this post was submitted on 18 Sep 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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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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For evading a $2.90 subway fare...

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The part they didn’t include in the headline is that the cops shot the bystander in the head.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I automatically filled in that blank. Because, of course the cops managed to fuck up a sitiation. Not surprised.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Even if you filled in the blank, it's still important to call out cop-excusing passive voice every single time just to highlight how pervasive a problem it is.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Cracking down on fare evasion doesn't even make sense financially. Assuming those cops are making the starting salary for NYPD officers, every single cop would need to catch roughly 54 people every day, each, for them to break even on lost profits. It cant possibly be that big of an issue there.

This is a tragedy. And one that was preventable to boot.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

You’re forgetting that having them posted there allows them harass certain people.

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

They said it's cracking down on crime within the train / subway system of which checking fares is a part. So they don't have them there to just check fares but their job is to reduce and prevent crimes and while they there they check for fares.

One guy skipped fares, he had a history of mental disorders and law violations, and their best course of action is to shoot him, and some bystanders. The fact that both officers shot the guy, with sufficient bullets fired that random bystanders can be hit. Their aim is dog shit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would like to add that mental issues is not an excuse to shoot.

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

I think it makes the shooting worse.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Tom Donlon, the city's interim police commissioner, ordered a full investigation but added: "Make no mistake, the events that occurred... were the results of an armed perpetrator".

These spineless fucks can't even admit they shot two innocent people, one in the head, for, like, $3. It's not like the guy with a KNIFE could have shot them .

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They never found a knife. They claim someone picked it up and left with it in the chaos, which is obviously bullshit. "I'm gonna ignore the cops flagrantly firing into a crowd in my direction to go pick up that free knife"

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

Hey man, a free knife is a free knife!!!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

You can get shot by the NYPD any day, but how many opportunities are you going to get for a free knife.