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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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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
My city council recently voted to start utilizing those "gunshot detector" microphones, despite being presented with evidence of how they are frequently inaccurate, with false alarms, and can tend to exacerbate racial tensions. The false alarms, meanwhile, pull police away from actual emergencies.
But here we are. Apparently we're going to spend millions of dollars on this.
I remember seeing the stats on this in DC. They always claimed they could precisely identify the sound signature of a gunshot… even filtering out similar noises like fireworks. Well, according to their own statistics, the system identifies the most gunshots on the 4th of July out of any other day of the year. I mean, I could see an argument for it. But, I also thought that this fact doesn’t give high confidence that it can tell the difference.
I mean, the one night of the year when the most guns are fired is the 4th of July. I try to leave the city for the whole weekend. It's not safe to stand out on the porch to watch what fireworks there are. It's fucking ridiculous, and terrifying. One year when I couldn't get away, I kept family in another state on a video call. They couldn't believe what they were hearing. It's pretty obvious when they're both going off at once, what's fireworks and what's guns.
That's not even getting into the PTSD aspects of that completely fucked "holiday".
Put a gunshot detector around here. I will blow it the fuck up with false positives.
Did you know the percussion cap on a black powder rifle sounds about exactly like a .22? And most states don't consider black powder arms to be guns? Just a random thought.
You owe it to yourself to get two large pieces of metal to constantly bang near the microphones. I would make it a hobby of mine if they did. I'd sit out at the end of my driveway and go ham on the daily.
I used to have a motorcycle that had a tendency to pop through the exhaust. I could normally manipulate the throttle to avoid that, but I wonder if it would trigger these detectors?
If a firework can cause a false positive then I cannot imagine a world where it doesn't.
I'm honestly not sure how any listening device can reliably tell the difference between a firework, a firearm, or a backfire. And every time I read about it, there is more evidence that it won't work.
It can't. That's the problem with this unnecessary surveillance technology.
Two 6" 2x4 pieces clapped together will also achieve the desired results as well!
I have misophonia. 😢
Hopefully someone else will take up that righteous cause.