real case here, but the way these rural areas work is that they never expect any attention or pushback. They're used to their little corrupt fiefdoms slipping under the radar. These people in rural TN also live in a bubble of others with the same politics, and they surely overestimated the power of their ideology to win the day.

So it's not really that any precedent was needed, because speech like this is not a crime - full stop.

The scary thing however is that for every case you see like this that goes viral, gets national attention, and has a victim who is aware of his rights and wins... how many small town sheriffs are out there getting away with it?

It's easy to just lock up people for similar trumped up charges and expect that nobody with resources will ever notice or care.

by JeremyNT

5/20/2026 at 8:33:27 PM

> So it's not really that any precedent was needed, because speech like this is not a crime - full stop.

I was still trying to look at it from a positive way but alas, the situation might be too bleak but yes, nothing meaningful might have came out of this judgement because well, we all know that memes or speech like this isn't crime but oh well, alas.

> The scary thing however is that for every case you see like this that goes viral, gets national attention, and has a victim who is aware of his rights and wins... how many small town sheriffs are out there getting away with it?

Yes that was exactly my point too. I was trying to point the same thing that there might be so many more people whom we don't even know! who might be going through something similar, whose voices are hidden within the swathes of internet and things.

A sad reality but one which is true. I don't know how one fights against it and certainly this question is way above my pay-grade indeed but something should morally be done to prevent an abuse of people and their rights and freedom by the system which is getting corrupted.

by Imustaskforhelp

5/20/2026 at 7:32:28 PM

> Every settlement against the police should be taken from their pension fund.

So... collective punishment?

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/art...

by kstenerud

5/20/2026 at 7:47:48 PM

Police aren't "protected persons"

> civilians who find themselves in the midst of an international armed conflict or military occupation and are in the hands of a foreign power

by valbaca

5/20/2026 at 7:37:05 PM

In the current environment, taxpayers are collectively punished.

by 5upplied_demand

5/20/2026 at 8:30:05 PM

If they don't like it, we could have individual punishment but they have to surrender qualified immunity. Deal?

by int_19h

5/20/2026 at 7:41:25 PM

Yes, collective punishment of the smaller collective who can self-police (cops, no pun intended) rather than the larger collective who can't (citizens and taxpayers at large).

by eli_gottlieb

5/21/2026 at 4:22:08 AM

Nice... I'm always disappointed when I see otherwise "enlightened" people being fine with civilizational regressions like this simply because it's a group they don't like. It's moves like this that chip away at your society.

Penalizing a group of people for the actions of a few is the very definition of collective punishment, and is universally condemned in the civilized world for very good reason. If you can't get such a fundamental thing through your head, ask your AI agent.

by kstenerud

5/20/2026 at 3:56:20 PM

I’ll cut against the grain here and say it’s ABSOLUTELY appropriate for taxpayers to pay the bill here.

It’s pretty toxic that people don’t want to take responsibility for their own government in a democracy. In this case, it’s especially bad, given the sheriff is elected by the people directly. But I’d go even further and say even where control is less direct, we need incentives for voters to take this stuff seriously.

by elicash

5/20/2026 at 4:04:43 PM

Taxpayers should get a line item on their tax bills that specifically counts the amount of their bill that went toward settlements arising out of police misconduct, so they can see in numeric terms what they're voting for.

by ryandrake

5/20/2026 at 4:35:18 PM

This is a country where people are fine with more of their taxes going into police budgets every year.

Adding a line item to their property tax bill showing how much is paid into settling lawsuits will not make people think that they should demand more accountability. They will think that it should be harder to take legal action against the police.

by rchaud

5/20/2026 at 4:40:40 PM

I didn't think about that, and sadly, you're probably right.

by ryandrake

5/20/2026 at 4:27:02 PM

I'd vote for that in a heartbeat.

I think part of the problem here is that this is usually hidden from visibility (intentionally) by officials because it reflects negatively on them.

It may make the news for a day or two, never get seen by the majority of voters, and get swept away later under the deluge of distraction most "infotainment pretending to be news" provides.

---

Go further and just list all government settlements/court judgements underneath the elected official in charge of the branch responsible.

by horsawlarway

5/20/2026 at 4:56:34 PM

While $835k is undoubtedly a lot of money for this man, split among Tennessee's 7M residents, this works out to be less per taxpayer than the sales tax on a latte.

Still, this idea bears merit for other reasons. Americans routinely underestimate how much money is spent on Social Security, healthcare, and debt payments, and overestimate how much money is spent on education and infrastructure. More clarity into that could help build real political momentum to actually balance the budget.

by _jab

5/20/2026 at 7:18:02 PM

It was the county sheriff and thus the county that was sued, Perry County.

Perry County is home to 9,126 people as of 2025. Which means this was $91 per resident.

by cogman10

5/20/2026 at 5:14:55 PM

> what they're voting for.

If citizens had granular voting power (i.e. liquid democracy), this would make more sense. As it stands you get to vote for team red or team blue once in a while and hope that their votes impact that line item you’re concerned about.

by teeray

5/21/2026 at 7:58:39 AM

Seems like the problem is only having two teams. People should be voting for anyone who's not team red or team blue in this case as otherwise things are not going to get better and both teams will have a race to the bottom (I'd say there's already a winner in that race).

by ndsipa_pomu

5/21/2026 at 7:16:02 AM

Yes, and if you're not happy with the way the president and the government treat your money you should ensure they are (A) not voted in again and (B) pressure new candidates to use the full extent of the law to punish them.

And quite frankly even if you're a hard-line rightwinger, the way this administration treats your money is so objectively bad, you have to be brainwashed to deny it.

by atoav

5/20/2026 at 10:31:16 PM

Police aren't elected. Nor are judges in most cases.

There is literally no legal mechanism for anyone to hold a police officer responsible for anything. This is enshrined in the highest levels of the law and there is literally no way to undo it without a constitutional amendment or a supreme court decision. Citizens also have no influence over either of those mechanisms. Literally nobody has influence over the supreme court.

This isn't a matter of voting. The police are literally outside of the law and above consequence. This was set up by a panel of unelected judges without any possibility of influence by the people.

Do you seriously not undersrsnd how any of this works? This is not a problem that can be fixed with votes. This problem exists outside of the law and out of control of any and all elected officials. A constitutional amendment is the only conceivable way in which the people could overturn this decision.

by vitally3643

5/21/2026 at 12:19:11 AM

Sheriffs are elected officials, at least in most states.

by kvnhn

5/20/2026 at 7:38:41 PM

This seems to imply that voters elected someone because they campaigned on violating civil rights or breaking the law. That's rarely the case (Joe Arpaio is one exception). If an elected official breaks the law and/or violates the constitution they are still the one responsible for their actions, not the voters. If voters continue to elect someone with a record of breaking the law and ignoring people's rights that's a problem too, but not one that higher taxes due to fines and settlements is going to fix.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 8:01:23 PM

I fully agree, but you will never hear a candidate for sheriff call out an incumbent for being a shitty person. They're cops first, and public officials second, so both candidates will say they'll bring down crime more, but they will never betray the tribe by suggesting that law enforcment institutions can harbor criminal behavior.

by anigbrowl

5/20/2026 at 8:13:57 PM

It would be nice if someone ran against Sheriff Nick Weems using this case in their ads and speeches as an example of why Weems is unfit for the job and a liability for tax payers, but if someone did they'd have to be prepared to move away if they lost the election because otherwise they risk being retaliated against by someone who has already proven that they don't care about people's rights.

It'd be better for law enforcement to be a licensed position and for civil rights violations like this to result in loss of their license which would strip them of their ability to work in the field anywhere in the US.

That'd solve the whole resign->move over one town/county->repeat cycle for officers too

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 8:54:39 PM

> but if someone did they'd have to be prepared to move away if they lost the election because otherwise they risk being retaliated against by someone who has already proven that they don't care about people's rights.

This is the big problem. A cop friend once told me that even he will not report abuse because he, and his family will be targeted by his fellow officers. They will do everything to make your life hell if you mess with them. One example is your license plate ends up in a database that gets you pulled over frequently and other forms of passive harassment.

The cops are just another gang, one that we call "the good guys." But honestly, not that many are good at all. Most are just ass holes looking for a power trip and carrying a gun is boner material for these cretins. The few decent or good people either leave or keep their head down and tow the line.

by MisterTea

5/20/2026 at 9:11:39 PM

> One example is your license plate ends up in a database that gets you pulled over frequently and other forms of passive harassment.

And then, if institutions are functioning as they should, you sue them in a higher court above their jurisdiction to make them stop.

by JoshTriplett

5/20/2026 at 10:11:29 PM

You make it sound easy but the fact is you have to be repeatedly harassed first before making any claims. Then you have to document that. So you have to eat, or at least take a few good bites from that shit sandwich before you can get the ball rolling.

by MisterTea

5/20/2026 at 10:16:24 PM

I'm not at all suggesting it is easy. I'm advocating that such abuse should be heavily and punitively punished.

by JoshTriplett

5/21/2026 at 2:58:19 AM

The real red pill is to accept that everything you just said also applies to teachers.

by Der_Einzige

5/21/2026 at 3:35:31 PM

Part of the problem is the decisions of the US Supreme Court have codified a lot of unwritten rules to favor law enforcement/status quo - we would need a radical change in our form of government to undo this (the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court justices is one obstacle, along with the political nature of the job, the difficulty in removing a justice, that all bring to mind some sclerotic bureaucratic mess from a dystopia.) This overrides the influence any voter can have with local issues - their local and state governments cannot override these rulings with impunity.

by stevenwoo

5/20/2026 at 5:37:46 PM

I agree with a caveat: the offending agency’s budget should be impacted rather than the general fund. The cost of lawsuits ideally would be itemized in the budget and publicized to show which agencies have legal waste. Otherwise the drag on taxpayers is obscured which gives cover for yet more malfeasance and political opportunism.

by hirpslop

5/20/2026 at 4:05:47 PM

I'd say it would be more fitting that the individual people named in the suit had to pay the bill. But in that absence of that, having taxpayers pay the bill is the next best way to wake people up about the true cost of incompetent public servants.

by jawns

5/21/2026 at 12:19:42 PM

Whatever political capital is gained fighting police unions will swiftly be lost when they run ads and start committing or letting crime get through.

