This is only partly a rhetorical question, but wtf is wrong with American cops?
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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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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• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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MODERATORS
- dumb cops are preferred to be hired over smart cops.
- bullies and domestic abusers join the police force to continue to bully and abuse.
- “good cops” who try to report bad cops are either killed, relegated to a desk job or are fired.
- cops kill so many people so often the american public doesn’t see the police force as the gang it is.
- lots of “good guy vs bad guy” bullshit on tv painting all cops as heros.
- the entire republican party thinks they are the good guys and get to break the laws becuase they support police.
- cop is its own race.
- police departments fight to prevent body cams from being used
- police plant drugs to make arrests easier or tell drug dogs to mark even when there are no drugs.
- qualified immunity.
- police often do not police the communities in which they live, so they have no problem coming in and breaking bones - people who live in cities aren’t human, they are punching bags.
#10 in addition to not having to be licensed and insured is key. Even when cops do demonstrably evil shit, it's entirely too hard to get rid of them. That's without mentioning how their union will protect bad cops in the name of fraternity and duty, even though the union has no duty to protect bad cops and they shouldn't want to fraternize with them.
In addition to #5, most cops on TV aren’t good cops. They tend to ignore proper police procedures without punishment. Which leads to people joining wanting to be the cop in TV/movies, and will act like them.
Nothing. The system works exactly as designed. The purpose of US cops is to protect and serve, but not the general public.
They're bad. Sometimes they just stop people because they're pathetic losers and racist
And what's worse is middle aged to old white people get scared of goddamned everything. They never leave their house but apparently they think they know every neighbor, so if they see a black kid or car that's more than 6 years old they think it's something nefarious
So they call the cops. "I'm just being a proactive neighbor!"
They love being a vigilante and they think they're going to be loved by their neighbors (the same ones who they don't know and probably think these people are fuckos). But since they're pussies they just call the cops
During that call they realize that simply a racist person calling about a black kid existing is probably not enough, so they embellish a bit. Saw a weapon. Kid looked shifty. Never seen him before. Seems to be casing the house. Any number of flippant remarks that are easily dismissed as misunderstandings when nothing actually happened, but enough to get the cops to show up
The cops, being fed bullshit do their jobs. Sometimes those cops are fuckos too and are on power trips, so it's worse than it should be
In the end, it's just racism and everything that cascades down from it. The loser who called it in and lied gets to go on with their miserable life. The cop gets desk duty for a week. And some minority kid who didn't do jack shit is traumatized for years
He was lucky not to be shot.
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sad state of the US that this is true
They're all bastards
Cops don't enforce the law. They enforce "policy".
America needs to get rid of qualified immunity protections for law enforcement. It undermines the legitimacy of the police force and erodes community trust in law enforcement as a whole.
Sadly the very foundation of policing in a capitalist system is designed to protect capital in all forms, and has NOTHING to do with protecting people.
If capitalism needs endless resources to grow endlessly, then what does that say about the incarceration institutions which financially benefit not from the amount of people they rehabilitate, but rather simply by how many people they can incarcerate?
Allow the parents to detain the cops' children illegally. Then see if those cops will be okay with an apology.