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376 boys in blue sat around and let 19 kids and 2 teachers die (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world to c/thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world

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[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 months ago

You used to be able to purchase brand new military machine guns right off the wall until 1986, yet I struggle to prove that more than 3 people have died to civilian-owned machine guns. Semi-automatic rifles were widely available for decades before anything really happened. Here is the question: what changed between then and now that started the trend of mass/school shootings?

[-] Illuminostro@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

Rush Limbaugh. Fox News. Fear and Hate being pumped into stupid, hateful peoples head every day and night. That's what happened. Easily available high capacity assault weapons make doing what they want to do obscenely easy.

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

Rush Limbaugh had only been on the air for a little over 10 years when the Columbine shooting happened. For News started that year I think. Other news agencies also did 24 hour coverage of the various big shootings and blasted the killer's identities everywhere, just like the media used to do for serial killers before they were blamed for causing more serial killings.

I think the media is certainly complicit but I think people need look deeper, back to when gang violence, poverty, and the ruining of the American worker began to come back. Neoliberalism has been a cancer infecting the Western nations for decades now, governing over the decline of our industries and the rapid growth of wealth inequality. You can track all the increases in gun violence and mass killings right back to it and its consequences.

this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024

1590 points (98.5% liked)

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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