The very first step that needs to be taken is cities decoupling citations/fines from their operating budget, either by putting them towards victim compensation funds or some other non-discretionary fund.

by casey2

5/20/2026 at 4:04:09 PM

I'm with you and have said this a long time. We* are responsible for the government that acts in our name and we should bear the costs of its abuse. The Sheriff did not have the power of arrest that he abused here when we has a regular citizen. We gave him that power and we are responsible for its misuse. That is not to say the Sheriff should not be punished and our criminal laws and criminal system are woefully inadequate for a myriad of reasons at punishing abuse. There is a term for what the Sheriff did - kidnapping. That is never gonna happen, but the civil litigation and damages is rightly against Sheriff Nick Weems not Nick Weems.

* We does not mean everyon every time - it means the people from whom an official vests their power.

by avs733

5/20/2026 at 6:13:36 PM

You're on the right track - the services of government should be more accountable to the people, and the people should hold some responsibility for the actions of their government.

For police in particular, the unions prevent a lot of police accountability, and because of the power that police wield over the population, I am comfortable saying I support unions EXCEPT police unions. At best they should be ballot initiatives.

If I go further down my rabbit hole of systemic issues, I think citizens should be more involved in community policing in large populations.

by unethical_ban

5/20/2026 at 7:58:11 PM

> For police in particular, the unions prevent a lot of police accountability, and because of the power that police wield over the population, I am comfortable saying I support unions EXCEPT police unions.

Police unions don't have the power to stop state prosecutors from filing charges on officers, or the power to stop a jury from finding an officer guilty, or the power to stop a judge from sending a cop to prison for their crimes. Those are the main problems standing in the way of police accountability.

Where police unions do end up giving too much protection for police it's in contracts that get approved by government officials when they shouldn't have been. Police unions can ask for unreasonable things, but when they do our governments should be telling them to fuck off instead of rubber stamping whatever they ask for.

Police, like almost all workers, still need unions though. Police can still be subjected to things like unpaid overtime, unsafe working conditions, insufficient training, low wages, and poor benefits. Police should be able to unionize to prevent being exploited. Local governments should refuse to cave to their unions unreasonable demands such as those that prohibit anonymous complaints, or purge disciplinary records to prevent identifying repeat offenders, or reject body cameras, or allow officers to use paid vacation time to cover unpaid suspensions.

Police unions get a lot of attention as being the main thing preventing police accountability but they really aren't. The problems are much deeper and eliminating the unions will not solve them.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 8:21:42 PM

> Police unions can ask for unreasonable things, but when they do our governments should be telling them to fuck off instead of rubber stamping whatever they ask for.

the rub: police unions are highly political machines and heavily involved in electing rubber-stamp politicians. it's a quid-pro-quo relationship that we seem to have a very hard time breaking out of in the united states.

re: police requiring unions: i have to disagree with you. american policing originated from two antilabor arms: slavecatchers and union-busters. they wield power over non-police union labor and implement it on every level from the individual to the systemic. they are class traitors by choice and by definition and do not deserve protection, because they are the physical arm of the body we require protection from.

by GuinansEyebrows

5/20/2026 at 8:38:49 PM

It falls on We the People to make sure our elected officials are working for us and not giving police unions whatever they want, but we will probably need election finance reforms to make it harder for the unions to influence the outcomes.

Police departments have already been found to do things like force officers to work an unsafe number of hours, commit wage theft in the form of unpaid overtime, engage in harassing and inappropriate behavior including sexual harassment, and the use of tasers on officers. Officers need unions to prevent abuse and exploitation and to ensure that they have protection from retaliation when they report on their fellow officers. Even abusers are sometimes abused. If we want good, honest people to work in police departments, we need to create work environments where they can and will want to. We can chase out those who aren't fit for the job as we go while still leaving good officers protected where they should be.

by autoexec

5/21/2026 at 3:41:08 AM

respectfully, i disagree. if they want labor representation they should not operate in service of the capital class.

by GuinansEyebrows

5/20/2026 at 8:59:50 PM

> If I go further down my rabbit hole of systemic issues, I think citizens should be more involved in community policing in large populations.

This is something I have thought of too. We are all interested in living in a safe society; However, there are many people who know damn well they can get away with all sorts of idiotic behavior because the cops aren't looking, but everyone else is. So give everyone else a method to discourage that behavior.

by MisterTea

5/20/2026 at 9:59:03 PM

> I’ll cut against the grain here and say it’s ABSOLUTELY appropriate for taxpayers to pay the bill here.

It's one thing to agree that he should be compensated (I agree), but the figure doesn't make much sense. Per the article:

> During his stay in jail, Larry lost his post-retirement job and missed his anniversary — as well as the birth of his grandchild.

That's all pretty rough, but I fail to see how it entitles him to the lavish sum of $800,000. That's roughly half a lifetime's earnings for the typical worker!

> we need incentives for voters to take this stuff seriously.

I have a sneaking suspicion that setting public money on fire is not the best mechanism to achieve this outcome.

by marcusverus

5/21/2026 at 7:21:17 AM

What would be the best mechanism?

by pseudalopex

5/20/2026 at 3:36:01 PM

> retired Tennessee law enforcement officer Larry Bushart has won a substantial settlement from the county and sheriff behind his arrest.

I did not expect to read that the victim was a retired law enforcement officer. This whole case is weird. I’m glad he won a settlement but I would like to see some actual accountability.

by Aurornis

5/20/2026 at 3:48:50 PM

Even being a retired FBI director doesn't save you from this kind of stupid sh*t.

by ourmandave

5/20/2026 at 4:03:30 PM

At the end taxpayer lost money and nothing happened to sheriff......

by cute_boi

5/20/2026 at 5:56:08 PM

Most people would spend 40 days in jail for $800k. Why wouldn't police collude together to arrest one another? This feels like a free money glitch. I agree without accountability this provides a huge incentive to enrich your friends quite easily off the taxpayer.

by hermannj314

5/20/2026 at 8:42:07 PM

You're making a big mistake by completely failing to account for the inherent (not to mention quite large) uncertainties in this kind of situation.

A priori, it's not "40 days in jail == $800k payday", it's "some unknown number of days in jail and risk of a conviction in exchange for a chance at a payday of unknown value".

by usefulcat

5/20/2026 at 11:59:30 PM

Not to mention, the side effects extend beyond jail time. For example, your name gets plastered everywhere too.

by OGWhales

5/21/2026 at 10:37:54 AM

That still makes these kinds of settlements feel more like a lottery than fair compensation.

by account42

5/21/2026 at 2:01:36 PM

I agree, and that's part of the point. "Free money glitch" does not sound like a valid description of any lottery I've ever heard of.

There's a reason (several, probably) why you don't actually see cases of police arresting each other and then suing to enrich themselves.

by usefulcat

5/20/2026 at 8:39:31 PM

Isn’t Jan 6 a better example? The next Jan 6 will be full of those seeking eligibility into a potential slush fund

by enoint

5/20/2026 at 8:03:23 PM

This is an extremely paranoid take. Sure, $800k for 40 days is good money, but it also makes the department look terrible, and sets a precident that they have violated rights in the past. It isn't exactly a "free money glitch", since this wasn't just some automatic "$20k/day" judgment, this was damages for violating his freedom of speech.

by RIMR

5/20/2026 at 8:12:26 PM

[flagged]

by laurenciumalloy

5/20/2026 at 3:34:03 PM

The sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority. That he doesn't reflects a structural weakness in US law. In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it.

by contubernio

5/20/2026 at 4:02:41 PM

In the UK 30 people are arrested a day for social media posts online. Only about 10 percent resulting in convictions.

Police don't face criminal charges for this.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

by okeuro49

5/20/2026 at 5:35:39 PM

Note that the quoted laws also cover things that would be restraining or harassment orders in the USA.

by kimixa

5/20/2026 at 5:45:59 PM

The laws sure, they may be considered similar to US ones, the problem with EU and especially UK speech laws is the way they're interpreted and applied by the justice system, in way more draconical and abusive ways than in the US.

For example a UK comedian got arrested for posting a photo he took outside his balcony of a large congregation of citizens of brown skinned complexion from the Indian subcontinent captioned "imagine the smell".

Someone below said it well: "This is the problem with going after 'harmful communication'. It is not something that can be defined precisely, which allows government officials to choose to interpret it in whatever way they want when the enforce it."

So this type draconical speech laws is that it always leads to selective enforcement, it's never an objective two-way street affecting everyone equally, effectively turning into a means for public intimidation(tyranny). One bad joke about one group sympathetic to the government politics can be considered "hate speech" and land you in prison, while the same joke about the groups the government dislikes is just "free speech".

Similarly in Germany if you were to call Merz a corrupt traitor online you'd get visited by the police, but if you were to call a German right wing politician a nazi bitch, then it's just free speech. Hate speech enforcement always ends up a one way street coming from the status quo in power.

What political leaders miss is that the status quo can always flip as history has proven time again, and then those laws they set in place to silence their critics, will then be used against them, and then they'll cry fowl.

by joe_mamba

5/20/2026 at 6:05:13 PM

No, that didn't happen. You're confusing two different events together.

