but BBC has uncovered 150 reports of failings
And the actual number of "failings" is going to be astronomically higher.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 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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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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At least UK police ain't killing plebs...
In US misuse would prolly be all murders... Cop "forgot" to turn it on! He was scared!
Apt username.
At least UK police ain't killing plebs...
They are, just not on the scale police in the usa do.
Negligence in poor communities (basically 'let the gangs sort themselves out') was a major issue in the area where my mum worked growing up. She worked with kids with learning difficulties.
That's still the way the British police like it (and in the US as well I know) - the arrogant 'well our hands are clean' attitude. Same when knife crime became an epidemic with innercity youths there was massive inaction before doing anything about it, I suspect largely because on the whole it wasn't white kids
It's a bit more than just that. Here's the wikipedia page with a list of people killed by uk police.
Yeah, the force that claimed an officer "may have been confused" would have been better off not bothering with that excuse at all.
Is it worse if an officer knowingly breaks the law, or if they're so fucking stupid they can't remember the law regarding something they MUST have just received recent training on?
Trick question, they're both the same, since the cops love telling people that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
It was hoped [something, anything] would increase transparency in policing, but [it never does]...
And only lots and lots of prosecutions will.
~~It's a bit more than just that. Here's the wikipedia page with a list of people killed by uk police.~~
Ignore this, it's a misposted reply to a convo elsewhere in the thread.
Sorry about this — you wanted to talk about people killed by UK cops — but holy crap, there's a Wikipedia page for people killed by US police, too.
Huh, I though I left that in a reply to comment further down? How odd.
You had a post vanish? That's happened to me a few times, too, very rarely. Funky fediverse. Hope it was something short, not something with six long paragraphs that took you half an hour to bang out... :)
No, it didn't vanish. I think as the comment I was replying to was at the bottom of the page, and I'd tabbed away to grab that wiki link, I mistook the reply to thread text box as the reply to comment text box.
(I wrote a bloody long essay about tardigrades for a tumblr conversation the other day, spent hours researching it and getting my words out just right and editing in pictures. Just as i was about to post it, I dropped my phone, and while fumbling for it closed the app. Fuck me, I almost cried, haha. I was very lucky i somehow hit post during that fumble, it was a really nice surprise when I checked the app several hours later too!)
That's the second best happy ending!