this post was submitted on 14 Mar 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

!abolition@slrpnk.net

!acab@lemmygrad.ml

r/ACAB

r/BadCopNoDonut/

Randy Balko

The Civil Rights Lawyer

The Honest Courtesan

Identity Project

MirandaWarning.org

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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

Black Lives Matter

Campaign Zero

Innocence Project

The Marshall Project

Movement Law Lab

NAACP

National Police Accountability Project

Say Their Names

Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration

 

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That is not even close to being a problem. Age requirements make sense, and so does that of.

It's the rest of the shit that's a problem.

[–] Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I mean if that much training is good for some yee-yee 30 y/o, why does it need an age minimum at all? If you "train" them, tf does it matter?

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

Legalities.

In a jurisdiction where there is a minimum age to be able to perform the duties of a job, be it for good reason or not, the employer is obligated to follow that law until it gets changed.

Since US police training is relatively shit, and there are plenty of jurisdictions where the age limit is 21. I can't recall offhand at the moment if the post covers where the job opening is/was, but that could be looked up.

Six months of training to start as a cop is not impossible. Again, that's by jurisdiction, there's no single limit afaik. With US police training being shit, a six month span of training wouldn't surprise me at all.

If that's the case, and they're being required the be able to legally carry in their jurisdiction, then dropping the minimum age to apply and be hired for training six months makes as much sense as it only being six months of training in the first place.

Frankly though? I remember that age. I remember how damn many of the people my age at the time were complete idiots. I would be perfectly fine with the age limit being higher than 21 to be a cop. There is such a thing as maturity coming with age. It might not be perfect, but you usually weed out the real idiots by the late twenties.