
Man kills himself after Police falsely said he critically injured woman in crash - fortran77
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/seattle-man-kills-himself-after-officer-falsely-says-he-critically-n1114076
======
kick
_Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said in a statement that she agrees with the
watchdog 's findings and suspended the officer for six days without pay,
according to a police statement Thursday._

Six days without pay for taking a human life. Here's a radical proposal: why
not hang him? Or imprison him for decades? Or even just fire him? Or do
literally anything? That's not even a slap on the wrist, that's a vacation.

Why is it that cops can get away with everything under the sun?

There are so many instances of this it's ridiculous.

If the United States doesn't see reform for these thugs, it seems impossible
that a dramatic inversion of the current status quo won't happen.

~~~
SamReidHughes
He didn't take a human life; he lied about a guy. Why not hang you for lying
about him?

~~~
kick
He drove a man to suicide on a lie: for all reasonable intents and purposes,
that's murder.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Wrong. That's slander.

You can't just make stuff up.

~~~
kick
He lied with intention, I said something I believe to be true.

By the definition of murder, my statement seems to be accurate.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/murder)

~~~
close04
> By the definition of murder, I believe my statement is accurate

Murder implies intention. This would be more akin to involuntary manslaughter
since there's no reasonable expectation that the intent of the lie was to
cause death (or any physical harm for that matter). This doesn't mean he
doesn't deserve punishment, just not for murder.

But the fact that you _believe_ something to be correct would serve as
mitigating circumstances at best since the very definition you quote describes
something completely different from what is being discussed.

> the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought

> to kill (a human being) unlawfully and with premeditated malice

~~~
kick
I'm no lawyer, so I was trying to not argue on those grounds, however:

What he did seems to fall under modern interpretations of malice
aforethought/what it's morphed to (see page 428-429; ctrl-f "recklessness" if
desired).

[https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...](https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1337&context=dlj)

It wasn't premeditated, so it seems like second degree murder, doesn't it?

~~~
close04
> It wasn't premeditated, so it seems like second degree murder, doesn't it?

Still no. You can google "involuntary manslaughter" as mentioned in my
previous comment. Murder implies malice, intent, when the death of the victim
is a likely outcome. You're talking about getting into a bar fight and
stabbing someone. There's a distinct possibility stabbing someone will kill
them. But nobody reasonably expects a verbal accusation will kill anyone.

~~~
jdkee
"But nobody reasonably expects a verbal accusation will kill anyone."

It was a foreseeable consequence of the officer's actions. Thus intent could
be imputed. Therefore, it could reasonably be construed as an intentional
homicide i.e. murder.

~~~
close04
> It was a foreseeable consequence of the officer's actions.

The only case that I know of when words lead to suicide for one and
manslaughter conviction for the other is when one urged the other to do it
[0]. And it still wasn't murder.

This feels like arguing for the sake of arguing. There's no way a reasonable
judge and jury would ever consider this to be murder. And it would be a very
dangerous precedent to set. Investigators, as far as I've heard, have free
reign to lie during interrogations in order to extract more information, and
will eventually even have an innocent person as a suspect. Regular people
might say something to someone who was more sensitive than they expected.

[0]
[https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/06/16/woman-w...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/06/16/woman-
who-sent-texts-urging-suicide-guilty-manslaughter/403330001/)

------
mnot
So cops shouldn’t be surprised when people assume everything they say is a
lie. Perhaps they should consider the secondary effects of this kind of
policy...

~~~
sneak
Sadly, most normal people tend to universally believe cops when they testify
in court, despite the fact that they're generally no more truthful there than
when speaking to suspects.

------
markdown
The officer got six days of vacation _and_ name suppression. Lucky guy; Carmen
Ortiz didn't get either.

~~~
kick
Poor Ortiz, she just got lawyer money for those entire six days of vacation
she should have took. She didn't even take the "mandatory training" that
apparently all of Seattle's thugs have gone through this year on being told
when they can lie!

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newguy1234
Never talk to police. They are not your friends.

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Simulacra
I think a key problem is that the police should not be able to lie to you. In
a formal interrogation, with an attorney present, maybe. But even then it
should be absolutely restrictive to the point of ineffective.

------
Out_of_Characte
Anecdotal evidence and survivorship bias is strong here. Cops tend to be human
beings on a medium income. If you want the apropriate penalty for
irresponsible cops then you need to look further than wrongdoing of the
individual. Cops are in the line of work in which every mistake is a wrongfull
imprisonment, death or negligence. What if your work didn't allow for a single
white lie or error? Wouldn't you demand higher pay? Or would less people be
willing to work in your field? It is also not obvious from all this anecdotal
evidence that cops are more likely to be morally corrupt. All research done
towards discriminating cops have shown the opposite. It feels like every
couple of years the news finds a new scapegoat. I used to read stories about
monsanto, evil wall street and bankers filling their own pockets. Now the
theme is injustice of lawfull force.

~~~
overgard
The news story is that the cop told a lie that caused a person to kill
themselves. There's no bias to that; it's a simple cause and effect. The news
story doesn't even really editorialize it. It's just what happened. I don't
see how paying police more would mean they're never cruel.

And by the way, if you're wondering why he killed himself over this: if he was
a drug addict he was probably in trouble with the law a lot. He's probably
_used_ to being harassed by cops (hard to say without knowing his identity,
but seems pretty likely based on how the law treats addicts). There's a decent
chance if caught he was going to get into a lot more trouble than the average
person, especially if he had been in and out of the system.

~~~
Out_of_Characte
Ofcouse the story itself doesn't show any bias. But the summation of only
seeing police cases of reported injustice is going to create the illusion that
there might be something rotten in the police force. The truth is that
policework is similar to surgery, 6% might not survive low risk surgeries. The
best surgeon will have a lower mortality rate, the worst will hae a
significantly higher rate. But we dont shame and blame minor misconduct,
misstepts or errors because there is an understanding that surgery is done to
the best of our ability, even for the rookie surgeon, and it CAN go wrong
against all odds. Yet this simple analysis doesn't get to be applied to these
police stories because we're unable to seperate the individual story in which
we know with 100% certainty mistakes were made by a policeofficer from the
overarching story of policeofficers making the wrong decision 6% of the time.