The guy who posted the photo of brown skinned people with the "imagine the smell" comment was American and lost his job. The UK wasn't involved in any way. [0]

The comedian you might be thinking of is Graham Linehan - he was arrested for inciting violence against trans people and has a long string of twitter posts quoted as possible reasons. (and had a similar post with the comment of "a photo you can smell" but with a photo of a trans rights protest, so perhaps the origin of the confusion?).

[0] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/indians-dogpile...

by kimixa

5/21/2026 at 5:34:31 PM

>Graham Linehan - he was arrested for inciting violence against trans people

What? He is a professional comedian and writer and just made a joke:

   "One post stated that if a trans woman enters a female-only space, people should "make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls""
Are we arresting everyone who makes a joke now and calling it "inciting violence" because some people don't have a sense of humour?

If that's the case then you're already living in the same universe as the people in USSR.

by joe_mamba

5/20/2026 at 5:55:31 PM

I find it ironic; George Orwell was English!

by ndesaulniers

5/20/2026 at 7:22:30 PM

UK police aren't breaking laws by arresting people for those social media posts. They don't have free speech to begin with.

by jim33442

5/20/2026 at 4:05:41 PM

The UK has different speech laws than the United States. Presumably, the actions of the police making those arrests are within the scope of UK law. Even if 90% don't result in a conviction, the police may still be operating within the scope of their authority in those arrests.

by Manuel_D

5/20/2026 at 4:13:33 PM

[flagged]

by okeuro49

5/20/2026 at 4:16:44 PM

Linehan was arrested for making this post:

> If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls

This seems like a straightforward call to violence to me. And he was released after police ascertained that he had no intent to act on these statements.

If someone made posts along the lines of "Christians are abusive, punch them" would it be surprising if CBP took them aside for further questioning?

by Manuel_D

5/20/2026 at 5:32:59 PM

The other context is also that Linehan was awaiting trial for harassment and criminal damage against a 17 year old transperson at the time. And that he ultimately didn't get charged for the tweets, and did get friends in high places to whinge at the police on his behalf

by notahacker

5/20/2026 at 5:10:59 PM

CBP, maybe not - there’s a lot more leeway for things that happen at the border, for better or worse.

But in general US law sets a high bar for claims of incitement. Your hypothetical statement would certainly be considered protected speech. That is, of course, not to say that you would not be a victim of vindictive prosecution ;)

by owenmarshall

5/20/2026 at 4:36:20 PM

yes, actually, it would be suprising if CBP took them aside for further questioning. That's not really how it's "supposed" to work.

by jvanderbot

5/20/2026 at 4:41:16 PM

Er, no, that's exactly how it's supposed to work: people who make violent threats have those threats more thoroughly assessed.

by Manuel_D

5/20/2026 at 10:35:55 PM

As a sign of how weakly I held that opinion I'll adopt yours. For the context of "incoming foreigner" your take seems correct

by jvanderbot

5/20/2026 at 10:26:17 PM

Seems like reasonable advice to women being threatened by a male intruder.

Anyway, the charges were dropped and the police issued an apology to him.

by hgappit

5/20/2026 at 4:27:29 PM

The suggestion that the actions within UK happen everywhere in Europe is just as misleading.

by krige

5/20/2026 at 4:31:05 PM

UK voted not to be a part of Europe. Well, at least the England part of the UK did.

by soperj

5/20/2026 at 4:47:20 PM

[flagged]

by meta_gunslinger

5/20/2026 at 5:18:19 PM

Speak for yourself. I'd rather them be outside Europe as well, Scotland, Wales and Ireland can stay though.

by Hikikomori

5/20/2026 at 5:28:28 PM

You are making a normative claim (what you want). Not a nominal one (what is). Completely irrelevant, the UK cannot be outside of Europe geographically because of your feelings.

by meta_gunslinger

5/20/2026 at 8:02:31 PM

At least you would need a sort of creative continental gerrymandering. ;)

by generic92034

5/20/2026 at 9:36:00 PM

Not with that kind of attitude! We have machines that can consume the Hambach Forest, and explosives powerful enough to crack landmasses. Sure, we might have to temporarily evacuate the populace near the border, so that they survive, but I'm sure we can evict England from Europe if we really put our minds to it.

by wizzwizz4

5/21/2026 at 7:55:00 AM

Easily done with a few bagger 288.

by Hikikomori

5/20/2026 at 5:45:15 PM

Excuse the whataboutism, but how many Americans are arrested for “disorderly conduct” each day? (Which from my YouTube police footage watching appears to be “being an annoying arsehole in public” [1] ie a broadly similar moral misbehaviour)

> [1] An overt act or conduct in public (or affecting the public) that disturbs the peace, safety, morals, or order (e.g., fighting, making unreasonable noise, using obscene/abusive language or gestures, obstructing traffic, creating hazardous/physically offensive conditions, refusing to disperse).

Our online laws which Americans often seem to view entirely through the lens of free speech are more about public (dis)order. It’s not ideas that are being censored, it’s personal conduct online which may be harassing, threatening, abusive or may create a breach of the peace.

by implements

5/20/2026 at 6:09:59 PM

Similar in the UK, and there has been along history of the police misusing things such as "causing an obstruction" here

by graemep

5/20/2026 at 7:05:30 PM

My understanding is that saying anything "grossly offensive" is illegal there, so it's not clear those police were blatantly overstepping their authority like in the case from the OP.

by OGWhales

5/20/2026 at 7:12:19 PM

I don't think GP is advocating that the US become more like europe by increasing the authority of police officers.

by ToValueFunfetti

5/20/2026 at 7:15:56 PM

I see a huge problem in increasing the authority of US police officers. They need to be held to much higher standards than they are now.

by rbanffy

5/20/2026 at 7:18:29 PM

you pitch this and next election cycle you will out as soft on crime which is why this can only ever go (significantly) into the opposite direction unfortunately

by bdangubic

5/20/2026 at 7:19:31 PM

We need a better system than this one.

by rbanffy

5/20/2026 at 7:29:20 PM

Right, nor was that the suggestion of my comment. I just wasn't sure they were comparing how abuse of power is handled in different legal systems so much as how freedom of speech laws are handled.

by OGWhales

5/20/2026 at 5:43:04 PM

It is similar in Germany, where you can be arrested for simply posting an insult (non-violent) to a politician. No police will face charges if you aren't convicted. And you will NEVER get a settlement.

I don't know why HN has become full of authoritarian anti-free-speech apologists. The current political divisions are turning people insane.

by pembrook

5/20/2026 at 6:00:55 PM

What are these messages? Threatening your ex-wife? Plotting to commit arson? Or saying you don't like immigrants? They all fall under this umbrella, yet the vast majority of people would agree the first two are criminal in nature.

by andrepd

5/20/2026 at 4:53:15 PM

That’s not Europe. They had a whole vote about it and everything!

by adampunk

5/20/2026 at 4:56:53 PM

Telegram creator arrested for the crimes of his users on his platform. He did not commit any of these crimes, he's being held as complicit, when every other social media giant is not being held to this standard, and its ridiculous to hold most platforms like this liable, unless it's the only thing they host.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel...

by giancarlostoro

5/20/2026 at 7:42:10 PM

> when every other social media giant is not being held to this standard, and its ridiculous to hold most platforms like this liable, unless it's the only thing they host.

My guess is there's a little bit of confusion on why this happened on your part. If the government wanted to, they can and will go after the other platforms. But you see the other platforms aren't end to end encrypted and gladly give up the data to law enforcement. If they keep giving over the data, there is no risk of prosecution.

by pixl97

5/20/2026 at 8:35:51 PM

> the other platforms aren't end to end encrypted

This is false. Discord (Voice & Video), Facebook Messenger, iMessage (to the point law enforcement has to rely on "leaked" message contents from the phones notifications), WhatsApp, Signal, Viber, and plenty others. They all have end to end encryption in some way, shape or form. There's also Twitter / X that has this as well.

by giancarlostoro

5/20/2026 at 5:00:36 PM

Europe is a continent which the UK is a part of.

by ImJamal

5/20/2026 at 5:59:03 PM

It was a joke about Brexit. A joke about a joke, if you will.

by jknoepfler

5/20/2026 at 5:55:47 PM

this is false

by tessierashpool

5/20/2026 at 6:07:43 PM

[flagged]

by newaccountman2

5/20/2026 at 6:12:00 PM

Who cares? Well the grand parent post references Europe, it is presumably a response to that.

by pipes

5/20/2026 at 6:15:25 PM

"most European legal systems" implies more than one system, they're most likely referring to the "European Union" and not the geographical continent of Europe, which the UK is not a part of anymore

by eukara

5/20/2026 at 7:04:53 PM

Also, UK law was always very different from Continental legal systems, Brexit or no Brexit. I don't think any country on the continent has common law, relying on precedent more than on statute.

by throw-the-towel

5/20/2026 at 6:41:04 PM

Generous interpretation.

by illiac786

5/20/2026 at 7:07:04 PM

My bad, I misread the thread, edited my comment to a no-op

by newaccountman2

5/20/2026 at 6:14:12 PM

The UK is famously no longer a part of the EU.

by EA-3167

5/20/2026 at 6:19:41 PM

EU membership has nothing to do with being physically located in Europe.

The UK, Switzerland, and most of the former Yugoslavian states are not in the EU. Same for Iceland.

by alistairSH

5/20/2026 at 7:05:57 PM

But one European countries legal system also doesn’t constitute “most European legal systems”.

by dkersten

5/20/2026 at 6:21:55 PM

That's completely wrong. The US legal system drew heavily from the British system, particularly any of the common law pieces (much of tort law, IIRC).

by alistairSH

5/20/2026 at 7:21:35 PM

I deleted my previous comment, but no, it's not "completely wrong".

