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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 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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RULES
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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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
"I'm going to save your life" reeks of his God complex. He knows better than his damn government. And I wonder how long his camera battery has been dead. How many days.
I only know ONE police officer personally. And he's a huge egotistic sack of racist shit.
I knew 5 and they were all at least wife-beaters, and 3 beat their children.
A good friend of mine has an older brother that is a state trooper and I have heard him say ... ".... A dead suspect can't defend himself in court" multiple times.
But I also my tenant who is a new state trooper and he is the nicest guy I have ever met. Maybe he isn't tainted yet.
My father is a retired cop and a genuinely good guy. Despite that, he still listens to Conservative radio and rants about the rising crime rates and how the US needs to do a better job of enforcing the "rule of law". No matter how nice a cop may be, they still participate in a system that hammers into them that the only way to reduce crime is more policing. It's a system that perpetuates itself by spreading fear.
Ya, probably my tenant isn't tainted then.
I work in municipal government, and different departments have very different police. It really comes diem to leadership and accountability.
In my last city, the police department wasn't founded until around 2010. The city manager who hired all their leadership at the beginning was a black man who had seen bad policing in his day.
They started with the understanding that shit don't fly. They all wore body cams from the moment the department was founded. They get most of their hires fresh from the academies so they haven't been tainted. They focus on public safety and compliance instead of punishment (in 2023 they wrote 4 tickets between 20 officers). It's a great department.
My current city is different. They exist to chase poor people and minorities out of the city. When there was a major collapse in a road, I (the maps and permits guy) was out there flagging traffic myself because the police chief didn't see it (public safety) as their problem. They go to the"warrior cop" seminars and just meet every stereotye of the bad cop.
The rest of the city staff hates them for a million reasons, but primarily because they're useless. We could just use the county sheriff's office and highway patrol and achieve everything we need to, but instead over half our staff positions are wasted on police when we don't even have a public works department or city engineer.
I think the problem with every system that involves any sort of centralized power (hint: almost all of them) that, no matter how well intentioned the original vision was, it is human nature to eventually get drunk off their newfound authority and start abusing it
That sounds so ideal, and something I feel like my city would be all about. According to newspapers, they just keep insisting that nobody wants the job. Nobody applying to any open position, so they're hiring anyone capable