THE POLICE PROBLEM
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
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
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
• r/ACAB
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INFO
• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• 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
• When the police knock on your door
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ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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I said this when Tamir Rice was killed. I said it in the 90s when the California kid was killed. And I'll say it here too.
There's no one single person at fault, but the person at fault the most is the parents for not teaching their kid how not to be a dumbass.
"Hey, what'cha doin' Jimmy?"
"Just taking my toy gun out to play"
"Whoa there! That's a bad idea. If this gets mistaken for a real gun, somebody will call the cops on you, and they'll KILL you for real! Nope! You're not going out with this gun. Even if it is plastic, a bb gun, a pellet gun, or anything else that could easily be mistaken as the real thing."
And I've heard it before: "But cops are the ones KILLING the kid!"
Yes, and I do agree that a LOT of what the cops do is corrupt, this is the ONE CASE where you expect them to shoot to kill. When they are under the impression that you have an active shooter, you WANT them to shoot to kill.
"But it's NOT an active shooter! It's a toy gun!"
And how do the cops know that? They get a call that theres a kid with a gun. Have you SEEN how many kids get real guns and shoot up schools the last 20 years??? They have to treat these situations as real.
"But he's just a kid!"
And a kid with a gun is just as deadly as an adult with a gun.
The way to not have cops shoot you on the spot is to not appear like a deadly threat to society. Now we can sit around all day debating on how we got to this point, but the reality is we live in a world where kids shoot people with guns. If you have what looks to be a gun, you're gonna get shot. And the kid may not even know what he did wrong.....and thats the parents fault.
Because if cops wait around, and figure things out first, you have Uvalde all over again. People were pissed, as they should be, that police showed up, and DIDN'T shoot a kid.
I have no love for police in their current state. I'm even subscribed to a community on Lemmy called "the police problem".
However, this is like the ONE THING they're good for, is stopping active shooters. Don't want to get shot by police? Don't make yourself appear as an active shooter.
While you might be right, I am angry that you are right.