"drew heavily" != "the same"

I went to law school and I assume you did too; I'm not sure why you would say this lol

Among other things, the fact that the US has The Bill of Rights is turning out to be important when it comes to privacy and free speech issues.

by newaccountman2

5/20/2026 at 6:53:49 PM

[flagged]

by pbhjpbhj

5/20/2026 at 7:00:34 PM

They're almost quoting the headline from The Times that they linked to, which says:

  Police make 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages
Now, I suspect many of these offensive messages are in the form of stalking or are of an explicitly sexual nature, but last time this came up I couldn't find any sign that anyone had statistics to look up for this either way.

by ben_w

5/20/2026 at 7:10:08 PM

I live in the UK and am citing an article based on Freedom of Information requests.

The UK has a problem with free speech at the moment. This is why the https://freespeechunion.org exists.

by okeuro49

5/20/2026 at 7:14:24 PM

The source is linked in his post. Did you not read the article? You should provide another source or address the data in the article instead of just asserting it's false with zero argument.

by chelical

5/21/2026 at 12:13:24 PM

It's very easy to find that this statistics is discredited, the figures aren't for "offensive messages on social media" they cover a range of crimes. If the OP is at all interested in the topic, which their comment suggests they are, then they already know this and posted in bad faith.

I'm not going to prove fire is hot when the OP is asserting the equivalent of 'actually fire isn't hot the burn is caused by socialists'.

by pbhjpbhj

5/20/2026 at 6:59:44 PM

You can't just say the statistic is false; you have to provide evidence.

by something765478

5/20/2026 at 4:55:34 PM

The UK doesn’t have free speech

by HDThoreaun

5/20/2026 at 4:57:59 PM

Those 30 aren’t arrested for just for writing “social media posts” but for possibly “harmful communication including incitement to terrorism and violence, online threats and abuse, and unwanted communication via email and other means”

Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning

Edit: and none of those cases would involve pretrial remand/jail

by helsinkiandrew

5/20/2026 at 5:02:38 PM

The vast majority of those arrested are just for mild insults, which are illegal under the censorious UK regime; not incitement to terrorism or threats.

by loeg

5/20/2026 at 5:26:52 PM

I'm pretty sure it's threat of violence. Sure, in some of the cases, the threats are mild ('i will fuck you up'), but they are often repeated, which, to be clear, should be considered harassment in any case (and the fact that it still isn't in other countries is wild. Someone keeps sending me insults, I should be able to legally retaliate to make him stop, no?)

by orwin

5/20/2026 at 5:37:11 PM

Do you live in the UK? This isn't true.

Here in the UK it is illegal to be grossly offensive online. Racism for example will have you charged under the Communications Act 2003.

by kypro

5/21/2026 at 9:39:27 AM

Have the racists tried not being racists?

by Hikikomori

5/21/2026 at 10:26:47 AM

This is obviously a dismissive comment, perhaps trying to rage bait, but part of the issue in the UK is that the definition of racism is poorly defined and what means the criteria of grossly offensive is also unclear.

For example, in the UK if you say you don't care if a hotel of illegal immigrants burnt down, you can be charged (and people have) for racism.

However we know illegal immigrants in the UK come from all over place – Albania, Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, etc. There is strictly no racial group being targeted here, nor is clear from a comment like this whether why it would be motivated out of a hate some racial group rather than just people who enter the country illegally.

Additionally even when a comment is universally agreed to be racist, it depends a lot on the context whether or not it's acceptable. You can say racist things about natives in the UK without risking being charged. Some racist jokes are also allowed so long as they're said by someone famous like Jimmy Carr, but if you're a regular person making similar racist jokes online (especially if it's against someone with power) it's quite likely you'll be charged.

If you want to make being mean illegal I'd disagree, but I think that's okay. My issue with the law as it's currently defined is how arbitrarily people are charged.

by kypro

5/20/2026 at 5:34:50 PM

Not UK but in Germany you can face criminal prosecution for insulting the chancellor,

https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/2056692341399081235

While here in the UK you can be arrested and charged for saying mean things about the royal family on private whatsapp groups,

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2023-09-07/five-former-met-p...

by kypro

5/20/2026 at 6:08:39 PM

The second one was for specifically racist messages - i.e. breaching hate speech laws - not just being mean.

I am opposed to criminalising hate speech, BUT I think its important to be clear its not just "saying mean things".

by graemep

5/20/2026 at 6:26:14 PM

> The second one was for specifically racist messages - i.e. breaching hate speech laws - not just being mean.

Can you provide a definition of "hate speech" which doesn't also apply to "mean words"?

Are you suggesting racist words are a special category of mean words or something? If so why?

by kypro

5/21/2026 at 11:24:32 AM

The law does provide a definition of hate speech that does not apply to mean words in general.

You assume we both know what is meant by "racist words" which implies it is a category that can be defined. Hate speech laws apply to more categories than race too. The wikipedia article has excerpts of and links to the relevant legislation and important cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United...

by graemep

5/20/2026 at 6:56:20 PM

Hate speech is a subcategory of mean words that needs to be legally prevented for a just society where people are equal. Racist words are only hate speech if they are uttered and used in a discriminatory manner. Since whatever group is targeted by hate speech is the only group that can be harmed by the hate speech, they should be handled differently in the eyes of the law to ensure no one group is excessively discriminated against

by mghackerlady

5/21/2026 at 10:11:40 AM

Do you feel the same about homophobia, height discrimination, fat discrimination and other discriminatory behaviours? Or do you feel these are different enough that they should be treated differently?

I think I disagree with you on this, but I think what you've said is a perfectly valid opinion and appreciate your response. I'm sorry that it appears someone has downvoted you for disagreeing. This seems to be a new trend on HN and I wish people would stop doing it.

by kypro

5/21/2026 at 11:26:06 AM

> Do you feel the same about homophobia, height discrimination, fat discrimination and other discriminatory behaviours?

The first is covered by current UK law, the other are not.

> I think I disagree with you on this, but I think what you've said is a perfectly valid opinion and appreciate your response. I'm sorry that it appears someone has downvoted you for disagreeing. This seems to be a new trend on HN and I wish people would stop doing it

Agreed. I upvote a lot of things I disagree with to counter unfair downvotes (including GP).

by graemep

5/21/2026 at 2:01:49 PM

homophobia, of course, considering I myself am bisexual and have had relations with other women.

Height and weight discrimination depends on what is considered height and weight discrimination. Saying you need to be x height or y weight to do something? That's safety. People saying they'd only date someone above x height or below y weight? I bit shallow but that's personal preference. Saying everyone above 200 pounds is lazy and deserves to die of a heart attack? Maybe then it crosses the line into actual discrimination

by mghackerlady

5/21/2026 at 3:56:32 PM

> People saying they'd only date someone above x height or below y weight?

What about height and weight affecting career prospects?

by graemep

5/21/2026 at 7:50:47 PM

Depends. Is there a reason to limit them (safety, they need to be big/small enough to do something, etc.)? if not, then it seems a bit discriminatory

by mghackerlady

5/20/2026 at 5:58:07 PM

> possibly “harmful communication including incitement to terrorism and violence, online threats and abuse, and unwanted communication via email and other means”

That's a lot of colorful language to say "words hurt".

I could point you to 30 BlueSky posts that would qualify.... posted in the last 5 minutes.

by 866-RON-0-FEZ

5/20/2026 at 5:35:09 PM

>Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning

Why do you need to arrest someone just to warn them?

by gruez

5/20/2026 at 6:01:27 PM

In the UK the police can detain you for up to 24hrs without a judge and extend it to 36hrs in some cases.

One case I read of a guy who got in trouble for a social media post, he was called into the station and they basically forced him to sign a paper otherwise he couldn't leave as they'd just keep interrogating him, where I'd imagine they threatened to get the courts involved unless he admitted he was wrong for doing it. Which is why most of them don't end up as convictions.

It's basically a very aggressive warning.

Example: https://www.aol.com/police-apologise-arresting-former-specia...

> Mr Foulkes was detained in a police cell for eight hours and questioned in relation to a potential charge of malicious communications. He said he ended up accepting an unconditional caution because he feared the investigation could affect his visits to his daughter in Australia.

Another https://www.foxnews.com/world/blogger-arrested-sharing-anti-...

> After being questioned for several hours, North was released without charge.

by dmix

5/20/2026 at 7:31:12 PM

>In the UK the police can detain you for up to 24hrs without a judge and extend it to 36hrs in some cases.

So pretty much half the time than in the US. (County of Riverside v. McLaughlin)

-In the United States, police generally cannot hold you for more than 48 hours without formal charges or a probable cause hearing before a judge.

by pixl97

5/20/2026 at 10:36:25 PM

Yep pretty similar, technically in the UK they can go up to 96hrs if the police just ask a judge for an extension, even without formal charges. So about twice as long as the US's theoretical upper limit.

My main concern is the fact they are raiding peoples houses, taking electronics, and aggressively interrogating people for hours over a tweet, then pushing them to sign a document admitting they did something wrong without charging them. While everyone pretends they just got a 'warning' and it's not a big deal that this happens to thousands of people a year.

by dmix

5/21/2026 at 10:54:37 AM

I'm pretty sure most people will "accept their fault" for whatever claims you make if you hold a gun against their head.

by account42

5/20/2026 at 6:28:09 PM

Great summary here of the kind of things people are arrested for and a bit more about the laws this refers to https://open.substack.com/pub/monkdebunks/p/are-30-people-a-...

by ljf

5/20/2026 at 9:41:53 PM

Sorry, that is far from a great summary. It quite obviously sets out to prove that there is nothing wrong. Evidence for this includes arrests have increased from 5k 12k a year but the number of convictions has gone down. That is far from reassuring. It seems to be claiming that all arrests fall into "bad" categories and have nothing to do with political thought. That is misrepresentation. Also narrowing of the argument in a attempt to refute the whole problem.

