In the following exchange, Box is a State Trooper and Guessford is a citizen legally exercising first amendment rights. The troopers ripped the sign out of his hand (classic first amendment violation), made threats (to take his car and kid), and then explicitly challenged the citizen to make a legal response. The legal response led to the state having to pay the citizen $50K due to a constitutional rights violation.

"""“Take it to court. That’s what I want you to do,” Box replied after Guessford told troopers he was going to take legal action. Box also threatened to charge Guessford with resisting arrest.

“We’re going to take you in. We’re going to tow the car, and we’ll call social services for the kid,” Box said, referring to Guessford’s young son, who was with Guessford and witnessed his profanity-laden tirade against the officers. “It’s not a threat, it’s a promise,” Box added."""

A major part of the case was video evidence showing the troopers breaking the law and boasting about it.

Only 50k. I guess there's not a monetary value you can put on deprivation of rights and in this case the money comes from tax payers and not as punishment to the officer. What I would really like to know is if the officer was charged and convicted of assault. Probably not but if I did these same actions and threats to another person I would absolutely be charged with assault and very likely convicted.

I understand that peace officers can be put in difficult situations where there can often times be no good solutions, but this was absolutely not one of those situations. This blatant assault and abuse of authority. This officer and those who stood by and did nothing should receive maximum sentences for their crimes. This is the very definition of "jack booted thug" using physical force and their authority to enforce revenue collecting. Because if they say it's any safety then a sign warning about about a speed trap accomplishes the same thing.

The real problem here is these officers feel empowered to do this kind of things because they are shielded by the elected politicians. Sheriffs are directly elected by the people of the counties, city police are under the direction of the mayor who appoints chief, the state police are under the direction of the governor. When it comes time to vote and people complain about law enforcement taking advantage of their position and harassing citizens do they take it to the ballot box and knock these people out of office and put in more favorable people. Because I guarantee you the moment of Governor gets booted out of office because a state police trooper acted like this the next Governor that's elected will be guaranteed to put someone over the state troopers who will absolutely prevent this kind of nonsense.

The citizens forget that they have an enormous amount of power over these elected politicians because the politicians goal is to continue to stay in power. They very much do not have many moral qualms about what they do to stay in power but that is their goal. You can look at the corruption in the Chicago city government but no mayor has totally failed at snow removal since one got kicked out of office for that.

It is our TikTok length memories that allow this kind of stuff to continue.