this post was submitted on 25 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

[email protected]

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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

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Movement Law Lab

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Say Their Names

Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration

 

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    Details are still scant, but...

“I mean, he had a lot of ammunition in that house, and certainly ... all of us were strapped, you know, with ammunition, and we were calling for additional ammunition,” Kraus said. “Like I said, we tried to give him every opportunity to come out.”

    ...I'll go way out on a limb and suggest that this could've been handled better.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here's what I read - I do not have the source but it was on a local Pittsburgh news site IIRC. He wasn't paying rent. House was his deceased brother's house which he bought in 1998 - not sure if shooter had inherited it or not, but there was something in excess of 15K owed for back taxes on it. An LLC paid the taxes on it and BOOM its their house - he filed paperwork with the state that they were scammers and he was contesting what he saw as an someone stealing his house. The LLC filed to have him evicted. Ultimately he made a bad decision to use a weapon and not a lawyer but he was ex-military and may have seen this as the last straw.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

He was a SovCit.

Court records show the house was owned by Hardison's brother Joseph, who died in March 2021. It was deeded to their father, William Hardison Sr., who neglected to make mortgage payments. The house was foreclosed upon and sold in March to a limited liability corporation called 907 East Street.

William Hardison Jr. was evicted from an apartment on the Northside last year for non-payment of rent. The attorney for 907 East Street says he began squatting in the Board Street home in April, and the LLC petitioned for his eviction in May. William Jr. then filed papers in federal court accusing the new owners of fraud and trespassing, maintaining the house was his and refusing to leave -- despite a judge's order to do so.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/who-is-william-hardison-suspect-in-garfield-standoff-held-sovereign-citizen-beliefs/ar-AA1fK1nZ

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Wtf

Someone else pays your taxes and they own you?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In some US states, yes. If a property does not have it's taxes paid, the state/county takes possession. Often they will auction it off or sell it for the amount of taxes owed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What's preventing the state from just raising taxes on all the properties that a business wants to absurd levels, seize it and sell it if to that business for cheap?

This sounds very undemocratic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If what I read was real, imagine what this might mean. It would be a form a swatting where a scammer could not only steal your property but if they're lucky get you shot and killed in the process. Some more about this kind of thing: https://www.abc27.com/investigators/could-a-scammer-have-the-deed-to-your-home-without-you-knowing/

[–] Kecessa 4 points 1 year ago

I'm going through this process with a property (although it's just an empty lot in a remote location in my case) and you don't get kicked out without notice. People can bid to pay the taxes you owe and whatever extra the person bids goes to you.

In my case the person owed 1.7k, I paid 5.3k, they get a check of 3.4k and have a year to pay me back 5.3k + 7.5%, if they don't the property can be transferred to my name. They still got a whole lot of time to do something about it and received money in exchange for a property for which they didn't pay their taxes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Or you could just pay your taxes.

[–] Kecessa 3 points 1 year ago

You get a year to pay back the person who paid your taxes + a fee, it's not something that happens all of the sudden.