this post was submitted on 14 Oct 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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148

Bodycam video shows Illinois cop shooting unarmed 14-year-old suspected of breaking a window (webcache.googleusercontent.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Original link

top 18 comments

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Depart policy is to have the taser on the opposite of the body. Sgt. Langan had his taser strapped to the front of his vest.

Failure to follow department policy.

Training is to happen every year. Sgt. Langan had training maybe two or three times.

Department failure to uphold document protocol.

I mean just these two alone they're going to be ripped apart in a civil suit. There's just this whole chain of broken from start to finish, literally none of the links interconnect. This department probably has a ton of systemic issues that State level oversight ought to get involved, but we know that the issues won't be addressed, the department will ask to settle out of court, and literally no one will be punished except the tax payer who will float that settlement.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I hope they don't settle.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

One-and-a-half years after the teen was shot, no discipline has been given. Sauk Village Police Chief Malcolm White says the disciplinary process has not begun. He said they were waiting to get the Illinois State Police and Cook County State's Attorney's office findings. The State's Attorney's office determined in early September that no criminal charges would be filed against the sergeant for the shooting.

No further comment was provided by the police chief.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

What a hero...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

404 on the cache link.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Five free ways around paywalls and region-blocking:

• archive.today — slow-loading, virtually unreadable without adblocker
• Ghostarchive — poor layout
• Google Cache — frequently fails, but captures video when it works
• Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) — slow-loading
• 12ft ladder — blocks access to most major newspapers

If there are other workarounds, please let me know.

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

It wasn't a paywall or region block, it was a 404 error, ie a bad link. However it's working now - on my PC anyway, it could be that some ad blocking on my phone did something weird and Google threw up a 404.

Edit: yep, works on my PC but not on my phone.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe Google Cache links never work on phones?
Here's another; plz let me know.

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

That doesn't work for me either. It's possibly a general phone thing, but I think more likely it's my phone's configuration. Privacy focused custom ROM, ad blocking DNS and a browser that does it's thing also.

The original link actually worked just fine.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Thanks for checking it out (I'm not a smart phone guy).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Bodycam video shows Illinois cop shooting ~~unarmed~~ 14-year-old ~~suspected of breaking a window~~

Tell the story for what it. A police officer shot a child. What they were or weren't suspected of, whether they had a weapon or not, doesn't matter.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, yes it does. Like it or not, in the US it's not unheard of for a 14 year old to have a gun. The fact that he was unarmed is very relevant.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It's not illegal to be armed. It's also not a death sentence. It's only relevant if they're armed AND shooting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You'd think gun right activists would more concerned with this reality. But I can assume the skin color without reading the article and that is a more uncomfortable reality for them to acknowledge; the reason some of them need to be armed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Spot on. The sad fact is, the best gun reform we ever got was when the black panthers decided to arm themselves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I think it's relevant because it's evidence the teen was not a threat. I don't think it's implying an armed individual would automatically be a threat.

There are articles that do draw that false equivalence, and they deserve being called out. I don't think this is one of them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Also, do you believe that a suspect needs to shoot first before being considered a threat by police? I would say "armed and brandishing" would make the individual a legitimate threat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

That's fair. I'd read an article titled with that.