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.
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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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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.
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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
view the rest of the comments
Guy doesn't have enough money for rent
Guy owns enough guns and ammunition to keep the police in standoff for 6½ hours
...
But housing price was the issue? 🤔
How long was he collecting ammunition? Did he buy a box on payday once in a while for a few years, or did he go out to Walmart and buy everything he used?
Everyone seems to assume that this guy found out he'd be evicted and he immediately went and bought a rifle and 20,000 rounds of ammunition that evening. Bullets don't go bad, he probably bought them over a few years.
If instead of buying guns with your paycheck for years, you plopped it in an index fund, perhaps rent wouldn't seem so out of reach.
Edit: if you click the links within the articles and keep going, you find out he got evicted because he's a SovCit who refused payments and wanted to fight the gov
You apparently have more time than I to research every random weirdo in the news. Good job.
Yeah I travel a lot for work and 3 news articles is not what I would call "heavy reading"
Perhaps you'd be less busy if you weren't working retail at a gun store.
Lol, insult a job I don't even have, want to try again?
Sure I'll insult lots of jobs! People who work in CAD are cads!
Not sure that's much better. I've accumulated 15,000 rounds of ammo that I've not used but I need more... how about 20,000 rounds??
Someone accumulating that amount of ammo "just in case" has probably got some other issues.
Lots of people have lots of bullets. Not saying they aren't crazy, but if they are then there's a fuck ton of heavily armed crazy people... Ok yeah actually that checks out.
They're a sensitive group too. Very trigger happy with the downvotes.
So? If you can't pay your rent and face eviction you sell that shit, you don't start shooting people doing their fucking job.
Gun nuts are the first to speak about individual responsibility but when it's their turn to face their responsibilities you can be sure of one thing, they ain't facing them without a fight!
This guy was a sovereign citizen, so the worst of the worst kind of crazy.
Didn't see that mentioned elsewhere in the thread, and it's a big fucking detail to leave out.
Here's what I read - I do not have the source but it was on a local Pittsburgh news site IIRC. He wasn't paying rent. House was his deceased brother's house which he bought in 1998 - not sure if shooter had inherited it or not, but there was something in excess of 15K owed for back taxes on it. An LLC paid the taxes on it and BOOM its their house - he filed paperwork with the state that they were scammers and he was contesting what he saw as an someone stealing his house. The LLC filed to have him evicted. Ultimately he made a bad decision to use a weapon and not a lawyer but he was ex-military and may have seen this as the last straw.
He was a SovCit.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/who-is-william-hardison-suspect-in-garfield-standoff-held-sovereign-citizen-beliefs/ar-AA1fK1nZ
Wtf
Someone else pays your taxes and they own you?
You get a year to pay back the person who paid your taxes + a fee, it's not something that happens all of the sudden.
In some US states, yes. If a property does not have it's taxes paid, the state/county takes possession. Often they will auction it off or sell it for the amount of taxes owed.
What's preventing the state from just raising taxes on all the properties that a business wants to absurd levels, seize it and sell it if to that business for cheap?
This sounds very undemocratic.
Hosting pricing is an issue, but you've got a point. Maybe not in this case.
There's a whole cavalcade of other issues here.
I think guns and bullets are a lot cheaper than you think they are. You can get a gun and a thousand bullets for under $500 last I checked.
Quick google search: Average rent in Pittsburgh: $1,531. Cost per bullet: $0.08 to $3 per shot depending on size. Number of bullets shot: Well, lets assume 30/minute, as that is what I found on google as the fastest you can shoot an non-automatic (I don't know what kind of gun he used or if he was perpetually shooting, this is just for math). So the cost of doing 30 shot/minute for 6.5 hours would be from $936 to $35,100. More for semi-automatic, less for shooting less.
So... probably shot a month's rent worth of bullets in those 6.5 hours. Others could get you closer, google isn't what it use to be.
I read it wasn't a rent dispute but that someone bought the property because he wasn't paying taxes. Searchig this thread for a source, though.