this post was submitted on 04 Jun 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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• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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Let's say you're a cop and you get a call: there's a hispanic gay crossdresser armed with a .50BMG sniper rifle with explosive rounds reported on the roof of the KwikeeMart, and they're threatening to shoot the Walmart across the street unless they're called by their proper pronouns, black lives/matter. This situation calls for an immediate response with at least a MRAP, and that's only because they don't have the funding for an airstrike from an A-10.
Yeah I mean they would need an MRAP to keep them safe while they wait for the shooter to finish up or run out of ammo. We've got to think of the officers and their safety.
Fun fact. That MRAP does not protect against .50 cal rounds.
Sounds like they are in desperate need of an M1A2 Abrams then
All the better reason for the government to fund the airstrike option.
F-35's coming to a local police department near you!
FTFY
Haven't seized enough cash to fund an airstrike from an A-10.
Operating an A-10, without firing its nose gun, runs about 19k-25k and hour. A full load of rounds is 1200. They fire at a rate of 3900 rounds per minute. The rounds, depending on the exact type, cost between 90 and 175$ per round. This also doesn't include the cost of maintaining the gun which incurs a lot of maintenance because of all the heat, and forces, involved.
For real? Shooting the entire load of ammo is done in like 20 seconds? SO all those brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr memes should be more like brrr?
correct. the reality is that is fires in short bursts. the rounds are huge and include, DU and tungsten cores, incendiary loads, high explosives, and others. a one second burst of fire from the A-10's GAU 8 Avenger Gatling gun is enough to destroy anything the rounds can penetrate.
When a pirate is flying it, it goes Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
...yet
Didn't police actually bomb parts of a town? But that might be from my limited knowledge about history
Yeah, the Phillie cops bombed an entire city block into rubble when they went after the MOVE group of fanatics. Coincidentally it was in a black neighborhood. What were the chances of that, eh?
Maybe not exactly what you had in mind, but the Battle of Blair Mountain ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain ) is an excellent example of the dynamic between police, capital class, and labor.
Edit: fixing my stupid link; thanks for the heads-up!
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
I totally missed that. I completely agree and apologize for the oversight.
All good, it's a really common mistake.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
Tulsa, I believe they bombed the black communities while attempting an ethic genocide.
You're a bit mixed up there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
There was a thriving black community in the Greenwood district. The whites resented "thriving" and "black" being in the same place. Read on and draw your own conclusions.