Here's one horrible example:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j718we6njo

As an aside the police body cam footage one of the officers searching his house says "lots of Brexity books'

There are countless awful examples of arrests for online comments. Here's another:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921

She posted the lyrics of her dead friends favourite rap song, and was convicted. How this even resulted in an arrest never mind court and conviction is beyond me.

by pipes

5/20/2026 at 5:23:36 PM

I mean, this is exactly what the Tennessee sheriff accused this guy of doing. The Sheriff said that a meme referencing Trump saying that people 'needed to get over' a school shooting was actually a threat against the school.

This is the problem with going after 'harmful communication'. It is not something that can be defined precisely, which allows government officials to choose to interpret it in whatever way they want when the enforce it. Obviously in these cases, the courts ruled against the official's interpretation, but that didn't stop this guy from having to spend 37 days in jail before they released him.

As they say "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride".

While it is good that the UK version doesn't send you to pretrial jail, you still have to fight the charge. You have to respond, spend time in court, hire council, and hope you can convince the courts that your post doesn't fit the definition of incitement to violence.

This has a chilling effect on free speech, even if all the cases are eventually thrown out. This is a tactic the Trump administration has used repeatedly. Go after people in court for things that are clearly not illegal. You make the person fight the charges, both in court and in the public eye, and then the cases are dismissed eventually and the administration moves on. All it does is make people factor this in when deciding how to act; is my act of protest worth having to fight this in court?

by cortesoft

5/20/2026 at 8:13:18 PM

> While it is good that the UK version doesn't send you to pretrial jail, you still have to fight the charge

The UK has much stronger protections at the start of this process though. Pre-charge detention is capped at 96 hours, charging decisions are by a professional, non-political, and non-elected governmental department who have accountability, political cases require sign-off right up the ladder, and bail is presumed in favour of release. You might get a police visit, worst case scenario an arrest and your devices seized, but it's also a case that will go nowhere because the CPS won't charge it. And you don't really get this whole "rogue sheriff" issue in the first-place, because we're not insane enough to politicize local law-enforcement.

by petesergeant

5/20/2026 at 5:05:37 PM

And harmful communication can be "Fuck Hamas" which may be hateful, but not harmful.

by ImJamal

5/20/2026 at 3:39:04 PM

"In return, Bushart will drop the federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against Sheriff Nick Weems, investigator Jason Morrow and the county for violating his constitutional rights."

Even at his age of 60 (I'm getting up there), I wouldn't have made that deal.

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates...

by Supermancho

5/20/2026 at 4:46:12 PM

Maybe he should try to get compensation through the new Anti-Weaponization Fund.

> “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

by criddell

5/20/2026 at 6:28:56 PM

I was just thinking that James Comey would also have a valid claim

by axus

5/20/2026 at 10:22:30 PM

I hope he applies (he's thought about it) just to further point out what a joke the whole thing is. Zero chance they treat his case fairly.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 4:51:28 PM

What that actually is, is a reward pool for Jan 6 participants and other people who have done illegal things to support Trump.

by crooked-v

5/20/2026 at 5:34:03 PM

The vast majority of the money from that pool will certainly go to Trump himself (and his family when he dies) in the long run.

He'll dole out small amounts of it to J6ers and other supporters in a public display of rewarding loyalty, but enriching himself is always the prime directive over every other concern and who (in his mind) has been the biggest target of "DOJ/govt weaponization?"... himself, of course.

He will take almost all of it to go along with the various other billions of dollars he has scammed away from the American people as president.

by georgemcbay

5/20/2026 at 10:23:50 PM

I think there's something in place where he's not directly eligible, but I doubt that applies to his family.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 4:18:29 PM

Under today’s administration and courts a federal lawsuit like that was going nowhere anyway, except maybe an executive order praising the Sheriff.

by LastTrain

5/20/2026 at 5:03:32 PM

"Thrown out due to Qualified [read: absolute] Immunity"

by Analemma_

5/20/2026 at 5:27:06 PM

Absolute immunity is much broader than qualified immunity; the former generally applies to government officials (judges, prosecutors, legislators, etc.), and the latter applies to law enforcement officers (e.g. police).

by nickff

5/20/2026 at 7:23:52 PM

While we'd all like to see justice, I can understand taking this offer. SPY has averaged 15% APY over the past decade, which means if you dropped the full $835k into SPY you'd have passive income of $125k per year without touching the principal. That's a never-work-again, very comfortable life in large parts of the country. He's in Lexington Tennessee where the median income is less than half of that, and those people actually have to work for their money. I'm sure some of that money is going to pay the lawyers but I'm also assuming he's not starting at $0 savings either so he really should never have to work again, especially considering at his age he'll be raking in that sweet social security and medicare.

by craftkiller

5/20/2026 at 5:40:23 PM

Potentially winning a drawn-out lawsuit against that sheriff, investigator, and county would have been a big improvement for the rights of his neighbors and friends, but I'd wager that with even half of those settlement winnings that he could do a lot more good than one lawsuit.

For example, there are surely dozens of others who are taking plea deals because they can't afford a lawyer to bring such a lawsuit, a few hundred thousand could multiply the impact tenfold.

by LeifCarrotson

5/20/2026 at 6:56:28 PM

His choice makes sense when you consider that the Supreme Court under Trump has essentially gutted Bivens. Our legal system is currently very broken sadly requiring strategic choices versus just (as in justice) choices. It's not clear the Supremes wouldn't contort to just gut 1983 as well (especially with their judicially created qualified immunity nonsense).

https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/supreme-court-ice-r...

by _DeadFred_

5/20/2026 at 3:44:21 PM

In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior. The long-running US trend of the inverse (additional legal protections for positions of authority) is incredibly destructive. This is a moral and values judgment, yes, but it's not just that -- it communicates to the population at large that they should find their own solutions rather than using the established system.

More succinctly, down this path lie guillotines.

by Arubis

5/20/2026 at 4:09:41 PM

One of the worst examples in the US is the consequence asymmetry for speech. Law enforcement and federal agents can lie as much as they like with impunity when dealing with citizens, but (a) it's a federal crime to lie to a federal officer (18 US Code § 1001, up to 8 years imprisonment), and (b) truly, anything you say to law enforcement when under any suspicion can and will be used against you in a court of law, even the act of pleading the 5th, regardless of (or perhaps especially because of) your innocence. "I want a lawyer", repeated ad-nauseam, is always the least harmful response, regardless of context[0].

Also, the body of federal law and regulations is so vast that smart people estimate the average person unknowingly breaks roughly 3 federal criminal laws per day[1], giving the federal government the legal ability to arbitrarily arrest anyone they want.

[0] James Duane, You have the right to remain innocent, 2016

[1] Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, 2011.

by TimTheTinker

5/20/2026 at 5:50:11 PM

> legal ability to arbitrarily arrest anyone they want.

As the famous Russian saying goes, "Был бы человек, а статья найдется" (Show me the man, and I will show you the crime.)

by hirvi74

5/20/2026 at 10:25:13 PM

Absurdities in US case law:

1. You do not assert the right to remain silent - you must state verbally that you are doing so. Otherwise the prosecution can describe your communication as "refused to cooperate with or answer questions from law enforcement" which is a "negative" finding, whereas the right to remain silent is at least meant to be interpreted neutrally.

2. Beware anything beyond the simplest statement: "Yo, I want a lawyer dawg" can be successfully argued in the (state) Supreme Court as "Defendant asked for a canine attorney. Law enforcement were unable to find one, but had fulfilled their obligation to attempt to provide counsel for the defendant. Therefore, any statements he made after his were done knowing he had no counsel and were as a result admissible."

by FireBeyond

5/20/2026 at 10:24:47 PM

The alternative extreme is likewise unworkable.

"OK, before we begin this meeting of the capas of our totally legitimate, not at all criminal business... Is anyone here an undercover officer of the law?"

"Shucks, you got me. I'm FBI."

However, your implied extreme isn't accurate. Lying to suspects can in some cases result in entrapment charges (although it is historically more likely for suspects with power and public office). Etc.

Yes, the current system is injust. No, it's not as bad as you claim.

by IAmBroom

5/20/2026 at 10:31:18 PM

A reasonable exception can be made for undercover work without permitting most of the instances where police lie to people.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 5:00:04 PM

This distinction doesn't make sense. A police officer's job is to lie to you. Are we expecting jailtime for doing their job?

by sidewndr46

5/20/2026 at 5:20:28 PM

Then it shouldn't be a crime to lie to the officer.

I genuinely don't think certain charges relating to preserving one's freedom should even be a crime in of it self.

Unless you endanger others in an extreme manner, things like "resisting arrest", running from police, or attempting to escape prison shouldn't be charges within themselves.

