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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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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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ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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Not only that, cops fought for... and WON... the right to not hire people who are too smart:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-smart-to-be-a-cop/
Their justification for it is such an open and obvious lie too. He might get bored and quit? Because he's too smart? Makes zero sense. On the list of jobs one might do I don't think being a cop would rank very high in the boredom rankings.
Are you judging the profession based on television? The majority of cops sit somewhere for a long ass time waiting for something to happen then when it does its mostly something boring like hauling a drunk driver in, writing a speeding ticket, or responding to a domestic violence call to either play therapist or MAYBE haul the guy off for the night knowing that nothing will happen except a tearful reunion.
On TV cops fire their guns twice in 30 minutes whereas in reality 68% NEVER fire a firearm in their career. There are almost a million officers in the US you have no doubt seen many in passing. Did it seem like on average they are out doing exciting things?
The bigger flaw in the logic is that since when do dumb people get bored less easily? If anything they get bored more easily because they're not observing potentially interesting things in mundane scenarios.
do you not understand the concept of "overqualified"
No such thing when we're talking about people making life and death decisions. In the military we were told the deadliest weapon is your brain. Once again Cops want to cosplay but not put the work in.
You'd be surprised. Unless you're in very specific parts it's a lot like the military. Boredom for 99 percent of the time and 1 percent "action". Add on to that, the second they find out you're a "smart guy" you're going into an office job where you stare at spreadsheets all day.
this comes up again and again and it's always only this one case. iq and being a good cop is not even directly related so I wish people would stop bringing this up as some sort of gotcha.
Actually IQ is correlated to problem solving which literally makes you a better everything just not obviously by itself. While this case is an extreme example of scaring off smart people there are lots of less direct ways you can discourage them from joining your ranks. Promoting idiots to positions of power and allowing them to erect dysfunctional systems that people l lower on the totem pole aren't allowed to change, punishing anyone who snitches on their fellow cops misbehavior, and promoting your idiot cronies are all pretty effect and pervasively practiced.
just because your IQ isn't 125 doesn't mean you're an "idiot".
what are the less direct ways?
Did you need to re-read the post?
Are you saying that you don't have an issue with stupid/dumb cops?
I don't, I have a problem with bad cops.