this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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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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INFO

A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions

Adultification

Cops aren't supposed to be smart

Don't talk to the police.

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

So you wanna be a cop?

When the police knock on your door

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An investigative report released by James’ office determined prosecutors would not be able to disprove that the deputy, John Rosello, believed the car was about to hit him or that firing into the car was a way to prevent himself from being harmed.

Rosello, of the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, fatally shot Dhal Apet, 17, and Lueth Mo, 15, as he was investigating the burglary of a smoke shop in the Syracuse area and responding to a call about people transferring items between two vehicles.

Surveillance video of the shooting previously released by the attorney general’s office shows the deputy use his SUV’s front bumper to pin one of the cars into a row of bushes. Rosello then gets out of the vehicle, stands for a moment in front of the car Apet and Mo are riding in, then steps out of the way with his firearm apparently aimed at the car as it moves forward.

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My impression from watching the video linked in the article is that the driver of the car did appear to be willing to hit the cop in order to get away. Unless the cop shot at the car after it already drove past him (which could presumably be determined by looking at the angle at which the bullets hit the car) I think that this really does look like self-defense.