And this is why most cops should be tarred with the brush of corruption - it isn’t that they broke the law, but too many are willing to cover up, defend and sweep under the rug those that do.
Engaging in a cover-up is in fact a crime. Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy!
Nobody should put up with that.
My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units”
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
The irony is that the municipalities that pay the most are typically the lowest risk. The most dangerous thing they will do is pull someone over on the side of the highway. Sure, not exactly safe, but also not exactly gunning it out with the bad guys.
What are the risks? Even among public employees I'd imagine firefighters are in dangerous situations more often. The data doesn't show that policing is an especially high-risk profession.
Pizza delivery drivers face about twice as much risk of on the job injuries via violence when compared to cops. Also twice as much risk of fatal injuries. This mythos the US has with cops does not match reality.
Police aren't in the top 10 of most dangerous professions in the USA[1], and when they are injured, it's overwhelmingly the result of traffic accidents.
Simply being able to tell other people what to do knowing they probably won't beat you up, like they used to back in school, is motivating enough. Id love to know the shit your parents covered up
The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.
It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like once requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours of OT. So the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check, everyone is happy.
Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".
Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
That's because field sobriety tests aren't designed to find out if people are actually impaired, they are designed to give cops a reason to arrest people purely on their own discretion even when they otherwise lack any evidence of wrongdoing. And in doing so it boosts both the local cops and court's funding through mandatory court fines and fees and programs when they hammer down on people too poor to afford a lawyer.
I don’t think this it’s worth being reported for asking for a source on this kind of claim. I would argue of a middle ground though. I think field tests origins came from a good intent of trying to distinguish intoxicated drivers but has morphed over the years and used to give reason to search your belongings. I think the original post is wrong, the intent is not to arrest people but they are commonly used as a means to get cause to search your vehicle.
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
A field sobriety test is distinct from a chemical analysis (breathalyzer or otherwise).
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
He refused a blood test as was his right, and probably the correct decision given that this "top cop" (ie, the one they say had by far the most DUI arrests) was a criminal and shown to break the evidence chain of custody.
I don't understand how simple DWI testing is like that in your country. 3 seconds of a certified calibrated breathalyzer is sufficient, this walking in a straight line and saying the alphabet backwards sounds like a joke.
As others have said the intent is not to document sobriety but to have a subjective reason for an arrest which looks good in the scorecard.
Look for “if cops say I smell
Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
The portable breathalyzer is inadmissable in court in my and most states. The Simon Says game is though (but it can be refused without penalty, hypothetically).
Why would a certified calibrated breathalizer test be inadmissible in court? How is it any different from catching speeders with a laser gun, or doing a DNA test?
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
This was incredibly dangerous of the victim. In another version of events, the officer could have shot him and plausibly (unfortunately) claimed the victim had a vendetta against the cop for arresting him.
At first I thought, "Wow, he's much braver than I am."
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
Yeah it’s a sad state. But it’s also not worth putting oneself in harm’s way. Report it to the state authorities (not all of them are crooked). Or try another jurisdiction, like the local police.
There's a reason I hate pigs. They can do whatever the fuck they want, and are almost never held accountable for any wrongdoing.
for example:
"I pulled you over because you swerved," - of course, its unprovable. Oinker CLAIMS you swerved cause thats easy way to get probable cause. There's no proof of that. Cams either dont get turned on, or are <SURPRISE> lost.
"could smell the odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from the vehicle." - ALCOHOL DOESNT SMELL. Pigs know that. They can make the pronouncement a another form of probable cause, AND to elicit a response of "I only had 1 drink" or similar. Its entrapment plain and simple.
"In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop." Sooooooo.... sovereign immunity for highway robbery?
Plain and simple.. Pigs are this country's biggest mafia, and can do basically whatever the hell they want, and never get punished for it.
And of course the cop has sovereign immunity, meaning he can do whatever he wants without any repercussions. They should at least do this properly like they do in Africa and extend the sovereign immunity to allowing the cop to accept payments to forget whatever trumped-up charges they've come up with.
(Although it's sometimes blatant graft and corruption, it's not always the case, a lot of police in African countries are very poorly paid and this is a way of supplementing their income. They typically target people who can afford to make a small donation and it's generally a friction-free experience if you play by the rules).
To be a bit pedantic, its not sovereign immunity, its qualified immunity. It is defeatable, and there are examples of it, but its rather rare. It is an abused and obviously problematic legal doctrine
>In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
Huh, interesting. I am very dubious of that quote. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure if they actually filed that in court they would be laughed out of the room. My guess is either the reporters got it wrong or its some AI hallucination. Unfortunately they don't source this claim.
