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Schizophrenic man, armed with a stick that had a knife on one end, is shot and killed by California police
(www.nbclosangeles.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
39 points (82.0% liked)
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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Police are trained and supposed to take that non-lethal force chance, yes absolutely. I am personally not a cop, because I don't want to be in those situations. But people that DO sign up to serve and protect the public should be held to a higher standard than the general public, especially considering the tools, training, and resources (money) police forces have at their disposal.
You're not going to convince me the only way to safely end this altercation was by shooting the mentally ill man to death. We have to ask ourselves how we can do better so we can learn from these situations and less people die violent deaths.
To use your your logic: why do tranquilizers even get produced at all then? Why don't we just shoot every unruly animal? Wild and sick animals are just as or more dangerous than a man with a knife on a stick.
They did try other options before shooting him though. It unfortunately sounds like they ran out of options.
He had a knife taped to a stick.
They put numbered him.
They could have done a lot more than just kill him.
We don't have video anyways to know exactly what happened.