this post was submitted on 22 Nov 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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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
• !abolition@slrpnk.net
• !acab@lemmygrad.ml
• r/ACAB
• r/BadCopNoDonut/
• Randy Balko
• The Civil Rights Lawyer
• The Honest Courtesan
• Identity Project
• MirandaWarning.org
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INFO
• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Adultification
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• Don't talk to the police.
• 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
• So you wanna be a cop?
• When the police knock on your door
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ORGANIZATIONS
• Black Lives Matter
• Campaign Zero
• Innocence Project
• The Marshall Project
• Movement Law Lab
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Say Their Names
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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MODERATORS
I see some nasty comments on here. So I will add mine adjusted to the popo. The popo are basically criminal goons contracted by the city to ruin brown and black people's lives. Every single day there's gotta be some but of news where they end one of our brothers or sisters lives. Why do we let them do that to us?
Sure there are bad people who need to be in jail. Trump for example. But only the regular folks like you and I get to go to jail. Only our lives can be ruined. Touch the glass ceiling for long enough and you get to be slammed teeth first into the pavement for a supposed traffic violation which ended up with some baggies full of funny powder. Those fucking assholes are everywhere. It's time to abolish the police and instead enforce some sort of social help.
My husband is brown, and had a cop intentionally try to antagonize him into responding emotionally so the cop could violently arrest him.
Used aggressive language, threats to bring him to the station, veiled threats alluding to a guy who had been paralyzed and left in a coma by police the week before. It was sick and fucked up. It left my husband literally shaking afterwards. I've never seen him scared like that. I hate that cop with every fiber of my being. My husband is a gentle, kind, and loving person just trying to get his car fixed.
His offense that got him pulled over? Going to the mechanic to get his car fixed so it would pass emissions and we could update the registration.
To folks reading this, cops will absolutely try to antagonize you and escalate the situation. Don't let them. It gives them every excuse to shoot you and get away with it.
Cops can go fuck themselves to death.
My worst experience was one time driving with my old man. I was a kid at the time in 6th grade. Probably the shortest skinniest and we both are nerd types wearing glasses. He was already in his 50s or 60s, white hair and all. Anyway he was driving his old dodge ram which had a steering problem. Some might know what I'm talking about...you tighten up the steering one week and then next week it's a little loose, like you pull straight and it either goes left or right. So you constantly had to turn the car left or right the entire time. So the cop naturally pulls us over that night 4 blocks from the house. "Why were you swerving!!". My dad didn't speak English so I had to translate to the office that was a mechanical issue. So I was like, I'll get off so I can explain. I opened the door and this other cop who I hadn't noticed just rammed the fucking door on my face. And I'm supposed to love and respect these fucks? And I won't go into detail on what they did to my dad with his heart bypass, glasses and visible frail. Fuck cops. I didn't turn into Elon musk and have my own musk flying rocket, super underground digging machine, battery making company or car making company. But I am a successful regular person and I don't need a fucking cop in my daily commute but every day I have to drive exactly 20mph in front of a school or the cop will pull me over. I've seen the cop pull over cars going 21mph. It's like dude, 21mph is still fine! I'm driving 16 to 19, just trying to stay alive. Oh and then there's these other two sections of the road. One has a tree with dark shadows....and a fucking cop in there hiding. The other is a sharp turn on a freeway ramp...and a fucking cop waiting for you in case you like to joy turn into the freeway. Fucking cops.