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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
That's one of those sayings that sounds good on paper but completely falls apart when you think about it for two seconds.
We need undercover police to investigate crime organizations.
We need unmarked police vehicle to catch dangerous drivers who put everyone at risk.
...
Except police don't actually do their jobs.
Depends on the country your are living in
If that's all they did, and they were transparent about even their undercover operations to catch actual threats to our community, I would have a lot more support for them.
The reality is that cops are brute-squad who serve their own interests more times than not. I often find it telling about the state of the narrative that when police "accidentally" shoot some black kid in the back nine times, it's a scandal that disappears and there are people coming out of the woodwork to say "that kid shouldn't have run."
But as soon as someone posts a story or clip of a cop shooting their dog in their own house without warning or pause, it's massive outcry and cop-hate. Fun fact, cops kill 10000 or more pets a year
If you ever had a beloved pet in your life, imagine for a moment a cop coming in your home for unrelated reasons and then drawing their gun and shooting your dog in the head for barking and then carrying on like nothing happened.
(If this doesn't make your blood boil, you would make an ideal cop.)
If the mere visible presence of a police vehicle makes people drive less recklessly (because if it didn't these vehicles would be pointless), is that not already accomplishing the goal of road safety? You would give up the broader effect of people seeing the vehicle and slowing down, just so a cop can write a couple tickets for whoever they choose out of the group? To me that sounds more like exacting revenge for a perceived slight (ntm a HUGE opportunity for police to abuse power and profile targets) than simply being concerned for safety.
Also if a driver is truly reckless, would it really matter if the police vehicle is marked or not? Reckless drivers aren't known for their perceptive ability or for that matter their respect for authority... This only allows police to catch drivers that would have taken their presence as a reminder to verify that they are following the laws.
So to that end, this expansion of the police state is only to promote rule abiding by instilling into drivers, at least the ones that care to follow the law, the constant paranoia that police could be watching. This will inevitably fail and result in less safe roads, because humans aren't machines that can go on forever operating on an exact set of instructions. But at least some of those drivers will have expensive tickets to pay when they slip up, and at least the police get to say they did something.
Rather than just having sensible rules that you would have to go out of your way to break, along with implementing other safer means of transport so that there are fewer people at risk for driving incidents. I would much rather see promotion and investment into a bus line than a swanky new stealth police vehicle, for example.
We don't need police. All Cops Are Criminals