So police in african countries are poorly paid so it's OK for them to just...rob people? Wouldn't it make more sense to just pay the police better? Is it OK for a waitress or a teacher or a taxi driver to steal your wallet? They're also underpaid...
That bit of justification seems absolutely bananas to me.
I've been saying this for awhile as well. Corruption is horse-shoe, once it is pervasive enough, it becomes affordable to the common man and not just the rich. Counter-intuitively, even more egalitarian, perhaps.
Ive had police in Mexico just walk up and steal $100+ from my wallet. It was refreshing as in the US they instead police have just dragged me to jail on fabricated allegations. When Mexican police can get all they want by just stealing my money and not my time, it feels like living in a more free country, liberating comparatively.
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.
> investigators determined Bradley had violated State Police policies, and he was suspended for one day.
Comically limp self-punishment- this is why police unions need broad reform.
Would police unions vote to strike to support a trooper who stole a laptop?
If so, then I think you've got police problems, not police unions problems.
And this is why most cops should be tarred with the brush of corruption - it isn’t that they broke the law, but too many are willing to cover up, defend and sweep under the rug those that do.
Engaging in a cover-up is in fact a crime. Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy! Nobody should put up with that.
People forget the original saying was "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel."
That’s true, but people on HN have a habit of saying ‘most’ when they really just mean ‘many.’
"State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year"
Holy cow.
People don't realize how well paid cops are. In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police.
And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
and pensions...
My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
> but it comes with significant risks
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
And they are that high just because statistically they are in traffic for such a large amount of time.
At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units”
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
The irony is that the municipalities that pay the most are typically the lowest risk. The most dangerous thing they will do is pull someone over on the side of the highway. Sure, not exactly safe, but also not exactly gunning it out with the bad guys.
What are the risks? Even among public employees I'd imagine firefighters are in dangerous situations more often. The data doesn't show that policing is an especially high-risk profession.
Pizza delivery drivers face about twice as much risk of on the job injuries via violence when compared to cops. Also twice as much risk of fatal injuries. This mythos the US has with cops does not match reality.
Police aren't in the top 10 of most dangerous professions in the USA[1], and when they are injured, it's overwhelmingly the result of traffic accidents.
[1]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.t03.htm
I've heard this statistic too but do you have a better source? The one you provided only has total injuries, not per 1000 or per capita.
> but it comes with significant risks.
Simply being able to tell other people what to do knowing they probably won't beat you up, like they used to back in school, is motivating enough. Id love to know the shit your parents covered up
Downvoted for needlessly insulting GP's parents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.
It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like once requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours of OT. So the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check, everyone is happy.
Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".
Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
One should have right to demand a blood test.To many people can't pass field with out having a drink or smoke.To many have disabilities,old,whatever.
That's because field sobriety tests aren't designed to find out if people are actually impaired, they are designed to give cops a reason to arrest people purely on their own discretion even when they otherwise lack any evidence of wrongdoing. And in doing so it boosts both the local cops and court's funding through mandatory court fines and fees and programs when they hammer down on people too poor to afford a lawyer.
source?
I don’t think this it’s worth being reported for asking for a source on this kind of claim. I would argue of a middle ground though. I think field tests origins came from a good intent of trying to distinguish intoxicated drivers but has morphed over the years and used to give reason to search your belongings. I think the original post is wrong, the intent is not to arrest people but they are commonly used as a means to get cause to search your vehicle.
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
Their obvious ineffectiveness for the stated purpose, combined with the effectiveness for the unstated, hidden purpose.
One should never take a field sobriety test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGHFpc6uiWA
In the UK it's done by breathalyser and refusing is itself an offence.
A field sobriety test is distinct from a chemical analysis (breathalyzer or otherwise).
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
He refused a blood test as was his right, and probably the correct decision given that this "top cop" (ie, the one they say had by far the most DUI arrests) was a criminal and shown to break the evidence chain of custody.
> He refused a blood test as was his right
Per the article, he refused the old walk-along-a-straight-line-without-swaying, not a blood test (nor even a breathalyser).
Blood tests are not administered in the field, they would be administered at a nearby medical facility, later in this process.
I don't understand how simple DWI testing is like that in your country. 3 seconds of a certified calibrated breathalyzer is sufficient, this walking in a straight line and saying the alphabet backwards sounds like a joke.
As others have said the intent is not to document sobriety but to have a subjective reason for an arrest which looks good in the scorecard.
Look for “if cops say I smell Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
The portable breathalyzer is inadmissable in court in my and most states. The Simon Says game is though (but it can be refused without penalty, hypothetically).
The portable one is used as an indicator.
