I work for an Indian WITCH type company in US. There is an ex cop who is now a manager in our office. Some time back, him, 2 male colleagues and a female were talking. The topic changed to about a brown guy. The cop guy asks is he a dot guy or a blow up guy (Indian or Arab). There are several Indians sitting around him including women hearing all this. Then he starts talking about penis. I think he was asking the female if she has penis or something. The female then excused herself saying I think that's enough for today. No one seems to have gone to HR about him yet.
Re-Form in the most literal sense seems necessary. A completely new department, from the ground up, with highly vetted employees and strong oversight. Run in parallel with the old department and slowly cherry pick officers who fit the criteria.
Agreed. You can't fix this without replacing the people and culture that normalizes things like this:
> Shortly after saying “she’s dead,” Auderer laughs and says “it’s a regular person,” referring to Kandula. He then says “just write a check -- $11,000, she was 26 anyway, she had limited value.”
>Run in parallel with the old department and slowly cherry pick officers who fit the criteria.
No. Any cop who was willing to put up with the corruption for a paycheck is implicit in supporting the system, and the old department is the problem. There are no good apples. Burn the entire system down. Fire everyone, no pensions, no gold watches. Start over from scratch, rethinking policing as a concept.
When BLM started saying "defund the police" people walked the concept back immediately, and maybe for good reason, but mostly because it was too upsetting to the status quo to even consider. But we need that kind of radical thinking, because the system is broken, rotten from the head and blood-soaked down to the floorboards. Nothing less than revolution, a complete rethinking of policing as a concept, can fix it.
Do you know a single person who is a cop? Any Oxford grads you have in mind for highly vetted? Because those people don’t exist. And even if you found that unicorn, they won’t be one after a year.
I distrust the blues as much as anyone, but I grok why they are the way they are. It’s a shitty job, and all they have are their bros.
It's a highly paid job, police are often the highest paid employees on a government's payroll. The officer in question in the OP makes $154k/yr according to open records, which is only $1k over the median salary for the SPD, and cops in the same department make over $250k with overtime and overtime fraud[1].
They can also retire with a full pension and benefits after only 20 years of working.
They have way more than their "bros". They also have multibillion dollar unions, governments and lobbyists on their side, as well.
I believe this is a topic of sufficient intellectual weight for HN. There is certainly something wrong with the law enforcement system in the US and this is just such a blatant and clear example of it that we can point to and discuss about.
You do not have to engage if it makes you feel uncomfortable but these issues are real and very relevant to a significant number of people, including HN audience, and they deserve to be addressed.
Seems like this is a pattern of misconduct from this cop[1], who is also the VP of his police union:
> 2010: Auderer was one of several officers who stopped two Mexican immigrants under a false pretext. The officers were caught on camera verbally abusing them and roughly arresting them. One of the officers, Corey Williams, infamously threatened to “skull fuck” the pair. (He’s now the sergeant of crisis response.)
> 2010: Auderer was one of a dozen officers who savagely beat Brian Torgerson, a mentally ill man, causing permanent brain damage. SPD settled with Torgerson’s family for $1.75 million.
> 2014: Auderer received another complaint from a woman he arrested, who claimed he sexually harassed her in a holding cell. There was no audio of the incident, so OPA issued a training referral.
> 2015: Auderer punched and choked a homeless man inside the ER at Harborview Hospital. SPD’s Force Review Board ruled that the force was unjustified, but OPA ultimately cleared him.
> 2016: OPA investigated Auderer for using force against a Black woman while she was handcuffed. This is prohibited by SPD policy unless there are “exceptional circumstances.” OPA ruled that the force use—which occurred conveniently beyond the view of the in-car video—was “lawful and proper.”
> 2016: OPA investigated Auderer again for punching a woman in the face. He was cleared of any wrongdoing
> 2016: Auderer was suspended for four days for taking part in an arrest while on an off-duty ridealong with his brother, who is an officer in another jurisdiction. He violated the person’s Miranda rights & failed to report the arrest to a supervisor.
> 2018: Auderer was reprimanded for making demeaning, unnecessary comments about a woman’s mental health during a traffic stop.
