THE POLICE PROBLEM
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.
♦ ♦ ♦
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.
♦ ♦ ♦
RULES
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.
♦ ♦ ♦
ALLIES
• r/ACAB
♦ ♦ ♦
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
♦ ♦ ♦
ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
view the rest of the comments
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.
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?
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
Sure, I'll take a citizen-led board of reviewers, as long as they have legal teeth and aren't under the purview of those being evaluated.