>It's not cynicism, it's Goodhart's law applied to actual law enforcement.
What OP pointed out was a potential problem that could be rectified. I don't get a sense of the scale of this problem and I don't see any evidence that what OP specified is an intrinsically large-scale structural problem that leads to innocent people being incarcerated in significant numbers.
>There are also bad ones who will take a person to court because it fits a description and allows them to close a case.
America is a big country of 320 million, with 700,000 police officers, and thousands of people moving through the justice system every single day. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of the process breaking down. That says nothing about whether or not this is a systemic, structural problem. And even if it was, it could be adjusted by policy and regulatory changes.
>Whichever path they choose, police won't be held accountable for taking shortcuts except in egregious, high profile cases.
This kind of argumentation is so annoying. You're clearly talking out of ignorance based on your own interpretation of how policing is done (which stems from movies and twitter). What do you mean police is not held accountable? Police departments are highly regulated. Every single aspect of policing has a process and regulation attached to it, and is coupled with enforcement and oversight from independent bodies.
> You're clearly talking out of ignorance based on your own interpretation of how policing is done
I am someone who knows someone who was convicted over purely circumstantial evidence, and I am only making the claim that we've built a system that leads to wrongful convictions in the face of incomplete evidence. The sibling comment gave 60 cases that would back this claim up, and you responded with "well that's just going to happen by law of large numbers." It's very easy to say it just happens when it hasn't happened to you.
What OP pointed out was a potential problem that could be rectified. I don't get a sense of the scale of this problem and I don't see any evidence that what OP specified is an intrinsically large-scale structural problem that leads to innocent people being incarcerated in significant numbers.
>There are also bad ones who will take a person to court because it fits a description and allows them to close a case.
America is a big country of 320 million, with 700,000 police officers, and thousands of people moving through the justice system every single day. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of the process breaking down. That says nothing about whether or not this is a systemic, structural problem. And even if it was, it could be adjusted by policy and regulatory changes.
>Whichever path they choose, police won't be held accountable for taking shortcuts except in egregious, high profile cases.
This kind of argumentation is so annoying. You're clearly talking out of ignorance based on your own interpretation of how policing is done (which stems from movies and twitter). What do you mean police is not held accountable? Police departments are highly regulated. Every single aspect of policing has a process and regulation attached to it, and is coupled with enforcement and oversight from independent bodies.