this post was submitted on 17 Sep 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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ALLIES

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INFO

A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions

Adultification

Cops aren't supposed to be smart

Don't talk to the police.

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

So you wanna be a cop?

When the police knock on your door

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ORGANIZATIONS

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Medina offered two puzzling excuses for leaving his camera off. He "cited intermittent conversations with his wife, who was a passenger in his unmarked patrol vehicle at the time of the collision," Ortiz says. "He claimed there was a right to privileged communication between spouses, which specifically exempted him from mandatory recording requirements." But the relevant policy "does not provide for nonrecording based on spousal privilege."

Even more troubling, Medina said he "purposefully did not record because he was invoking his 5th Amendment right not to self-incriminate." Since "he was involved in a traffic collision," he reasoned, he was "subject to 5th Amendment protections."

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[–] [email protected] 131 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you are on duty, and acting as an agent of the state, your bodycam is on. If you've invited your wife into your patrol car while on duty, your bodycam is on. If you're "involved in a traffic collision" while on duty your bodycam is on.

You fascist fuck.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yep, the on duty part makes his claim irrelevant. Or, rather, it doesn't count as self incrimination. The entire point of the cameras is to cover on duty activity, and is no different than a cctv in a parking lot at the police station because the patrol vehicle is public property, not his.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago

It's more than that. When you accept the responsibility of acting as an agent of the state, your actions are those of the state. And we the people have a right to know what actions the state is taking, especially in policing, where those actions are far too often against us.

Going beyond that, bodycams protect everyone, both the public and the officers. Having spoken to police officers about bodycams, the good ones love them, because if someone decides to make a false complaint against an officer, they have bodycam footage to defend themselves with. One officer told me that the number of complaints went down after the introduction of bodycams, because the department would say, "Okay, we'll pull the footage" ... and a good number of those complaintants would suddenly vanish.

The only cops who don't want bodycams are the ones who would be incriminated by that footage.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago

If you need your fifth amendment rights to be a cop you don't need to be a cop. Simple as.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago (1 children)

He is a real piece of shit, not your normal cop piece of shit, extra shitty shitty. Like a turd that makes it cry a little as it is on its way out.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Like the orange dude running for prez?

[–] bradinutah 14 points 2 months ago

If he's wrong (and I think he is) then doesn't his turning off his camera become obstruction of justice? If not, what would this be considered?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

he should be charge for the use of public resources for personal use and reprimanded outside of everything related to the crash and the camera is the property of the department and not him and is unrelated to his rights. His mouth is his and he can keep it shut if he wants to invoke his rights.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

This is the same dude that got himself a 100k police cruiser because he wrecked his.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

I think Albuquerque's police chief can go fuck himself.

My workplace's IT staff can see what I'm doing on my work computer, even when it's texting my wife. That's fine, it's their computer; anything I do with it is under their banner and they bear some responsibilities around it, and therefore my using it for personal stuff is a privilege I need to be cognizant of the realities around. A cop's work vehicle is no different. The camera isn't there to protect his wife, it's there to protect society against him and he doesn't get to pick and choose when he's subject to that oversight.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

You don't have to use technology in a potentially incriminating way? So you won't force people to use their biometrics to unlock their phones?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Fuck this guy. Seriously.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Abq and him deserve each other.