this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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Malicious Compliance

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People conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request. For now, this includes text posts, images, videos and links. Please ensure that the “malicious compliance” aspect is apparent - if you’re making a text post, be sure to explain this part; if it’s an image/video/link, use the “Body” field to elaborate.

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[–] whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 171 points 1 month ago (20 children)

About five minutes later, the arresting officer approached him again. “He said: ‘I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.’ I said: ‘What’s the good news?’ He said: ‘I’m de-arresting you.’

“And I said: ‘What’s the bad news?’ He said: ‘It’s going to be really embarrassing for me.’ And then I walked free, while all the real heroes are the people that are actually getting arrested.”

The officer seems to understand his mistake at least

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 87 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (19 children)

The poor copper lost all that time arresting a guy with Plasticine Action on his t-shirt only to have to de-arrest him when he could've been arresting an old lady with the words "Palestine Action" written down on a piece of paper for her to be prosecuted and maybe even get a jail sentence.

That mistake was making it hard for him to make his quota of arrests for that week, the poor bloke.

[–] callouscomic@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (18 children)

This is why I always imagine it'd be funny to ask a cop "so how many murders got solved this week?" whenever they're wasting time on mundane shit.

I've never had an interaction with a cop where they didn't make it unnecessarily intense.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Their job is not to solve crimes, their job is to get people convicted, the subtle difference being that they'll turn non-crimes into crimes (for example, they'll chose to legally interpret things which can go both ways as crimes which require prosecution, which is why one often sees kids criminalized for childish bullshit) and it doesn't matter if the person convicted is innocent, all that matters is that somebody got convicted (so, for example, they won't try and find exonerating evidence).

This partly explains their tendency to take an adversarial posture towards people who aren't from their group, also partly explained because that posture itself indirectly feeds back on them (people are weary of them because of how act towards the general public, which in turn makes them feel apart and suspicious hence they behave even more so) and partly because they do tend to get exposed far more than most people to the seedy side of humanity all with a judgemental mindset and an aim to see crimes, so even a lot of the stuff they see which most people think is just silly fun (say, most drunkenness), they'll see as crimes.

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