THE POLICE PROBLEM
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
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.
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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
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Thank you for your reasoned reply. I think I understand now what you were getting at.
The problem you were running into -- for what's worth; I recognize now that this was probably not what you meant to do -- was, in a word, "Squirrel!" Or to put it another way, allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. In a roomful of wholesale liars, i.e. MAGA, who are literally making up "fake facts" faster than I can engage with them, I do not worry about minor details.
You're right, they do love to seize on minor inaccuracies! But in the context of the wider picture, even this too is a lie, a dishonesty intended to distract.
So when you bring your own well-intentioned efforts to dissecting the minutiae in pursuit of perfect accuracy, as in this thread, at that point you are fighting their battle for them, which is to detract by any means fair or foul from basic acknowledgement that 1) a traffic stop which ends in an extrajudicial death sentence on the spot is not normal, 2) that it is 100% murder, and 3) that this extrajudicial murder on behalf of the government is itself proof that we as a country have entered into fascism.
To be clear, it is any refusal to concede this set of three reasonable conclusions, and not your edits, nor the factual picture still emerging, with which I find great fault.
Thank you again for explaining your position; I very much appreciate it.
EDITED to add that in rereading I see that I failed to express that I do very much value your commitment to factuality: there is no substitute, and if we are ever to find common ground again it must start there, which means that in a way you're defending the most important thing of all. That got lost in my effort to remain on topic. But I do highly value real facts, which are thin on the ground anymore, and I wanted to make sure that high personal standard on your part got pointed out as well.
Thanks, I also appreciate your attempt at reaching out as well in the message before this one.
I can also see rationale behind your Squirrel explanation. I'll keep that in mind in the future.
And I do 100% agree with all 3 of your points, there is no dispute there.
Hell, I probably owe you an apology, because I honestly believed you were posting in defense of the murder and you thought you were doing anything but. I guess we can leave it as lessons learned on both sides: you'll watch your Squirrel!-ing and I'll read a bit more carefully before replying to these things. Hope you have a great night, and thank you again.