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
How is it that there isn't a riot when killing an unarmed, innocent person who asked for your help is labeled "Failing to meet expectations"???
Bitch, that is murder. Your expectations cannot seriously be as low as 'don't kill people', and still fail at that with no consequences.
I usually hesitate to say it, sounds like an endorsement of vigilantism, and I'm still opposed, but...
You have to wonder how long people will be willing to complain at city council meetings, or email the mayor's office, or picket on the sidewalk, when it all seems to lead to nothing.
I agree, and I'm a bit shocked that we haven't had another Christopher Dorner pop up over constant police brutality. I have heard hysterical and maybe not true stories of cops being ambushed, where someone calls 911 and blasts whatever officer shows up.
Back in 2019 I started writing out of boredom amd maybe for therapy. I'm working on a novel that will probably never be finished, where someone's wife and kid gets killed by one of these assholes, and how he ends up dealing with it afterwards, but im running into two problems. First, this poor sod is supposed to be the bad guy, and I'm having trouble writing him as the villian. Second, it's getting difficult to write a fictional story about over-the-top violent and useless cops because actual cops keep doing over the top violent or useless things. I had to delete an entire chapter where several police got scared and refused to enter a school during a shooting, because that actually happened a year or so after I wrote it.
Your story doesn't have to be so over the top that it's not realistic. It can absolutely be based on things that happen in real life and even mirror some situations.
The "failed expectations" were doing a better job of covering it up.
Ultimately this is why the right to defend yourself against police needs to be codified in law above all else.
At this point, it is them or you, people need to understand that any encounter with police in the US is a high risk engagement.
You had one problem, now you have two... Or you are dead.
That's a fucked up double-or-nothing. 😞
He called for help, why did the cops need to have him get out of the car?
I know the answer is "Respect my authority!"
I can sort of understand that they probably wanted to pat him down to ensure he didn't have any weapons. But that's a desire, not a need. If they are so afraid that they have to kill someone for not wanting to exit their car, they aren't fit for duty.
I'll reiterate something I said on a similar thread. Cops are dangerous and it's best not to resist in any way, even if their wrong and you're right.
Concur and agree. In a lot of the cases we talk about here, things would've gone better if everyone had obeyed every cop's commands.
It's all ugly and infuriating. Free people shouldn't have to obey every damned fool cop's every command, and the penalty for disobedience shouldn't be death, but when a cop is present we're really not free people
Very brief story: A cop pointed a gun at me once, and said to put my hands up. It pissed me off then and pisses me off now, but I put my hands up. That's why I get to tell the story.
We’ve all seen countless videos of the cops opening fire on someone doing exactly what the cops are asking them to do.
Too bad some people do put their hands up and are shot anyway. Or shot for following other directions.
Telling people to just follow the police directions are glazing over the fact that the directions are often shouted and hard to understand, contradictory to themselves, and people get shot even when complying.