“Taxpayers on the hook for innocent man assaulted and framed by police and DA.”
Fixed that for you.
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
222 points (99.1% 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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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
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MODERATORS
Need to have police unions on the hook for this stuff.
Their pensions/salaries need to get hit for this before it will affect anything. Also there needs to be some kind of National law enforcement accreditation standard and training. I’d also like an independent review and oversight commission that allows zero current or former police, but I recognize all of this will never happen. Instead we have an occupying force ostensibly for our protection.
America will never have a national accreditation for this. Almost certainly a state's rights issue as there's no interstate-trade angle Congress could take.
But damn, I'd be all for it. If you're a government official, and you carry a weapon, you get standard training.
This week, Bell was awarded a settlement of $17.5 million from New York City, a record breaking sum, first reported by the New York Times.
Nobody:
New York Times: "FIRST!"
Only 17million USD? Wow, so this innocent civilian can maybe buy a small apartment in their hometown of NYC and get back to work.
"The prosecutor of the case Brad Leventhal and his boss, Assistant District Attorney Charles Testagrossa, withheld evidence that would have pointed to other potential suspects, and hid mental health records of key witnesses, according to Zayas."
The first money to be paid should come from selling everything these guys own. Then they go to jail and be paid $0.75 per hour making license plates, for 20 years. Then they get a TV to watch until the rest is paid back.
Evidence of a prosecutor withholding exculpatory evidence should be a crime in itself. Devil and details and all, but I'm sure we're smart enough to craft and test such a law.
How about we start making the cops sell their tanks and helicopters and drones and rocket launchers and MRAPS to pay for these settlements? Seems like it would solve several problems at once. Departments wouldn't want to hire shit cops anymore because they'd lose their toys. The departments that DID still hire bad cops wouldn't have any toys left for the bad cops to do as much damage with (which would make being a cop a lot less fun for the chucklefucks). And we'd start demilitarizing our police force while still letting the folks that can be trusted with the stuff to use it appropriately.
Most of that stuff is still owned by the federal government and is "on loan". The municipality needs to prove they have a legitimate need/use for it, that they'll maintain the equipment, and that they won't misuse it -- or the feds will take it back.
And they do audit their "loaned" inventory.
Someone who did nothing wrong got his life wrecked. A bunch of people who did nothing wrong will pay him a lot of money because of this. The actual villains who willfully ignored both the law and human decency in an effort to ruin this man's life, and almost got away with it, will get a free pass because nothing is illegal when you're a cop.
Not some. Not many. Not most. ACAB