• Oppopity@lemmy.ml
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    16 hours ago

    because things like libel

    Why does it have to be like libel? Why not death threats? Advocating for an intellectual position on things like medicine can cause harm and should be regulated.

    Sure, more cops is clearly a great solution!

    I didn’t say that you cunt. Why can it not be like what they did with Alex Jones where he was throwing a bunch of conspiracies around school shootings and parents who had their children murdered started getting harnessed so Alex Jones ended up facing consequences. This isn’t “oh so you just want more police. Good.”

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      And there’s no agency for it? Then make one.

      It doesn’t get much more “advocating for more cops as the solution” than saying we should make a new law enforcement agency to solve a lack of enforcement capability. What were you trying to say there, if it wasn’t “make a new agency to enforce this law”?

      Why can it not be like what they did with Alex Jones

      That was a defamation lawsuit - of which libel is a type. The ‘harm’ done in that case was to the parents of the sandyhook children’s reputation, not their physical wellbeing.

      • Oppopity@lemmy.ml
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        7 hours ago

        Cops aren’t the same as say the FDA.

        And there is harm when people take misinformed medical advice from people claiming to know better.

        • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          The FDA Office of Criminal Investigations, the direct enforcement branch of the FDA, uses bonded LEOs to do the enforcement under their perview. While the majority of actions go through civil proceedings (lawsuits), any investigatory work for those lawsuits is done under the direction of the FDA’s federal law enforcement officers (or their contracted representatives). That’s how enforcement works in the US. If you want to avoid that, it would require a complete restructuring of the entire US legal system from the ground up.

          And there is harm when people take misinformed medical advice from people claiming to know better.

          Yes, but that harm is resolved in civil court unless the person in question is criminally liable, usually through gross negligence because they have something like a duty of care. The Alex Jones case, which you brought up as an example, is not in any way comparable to that.

          (edit: for clarity, bonded LEOs are what you think of as a cop, instead of someone like a building inspector who is technically law enforcement but does not have the ability to do things like make an arrest or charge criminal proceedings.)

          • Oppopity@lemmy.ml
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            4 hours ago

            Why does it need a complete restructuring? Just have an agency who’s purpose is investigating these specific crimes and then rely on regular cops to handle perpetrators.

            • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              Because in the US, criminal investigations have to be carried out by duly recognized officers of the law (or their designees), outside of some extremely specific exceptions like the UCMJ. This structure is so fundamental to the system that it can be traced back to English common law. There are a handful of outliers: some “government watchdog” groups have limited judicial powers (though I can’t actually think of any examples of this right now), the crew of aircraft or ships under US flag have (limited) law enforcement powers while underway and there’s the big nebulous complexity of the coastguard’s interaction with the civilian legal system.

              (An aside: at and below the state level there’s some additional fuckery, like for example firefighters in some municipalities are endowed with policing powers while carrying out their duties, and some places have reciprocal LEO certifications for things like mental health first responders, but those are all extremely limited in scope and still rely on those people being considered officers of the peace (or some equivalent designation))

              An agency to investigate things like this would require their own dedicated enforcement branch, just like the FDA, USDA, Post Office and even NASA all have (disappointingly the NASA police are just called the “protective services office” and not “space cops”. Tragic waste of a good opportunity there). We’d need more cops to staff this hypothetical new agency, and we can’t simply “borrow” cops from somewhere else - they’re already busier than they can handle, even setting aside jurisdictional complexities and expertise. This is how the system in the US is structured, and to deviate from it we’d have to rework that structure fundamentally.