this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
120 points (93.5% 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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RULES

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ALLIES

[email protected]

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r/ACAB

r/BadCopNoDonut/

Randy Balko

The Civil Rights Lawyer

The Honest Courtesan

Identity Project

MirandaWarning.org

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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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ORGANIZATIONS

Black Lives Matter

Campaign Zero

Innocence Project

The Marshall Project

Movement Law Lab

NAACP

National Police Accountability Project

Say Their Names

Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration

 

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[–] [email protected] 109 points 10 months ago

Not a moment of self reflection on what might be wrong with the institution of policing, just feeling bad for themselves.

Still a mystery why trust in police has been eroding.

[–] [email protected] 99 points 10 months ago (1 children)
  • Show up because of mental health call.

  • Kills person.

  • Gets PTO to recover before being put back out

Yeah I don't care what a cop feels.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago

I'm a veteran.

PTSD from combat and gun stuff.

I call the crisis line due to PTSD episode and panic attack.

Cops with guns drawn show up to determine if I should be committed against my will.

I have to fake my way through a panic attack to convince them I'm fine.

They believe me and leave me alone.

I wonder what the next steps are.

Fuck cops.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 10 months ago

makes it pretty hard to show up to work

aww is your job of harassing people, and pointing guns at people, making your feefees hurt?

[–] [email protected] 66 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They could try not pointing their gun at everything that moves. Might change the conversation around policing a little bit if they weren't so trigger happy.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

With the Uvalde and Maine cops in mind, I’d say the larger problem isn’t that they point their guns at everything that moves—it’s that they make an exception for anything that poses an actual threat…to themselves.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago

Aww, did the cops get their feelings hurt because someone said something mean? The poor dears, I'm sure a nice cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows and a few civil rights violations will fix them right up

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago

we see no evidence that cops police themselves, so it's hard to have sympathy.. you seem to think cops are a special case and laws don't apply to you boys..

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago

A mass quiting of cop sounds like a dream scenario.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago

Cops, the original snowflake

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Not too different than the boondoggle known as "Cop City" in Atlanta where then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said "This training facility will not only help boost morale, retention and recruitment of our public safety personnel, but will give us physical space to ensure that our officers and firefighters are receiving 21st century training, rooted in respect and regard for the communities they serve."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Maybe someday we can start talking about tearing these down and sticking them in whatever hole the confederate monuments end up in.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

oh, no, boo hoo!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Well I will admit im glad im not a cop or a priest.