this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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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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• Know your rights: Filming the police
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• Police aren't primarily about helping you or solving crimes.
• Police lie under oath, a lot
• Police spin: An object lesson in Copspeak
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• Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States
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Footage should be held by some independent 3rd party who will follow the rules on releasing it. It shouldn't be up to the cops.
We tried that when Biden was in office and all these new body cam laws were passed. So many cops threatened to quit, politicians backed down and let police unions retain control of the cameras and recordings.
Damn, I had no idea that happened. So fucked.
Edit: Also, I kinda feel like the ones who threatened the quit, were the ones we wanted to quit ...
Right there with you on that one. If I had it my way, I'd let them all quit, then divert funding from police to social workers and incorporate them into the first-responders network.
Of course, if I had it my way, police would also (at a minimum) have similar training requirements as EMTs, would belong to a union who answered to voters, not other cops, and a whole bunch of other changes to limit their power and militarization.
They wouldn't have quit. That would have impacted their pensions.
I've just been thinking on this more, that really would have been fascinating to see it play out.
I think you're right for any old timers. New people it's not a big an issue. I feel like there may have been a big lawsuit though over if that would be reasonable grounds to quit and keep the pension? It could be entirely baseless, I don't know know anything about that, but that feels like what would happen for those that did quit or wanted to quit?
The ensuing aftermath though would have been a very interesting watch.
Edit: the ensuing aftermath also including all the changes in police misconduct stats.
I say let most of the cops quit and put that funding into training social workers to be first responders to pretty much everything except armed robberies and up.
I think you'd need police for more than just that. Situations can change pretty quickly in a lot of circumstances, but definitely a lot of scenarios where you could send a social worker instead.
There could also be unarmed police like in the UK which would add some level of general deescalation from the start.
The cynic in me doesn’t believe there exists any such party.
Public library systems, give them money from the police budget to get the job done.
I could do it. Problem solved.
I admire your gumption if not your efficacy
Thats also fair.
Screw that. It should be held by a 3rd party openly hostile to police.
Exactly. The footage is there to keep the police from abusing their power, it's not supposed to be neutral in the first place.
"Neutral third parties" that who rely on police departments contracts.
If the cops want it released then it's released. If they want they want it deleted then it's deleted.
I think that would be a potential privacy problem for the people interacting with the cops, given that the majority of their interactions with people don't end up in a shooting. I once got pulled over when I was driving home from late night board games a few days after Christmas. I hadn't been driving erratically, they were just doing routine breathalyser checks because there had been a lot of drunk driving in the area.
I think when the policy is well-made, it would fit with security camera workings. When you go shopping at the mall, pay for your stuff and leave, you're recorded, but the running footage is erased every 48 hours or so. It's only when the mall has a major shoplifting incident, or a mass shooting, would someone tag the period of the crime and save it all for review. Similarly, police would only need body camera review if there's a report they discharged their weapon, made an arrest, etc.