People love the phrase "you can beat the rap, not the ride", but that essentially gives broad power to harass and damage one's life without recourse sans extremely expensive legal routes. In this example, a man lost his freedom for 37 days over a bogus charge and was paid by the taxpayers to essentially shut up.

by MSFT_Edging

5/20/2026 at 7:54:17 PM

It's not. You might be thinking of perjury, which is lying under oath.

by breezybottom

5/20/2026 at 10:27:38 PM

[flagged]

by FireBeyond

5/20/2026 at 10:25:48 PM

I believe in certain Scandinavian or northern European countries, there is no crime or additional punishmented meted out for attempting to or escaping from prison, as "the desire to be free is inherently human". You will be looked for, and retrieved and returned, to be sure, but you won't then be charged with escaping from custody.

by FireBeyond

5/21/2026 at 3:11:42 PM

I learned about that years ago and really internalized it.

by MSFT_Edging

5/20/2026 at 5:36:36 PM

> A police officer's job is to lie to you

Federal statute should categorize that as a fireable offense and an intentional tort incurring punitive damages at minimum, and any subsequent proceedings (after the lie) as inadmissible evidence.

If that makes investigation more difficult, then so be it. For too long, law enforcement and federal investigators have relied on inappropriate and immoral techniques to obtain conviction. Mass surveillance, warrantless wiretapping, manipulating suspects -- what happened to old-school investigation that was after truth via smart observation and deduction? There's a reason people love watching Poirot: it's a (admittedly stylized) snapshot of real justice in progress.

Their expected standard of behavior should be higher than that of citizens.

by TimTheTinker

5/20/2026 at 10:33:54 PM

> A police officer's job is to lie to you.

No it isn't. Their job is to enforce the law. The only time it's reasonable for an officer to lie is when they're engaged in authorized undercover operations.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 6:20:47 PM

How is it their job to lie to me?

by wat10000

5/20/2026 at 7:22:04 PM

When trying to obtain evidence, investigators or regular officers will make frequent recourse to lies and intimidation to get you to admit to things that you may or may not have done. For example, "If you don't tell us where you were that day, CPS will take your kids away" or "Look, if you just admit what you did, we can let you go" or "We've already detained your wife/brother/mother/father and they've fessed up; just yadayada."

by mjh2539

5/20/2026 at 7:45:08 PM

I'm well aware of when they will lie, but it's a choice, not an inherent part of the job.

by wat10000

5/20/2026 at 9:54:19 PM

There is no law prohibiting a police department from requiring their officers to lie to you. It absolutely can be part of the job.

by sidewndr46

5/20/2026 at 10:03:13 PM

The claim was not that it can be part of the job. The claim was “A police officer's job is to lie to you.”

by wat10000

5/21/2026 at 2:22:30 AM

Police are trained to lie to you in the course of investigation so “they could choose not to do their job (by conducting an investigation)” doesn’t refute the notion that it’s their job to lie to you, it affirms it. It’s like saying “it’s not cops’ job to lie to you, some of them are dogs whose entire job is sniffing out cocaine with their extraordinary sense of smell”

by jrflowers

5/21/2026 at 2:25:02 PM

It's like saying it's a pilot's job to wear a uniform. The uniform may be required by their employer, but it's not the job. A law banning pilots from wearing uniforms would not result in jail time for doing their job.

by wat10000

5/20/2026 at 3:54:07 PM

The death penalty should be reserved for people who violate a position of public trust and authority.

by lokar

5/20/2026 at 4:39:07 PM

Yeah that would never be weaponized with trumped-up charges against political opponents.

by helterskelter

5/20/2026 at 5:36:12 PM

But the same thing could happen right now with the existing death penalty -- has that been a trend in American politics?

by Teever

5/20/2026 at 11:09:13 PM

There are some troubling signs that things are headed in that direction (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/11/20/sediti...)

The greater problem is that many innocent people have already been and certainly will be murdered because of the death penalty. That should be totally unacceptable.

by autoexec

5/21/2026 at 12:38:57 AM

POTUS has been throwing around the "treason" label a lot this term, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he started pushing for executions of his political opponents or reporters he doesn't like.

by helterskelter

5/20/2026 at 4:15:30 PM

You want to give the government the legal ability to threaten the life of the entire civil service, judiciary, and all elected representatives.

I’m sure that would never be abused.

by cgriswald

5/20/2026 at 4:30:10 PM

The government already has that, since currently anyone (except the King) can get the death penalty.

by actionfromafar

5/20/2026 at 6:08:22 PM

I am opposed to the death penalty in all cases, for a variety of reasons.

However, currently the court has to at least find that a murder has occurred or in some cases child rape (sometimes with conditions like a second offense). These are categorically different offenses that are unlikely to occur during the normal course of a public servants job, except perhaps if police kill someone there may be a question whether it was murder.

If “violation of trust” is given the death penalty than any normal act in the course of a public servant’s service history could potentially be used to hang him by questioning the legitimacy of the act.

by cgriswald

5/21/2026 at 9:22:08 AM

For the record, I am also against the death penalty. I just thought it would be a funny Venn diagram to keep it for the existing crimes, but only if the perpetrator is also a public servant. But better abolish it completely.

by actionfromafar

5/20/2026 at 10:36:51 PM

The death penalty should just be abolished. Where it exists there will always be innocent people who are murdered by the state.

by autoexec

5/20/2026 at 5:06:24 PM

Because it is irreversible, the death penalty should be reserved for cases in which there is no possibility of mistake. Which, given the fallibility of humans, is never.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 6:49:25 PM

I think when you admit on public television and public comms that you will commit war crimes and then you do commit war crimes we should have a notable exception - there's no possibility Pete Hegeseth didn't know exactly what, how, and when his war crimes were going to be perpetuated.

by hilariously

5/20/2026 at 7:14:53 PM

The death penalty was supposed to be for exceptional circumstances now, and look where we are. This country has put innocent people to death.

If you make exceptions, you will make more exceptions, and you are eventually guaranteed to put an innocent person to death due to the law of large numbers. A justice system must have a way to reverse mistakes to deliver justice properly, period.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 11:02:03 PM

Bad people doing bad things doesn't invalidate good people doing the right thing. If we kill innocent people that is bad, and we should require an incredibly high bar for this type of thing.

It becomes a slipper slope argument - well if we allow people to be jailed then inncocent people will be jailed and that's due to the law of large numbers, and there's no way to reverse our incredibly horrible prison system as it stands.

So now its my job to build our restorative justice system or... take out a few more nazis.

by hilariously

5/20/2026 at 11:21:49 PM

Theres's no slippery slope. You can reverse sending the wrong person to jail. You release them.

> If we kill innocent people that is bad, and we should require an incredibly high bar for this type of thing.

Yeah, the bar should be "only when humans reach infallibility" and then we won't kill any innocent people.

Why would you want a justice system that kills innocent people (and spends more money in the process) when it is entirely avoidable?

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 7:00:13 PM

I don’t see how the death penalty adds anything here. There are already significant consequences. People who commit such crimes either do not expect to face the consequences or don’t consider the consequences at all.

by cgriswald

5/20/2026 at 10:55:22 PM

Sure, and that might as well be said for any punishment at all for them. When you take mass human life you should not expect to stick around for your cronies to bust you out of jail in 10 years when the political winds have shifted for the worse again.

by hilariously

5/20/2026 at 4:07:53 PM

Hot take, but I feel like no humans should be killed as a punishment... But I'm also probably too European to understand the true value of death penalty.

by embedding-shape

5/20/2026 at 4:42:19 PM

I'm only against the death penalty for the simple fact that courts have convicted innocent people. Sometimes, that conviction happens when the court actively blocks exonerating evidence.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/284/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/319/

by Sohcahtoa82

5/20/2026 at 5:09:22 PM

Anybody who is wrongfully executed was basically guaranteed to spend their entire life in prison. Death row inmates get dramatically more access to legal aid than anybody else rotting in a cell, so if they couldn't win their appeal, the guy doing life isn't, either.

Generally, I'm against incarceration for that reason. I think the relatively muted violence of it is too easy to stomach for the public, which leads to people letting the system get sloppy. For public and infamous crimes, however, where the question is not "what act took place", but rather "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"-type cases, I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment being on the table. We trust public officials with significant authority, and abuse of that authority is utterly irredeemable. Frankly, for elected officials I'd support a "two-thirds vote and you hang" policy. If you want power, and seek out power, you have an immense responsibility to live up to your constituent's expectations.

by OkayPhysicist

5/20/2026 at 5:31:46 PM

That isn’t true. There have been death row inmates exonerated, both before and after their execution.

The ones that were executed would have been alive for the exoneration if we they had been given life in prison instead.

by cortesoft

5/20/2026 at 5:15:17 PM

> "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"

I guess that last part is the perspective I'd change, for a more compassionate world. I'd much rather ask "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what made the person commit that crime, and how can we help them not do that in the future again?".

by embedding-shape

5/20/2026 at 5:28:12 PM

For the kinds of "public and infamous" crimes I'm talking about, the answer is almost always greed, either for fortune, power, or fame. There's no need to ask "Why did Nestle decide to kill a bunch of African children by giving away just enough formula stop mothers from being able to breastfeed?" or "Why did tobacco companies stand in front of congress and lie through their teeth about how non-addictive nicotine is?" or "Why did Nixon decide to pursue the war on drugs in order to disproportionately target his political opponents and minorities?". The answer is that in order to end up in the C-suite or board of directors of a megacorp, or the White House, you have to be one of the most madly greedy, power-lusting parasites in the world.

My compassion for my fellow man is why I suggest we wait for them to commit a crime before punishing such behavior.

by OkayPhysicist

5/20/2026 at 6:51:52 PM

> you have to be one of the most madly greedy, power-lusting parasites in the world.

