this post was submitted on 17 Mar 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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RULES

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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

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] 134 points 5 months ago (4 children)

You're telling me the police statement lied??? I am SHOCKED. yeah right.

Police statement are always false, always. Never believe them. That's why I didn't buy it a few days ago when everyone on Lemmy was saying the kid deserved it

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago

Which is crazy because any doctor (or coroner) would recognize an entrance wound in the back.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I will say that at least in this case the kid had guns. Usually they don't even have that and get murdered. This is more justified than usual cop involved shootings, but still not justified. The fact that a lot of the others get away with it tell me this guy probably will too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So he got killed for dropping the guns when told to? The article may not be explicit enough with the timeline, but at least implies that

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Well, he dropped one of the guns. The other didn't leave his hand until shot, per the video. So for whatever reason he hadn't let go of the second gun. He didn't manage to do anything vaguely looking like aiming the gun, but he certainly hadn't dropped the second gun at the point he got shot.

Think this is a tough one to use for either side of the argument. On the one hand, he didn't quite manage to raise the gun or face the officer. On the other hand he might have been about to find some cover and return fire too quickly for the officer to react, since the gun was in hand, depending on what was in front of them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't have it off the top of my head, but the usual "he was running at us blasting so we had to do it"