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
Well, police shouldn't be engaging in car chases. This might not be a very egregious case, but police chases often end very poorly and result in dead cops, dead suspects, and/or dead civilians. Personal property for civilians also tend to get caught in the crossfire. Suspects of color also are treated more harshly, and often receive an extrajudicial death.
The bigger problem is police enforcing laws that criminalize rather than reduce harm. Drug trafficking is bad, but it's incentivized because users of illegal drugs get treated as criminals rather than people in need of medical treatment.
What should police do when someone chooses not to be pulled over?
Is it just an automatic give up because they happen to be in a car? They can do whatever they want and it's not worth trying to enforce anymore?
I agree high speed chases are terrible... but there is no other solution. Checking their plates only works if they aren't obscured, and if police weren't allowed to chase, there isn't much disincentive to obscure your plates and just refuse to pull over.
If someone decides to run, then no police should not take chase. If it's an infraction like speeding, the officer can record the plates and issue a fine for the infraction as well as evading police officers. You know, like what happens when police take chase.
Can you address the other part, how to deal with people obscuring their plates... it's already way too common, what would happen if obscured plates and not pulling over meant you couldn't be caught for any crime? Car chases are sometimes currently the only way to solve a problem that needs to be solved. And no matter how safe the officers try to make it, which most of them do, there is of course automatically elevated risk.
Ideally we need a different solution, but we don't have one yet.
Obscured plates? There's a guy in NYC that goes around and fixes them on parked cars. (NYPD can't be bothered.) That seems like a fine way, though, tow and impound the cars when they're parked.
But there'd be no chase, no inherent danger, no exciting video for the 6:00 News, and no 'roided up cops would get the chance to say, "You think you can run from me, fucker?"
And all that is the whole point of the chase.
Mail them a ticket. That's it. Unless the person fleeing is KNOWN to be a serious danger to others, in the sense that they are likely to hurt or kill someone.
A chase is somewhat justified, for instance, in the situation of someone driving around in a completely maniacal way that is nearly certain to result in injury or death of a third party.
Mail them a ticket how? They would have no idea who they are with an obscured plate.
Just because this particular chase didn't go bad doesn't make it a good thing or an argument for police chases. This both an exception to the rule and the best case scenario. Most chases don't end like this. Most chases end with at least one person dead, usually the suspect. Remember, innocent until proven guilty. It's not a good thing for cops to kill suspects that run.
Police selectively enforce laws all the time. Drug policy needs to change, but police don't need to enforce it the way they do. Enforcement in the war on drugs is highly discriminatory, so it takes a joint effort between police not enforcing and politicians changing these laws for the change to happen.
The police are not required to know the laws in the US
Their job is not to enforce laws
You don't understand this issue. You're wasting your breath, talking about something you obviously don't know about about.
The facts that they gave chase, risking the lives of innocent bystanders, for any traffic violation is a serious problem. Period.