Yes, which is why we need to help these people. They clearly lost all their humanity and compassion, at one point we should care about the betterment of humanity as a whole, and put a limit to how these sort of people can act and do, the current situation is not tenable, and they should be classified as the sick people they are, rather than idolized.

by embedding-shape

5/20/2026 at 5:58:21 PM

So why aren't you against imprisonment for the simple fact that courts have imprisoned innocent people? We have to accept a certain amount of false positives in all things.

by eudamoniac

5/20/2026 at 6:38:46 PM

The death penalty can't be undone, a prisoner can always be released. Sure, they'll never get that time back, but at least they can live.

by Sohcahtoa82

5/20/2026 at 5:15:33 PM

If someone kills a family member and the court gives them 6 years and a parole officer, the remaining family will and has taken justice into their own hands and that has a much higher blast radius and margin of error than executing a guy convicted of the murder in a court of law and sat on death row making appeals for 10-15 years.

If dylan roof was allowed to live his full natural life in jail, there would be race riots in the US by the end of the press conference.

by boredumb

5/20/2026 at 7:48:15 PM

> If someone kills a family member and the court gives them 6 years and a parole officer, the remaining family will and has taken justice into their own hands and that has a much higher blast radius and margin of error than executing a guy convicted of the murder in a court of law and sat on death row making appeals for 10-15 years.

There's a huge gap between "6 years and a parole officer" and the death penalty.

> If dylan roof was allowed to live his full natural life in jail, there would be race riots in the US by the end of the press conference.

This is both offensive and untrue. Black Americans oppose the death penalty at much higher rates than white Americans and in fact, several survivors and victims' family members have come out against his execution.

by jgwil2

5/20/2026 at 5:18:22 PM

Cool, maybe rather than aiming to punish people, aim to rehabilitate them, and they don't need to spend their full natural life in jail. And if they're "unsalvageable" like many would claim, we (maybe not you, in the US, I dunno) have hospitals for those that are ill.

by embedding-shape

5/20/2026 at 6:17:27 PM

Cool, but I'm not sure the victims and the public are always thrilled when they see murderers get off by reason of insanity, despite it being a life sentence and essentially a medically induced solitary mental confinement. People were furious about Yates and Bobbitt despite not even living within a 1000 mile radius because they felt it was a miscarriage of justice and are aware that rehabilitating people who drowned their own children is naive at best or yet another grift to siphon public money into their own pet projects and feign moral superiority.

by boredumb

5/20/2026 at 8:35:13 PM

Are they thrilled when innocent people are executed? Because you can't have death penalty without that part.

by int_19h

5/20/2026 at 6:00:35 PM

We also have state operated forensic psychiatric facilities for criminals deemed "unsalvageable." Many are not the same facilities that civilians seeking mental health would attend. Though, some facilities house both on separate units.

While prisons in the USA are often more punitive and dangerous than a forensic psychiatric facility, that does mean forensic psychiatric facilities are not their own form of Hell rife with their own problems. Essentially, autonomy, dignity, and human rights are stripped from individuals in both facilities -- you do not want to go to either.

by hirvi74

5/20/2026 at 4:48:59 PM

It's a uniquely-American perspective: "Our government can't do anything right. But hey, I still trust it to kill the right people."

by CamperBob2

5/20/2026 at 5:18:02 PM

so true, citizens of the dozens of other countries with the death penalty believe their governments to be infallible

by 1234letshaveatw

5/20/2026 at 4:31:17 PM

[dead]

by s5300

5/20/2026 at 4:13:11 PM

> In a sane, fair, and (crucially) long-term stable system, persons given privilege and authority over others are subject to a higher standard for their own behavior.

The US military is subject to a higher standard, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Penalties for US service members breaking the law or codes of conduct are much higher and much more severe than civilians. The US military makes routine example of law breakers and misconduct.

The US police force, by contrast, is civilian. They are not licensed, commissioned, or subject to additional standards. Certainly not nationwide standards that would bar police removed from their post from finding similar work elsewhere.

We should pay our police officers more, make them undergo nationally standardized training and licensing, and then hold them to a higher standard if and when they break the law.

Police court-martial.

by echelon

5/20/2026 at 6:18:13 PM

I agree with most of that, but are cops around you paid low enough to get anything in exchange for giving higher wages? Ive lived in many poor places across the US and the cops are often among the highest paid workers in the area already despite currently needing a jokes worth of training and knowledge. The wages ive seen cops around me getting seemed to already be in the top 50% of skilled proffessionals with college degrees.

by AngryData

5/20/2026 at 4:14:31 PM

> Penalties for US service members breaking the law or codes of conduct are much higher and much more severe than civilians. The US military makes routine example of law breakers and misconduct

Honest question, is this currently true?

by JumpCrisscross

5/20/2026 at 3:37:56 PM

In the US we grant immunity to the law in proportion to power. Rather seems it should be the opposite if you ask me.

by idle_zealot

5/20/2026 at 3:40:38 PM

> In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it.

I wouldn't say in most. In many they wouldn't

by p0w3n3d

5/20/2026 at 3:36:51 PM

It's not a structural weakness, it's an intentional feature. Our legislature specifically and intentionally made it impossible for citizens (or anyone) to hold police responsible for anything.

by vitally3643

5/20/2026 at 4:05:27 PM

Not the legislature: the Supreme Court. Qualified Immunity was created out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court back in the 1960's when a police officer arrested- and then a judge convicted- a group of black and white Episcopal priests for "making a disturbance of the peace"- that is, having black and white people out in public together as equals. This was Pierson v. Ray, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967.

The current implementation of it- where you need to have "clearly establish" a Constitutional right with a prior case in this region- is based on Pearson v. Callahan from 2009, and it takes a terrible Supreme Court precedent and makes it even worse. This has created the patchwork "no case in the circuit has clearly established that a police officer must not make a warrantless search on a Tuesday in May" sort of quibbling.

The work of legislatures has been to roll back qualified immunity. Colorado, New Mexico, and California have removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level. LEO's can still claim qualified immunity for suits under federal law, but they cannot for some suits brought under state law or the state constitution in those states.

The Supreme Court has also, at the same time they've made it harder to hold police to account, made it harder to hold politicians to account, gutting bribery laws and expanding "free speech" to include paying politicians. And the recent idea that a President can't be prosecuted for any "official acts" is also nonsense created by the Supreme Court. This isn't Congress fault, there were laws that prevented it. The Supreme Court just decided that they didn't want to enforce those laws.

The Supreme Court at the root of a lot of the dysfunction in American politics, and somehow still has more respect than they deserve.

by mandevil

5/20/2026 at 5:04:28 PM

Isn't it way more narrow than what you're saying? For New Mexico's cases it only applies to civil rights violations. If the police officer just for example kills someone in the line of duty, he still has qualified immunity

by sidewndr46

5/20/2026 at 7:08:02 PM

Civil Rights law is how these sorts of things are enforced by individuals who were harmed, in your example a Law Enforcement Officer violated someone's civil rights by killing them in the line of duty and their family can sue for violation of the deceased's civil right to life. Qualified Immunity short-circuits that entire process for the individual LEO's (it does not protect the organization, just individual officers).

If the prosecutor thinks they can get a criminal conviction for murder (or whatever) that is a totally separate process that is between the People (whom the prosecutor represents) and the defendant (in this case, the LEO who killed the guy in the line of duty). Qualified Immunity never applied to criminal cases(1). But criminal cases will not provide any money or anything like that to the victim (or their family)- that comes from civil suits alleging that the LEO violated someone's civil rights. And that is what removing Qualified Immunity encourages, individuals who were harmed can sue individual officers and receive payments from those individual officers (Colorado's police reform bill holds individual officers responsible with their own money up to certain limits where the organization becomes responsible; I don't know about other states).

1: Which are rare against LEO's because prosecutor's don't want to anger the LEO's that they work with regularly. This is why civil suits are generally the main avenue for people to get justice from over-zealous LEO's.

by mandevil

5/20/2026 at 9:53:37 PM

How can I have a civil right to life? I'm aware I have a civil right to things like voting, a jury trial (for certain charges), legal representation. Those are all things the civic institutions provide to me. Civic institutions don't provide me life.

by sidewndr46

5/20/2026 at 10:09:12 PM

The US Constitution is an amazing document, I suggest you read it if you are an American. It's pretty short and has a lot of stuff that is useful to know, even if you aren't a lawyer (I am not). Because I am not a lawyer, I didn't word it exactly correctly.

The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution says, in its entirety:

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

The key in this context is "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law." If a government agent takes that from you without due process that is a civil right of yours being abridged, at least in the US. I can't speak for other countries.

by mandevil

5/21/2026 at 1:21:00 AM

Those are constitutional rights, by definition.

by sidewndr46

5/21/2026 at 7:43:54 AM

You meant what? The civil rights you identified were constitutional rights.

by pseudalopex

5/21/2026 at 11:52:43 AM

From my perspective civil rights are the constitutional rights that the government can uniquely deprive you of. For example, a jury trial. No one else can try you, so only the government can deprive you of that right. It's fairly limited in practice anyways, but it is true.

The right to life, etc. anyone can deprive you of.

by sidewndr46

5/20/2026 at 4:20:13 PM

What's your source for:

> California [has] removed qualified immunity for their law enforcement officers at the state level.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#State_law, it's Connecticut, not California, as the third state which limited qualified immunity.

by throwworhtthrow

5/20/2026 at 4:25:37 PM

California SB 2, signed by Gavin Newsome in 2021, removed Qualified Immunity as a defense for all lawsuits brought under the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act.

I'm not a lawyer, and I have never lived in California so I don't know how much that covers. The QI removal I knew best was Colorado (CO's law also made individual LEO's have to pay with their own money, up to certain limits), and was doing some googling which listed California and New Mexico.

by mandevil

5/20/2026 at 3:58:29 PM

This is a misunderstanding. In most cases you cannot sue the federal and state governments, with very important exceptions, but you can definitely sue the police. Government officials, such as the police, usually only have _qualified_ immunity rather than absolute or sovereign immunity, and even then only when they were acting in good faith and are not being accused of violating someone’s constitutional rights.

