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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A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions

Adultification

Cops aren't supposed to be smart

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Killings by law enforcement in Canada

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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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The shooter went into the bar targeting his ex-wife, who was wounded but survived, local media including the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register reported, citing law enforcement sources. She had been a regular at the bar and its weekly $8 spaghetti night, they said.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Tragedy aside, that $8 spaghetti has to suck.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pasta and red sauce are ridiculously cheap, especially in large quantities. Imagine buying the sauce for $5 in a massive can, the pasta for $0.25/pound dry, and then some garlic bread which is like $1 per loaf. Add it all up and you’re likely paying roughly $2.25 a person for the food that you’re selling for $8, plus you can move liquor, wine, and beer which have even higher markups. Heck, add in the cost of labor for the kitchen staff, and the markup on the spaghetti is probably only 75-100%. As for quality, it’s probably decent, because spaghetti, marinara sauce, and garlic bread are all easy to nail and somewhat difficult to mess up.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That’s exactly what people mean when they say $8 pasta is going to suck. There are a lot of people who find a $5 massive can of marinara inedible. It’s not only entirely possible to fuck up marinara. Rap’s, which is pretty good for a jarred sauce, goes from $10-15 for a jar.

Same thing with the pasta. There’s a world of difference between freshly made pasta, refrigerated pasta, and dry box pasta. There’s again differences by brand and price within those tiers.

And as someone who loves for bread, we’re not even going to address the kind of mushy grocery store loaf you can get for $1.

It’s not that the meal is easy to nail, it’s that you like very cheap Italian food. That’s not a dig - I grew up eating it and it’s a comfort food for me. If I pay $1.50 for a taco, I know I’m not getting a $26 for a plate of 3 kind of taco. I’m fine with that, because I love cheap tacos.

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

$8 pasta is about community connection, not quality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Absolutely! And biker bars are about community, not craft cocktails. It doesn’t mean that Natty Light doesn’t suck, it just means that that’s not the selling point.

I’m not objecting to someone eating $8 pasta. I’m just saying that I agree that, as pasta, it’s going to suck. I am all for living the experience of having an $8 spaghetti dinner with Satan's Helpers.

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

I think you got me wrong. I’m not saying it’s great, but there’s a lot you can do with restaurant components to start with, and economy of scale makes things like freshly baked bread very possible for $1 a loaf. Turning that into garlic bread is adding butter and garlic, both aren’t exactly pricey. It doesn’t require training at the Culinary Institute of America to make good garlic bread for pretty cheap. Restaurants and bars get weekly if not daily deliveries, loading up on bread one day a week seems very simple to plan into the delivery schedule.

The rest of the meal is similar. It’s not hard to doctor up canned tomatoes which are $5 for 102 oz. I make pasta sauce from scratch all the time, it’s really easy, and even fresh herbs aren’t all that expensive. Shoot, fresh basil from Trader Joes is like $3 for enough to make gallons of sauce. Extrapolate from there.

[–] agentshags 2 points 1 year ago

I love that the only comments here are a civil discussion on the qualities of spaghetti and garlic bread lol

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Imagine having $8 spaghetti night a highlight of your week, and then your ex, pig husband, comes in to shoot you. Sad situation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Sounds over priced if they're serving stuff from a bottle

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

the article says biden has been briefed on the situation. Do you think they told him about the spaghetti ?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

$8 spaghetti night is either a steal or a rip off, but I'm interested in hearing more.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's a steal but you have to eat while you're under fire

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They better have. You can't just not tell a president about $8 spaghetti night. That would be blasphemy.