A new database on police use of force and misconduct in California
17 comments
·August 5, 2025TechDebtDevin
I'm all for this, but we need a different type of person to be a cop ultimately. A lot of cops see something like this and just stop doing there job altogether. I frequently ask cops in my city wtf they're doing when parked next to 20 people doing meth and they blame the democratic mayor almost every time.
nativeit
You just sped run to the justification for “defunding the police”.
hsbauauvhabzb
You often see a cop parked next to 20 people doing meth?
mc32
20 might be hyperbola but in SF cops ignore lots of drug use on the streets. They used to care up until the end of the Brown mayorship. Once Newsom and the new wave of progressives took control over the city they began pulling back from enforcement incrementally —it peaked with Breed and is now slightly retrenching but very very slowly.
Willy might have been corrupt but at least he took care of crime meaningfully.
immibis
Policing drug use is a waste of taxpayer money as well as a waste of labour (of both the drug users when they're not doing drugs, and the cops). The results of drug use should be policed, not the use itself; safe environments for occasional drug use should also be created (the free market would do this if it wasn't illegal, and in some places if you know where to look, has already quietly done this).
I have to disclaim I don't know what meth is like, what meth users are like, or what it's like to be on meth, but if 20 people are doing meth and not bothering anyone, and the police officer is keeping watch to ensure they don't bother anyone, that is fine by me. We should treat them like drunk alcoholics, not like murderers (unless they murdered someone).
Also we could encourage them to shift to less harmful drugs than meth.
hsbauauvhabzb
Yeah! Lock up the meth heads, that’ll fix crime!
s5300
[dead]
throw9394944
Well, meth people are pretty fragile (no joke). If they die of overdose under your watch, you are in tons of troubles. Any normal person would refuse to deal with such risk.
Maybe meth people should become cops! And we could call Antifa to fight meth cops!
Simon_O_Rourke
There's never a problem so bad that a Californian police officer can't make it worse.
dang
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
I’m ostensibly a proponent of this, certainly of its aims. That said, I’ve never been comfortable with registries. I think they are quite vulnerable to being misused, and frequently tend to become facades to cover a broader lack of more significant actions to address root causes. Institutions, bureaucracies, and most large human enterprises are more than happy to throw an individual (or dozens of them) under the bus to keep the franchise going. Especially if it means they can avoid more meaningful reforms that threaten the status quo.