The real problem right now is how the courts determine if an official was acting in good faith. Right now they are assumed to have acted in good faith unless it has already been “clearly established” that what they did was illegal. This means that the official can argue that they didn’t know that their actions were illegal because no prior case ever dealt with that exact fact pattern. This works far too often and has let a lot of very guilty police get away with their crimes. Still, some police officers _are_ held to account, so it is not actually impossible.

by db48x

5/20/2026 at 4:10:31 PM

Which has led to police officers using "the punishment I received is far in excess of the last time an officer of this department was punished for habitually arresting and raping minors!" as a defense, and it works.

by petsfed

5/20/2026 at 3:39:55 PM

It is a weakness, but yes, an intentional one. Why a weakness? It leads to structural instability.

by idle_zealot

5/20/2026 at 4:06:54 PM

The Sheriff absolutely should face some consequences, at least to his career. The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back. It's taxpayer money, they will just underfund a good thing, raise taxes, or print debt to pay it if there's a shortfall.

It'd be an interesting thing to see garnishing of wages, deductions from pension funds, or loss of some kind of bonus system to help balance the scales.

by maerF0x0

5/20/2026 at 5:15:52 PM

Seems to me that law enforcement officers should be required to carry liability insurance that they personally pay for. Have a lot of settlements / claims? Your insurance rate goes up. That happens enough and now it's not economically feasible to hold the job

by etskinner

5/20/2026 at 6:26:34 PM

It is better than nothing but it is also adding another middleman between civilians and justice with its primary motivation as personal profit above anything else.

If supressing cases or throwing big money lawyers against legitimate lawsuits is cheaper, they will do it. If teaching cops to hide their corruption is easier than rooting out all the corrupt individuals to raise rates, thats what they will do.

by AngryData

5/20/2026 at 5:17:36 PM

Not just law enforcement, all civil servants should.

I had to spend money to sue the local unemployment office because a bureaucrat there illegally cut off my unemployment payments. They lost and had to pay me back in arrears but that money came from the taxpayers(so me and you) and that asshole who did that is still working there just fine collection golden handcuff paychecks and a gold plated pension when she retires.

All civil servants need a form of direct accountability with consequences for their mistakes at work, especially when malicious and repeated. Currently they're untouchable and the taxpayer foots the bill for their mistakes with no repercussion.

by joe_mamba

5/20/2026 at 5:02:48 PM

I highly doubt Tennessee is going to start printing USD.

by sidewndr46

5/20/2026 at 5:08:19 PM

States and municipalities can issue bonds, which is what I presume they meant given a charitable interpretation.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 6:30:03 PM

Merely facing some consequences to his career would be far too weak. This dude knowingly imprisoned somebody for over a month. The minimum consequence should be, say, two days in jail for every day this guy spent locked up. Better would be whatever punishment we'd levy against any common criminal who kidnapped someone for 37 days. Ideally we'd be even harsher than that, due to the abuse of authority involved.

This wasn't some honest mistake. This was a deliberate violation of a citizen's civil rights. This was a crime, and the only reason it's treated so lightly is because the criminal is an officer of the law.

But who am I kidding, even him losing a single day's pay would be a victory here. Nothing will actually happen to him.

by wat10000

5/20/2026 at 4:22:12 PM

> The money paid to Bushart ultimately is no skin off the government's back.

The suit was filed against Perry County, TN, not the state or federal government. A quick google says that its budget is $33M, so in fact this is a very impactful settlement for the county.

by ajross

5/20/2026 at 4:55:08 PM

Their insurance rates will go up. Its not like they are cutting a check from their county budget...

by briffle

5/20/2026 at 4:38:05 PM

*County taxpayers. The people who actually work for the country won't face any consequences.

by suzzer99

5/20/2026 at 6:43:24 PM

Well, its not like thats going to happen when people settle out of court. Not sure if his first amendment rights have been vindicated really...

Today, the parties announced in a joint statement that Larry will receive $835,000 in exchange for dismissing his complaint.

“I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” said Larry.

by calgoo

5/20/2026 at 5:04:09 PM

i don't know if you've seen how american law is faring; the supreme court recently legalized racism as long as it's partisan.

by Kapura

5/20/2026 at 4:36:21 PM

In the US, we just pay out a lot of taxpayer money to the victim, and the authority abuser gets some time off with pay.

by suzzer99

5/20/2026 at 6:10:13 PM

The same Europe where people who criticize the rapist of their child does more time for causing offense than the rapist did for the actual rape? THAT Europe?

by AmVess

5/20/2026 at 3:43:24 PM

At the very least, taxpayers should be looking to make him personally responsible for the $835,000.

by kgwxd

5/20/2026 at 3:48:10 PM

Eh, in the UK this is only true for the most absolutely serious cases where someone has been killed or seriously injured. Wrongful arrest doesn't. It may face career risks.

Ultimately the US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police" that would be able to ban people from being law enforcement officers or at least require e.g. retraining or restriction of duties, without leaving it up to frankly corrupt local authorities.

Double-edged sword though when the Feds get captured by the Party, though.

by pjc50

5/20/2026 at 4:04:45 PM

> US lacks some sort of Federal "inspectorate of police"

I don't think this is true, or at least it's not entirely true.

Various states and law enforcement agencies have an office of the inspector general which at least should provide some oversight. We also have the courts and individual officers and agencies can be sued in the court of law which also provides a means of oversight. You seem to be suggesting that everything is corrupt, corrupt local authorities, corrupt feds captured by the party. I think that level of perceived corruption is not reflected in operational reality.

Some states or local police organizations do in fact look at past police records for applicants. There's a bit of variation here, but it's probably a bit better organized than, say the EU where outside of other bureaucratic hurdles I don't believe there is any real way to stop some German citizen who should be banned from being a police officer from moving to Estonia and being a police officer. Though perhaps I'm wrong and there is an EU-wide database that all countries and their police forces use?

I know the UK isn't in the EU, but I just bring that up as I think it may be a bit closer of an example.

by ericmay

5/20/2026 at 8:55:33 PM

Piscis primum a capite foetet

by tialaramex

5/20/2026 at 9:34:24 PM

Catchy, I suppose, but ultimately without much meaning.

by ericmay

5/20/2026 at 10:20:58 PM

Huh? It's a widely recognised proverb, you might as well say that "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander" is without much meaning. You could insist it's wrong if you like, or that it somehow doesn't apply but meaning is its whole thing.

by tialaramex

5/20/2026 at 10:27:26 PM

I would say that goose phrase is also without much meaning. It's just a phrase. Like ok, you said a phrase? So what?

Let's bring up the Iran war - you could say a few things about how it's wrong or something and I can just reply de oppresso liber.

Ok? That's not a discussion, it's a drive-by, feel good zinger.

by ericmay

5/20/2026 at 11:07:02 PM

You claim that "de oppresso liber" doesn't mean anything? Seems to me that it's meaning was pretty clear. Actually in this context I'd say there are two distinct meanings, both the "Regime change" bullshit from the start of this war and boots on the ground for a US combat unit. Seems like a poor comeback to any "War is bad" rhetoric because in my experience all such rhetoric sort of builds in a just cause assumption and that's really all you'd be going for with this phrase.

But then you say it's not a discussion, nobody said anything about it being a discussion.

by tialaramex

5/21/2026 at 1:49:26 AM

That’s how the cookie crumbles

by ericmay

5/20/2026 at 4:14:51 PM

Yeah. Did any meaningful consequences befall anyone for the Horizon IT scandal?

by anonymars

5/20/2026 at 9:02:18 PM

On 23 February 2024, King Charles III revoked Vennells' CBE

So, not very much, and I suppose you can argue about whether it's meaningful, but it is a consequence.

by tialaramex

5/20/2026 at 5:16:58 PM

>In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it.

No they won't face anything like that. Police lawyers will claim they were just enforcing hate speech laws to protect the country's leadership from far right supremacists and will be let go scuff free. You also won't get anything remotely close to $835,000 from the state for being falsely imprisoned. You're lucky to get maybe 5000 Euros for your trouble.

In Germany for instance the politicians are protected by dedicated law against negative comments from the public. You can't even call them fat or they send the police after you. Sure, you won't get locked up for the fat comment, but the point of the police going after people with mean comments is only intimidation, to get people to self censor and stop criticizing the leadership and accept the propaganda like obedient cattle.

Americans with their 1st, 2nd and Nth amendments, have an overly rosy view of the EU justice system which is far more lenient to law enforcement abuse of power and speech crackdowns. It's why you easily saw Americans attacking and throwing rocks at masked ICE officers in the US, and why Germans would never dare touch a law enforcement officer in their country, because the courts would never tolerate public attack on law enforcement and challenging the state authority.

by joe_mamba

5/20/2026 at 4:28:53 PM

[dead]

by s5300

5/20/2026 at 4:13:50 PM

> sheriff that arrested him should face criminal charges for misuse of authority

Eh, just fire him and garnish a portion of his future wages to pay back the cost to the city.

> In most European legal systems a law enforcement officer overstepping his legal authority would face criminal charges for it

Do you have a recent example?

by JumpCrisscross

5/20/2026 at 4:09:23 PM

Giving some of the taxpayers' money back as a fine is no victory.

Victory would be if the Sheriff and others involved actually went to jail.

Until that happens, expect other power-trippers to keep doing such things. After all, what do they have to lose? Not a penny! Since the fine comes out of the pool of money that taxpayers collected!

by mlmonkey

5/20/2026 at 4:54:51 PM

I have tremendous respect for FIRE's commitment to defending free speech equally whether attacked from the left or the right.

by mrandish