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] 50 points 7 months ago (3 children)

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2024/04/04/tallahassee-police-chief-slams-release-of-edited-dui-video-before-trial/73208195007/

Lol Tallahassee PD is going full "shoot the messenger and the messenger's dog" about this. Blithering on about how releasing the video is wrong and now the dude they tried to frame can't get a fair trial because people saw the video, which they were totally gonna show after the trial (trust me, bro. bro you gotta trust me. we can't have people knowing what happened until after he's found guilty and we get to take a bunch of his money by force.) but now everyone is gonna be prejudiced in favor of the defendant which violates his rights and that part of the video where she clearly opens a sealed container, dumps it out, throws it back into the car and then arrests him for open container was taken out of context.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (3 children)

It hurts to think about how many of these cases they haven't caught.

[–] Plavatos 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

After I saw that one of the officer palming a baggy and acting like they found it I thought: how could I possibly protect myself when they're running a search like this? Scary shit.

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

The only way is hidden cameras in your car that constantly backup to the cloud via lte. Which if that sounds stupid it's because it is. You shouldn't have to even consider shit like that let alone do it

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

99% of people charged with DWI, plead guilty or may settle down for a lesser charge. Fighting a case like that is a lot of money ($5k-$10k), your average citizen probably doesn't have a emergency fund. It's horrible, and not only that, the cop who charges the person with a DWI gets a nice bonus at the end of the year. You can't assure yourself that you'll be in the clear if you're sober; they might have insiders who mess around with your test results and make it look like you had alcohol/drugs in your system.

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

Yeah, maybe we violently need to get rid of police?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I thought this is what body cams were for, or was it just for watching with your buddies during weekends while eating popcorn

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

body cams are for police highlight reels and for taking clips of their murders home to masturbate furiously too. Not for the public good, or justice.

Which is why it often takes years to weasel the fucking video out of their hands when it shows them doing wrong (and yet the videos are almost always immediately released when they think they are in the right..), like with that abduction victim teenage girl a few years ago who the police blasted the fuck out, from behind, despite her following all instructions.

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

That's what the police think surveillance video is for, at least. When they're done assaulting innocent old women with dementia they sit around with their buddies, watch the video and laugh and laugh. I assumed that when the officer said "wait for the pop" he was talking about the audible sound of him breaking this 73 year old dementia patient's arm over $13 in goods from Walmart, but the way they're gathered around the screen celebrating the assault, maybe he did mean popcorn.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

"By showing the video where our corrupt officer destroyed property and framed a man, you have ruined our attempt to imprison an innocent man who didnt deserve it.

How dare you, public, for foisting this terrible injustice upon all of law enforcement!"