THE POLICE PROBLEM
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
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.
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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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ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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I get that he fired first ( the eviction situation is a whole other bag of nuts) but couldn't 5 police officers with some tear gas have fixed this in 30 minutes with a lot less gunfire?
The guy was losing his home and he was scared. We don't know what his mental state was and we don't know how he came in to possession of so much fire power so I'm not going to assume he bought guns instead of paying his rent- I'm just going to assume that 75 officers and 6.5 hours of gunfire was obviously not the best way out of this situation.
Are you kidding me, cops love this kind of stuff. They might act like they were scared or that it was a serious situation, but they were having so much fun. Cops wake up every day and hope something like this happens.
So yeah, it definitely could have been handled better.
I meant that the guy they murdered was scared. I know who seeks to be police officers and it's not people who are generally egalitarian or understanding.
I'm no police fan boy, but this is an unhinged propaganda if I've ever seen one
Only if they were trained worth a damn and didn't have the biggest chip on their shoulders imaginable outside of an evangelical church.
I've got a theory that we'll never see investigated, and that's that dude is responsible for probably about the first ten shots and the rest of this "standoff" was police shooting in response to hearing their own gunfire.
Nope, we hate lil' wussies with feelings and we love shooting people in the fucking face multiple times.
Touché. Can't have none of those feelings making the country weak.
Yes, they are getting cop vacation because this was the worst possible wsh to deal with the situation.
Saying the guy was "losing his home and scared" is giving him far too much credit. He's a sovereign citizen wackjob with an extensive criminal record, he's not a poor downtrodden guy who snapped when he got kicked out.
Being poor and downtrodden is likely what lead him to be in that state in the first place. Someone can be a "whackjob" and still get the benefit of the doubt- especially when it comes to police brutality. We all know they'll look for any excuse to kill. That's why they're police.
SWAT was on scene not long into the shootout
The city of Pittsburgh approved a budget where 18% of all expenditures were just for police operations. What were they gonna do that they can't already do with $120 million/year?
The Pittsburgh police budget in 2022 was $120,449,711.