670
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
670 points (97.3% liked)
THE POLICE PROBLEM
2482 readers
73 users here now
The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
♦ ♦ ♦
Our definition of ‘cops’ is broad, and includes prison guards, probation officers, shitty DAs and judges, etc — anyone who has the authority to fuck over people’s lives, with minimal or no oversight.
♦ ♦ ♦
RULES
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.
♦ ♦ ♦
ALLIES
• r/ACAB
♦ ♦ ♦
INFO
• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• Killings by law enforcement in Canada
• Killings by law enforcement in the United Kingdom
• Killings by law enforcement in the United States
• Know your rights: Filming the police
• Three words. 70 cases. The tragic history of 'I can’t breathe' (as of 2020)
• Police aren't primarily about helping you or solving crimes.
• Police lie under oath, a lot
• Police spin: An object lesson in Copspeak
• Police unions and arbitrators keep abusive cops on the street
• Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States
• When the police knock on your door
♦ ♦ ♦
ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
You're misrepresenting what happened here. She pulled the car ahead, yes, but only moved forward at a speed less than the speed the cop could walk backwards. So characterizing it as "started running over one of them with her car" is a little inaccurate, don't you think?
And the cops were beside the car and then for some reason, one guy moved around in front of the car. I suspect he did this because she started the engine or in some other way indicated she was going to drive away. If that was the case, the cop put himself into a dangerous situation over a shoplifting accusation. So that means any argument that he was afraid doesn't fly with me because he made the mistake of putting himself in that situation.
And yeah, I've never had problems with police because I don't break the law either. But after seeing enough videos I've come to realize that I don't have problems with police because a) yeah, I don't break the law, but also because b) I'm white. That second factor that can't be ignored in all of this. If it were a white woman would this situation have gone down the same way?
And the cop feeling threatened (because of a situation he put himself in) also applies to the woman. Was she trying to drive away because she was afraid? I suppose she can't give testimony now, so that's convenient for the cops, isn't it?
The cop fucked up by putting himself in front of a running car, and then murdered a woman for slowly moving that car forward. None of their actions are defensible.
It's a strategy so commonplace that I suspect it's part of police training:
If someone doesn't step out of a car immediately on command, an officer stations him/herself in front of the car's headlights, with gun drawn. Not in front of the car, but in front of a headlight. This allows the claim that, holy smokes, the cop could be run over if the car moves an inch, but it leaves the officer ample time and space to jump out of the way even if the driver floorboards the accelerator.
It's bogus, but such a well-practiced maneuver that even people who recognize other police misconduct tend to believe it. Well, I guess they had to kill this particular perp — she was trying to run him over!"
Yeah and I'm thinking if she drives off, they have her license plate, right? And it's someone accused of shoplifting not a mass shooter. Of course if it were a mass shooter they'd be holding back and assessing the situation to avoid being put into danger.
It's possible for both people to have been in the wrong. That woman wasn't a murderer, so let's remember degrees of wrong, but she definitely wasn't innocent. One of cops' literal jobs is to catch criminals who don't want to be caught. That's why they approached her and probably why he stood in front of the car. They weren't accosting some rando on the street. What they did wrong was drawing a gun, pointing it at a person, and pulling the trigger when not in mortal danger.
I don't appreciate that in these situations, everyone lines up on one side or the other and whomever we've decided to defend could have done no wrong. The wrongdoers were wrong in every possible way. It's mob mentality. And then we wonder why those on the other side can't see things our way. Hyperbole helps nobody.
So the cops didn't take down the license plate? The job of the police is to maintain law and order. Escalating a situation so they can gun someone down in a parking lot is the exact opposite of maintain order. Instead of of doing the sensible thing of allowing the person leave the parking lot and then arrest the person in a less dangerous situation, they continued to escalate it and then shot and murdered a person in the middle of a busy parking lot.
I don't appreciate that in these situations no one has any regard for the bystanders that had nothing to do with the situation put at risk by murderous cops. These cops are greater danger to the public than a woman slowly moving her car forward.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a fine principal, quickly forgotten by most, and a punchline for police.