this post was submitted on 18 Jun 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
• 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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Because it's a group of narcissists. They were too worried about themselves. None of them had the courage to say "I'm willing to not go home tonight so these kids can."
Actually I'd bet that a bunch said that, but didn't actually do anything about it.
This is what pisses me off the most. 376, and you can't storm the room? 376? And you refuse to trade one for any of those children who needed protecting? These are supposedly the hard calculations they have to make and they all unilaterally chose themselves? Enforcers will always be useless to anybody but the property owners. They aren't actually here to protect anybody. They should have made the call, and traded 20 of themselves so those kids didn't have to die. Thats the hard call we expect these "hard asses" to make.
I can't remember the study but basically the bystander effect is a thing. The more people there are in a group, the more likely it is that no one will do anything because everyone will assume that someone else will do something.
This isn't to excuse officers because they are specifically trained that they are that someone. The fact that they were held back from entering is willful, malicious, and negligent.
The fact that the officers actually complied instead of disobeying orders especially when seconds turned to minutes, is cowardice.
And a reminder that I believe the police chief and mayor of the town was reelected by the town.
They analyzed the trolley problem, they chose to sacrifice the few for the many.
A coward is not the same thing as a narcissist.
One can be both, however.