this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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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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How was he injected with ketamine?
Syringe by paramedic, urged by police who didn’t like that he was struggling against an illegal search.
Illegal searches tend to include violent restraint as well, because cops love to call someone that falls over when shoved 'resisting arrest'.
Damn, paramedics are pigs too?
Can be
Unfortunately, the police complex is coopting a lot of stuff it has no business coopting.
I've had cops (and firefighters, for that matter) help me control aggressive patients until we could get them restrained or medicated so I didn't get my ass beat. I've taken over from cops when they determine that it's a medical call rather than a legal concern. Chemically sedating people for the cops, though? That should have never been happening, and IIRC it was official FD policy in Aurora.
there's no co-optation here, western medicine was founded upon white supremacy and colonialism. this is just the modern presentation of it
Okay, I've worked in medicine for fifteen years. I'm not sure I would agree with you on that from where I'm standing now, but I'm open to learning new things. I'd like to invite you to make your case, either for yourself or by pointing me to the appropriate resources.
it's really concerning you've worked for more than a decade in healthcare and you haven't put 2 and 2 together. but I guess that's just HCW privilege for you.
I recommend Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington
I saw a lot of injustice because I work in the US healthcare system. The company let old white people die just the same as anyone because they were on Medicaid; dude needed dialysis, and some goddamn bean counter decided that the costs after gas and crew wages didn't pencil out. If you want to be a dick because I didn't come to the conversation already seeing things your way, I guess that's your right. I'll make my way around to your source, but what I've seen, and I suppose what I am blinded to all other considerations by, is that our system of medicine is nothing short of direct class warfare. All other criticisms seem to arise as a direct consequence of that.
western medicine was racist long before capitalism even existed. if you wanna take the class reductionist approach whenever apartheid is being brought up that's your prerogative
What are you on about? Capitalism long predates anything that resembles modern medicine.
good thing I never said modern medicine, eh?
all the paramedics that don't wear respirators for COVID are cops
Sometimes. Paramedics deal with a lot of people who react to life saving stuff with violence. Sometimes this is because the person is afraid and in fight mode, sometimes it's drugs sometimes it's because they face consequences after they get better. Anytime you mix violence with other stressors, low pay, overtime, threats of legal or financial censure for not dealing being proactive with violence when you have to prioritize something else more than running away, PTSD from bad experiences... Even good people get hard hearted.
The same pressures that turn cops into monsters are present in paramedic work, it's just there's different priorities. The same initiatives that change laws to be more health focused and the movement to defund and demilliterize cops in favour of using those resources to provide communities with additional compassionate supports and services for wider multitude of different responses also benefit paramedics. The problem with cops isn't always that they exist. If someone is trying to murder someone then it is kind of nice to have someone you can call - it's what the design of the system turns people into and how they become tools of oppression and an escalating force of violence. To not become a jaded paramedic willing to solve problems "the easy way" takes sustained willpower that some systems make into a superhuman feat.
it's always been ACAB not some cops are bastards. exemplified by the paramedics being gleeful at getting to do a lynching
If you want to oversimplify it into a slogan sure.
"The systems of law and systemic oppression currently in place mean that it is virtually impossible to be a net good to society while trying to serve it in the capacity of cop even if you are well intentioned and want to stop violence." doesn't fit nicely on a shirt.
Problem being is when you take the slogan as nothing but axiomatic truth you kind of miss the point the slogan was made for. The cops whether some or all were never the point. It's the overlaping systems we have to dismantle.
Plenty of them aren't. Some are just jaded from overwork and low pay. Others couldn't hack it as cops or firefighters and still need something to feel big about, and are pigs.
I disagree, all medics are bastards until they unilaterally separate from the police and abolish the healthcare industrial complex
Paramedics came and gave him more then a therapeutic dose to sedate him.
Why was he sedated with ketamine? Surely, there are better options?
I don't think, "Dont harass innocent people." is on the list.
Of course that would ideal, but IF someone should be sedated, why use ketamine?
Are paramedics allowed to do that?
They were convicted in court. I followed up on some of the details, and I believe that they neglected important duties as healthcare providers. I can go into it a bit, but basically they are allowed to give Ketamine for combative patients that present a hazard to themselves or others, and it's a weight based dosage. Elijah was alert and oriented, which should have been a contraindication AFAICT, and they gave him basically double what they should have.