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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 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
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.
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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
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MODERATORS
You do know that there isn't a finite number of police and if you kill a few, they will hire more, right?
Maybe we'll be left with an essence of what used to be if we dilute the crowd enough.
Is this the homeopathic remedy to the police problem?
I would actually suggest starting up a new force with a better name and dramatically more strict guidelines.
I don't know that shooting at the current force is going to result in that happening.
You can always ask them nicely to step down.
Obviously that won't work either, but at least you won't have the public's sympathy on the side of the cops, which you absolutely would if some guy gunned down a few of them before they shot him.
At least I'd be dead and it's everyone else's problem to solve.
How selfless of you.
No, it's about me.
Yes, that was the point of my sarcasm.
You're not solving a problem, you're feeding your egotistical dream of going out in a blaze of glory.
I don't care about the glory. I just want out. If nobody is gonna work together to fix it, I'm not sticking around.
And yet you're sticking around talking to me. Obviously something is stopping you from walking into a police station with a gun right this moment.
Yeah I don't have a gun. Effort.
So you want to die by getting into a shootout with cops, but you aren't going to buy a gun? You're not making any sense.
Can't buy a gun. Also I'd like to give the proper way a chance first.
The proper way being?
Your way of course. Go get em tiger!
Well my right way to die would be to get as old as possible and then have it happen in my sleep, but that doesn't seem to be what you want.
The right way to deal with the police problem you idiot.
I never claimed to have a way. However, you claimed to want to die in a shootout with police, but you won't find a gun to do it with. Not my fault if you can't go ahead with your own plans.
If everyone kept killing cops and suddenly nobody would want to be a cop.
I also liked my bosses idea. Strap a paintball gun to a drone. Then every time a cop pulls someone over in this notorious speed trap you start shouting the cop with paintballs and fly away. Maybe then they’d find something more productive to do.
So you're going to start killing cops now, right? When's your first shooting spree?
I mean if that's the solution, why haven't you taken the initiative?
Otherwise, this sure sounds like some armchair general talk.
I'm not saying it's a good strategy, I'm just explaining how it would work.