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DOJ says police officer justified in killing 22 y/o over 2 magic mushroom chocolate bars.
(www.delawareonline.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Mar 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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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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The decision was: do I let this kid get away with selling 2 shroom bars or do I deploy potentially lethal force?
If someone's unnecessarily killed during say an armed robbery, they weren't killed over nothing, even if they could've been arrested.
Police are empowered to use violence with the understanding that it will benefit society. And most will agree that preventing armed robbery has value.
This officer deployed violence to prevent a kid from getting away with selling 2 shroom bars. Without any personal threat. That has no value to society, nothing. And a kid was killed over it.
I don't understand why the particular events that happened before that seem so important to you?
That wasn't the decision. There's not an ice cube's chance in hell he went through the longer thought process it would take at the speed events unfolded to contemplate, "hmm, you know what, this kid has 2 whole mushroom bars in that car and he appears to be trying to leave with them, and he's now accelerating towards me, or at least in such a close proximity to me that it's now dangerous, probably not dangerous for my colleagues whom have just driven up because I can see the future like a Jedi all of a sudden and know what's going to happen before it happens, but they still have those damn mushroom bars and my partner and I we're going to split one of them after the bust and I owe him for talking that hooker he busted last weekend into getting let off in trade for giving me a free beeg behind Wendys, so I really need those mushroom bars and that's totally the reason I better start blasting."
😆
The decision was, "suspect driving at me, he's now a danger to me or my colleagues, shoot at danger."
Don't matter how they all got there.
Cops and correction officers are trained to take the decision making process out of the equation for faster reaction times.
I'm in no way saying that's the best, or even a good-at-all way to train cops, but it's predictable.
So, what'd we all learn?
This cop in question certainly is a fuck up and should be fired, and charged for the extant he can be.
Officer training needs work.
2 mushroom bars remains a very stupid reason to arrest someone in the first place, and mushrooms should be legalized. But it doesn't matter in this case because laws are laws.
The Victim was killed over attempting to flee, because we know now how cause-and-effect works, and the mushroom bars can't be the cause because had he not fled, he wouldn't have been shot at and killed.
Ops tag line was sensationalized to remove blame from the vic and add blame to the cops because, well they deserve it, but also because we're in the police problem sub. It lacks though because, "2 magic mushroom chocolate bars" can be substituted with, "bust", or, "drug deal gone wrong", or, "waxing gibbous moon"...and those would all be valid, therefore if it's any of them, it's none.
They were there and present over mushroom bars, but the Victim was killed over ( what I'm sure the cop will say in court is) attempt vehicular homicide.
And, Don't.fucking.run.from.cops. regardless of their training.
Cheers.