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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RULES

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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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[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah and that's really the core issue. Cops aren't evil people but the US policing context is toxic AF

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah it's a whole systemic thing, frankly there isn't really "one issue," but a multitude all working together. Stuff like no knock raids, qualified immunity, even just "one's tendency to stick up for one's friends" which we all have and we all do, but when you're the police force covering crimes it's a lot different than me clocking my friend in to work when he's running 5min late and doesn't want to be fired about it.

But as you say there are indeed plenty of good cops, though the "good ones" can't even do anything about the bad ones and so they end up being complicit or fired, making them "also kinda bad" or "no longer cops." That is another part of the phrase and why it's not "SCAB or MCAB, Some/most Cops Are Bastards," tbf.

It is a sweeping generalization, though, and as such it can never be 100% accurate by nature. Sweeping generalizations are too...general.

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

Personally I'd like more focus on the politicians who allow this system to be the way it is than the people working in the system (of course, you have to do both)