> The cop, Lamar Roman, wasn’t trying to pull over a suspected criminal. He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey, which he had worked a security detail shift on a few weeks prior to pulling her over. After meeting the woman, catcalling her and harassing her for her full name and Instagram details, the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID, a Florida Department of Motor Vehicles database for law enforcement. He then put her license plate details on a surveillance “hotlist,” meaning he would get a notification in real time anytime she drove by an AI-powered license plate surveillance camera.
> The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn. On August 21, Mayor Alioto advised the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that they should concede to the strikers' demands. The Supervisors unanimously refused. Mayor Alioto immediately then declared a state of emergency, assumed legislative powers, and granted the strikers' demands.
Again, you sound like someone who has never read an ounce of political philosophy. The policing of behavior will exist in any society, whether it is held by the state, the church, private security firms, organized crime, or vigilantes. The entire point of putting the police under the authority of a democratic public is because the alternatives are all much worse.
The policing arm of the executive branch can be difficult to manage, the point is once it leaves the purview of the state, it is impossible to manage.
> The entire point of putting the police under the authority of a democratic public is because the alternatives are all much worse.
Yes, I agree.
I just think we're in that "much worse" scenario now, with police unions, qualified immunity, pardons for brutality, and police punishing attempts to rein them in.
American cops are out of control, and emboldened by their success.
Of course, the example chosen for the article didn’t involve anybody abusing their authority. It involved police doing what I’d expect them to do. But I’ll acknowledge that if all of the relevant details were different, then I’d also be concerned.