[javajosh]

An arrest of the sort we are talking about is a form of extra-judicial punishment that should be forbidden by any just system of law. In fact, I am constantly surprised at the things that are allowed, and even encouraged, in our judicial system, and how many individuals apparently believe the system is fine the way it is. Saying that we should continue to allow people to be fired for an arrest is to further support this extra-judicial punishment. It gives individual police officers the power to destroy any individuals life with which they come into contact, without even firing a shot. This power is far too great for anyone to wield, and our system was designed to prevent this kind of power, and yet here we are, with people like you arguing in it's favor.

[giancarlostoro]

It is entirely against the premise of "innocent until proven guilty" we treat suspects like criminals, I get it, you want them to "crack" but what in the world! If someone has no criminal record, please treat them as if they may not have one after you question them, don't ruin their lives.

[isoskeles]

This a misunderstanding of what I am saying. I don't think the existing system is fine.

Fix the judicial system itself, don't offload that responsibility onto businesses. If arresting a person is so easy as to be able to ruin their life (and I agree that it is), there should be a higher bar to arresting people than < says here his phone was near the scene of the crime >.

If a system is conceived in which a business is able to fire and quickly rehire someone who was wronged by the police, I am supportive of that. But some general idea of, "Well let's just make it illegal for businesses to do that!" is beyond absurd. It's papering over a problem caused by another problem. Businesses are not responsible for fixing a problem caused by the police. This would be as absurd as a business suing the government for failing to prevent a valuable employee from being murdered.

[javajosh]

Yes, I agree that the justice system itself is the root cause. However, I think it's also okay to "paper over the problem", and to support that I would directly appeal to the jury-trial system. The government is taking people away from work to perform a government service, and they (rightly) forbid business from firing someone during that time. In the same way, arresting someone also conscripts a person, against their will, to do government service. The service, in this case, is very similar to jury service in that the arrestee's role is to help justice be done by the government. The only difference is that a juror is picked by a computer (and then a lawyer) but an arrestee is picked by a cop.