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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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THE POLICE PROBLEM
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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.
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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.
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ALLIES
• r/ACAB
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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
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• NAACP
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• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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Won't crime go down if it's legal?
pretty sure that's the case in the places where it has already been decriminalized or legalized outright; plus, it frees the resources and manpower that departments and agencies devote to the heinous crimes of weed possession and use.
the police, on the other hand, would lose easy targets to detain, abuse, harass, beat up, or shoot, all while hiding behind the flimsiest excuse and the easiest lie of 'i smelled weed', and enjoying the benefits of qualified immunity that comes from such claims.
Yup, just about the easiest targets of all. Your average cop would much, much rather arrest a stoner in dreadlocks than bother with genuine bad guys.
They won't be able to pull over random black people because 'they smelled marijuana', and obviously every one of those was on their way to commit a crime.
Guess they'll have to smell fentanyl, which has no odor.
No they can't use that excuse, because the cops are already faking fentanyl overdoses after "smelling" it and having panic attacks because they don't actually know shit about it and believe their own propaganda.
Ha — I attended a neighborhood meeting several months back where a policeman spoke, and described a bust where he'd "smelled fentanyl." It's amazing how much they don't know.
It's like the Battle of Wits scene in Princess Bride.
Yes and so will personal property confiscations (cash, vehicles, etc) I.e. police budget bonuses
I never really heard of police/crime incidents in my hometown involving weed before or after weed became legal in Washington. So I'd assume there really hasn't been a noticable change, which is still better than the fear mongering that crime will increase upon legalizing weed.
In illegal times and places, getting busted for weed is/was so common it only made the news when celebrities are/were caught. Can't much speak to the here and now, but I grew up in (suffice to say) an earlier decade of the illegal era, and dope busts were incredibly common.