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
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That's just the London police force as well. There was a national review of all working police officers records to check any complaints etc that had been made against them just to double check they'd been dealt with properly and not been made to disappear...
I think the Police round our way has already cleaned itself up after previous things. But the it's the fact it takes a scandal to make it happen that's the hard thing to take.
I'm guessing this is an American community though and so I shouldn't complain because I don't think ours are as bad as yours.
My head spins. Here in the America, I can't imagine even a local sheriff in a small county going back, doublechecking to be sure all complaints had been seriously looked into. The notion of doing that for all police officers in the country? Why, that's the kind of thing that might make people have confidence in cops.
Nothing like that has happened in the history of the USA. My head's still spinning.
Yeah it's because they found there'd been quite few officers all over the country who had been getting away with 'dodgy things' - read rape, coercive relationships, stalking, harassment etc' - to do with women for years. Wales was another particularly bad one I think but as per usual in the UK mainly the media care about London.
USA is a bigger country of course which means it's a bigger job - that said, each unit should be able to have one person same to spot check historical case files if there are concerns about an officer's behaviour. Need more whistleblowers in police forces. These guys can't be that well liked
Whistleblowers aren't allowed in America. Any cop blowing the whistle on bad cops gets fired. So by gawd yes it's a brilliant idea, let's do the doublecheck of complaints, but the doublecheckers can't be police employees or cronies.
Are you taking the piss? That's ridiculous! So if there is a bad apple cop, what do the good cops do?
We actually have anti-corruption units here, how effective they are I don't know but they're meant to 'watch the watchers' - a very popular series, 'Line Of Duty' was based on them if recommend it if you're interested in police corruption and it's available over there (I think series 4 or 5 was where it went downhill but before then it was really on the nose). Having a highly popular drama based around police corruption might have paved the way in the public consciousness for expecting the police to be having people like that in real life keeping on top of bent coppers.
You've cut directly to the crux of the problem, here. American cops who report corruption or brutality to their supervisors tend to be quickly forced out. If they go to the courts or the media, the firing will be quicker. It's a bit of a problem.
I'm curious to see how it's handled elsewhere, so Line of Duty goes on my list, thanks.
That's terrible. I can imagine there'll be a few pretty depressed police out there