A positive result will get you arrested and taken to the station, where they have the (non-portable) court admissible calibrated kit.
Why would a certified calibrated breathalizer test be inadmissible in court? How is it any different from catching speeders with a laser gun, or doing a DNA test?
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
Think of all the things stolen from people who can't afford this technology. The US system really is two-tiered.
If he was the 'Top Cop' how bad are the others?
It would seem that he was the top cop because he was this bad.
> State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year.
> That's more than the salary of the Illinois State Police director.
Why is someone making that much money stealing a MacBook?
That's the fun thing about greed, it is rarely satisfied :/
That’s how they have that much money.
It’s like saying why does the drug cartel leader keep selling drugs, he’s swimming in cash (literally).
Here's a radical idea... you could... read the article :-O
Psychopathology.
This was incredibly dangerous of the victim. In another version of events, the officer could have shot him and plausibly (unfortunately) claimed the victim had a vendetta against the cop for arresting him.
At first I thought, "Wow, he's much braver than I am."
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
Great, so they steal your stuff and you can't even confront them about it
Yeah it’s a sad state. But it’s also not worth putting oneself in harm’s way. Report it to the state authorities (not all of them are crooked). Or try another jurisdiction, like the local police.
Should have stuck to shaking down illegal immigrants and drug dealers.
acab
There's a reason I hate pigs. They can do whatever the fuck they want, and are almost never held accountable for any wrongdoing.
for example:
"I pulled you over because you swerved," - of course, its unprovable. Oinker CLAIMS you swerved cause thats easy way to get probable cause. There's no proof of that. Cams either dont get turned on, or are <SURPRISE> lost.
"could smell the odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from the vehicle." - ALCOHOL DOESNT SMELL. Pigs know that. They can make the pronouncement a another form of probable cause, AND to elicit a response of "I only had 1 drink" or similar. Its entrapment plain and simple.
"In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop." Sooooooo.... sovereign immunity for highway robbery?
Plain and simple.. Pigs are this country's biggest mafia, and can do basically whatever the hell they want, and never get punished for it.
> "ALCOHOL DOESNT SMELL"
Alcoholic drinks do smell though. I can smell if my girlfriend has been drinking. The smell of a bar is very distinctive
And of course the cop has sovereign immunity, meaning he can do whatever he wants without any repercussions. They should at least do this properly like they do in Africa and extend the sovereign immunity to allowing the cop to accept payments to forget whatever trumped-up charges they've come up with.
(Although it's sometimes blatant graft and corruption, it's not always the case, a lot of police in African countries are very poorly paid and this is a way of supplementing their income. They typically target people who can afford to make a small donation and it's generally a friction-free experience if you play by the rules).
To be a bit pedantic, its not sovereign immunity, its qualified immunity. It is defeatable, and there are examples of it, but its rather rare. It is an abused and obviously problematic legal doctrine
When it's ICE it's both :-(
Quoting the article:
>In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
It’s just a sloppy article.
The concept is right but sovereign immunity is about states and between states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
Huh, interesting. I am very dubious of that quote. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure if they actually filed that in court they would be laughed out of the room. My guess is either the reporters got it wrong or its some AI hallucination. Unfortunately they don't source this claim.
So police in african countries are poorly paid so it's OK for them to just...rob people? Wouldn't it make more sense to just pay the police better? Is it OK for a waitress or a teacher or a taxi driver to steal your wallet? They're also underpaid...
That bit of justification seems absolutely bananas to me.
How are you going to tax them for salaries? There's not much formal economy in most of central africa.
If there's no way to charge the public for policing besides corruption, that's not a police force, it's a gang.
Still a gang, yes, though one with aims more accessible to the common man who can bribe them. Instead of purely the ruling class.
> and it's generally a friction-free experience if you play by the rules
That is horrible anti-american behavior. It's the definition of corruption; and goes against the fundamental principles of the founding of the US.
And, to put it quite bluntly: Cops walking around demanding tips from affluent Americans will quickly get shut down because no one will stand for it.
I've been saying this for awhile as well. Corruption is horse-shoe, once it is pervasive enough, it becomes affordable to the common man and not just the rich. Counter-intuitively, even more egalitarian, perhaps.
Ive had police in Mexico just walk up and steal $100+ from my wallet. It was refreshing as in the US they instead police have just dragged me to jail on fabricated allegations. When Mexican police can get all they want by just stealing my money and not my time, it feels like living in a more free country, liberating comparatively.
search for eminent domain in the us, it can be much worse than just $100
I was billed about $1000 when US police took me to ER in cuffs and claimed (made up) I was secretly smuggling drugs up my ass.
Did they have a warrant?
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.