this post was submitted on 18 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
• 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
founded 1 year ago
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How about we clarify that as: little boys and little girls in blue.
Altho TBF, women in blue are typically at the bottom of the chain, and almost certainly deserve the least amount of critique here, whilst the highest ranking dudes unquestionably deserve all the shit in the world for directly ordering their forces not to make any meaningful attempt.
And it was a civilian woman who ran in and got her kid. She would've died trying, if unsuccessful. More balls than any of the male officers. They should make her a statue.
Right on.
Now this is just personal anecdote-- but one thing I've always been pretty surprised by (as a person with fairly severe health issues, haha not sure how that totally influences thigns) is how, when there's a local emergency, the adrenaline just hits me and I spring in to action (as much as I can) to help out.
Par example, three times now I've survived bad fires that way, and after comparing notes with an old friend over Uvalde, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that both of us felt the same way-- that we wouldn't have been able to look ourselves in the mirror if we hadn't made our best attempt to save the kids.
Seriously, how do these BLUE people look at themselves in the mirror for either not doing their best that day, or on a national scale, for enabling this awful betrayal of public trust?
Because police in the US exist to protect the rich and their property, and to funnel "those people" into for-profit prisons. They don't give two shits about you, your family, or anything except for their pensions.