this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
204 points (98.6% 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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If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.

Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.

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ALLIES

[email protected]

[email protected]

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] 61 points 1 year ago

Bootlicker Fantasy: "If you defund the police what are you going to do if someone attacks you?"

Police Reality: "We hear a citizen being attacked, maybe if we wait it will go away or become someone else's problem. These things have a tendency to work themselves out where I don't have to put myself in harms way... the most important thing is assuming no risk so I can get home to my family because I'm a hero."

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

Police: rolls up in an actual fricking APC, and a bunch of army seals wannabe cops pour out, "ready for action"

Also the police: we can't go in there, he has a knife and someone could get hurt!

Meanwhile, inside: victim literally dying from stab wounds.

.... we pay them for this. We do, with our taxes.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Fuck these pieces of shit. They stood by and listened as a woman was brutally murdered RIGHT BY THEM, and instead of doing literally anything, they “called for more experienced backup”

Fuck a lawsuit, fuck jail time, these motherfuckers deserve exactly the death that they deliberately failed to prevent. Slow and fucking painful.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

To be fair, she didn't have a fraternal order of police sticker on her window.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's not even a slap on the wrist, it's a rounding error in their budget. This is messed up.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For anyone wondering, it's about the equivalent of just under 0.05% of their city budget about two years ago. Probably less so now as budgets tend to not get smaller.

So, rounding error isn't that far off.

Edit: they also operated at a surplus far greater than this fine as well. Though I will admit I don't know if they're still in surplus.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, about $5K per stub. Good to know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can probably only afford three, I'd better make sure they're accurate

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You don’t understand. This is how you earn the money, by letting stubbing yourself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thank the police!