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242 points LinuxBender | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.403s | source
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plagiarist ◴[] No.42168920[source]
It should really not be possible for a single anonymous phone call to dispatch a heavily armed response team to break down someone's door.

Aside from that, people who do so are despicable. 20 years is a light sentence. Taking money to put people in situations that could easily become deadly.

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bigiain ◴[] No.42169045[source]
It wouldn't be a problem, if the "heavily armed response team" was properly held to account when they killed innocent people.

Cops kill people on the basis of ludicrous anonymous phone call because they know they'll get away with it when it turns out to be false.

And they like it that way.

There needs to be a few very public cases of entire SWAT teams getting 20 year sentences.

ACAB

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Loughla ◴[] No.42169199[source]
While the acab is kind of rough, I'm absolutely with you on police accountability.

If there was open and honest accountability, I don't think people would have as many problems with the police.

The issue is that police operate in extremely high pressure novel situations all the time. Training only goes so far. After that, you're investigating mistakes versus violent intent.

I'm not sure that's easy to do, and I'm certain the public would never accept the finding that a police officer made an honest mistake, and won't be punished, but somebody got killed.

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1. jonp888 ◴[] No.42172790[source]
> Training only goes so far

Compared to other countries American cops aren't really trained at all.

In Germany the training period for a police officer is 2 to 3 years, in the US it's usually less then 6 months.

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2. Aloisius ◴[] No.42175775[source]
It's not quite that bad.

That US 6 month number excludes field training (typically 1 year) whereas the 2-3 year German number includes it (6 months I believe).

This largely stems from a difference in how academies work. In many countries, field training is required to graduate. In the US, field training is required after you graduate in order to get a permanent job. This skews the total training time numbers.

That said, American police are still undertrained by comparison.