this post was submitted on 19 Dec 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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RULES

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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] 51 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

“We can’t just terminate someone like other organizations. We have to operate by the law and our state police rules,” Davis told AP. “As a superintendent, I have to put my personal feelings aside. Our job is to operate under the color of the law.”

your officers can just terminate a man in the street during a routine traffic stop, by torturing him to death apparently

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Look, I'm not defending the officers in any way, but firing them in a way that doesn't follow law and policy just means they get rehired with backpay later. Off the top of my head, the old police commissioner Kathleen O'Toole fired an officer for blatant racial discrimination (stopped and arrested a black man who was walking down the street using a golf club as a cane and then grossly mistreated him), and even after a lawsuit where the police department was found liable for the officer's actions, she was still given backpack and change to "retirement" instead of being fired after a lawsuit by the officers' guild.

It does no good to fire them if it's not done properly, but we should definitely work to change the system that makes it so difficult.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

they should swing for murder.. ignorant fucking animals all..

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

Oooh oooh oooh!!! I bet I can guess what color the law is!!!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (6 children)

We have had the internet for 30 years, and with it, the ability for common people to organize on a scale never before seen in civilization.

Yet, somehow, still, we stand idly by and let injustice prevail. All it takes is organization and bullets, people. We could easily make these authority figures fear the common man as much as they want us to fear them, but alas, America is a wasteland of cowards. Oh well. I guess we get what we deserve.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Bout to say color of the law must be pretty white for this asshat

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Indeed we do get what we deserve. The culture wars have proved to be quite successful, for those who want to keep all of the workers divided.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

it kinda worked in minneapolis. there was a lot of unnecessary destruction that affected hard working people. i would much rather see a tit-for-tat culture in response to police brutality. all we need for cops to respect citizenry is to have them fear retaliation from the public.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Land of the Fee. Home of the Slave.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's because it doesn't affect white ppl. If there's one thing history has taught me about this country is if it doesn't affect white ppl nothing will happen.

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

we need a new black panthers then. focus on solutions, not complaints.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

they're not scared of us like they should be.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

It's because we're not burning down enough police stations like in Minneapolis, when we strike back we need to attack less retail stores and more police stations, city halls, and other places to better focus our rage on.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

the police are allowed to lie under oath because they need to be able to hurt people who didn't do anything wrong