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I have played several games in my Steam library for more hours than it takes to become a police officer.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
1033 points (98.8% 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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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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It's also not just the amount of training they receive, but the content of the training. When you learn in Police academy that 1) everyone is armed and dangerous and 2) everyone is out to kill you, you tend to be more aggressive. And this is drilled into their skulls with the equivalent of a jackhammer. No wonder you get cops that are completely devoid of empathy, reason and humanity, but rather trigger happy assholes who will use violence for every single issue.
From what I understand the system is little bit more involved. In the Academy they technically teach you all the rules you need to abide by. But they drill the self and buddy defense imperative into you at every moment. This is so they can point at the training regimen whenever reformers make a stink.
But that's not the end of training for police officers. There's two more crucial steps. First you have to get through probation where it's really easy to fire you and your training officer basically controls that 100%. So it's a vibe check. Then they send you to continuing training seminars that propagandize police into a Hollywood Western mindset and teach them to not feel guilt or shame at killing people. Basically lowering the psychological barrier to shooting people.
Which for the record, isn't even a step the military takes. It's not hard to dehumanize someone threatening you. The only reason you'd need a class to do so, is if you're trying to dehumanize people before hand.