this post was submitted on 04 Jun 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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RULES
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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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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Yeah, I’m sure you attended police academy, or served in the military, right? If you had, one of the first things they would tell you is to not have social media.
I did, yeah. About 75% of males around here do, nothing special about it. Also, while we do it we genuinely get better training in the use of force than most American police.
And yes, they do talk about the responsibility of what you share. When I was in the army, not so much, as social media wasn't really a thing yet and phone cameras weren't much of thing. My brother, though, went a few years after, they covered it in much more detail.
Edit technically I'm still in the army, as I'm in the reserves.
Lucky you. They deemed you physically unscathed enough to serve.
Like they do more than 90% of males here. ~7% go to civil service.
"Lucky you". You Americans and your military fetishes. Exactly what's the problem here, preventing you from discerning your police from your military or even really knowing the difference.
Oh, so you aren’t even American? You don’t live in America. So what is your problem with police in Texas? This post specifically addresses police in Texas and the new vehicles they received.
"You're not even American, and think you have the right to laugh at the American military-industrial complex?!"
What's wrong with an overmilitarised and undereducated police force...?
What's wrong with people genuinely not being able to name the difference in roles between the military and the police?
We can figure this out together, I'm sure.
I think you should live in America before you make that judgement. You’re only seeing one side of the story in this part of Lemmy. Usually, on the internet, you’re usually only seeing one side of the story, and it’s the side that wants to profit from suing police.
No, I really don't.
What "other side" are you talking about?
What is the "story" here even?
That America has a military-industrial complex which results in undereducated police officers with military gear and little to no understanding of the rights they say they're protecting?
No, I really don't nees to live in the US to judge that, just like neither of us needs to live in Gaza to know whether there's a genocide going on there or whether or not genocide is moral. (Hint: It's not..)