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this post was submitted on 07 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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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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MODERATORS
I refuse to change my opinion about all of law enforcement over the isolated actions of a few good apples.
You cant be a cop and be a good person.
They are fundamentally opposed like matter and antimatter. and like matter/antimatter, they annihilate eachother on contact.
If you are a good person, and a cop, You will either quickly end up forced to quit/fired as you take a stand against the institutional corruption, casual racism, ethical violations, abuse of people, and more.. Or your fellow cops end up arranging your death.
this is why police agencies have gone to court to fight for the right to NOT higher qualified candidates who know the law, who know how to behave, etc etc.
Cause they don't want respectable cops.
They want under educated highschool bully types who are quick to get down with the corruption if it means they can wax their Authoraween on the poor unsuspecting public.
In corrupt systems being corrupt isn't an option; it's mandatory.
A good example of the cadet to pig pipeline is padding overtime. Whenever you see a cop charged with anything, one of the charges will inevitably be "theft of public funds" or some such. That's padded overtime. But now imagine you're honest on your timesheet. You look like the laziest cop now.
Same thing for arrests, tickets, or any metric used to gauge performance.
They also love to pick up arrests near the end of their shifts so they can spend hours of milking overtime doing paperwork at your expense.
Read "Power of the Powerless" by Václav Havel
I mean, this is literally a prime example of why people insist (correctly) that ALL cops are bad. Because if they're good for 3 seconds, they get fired or chased out.
And won't get hired anywhere else. It's fucked up that people can cancel someone else with just firing them.
It wouldn't surprise me
this validates your opinion. the good apple has been thrown out by all the other apples, lest it unspoil the whole barrel. it's a self-healing, antifragile system designed to perpetuate abuse and lawlessness.
Exactly. I'm sure there were nice roving horsemen out on the steppes, but they were still with the pillagers.