This really is plain robbery, somehow legal.
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 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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• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
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• Killings by law enforcement in Canada
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• Know your rights: Filming the police
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• 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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The vehicle was not speeding or driving recklessly. It had no broken lights or expired tags, nor had the car been reported stolen. What it did have was out-of-state plates on a rental car.
This is enough to trigger a traffic stop during Operation Rolling Thunder, the annual five-day law enforcement blitz that turns a 20-mile stretch of freeway between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, into a gauntlet for travelers.
This in itself is illegal.
This seems ripe for federal legislation to ban any civil asset forfeiture in the absence of a criminal conviction. It would be an easy political win for any person or party that managed to get it through.
All true, but once again we find that police will abuse their power to the maximum extent, then wonder why everyone hates them. All those "good apples" should be vigorously opposing policies and practices such as these.
An article like this about behaviors like this could never be written about an organization that was actually there to protect the public.
Oh, sure, definitely. I'm just shocked that something that is so widely abused, and has very little apparent legitimate purpose, hasn't been targeted for legislation.
Fair, I agree also. I just wasn't done venting my outrage yet. 😁
Not that I hadn't heard about civil asset forfeiture before, I also didn't recognize that it was so blatantly, openly abused.
Oh my god, yes. It's fucking awful. Even worse, it tends to target non-white people, because they're less likely to have traditional bank accounts and be able to move money electronically. It's literally life savings for some of the people getting hit, and they're getting pulled over on absolute nonsense bullshit.
Any large amounts of cash in the vehicle?
Last Week Tonight's piece on civil forfeiture. Cops just take your shit and you can't even challenge it.
For instance traveling to buy a car with cash, have cash with you as you're moving to a new job in a new city? Cops stop you, take your money and you can't challenge it in any way, even when you've genuine proof that you're going to buy a car with that money and the deals already made and verified and whatnot.
It's insane