this post was submitted on 04 Jun 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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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

[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] 168 points 2 months ago (3 children)

A lot of police departments are just... gifted this shit by the military industrial complex.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarization_of_police

They don't have a need for it, but it looks cool parked at the county fair.

The problem is, once they have it, they reach for reasons to use it.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 2 months ago (1 children)

DOD doesn't want to pay upkeep and it was designed for roadside bombs in remote mountains not Iranian drones.

Might as well give it to the cops, in case one of their supporters accidentally hits it while trying to bomb a women's shelter or something.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (3 children)

They're specifically not to be used on roads because they don't fit, rollover if sneezed at and destroy our roads but fuck it they're police right?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What are you talking about, that would fit perfectly parked in the bike lane

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I dunno, it might have to “monster truck” its way over all the other motor vehicles already parked in the bike lane.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I'm confused about the design. If it's designed for mountain areas but is top heavy and rolls easy, isn't that a major design floor for an area where the terrain is likely to be steep from left to right in parts?

Maybe my idea of terrain in mountainous areas is wrong.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's designed to stay on roads.
Those roads are natural choke points where bombs are often hidden on the ground, which results in a high and heavy design.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

MATV begs to differ. We always had the technology. We just wanted a cheap solution to stop taking so many casualties.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Correct, they move slow but they are quite explosion survivable past the original design.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

You have correctly identified one of many reasons the military hated these.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Tall but narrower than other options while having survivability in case of getting IED'd. I know HMMWVs are actually big but the MRAPs didn't all have a much larger footprint.

Fun fact though, they had to add a gunners harness because the gunners were more likely to die in a roll over. Armored plates all up over your back but you get crushed because the Specialist driving hasn't even driven anything bigger than his Civic and doesn't have enough hours dealing with actual Afghan roads.

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

Hey, you can easily get them up to 50mph on an airfield runway and feel the death rattle telling you to slow down. It's basically all operator error.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Is it “gifted” to them, or are they paying taxpayer dollars to purchase these war machines? When they’re turning our local communities into war zones, some of us might even question whether we should reduce their funding significantly if this is what they’re squandering our money on.

Watch them cower inside of this vehicle, idling in the parking lot as a school shooter empties one magazine after another.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

They pay little to nothing to get them, then they pay everything to keep, maintain, and store it. As someone else noted, looks like it's already leaking oil.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They pay very little for it. Essentially shipping.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, can’t decide if that’s better or worse.

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

Title of ~~your sex tape~~ our government's entire domestic agenda...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

When all you have is a hammer, etc.