this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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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]

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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] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have they ever tried, like, not killing people, like all the civilized countries do?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Well that just sounds like a slippery slope straight to COMMUNISM /s

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Rodents might not be a great model. We know from a variety of sources that humans can't really sense excess nitrogen or hypoxic air: industrial accidents, diving experiments, even astronauts.

However, rodents may be able to sense hypoxia a bit better than we do: experiments found that rodents presented a choice would avoid a hypoxic chamber. Guinea pigs may not be the humane animal model here.

A hypoxic chamber does sound like one of the less painful ways to go. I'm not in favor of governments killing people, but a relatively quick loss of consciousness seems far better than getting poked with needles, electrocuted in the brain, shot with bullets, or hanged on a rope. Although I'm still expecting Alabama to screw this up somehow.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not a literal guinea pig. The human is the guinea pig

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The article mentioned that veterinarians don't consider nitrogen to be humane for euthanizing animals.

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

I’m against the death penalty. I wish we didn’t use it since it’s vengeance and not justice.

That said, this is supposed to be much more humane.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I was going to be executed I would volunteer for the nitrogen method over anything that's currently in use.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

When the electric chair was introduced it was marketed as painless too.

Granted, we do have survivor accounts of nitrogen hypoxia so it's a bit different.

I think death by excessive explosion actually sounds both dope and as humane as it gets.

Like, strap a dude with way too much TNT and let it rip. They're guaranteed to not feel it, and explosives are relatively cheap.

Plus, the witnesses get to be issued ponchos, and that's always fun.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Bonus, you could probably raise funds for the district by having a thing where people could make a donation to have them add even more TNT. It's not like its going to make it any less or more fatal, but everyone likes an earth-shattering kaboom.

Not even joking, look at people sponsoring signed missiles in Ukraine and you know there are guys who would be all in on this

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't care how it's marketed. I thought of nitrogen asphyxiation on my own a long time ago when I was contemplating the most reliable way to kill someone painlessly. (I am against the death penalty BTW, but I have no illusions about it stopping anytime soon.)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What makes nitrogen so much worse then the lethal injection or the chair or something?

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

I'm not so much concerned that it's 'worse', as that people will say it's 'better', as in, "Ain't it swell that we've figured out a kind and courteous way to execute people, so why not use it more often?"

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

Err...I hate the death penalty too but you literally just argued we must never make it more humane..

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

Yup. I'm against even the warmest and fuzziest killing as punishment for a crime someone's already in prison for.

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

So...keep it inhumane? That's what you want. They must suffer so the public is more opposed to the death penalty.

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

No. Stop fucking doing it.

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

That's not the discussion right now and more importantly it's not happening anytime soon. As I said I am completely opposed to the death penalty as well. I will admit I think people out there simply deserve to die but I don't trust the state to make that call with 100% accuracy.

But right now we are talking about the humanity of nitrogen versus the electric chair. When I asked how nitrogen is worse then the electric chair is response is that if we make the death penalty more humane it will be used more.

So...again... somehow this discussion has turned into how the death penalty must remain inhumane as a deterrent to using it. We must make them suffer in death so that the general public feels bad that they died. That is the current argument that I am questioning. Because, personally, I find that to be pretty disgusting.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

"Don't" is an implicit option that can and should be promoted anytime "how" we execute people is brought up. I'm not interested in splitting moral hairs about something that is always morally wrong.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ok so....basically just putting your fingers in your ears and screaming that the current world doesn't exist. Got ya. Also..I love that you say choosing between making a man die in extreme pain or allowing him to die peacefully is 'splitting moral hairs'.

That is literally how you view human life.

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

Capital punishment is a thorny issue, but your arguments are loaded with misunderstandings and fallacies.

OP wasn't calling for harsher methods; they're concerned about making a bad act seem "better."

Yes, abolishing the death penalty is relevant. It doesn't directly answer your question, but it pushes the conversation toward action, not just analysis.

I think you twisted Chetzemoka's words. Whether "extreme pain" or "peacefully," we're still talking about killing someone, not just "allowing" them to die, so let's not phrase it that way.

Let's focus on constructive debate, not misinterpretations and logical dead-ends.

To directly answer your question, nitrogen shouldn't be worse, and as a matter of fact should be loads better. But we don't know with certainty, so the argument is that makes it automatically inhumane.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nitrogen has been approved as an execution method by three states: Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

If something is banned everywhere except those specific states, there's a 100% likelihood that it's so heinous that it should never be allowed anywhere under any circumstances.

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

Euthanasia advocates are generally a compassionate bunch, and nitrogen asphyxiation has been proposed numerous times in that space. I don't think it's fair to vilify its usage just because you look down upon the states that have legalized it's usage in this capacity.

I've also personally blacked out from a lack of oxygen, and I can tell you it was far too sudden for me to comprehend I was about to die, let alone process potential pain.

I am against capital punishment, but if we're going to do it, the current methods are far too brutal. We need to be accepting of new alternatives, especially ones that historically have been effective in other contexts.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

With the death penalty they approve methods. They don’t ban methods.

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

It’s an important distinction. Nitrogen is not banned in other states. It’s not approved.

It’s used for euthanasia because it’s less painful

I’m against the death penalty but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be humane.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I would imagine any halfway honest judge would shut this down as cruel and unusual punishment. A judge like that might be a rarity in Alabama though.

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

This is a more human way of execution, my only problem with it is, if a state is pro-life then state execution should be illegal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is no humane way of execution.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's humane for potential victims

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Try again please. I don't understand.