this post was submitted on 24 May 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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• Know your rights: Filming the police

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• Police aren't primarily about helping you or solving crimes.

• Police lie under oath, a lot

• Police spin: An object lesson in Copspeak

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• Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States

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Victim reports his father missing. Police instead interrogated him for 17 hours, said they killed his dog, and withheld his meds from the victim. Victim tried to commit suicide in the room. (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator.

Finally, after curling up with the dog on the floor, Perez broke down and confessed. He said he had stabbed his father multiple times with a pair of scissors during an altercation in which his father hit Perez over the head with a beer bottle.

Perez’s father wasn’t dead — or even missing. Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California. But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The point is that the cost of lawsuits would come out of the police officer’s pockets due to higher premiums

man, it's a good thing police forces are private institutions funded by their own dollar.

Surely nothing bad could ever come of this arrangement.

That is a fantastic idea I whole heartedly agree with. Who is in charge of assigning the punishments? Police unions refuse to have civilian oversight.

legally, it should be the court, and a jury. Though we should also institute some protections against criminal enterprising, because it could be very easy to stack a court against them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

man, it’s a good thing police forces are private institutions funded by their own dollar.

That's the entire point. Police stations are tax funded. They torture someone into a false confession and the station gets fined $900 000, which comes from taxes, so they don't fucking care.

What I said was: the cost of lawsuits would come out of the police officer’s pockets, not the police precinct's. The Officers would be paying the insurance costs out of their paychecks. Each lawsuit means the officer ends up with less money. If a specific precinct keeps having lawsuits against it that will result in higher rates for working in a "high risk precinct". Lawsuits should result in financial consequences for the people involved, not for tax payers.

legally, it should be the court, and a jury.

There should absolutely be legal consequences for the officers involved here. How much do you want to bet there won't be?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

That’s the entire point. Police stations are tax funded. They torture someone into a false confession and the station gets fined $900 000, which comes from taxes, so they don’t fucking care.

the problem here is that they aren't reprimanded or punished, they need to be, not that the tax payers pay someone who was abused by an institution funded by tax dollary doos.

the cost of lawsuits would come out of the police officer’s pockets, not the police precinct’s. The Officers would be paying the insurance costs out of their paychecks. Each lawsuit means the officer ends up with less money. If a specific precinct keeps having lawsuits against it that will result in higher rates for working in a “high risk precinct”. Lawsuits should result in financial consequences for the people involved, not for tax payers.

a decent trick here would be forcing the police dept to represent itself, or the officers more specifically. That would come out of the budget fund, and then be an immediate problem.

There should absolutely be legal consequences for the officers involved here. How much do you want to bet there won’t be?

yeah, we literally run this country though, so i don't know why you're sitting here trying to argue something that isn't actually legal punishment, and then sitting here and complaining about the fact that there won't be, even though you're literally steel manning your own argument there.