this post was submitted on 17 Nov 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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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.

Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.

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It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.

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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] 109 points 1 month ago (4 children)

the only thing i saw was that the coward cop 'saw a knife' and clearly had to kill everything in sight instead of, ya know, backing off.

de-escalation is not in their vocabulary or police training.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Blue lives don't matter.

Seriously, that's the entire point of police. Or at least, that's the propaganda. Police exist to protect the citizens from criminals. They're given authority in the form of a badge, and power in the form of a gun, and they are expected to enforce the law as defined by our elected leaders and judicial appointees.

Cops are heroes. They risk their safety to enter situations without hesitation or concern for self preservation. They are trained to be as safe as possible, but there isn't a police officer alive who wouldn't claim to be willing to lay down their life for the life of a baby.

Unfortunately, in practice, that's not what we see. We do not see heroes protecting civilians. We see criminals protecting each other. We do not see selfless sacrifice and empathy. We see megalomaniacs protecting their power.

Good cops, true police officers, would all agree and say proudly, their lives don't matter. Not when it comes to being sure of your targets. Not when it comes to being sure of the threat. Not when it comes to being sure that lethal force is required to keep everyone safe. An officer who is so afraid of injury or death that they are willing to trade the life of a child to protect their own has no business being a cop. We should never tolerate the idea that blue lives matter.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Blue lives don't exist. Full stop.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Police exist to protect the citizens from criminals.

But they don't. They exist to protect the STATE from CITIZENS, in the same way the military exists to protect the state from foreign aggression. Police are the only people empowered to do violence to citizens of a state, and they do it on behalf if the interests of that state. That is their genuine and explicit reason for existing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm so disenchanted with policing that I'm not sure it can be rehabilitated without heavy heavy changes, but you remind me of how I felt signing up for police college as a young guy. I was pretty religious too at the time, and going into policing felt like the ultimate service to the community.

Anyway, a few ride-alongs cured me of that notion.

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

I told my father, a Nazi and former cop (but I repeat myself), that body cams should be turned on from the moment a cop is on duty to the moment they are not, that this data should be live-streamed to servers where the footage can be reviewed by the public and become subject to feedback. He RAILED against this, crying about how cops would never have any privacy, etc. (completely missing the point and the detail of what I said because he's completely reactionary, like cops tend to be).

I'm an open source code developer. My code, including the often dumb and embarrassing errors I make from time to time, are available to the world for immediate scrutiny the instant I push a commit or open a pull request. My code isn't really the kind of thing involved in life or death situations. So why should I be subject to more direct scrutiny than cops? Why should we allow cops this whiney attitude toward job evaluation?

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

Agreed re body cams, except maybe how "public" the footage is. Thinking here about the privacy of the subjects being recorded.

Maybe sent to a watchdog org which can accept requests if people don't want details of themselves or their lives freely available.

Opens up the avenue for intimidation ofc, so kid gloves

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

Sure, I'll take a citizen-led board of reviewers, as long as they have legal teeth and aren't under the purview of those being evaluated.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Except you'd never hear a firefighter say that they would rather let a civilian die in a fire than risk going into a burning building.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I should have been more specific:

They risk their safety to enter situations without hesitation or concern for self preservation. They are trained to be as safe as possible, but there isn't a police officer alive who wouldn't claim to be willing to lay down their life for the life of a baby.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

A guy with not one, but two knives was just stopped today by German police. They shot him in the foot and he's now in the hospital. In contrast, American cops always claim that hitting the legs is not a reliable way to stop an attacker. They always act like they are in a military occupation zone with suicide bombers at every corner.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

It is, unfortunately, not about the expediency of stopping the person, but not having a person to challenge their actions in court after being shot. They are far, far, more likely to have the shooting be judged as bad, in court, if they have a victim narrative during the trial. We have had many recordings of police, in training, being told to shoot, to kill, for this very reason.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

De-escalation is when they go from two guys pointing guns at you to one guy pointing a gun and one guy hitting you with an asp. And I am not joking. It relates to the use of force continuum.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

hitting you with an asp

They're swinging snakes now?? ACAB, but that's fucking badass! 😛

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

I assume you're joking, but for anyone unfamiliar, an ASP is a collapsible metal baton that police frequently carry.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I choose to believe: telescopic serpent

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I like this, and would like to see the full line of products.

Telescopic serpent? Check. Collapsible giraffe. Copy. Inflatable kangaroo? We got three. Glow in the dark parrots? Yes please!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Here’s the inflatable kangaroo at least. Can’t help with the rest, but this one is giant!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Aww, c'mon! No flammable penguins? Left handed horses? Subterranean cuttlefish?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

De-escalation doesn't get them to do the shooty-shooty part, and thats the best part of their day, they aren't trying to avoid it (especially once they confirmed there is no lethal weapon that would put them in any actual danger).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Hey, they had to shoot someone! Just think of the nut he'll get later!