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this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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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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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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I've heard some dodgy stuff about their conviction rates and tendency to stitch people up but I've not really read in to it.
Actually, now that you mention it, I have heard of that conviction rate issue, and I sorta have experience with it too.
This is strictly anecdotal (I just learned about the term "anecdata," lol), so take it with a grain of salt, but I do feel like the prosecutors I work with seem quite concerned about getting the accused to admit to the crime. I think it might be because of the nature of the crime—usually something really stupid like DUI, assault, public nuisance, or trespassing with lots of evidence. I think it has less to do with keeping the conviction rate up than the prosecutor not wanting to waste time and resources handing out prison sentences. First-time offenders tend to get away with lower fines and summary trials if they just tell the truth and admit to their crimes, apparently.
The point of my comment is not to defend the Japanese police. In the end, I don't trust them just like how I don't trust any authority.
Ironically despite not being from there I know more about that phenomenon in the American system than that of my own country but I should imagine a similar dynamic is at play here, there, in Japan and everywhere. It takes a great deal of time and money to conduct trials and there's a lot of pressure to clear backlogs so if you can persuade someone to either admit the crime they really did because there's overwhelming evidence or simply capitulate even though they actually didn't do it because the risks if they lose at trial are so high then you manage to help to this end. I'm sure that's happening in what you're observing but it sounds like those types of incentives operate everywhere whereas the negative commentary about Happen in particular seemed to be about an unusually high conviction rate which is used as indirect evidence of a lack of fair process so if that's sticking out even with this phenomenon occurring then it sounds fishy. But again I'm really just repeating rumours.
There have been cases where it seemed that the japanese police, prosecutors and judges where more interested to send the first person to jail they had get a hold of although they knew they were innocent just because the police and courts are always right.