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[-] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 144 points 1 day ago

a woman and her infant who were killed last week during an incident that led up to a shooting involving Independence, Missouri police.

What the fuck kind of language is that? Is it even possible to further remove police culpability in this?

the only thing i saw was that the coward cop 'saw a knife' and clearly had to kill everything in sight instead of, ya know, backing off.

de-escalation is not in their vocabulary or police training.

[-] Hubi@feddit.org 23 points 1 day ago

A guy with not one, but two knives was just stopped today by German police. They shot him in the foot and he's now in the hospital. In contrast, American cops always claim that hitting the legs is not a reliable way to stop an attacker. They always act like they are in a military occupation zone with suicide bombers at every corner.

[-] Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago

It is, unfortunately, not about the expediency of stopping the person, but not having a person to challenge their actions in court after being shot. They are far, far, more likely to have the shooting be judged as bad, in court, if they have a victim narrative during the trial. We have had many recordings of police, in training, being told to shoot, to kill, for this very reason.

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 50 points 1 day ago

Blue lives don't matter.

Seriously, that's the entire point of police. Or at least, that's the propaganda. Police exist to protect the citizens from criminals. They're given authority in the form of a badge, and power in the form of a gun, and they are expected to enforce the law as defined by our elected leaders and judicial appointees.

Cops are heroes. They risk their safety to enter situations without hesitation or concern for self preservation. They are trained to be as safe as possible, but there isn't a police officer alive who wouldn't claim to be willing to lay down their life for the life of a baby.

Unfortunately, in practice, that's not what we see. We do not see heroes protecting civilians. We see criminals protecting each other. We do not see selfless sacrifice and empathy. We see megalomaniacs protecting their power.

Good cops, true police officers, would all agree and say proudly, their lives don't matter. Not when it comes to being sure of your targets. Not when it comes to being sure of the threat. Not when it comes to being sure that lethal force is required to keep everyone safe. An officer who is so afraid of injury or death that they are willing to trade the life of a child to protect their own has no business being a cop. We should never tolerate the idea that blue lives matter.

[-] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 hours ago

I'm so disenchanted with policing that I'm not sure it can be rehabilitated without heavy heavy changes, but you remind me of how I felt signing up for police college as a young guy. I was pretty religious too at the time, and going into policing felt like the ultimate service to the community.

Anyway, a few ride-alongs cured me of that notion.

[-] aphlamingphoenix@lemm.ee 2 points 1 hour ago

I told my father, a Nazi and former cop (but I repeat myself), that body cams should be turned on from the moment a cop is on duty to the moment they are not, that this data should be live-streamed to servers where the footage can be reviewed by the public and become subject to feedback. He RAILED against this, crying about how cops would never have any privacy, etc. (completely missing the point and the detail of what I said because he's completely reactionary, like cops tend to be).

I'm an open source code developer. My code, including the often dumb and embarrassing errors I make from time to time, are available to the world for immediate scrutiny the instant I push a commit or open a pull request. My code isn't really the kind of thing involved in life or death situations. So why should I be subject to more direct scrutiny than cops? Why should we allow cops this whiney attitude toward job evaluation?

[-] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 points 31 minutes ago

Agreed re body cams, except maybe how "public" the footage is. Thinking here about the privacy of the subjects being recorded.

Maybe sent to a watchdog org which can accept requests if people don't want details of themselves or their lives freely available.

Opens up the avenue for intimidation ofc, so kid gloves

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 9 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Police exist to protect the citizens from criminals.

But they don't. They exist to protect the STATE from CITIZENS, in the same way the military exists to protect the state from foreign aggression. Police are the only people empowered to do violence to citizens of a state, and they do it on behalf if the interests of that state. That is their genuine and explicit reason for existing.

Blue lives don't exist. Full stop.

[-] LowtierComputer@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago
[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Except you'd never hear a firefighter say that they would rather let a civilian die in a fire than risk going into a burning building.

[-] LowtierComputer@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago

I should have been more specific:

They risk their safety to enter situations without hesitation or concern for self preservation. They are trained to be as safe as possible, but there isn't a police officer alive who wouldn't claim to be willing to lay down their life for the life of a baby.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago

De-escalation doesn't get them to do the shooty-shooty part, and thats the best part of their day, they aren't trying to avoid it (especially once they confirmed there is no lethal weapon that would put them in any actual danger).

Hey, they had to shoot someone! Just think of the nut he'll get later!

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 day ago

De-escalation is when they go from two guys pointing guns at you to one guy pointing a gun and one guy hitting you with an asp. And I am not joking. It relates to the use of force continuum.

[-] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

hitting you with an asp

They're swinging snakes now?? ACAB, but that's fucking badass! 😛

[-] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago

I assume you're joking, but for anyone unfamiliar, an ASP is a collapsible metal baton that police frequently carry.

[-] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 day ago

I choose to believe: telescopic serpent

I like this, and would like to see the full line of products.

Telescopic serpent? Check. Collapsible giraffe. Copy. Inflatable kangaroo? We got three. Glow in the dark parrots? Yes please!

[-] ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

Here’s the inflatable kangaroo at least. Can’t help with the rest, but this one is giant!

[-] ChronosTriggerWarning@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

Aww, c'mon! No flammable penguins? Left handed horses? Subterranean cuttlefish?

[-] jonne@infosec.pub -3 points 1 day ago

She shouldn't have been using her baby as a human shield!

[-] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 hour ago

I maintain that shooting a baby is worse

this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
253 points (99.6% liked)

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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