this post was submitted on 04 Apr 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

[email protected]

[email protected]

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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[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Straight up psychotic. She should get exactly whatever the max sentencing is that he would have gotten.

[–] RobertoOberto 50 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

More than that.

Law enforcement should be held to a higher standard, and this kind of violation of trust and abuse of power deserves far more than just the punishment for a DUI. The DUI punishment should be stacked on top of whatever she can be charged with for this act itself: false arrest, filing false reports, falsifying evidence, etc. And there should be no allowance for serving those sentences concurrently.

But it probably won't happen.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Knowingly arresting someone based on false evidence should be charged federally as kidnapping.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)
  1. Unless you can prove in a court of law that another cop was told by another court not to dump booze in another victim's car, then arrest them for it, then there is no way we can expect her to have known this was wrong! (Qualified Immunity)

  2. Cops don't have to know the laws they're paid to enforce. (Heien v. North Carolina)

  3. Cops have no legal duty to protect you (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, Castle Rock v. Gonzales)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Cops have no legal duty to protect you (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, Castle Rock v. Gonzales)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

That's not what qualified immunity means, FYI. Qualified immunity protects state actors (i.e. police) from being sued for actions performed during the execution of their duties. The state and/or department takes up financial responsibilities. It does not shield them from criminal prosecution.

The cops certainly really, really wish it did. And if they had their preference, they'd have you believe it did, too. But it doesn't.

On paper, the police are not above the law in regards to criminal prosecution. Unfortunately in practice generally they are. As we've seen many times.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Oh it absolutely won't. You have to have a reasonable expectation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The real question is, what can we do? This type of shit needs to stop, I'm so tired of cops like this!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's all of them though. Some might not do things like this but there's no doubt they cover for the ones that do. That's why we say ACAB.

There's nothing I can think to be done but dismantle the entire organization and destroy the gangs er I mean unions. Then we can start fresh with all new people, new (and extensive) training, and a completely different culture.

Seems impossible. Anyone got an idea for a way to get there?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I say ban qualified immunity, force every cop to have their body cameras turned on at all times (except for when they use the bathroom), have weekly/biweekly training, etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I'll settle for her being fired and charged with making up evidence. Let her name be entered into a national + open database of people whose words are worthless.

I'm more interested in the taxpayers compensating Riley for as much as possible, and maybe asking for higher quality police officers who can do their jobs. You know, the fiscally responsible path....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Double the sentence she tried to frame him for in addition to the max for any and all other crimes she may have committed, and knowingly arresting someone based on false evidence needs to be charged federally as kidnapping because that's what it is.