THE POLICE PROBLEM
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
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This city has a serious drug problem and some high crime areas and there is no way they are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
And this is in front of the police station. It was the only photo of it I could find. The carving the dog is blocking says, "fairness."
That is genuinely creepy.
Right? My wife works in the library across the street and I see it all the time. I want to take a photo of it, but I'm actually worried about what they would do if I did.
Incidentally, it's parallel with this statue, which is slightly less intimidating due to the cop's posture but still creepy.
Man, dogs are our best friend and cops turned some against us. They ruined dogs. Everything cops touch turns to suck.
Please tell me Fairness is the name of the town…
No. The name of the town is Terre Haute. It is the first of many very stupid things about this town... because it means "high ground" and we're in a valley. It's technically higher ground than the river next to it, but that's basically true of all rivers everywhere because of, you know, erosion.
Come to think of it, it might be the least stupid and terrible thing about Terre Haute, along with "it no longer deserves its reputation for smelling terrible because the paper mill is no longer here."
Don't get me wrong, there are some good things here, but the bad things far outweigh them. It's generally considered one of the worst cities in Indiana and it deserves that reputation. And just being in Indiana is pretty awful since we're sometimes nicknamed "the middle finger of the South." Which is 100% accurate.
Ok, and most cops are bastards.
There’s a reason I put the last sentence on the comment. lol
It’s like communism, sounds great on paper but doesn’t stand up to the real world
Communism works fine in the real world, on a small scale. Communes exist, and most people that have lived in communes have loved them. OTOH, it seems to break down once people don't have a first degree connection to the other people in the society.