At around 6 a.m. on July 4, John Sexton was walking with his 6-year-old son, who has autism. He was stopped by two officers for suspicious activity before being thrown to the ground and briefly detained.

“We’ve had over 200 phone calls this weekend,” Daugherty said.

While it isn’t his department, the sheriff called for both officers involved to be taken off of the streets while OSBI works the case.

“I can understand why they feel the way that they do, because of hearing that child scream is one of the hardest things,” Daugherty said.

That officer has a history of other complaints, including from his former colleagues, according to the sheriff.

  • snooggums@midwest.social
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    3 months ago

    The suspicious activity was being non-white.

    Many times, he said law enforcement officers bounce between departments because complaints are harder to track down even though there is a database for them.”

    Seems like there’s an urgent, justifiable need for a database, or am I missing something? 🤷🏼‍♀️

    Well, per your quote there is a database, but it isn’t used in a way that is effective. Most likely the database exists because of a requirement, but it was done in the cheapest way possible and nobody uses it so it is like not having one at all while being able to tell the public it exists.

    I work with systems that track people who move around and getting quality data that you can do anything with is a lot of work beyond just the technical complexities. Police agencies who don’t want it to work can just put in typos or even refuse to use it because they are “too busy” if there is no oversight.

    • pearable@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Frequently the databases are impossible to properly search because the data being added is not normalized

    • Sarmyth@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      What I think would be a funny “get fucked” move would be to revoke their baton license when they get in trouble for anything like this. I only learned it was a thing when I worked security for a short bit. It could prevent them from being a beat cop without “infringing or their 2nd amendment rights”.