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White "back the blue" family shocked after suffering police abuse
(boingboing.net)
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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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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
Thats how people who tell their offspring to “submit” to someone think. Being an obedient little slave is their thing.
We are raised in families where we are ordered around. We are sent to schools where we are trained to be obedient. We go to work in authoritarian organizations. We don’t understand democracy or cooperative organization. Nobody knows why.
Because life is even worse (and often shorter, at least in the US, since you don’t get health and dental care until it’s too late) if you’re poor.
But seriously my dad taught us never to say anything unnecessary to police and to ask for a lawyer first if ever questioned. This was in the 80s too, way before the internet memo lawyers made catchy videos about not talking.
Your dad was amazing for doing that. Sadly that advice was far from the norm back then. Especially in non minority families.
He’d been tear gassed while protesting the Vietnam War, and when I was deciding what to do for college, he let me know that the main reason he went was to reduce his draft odds.
I think that’s what made him distrust the police. He wasn’t antigovernment or anything though, and even ran for state senate later in life, after being in local politics. No Democrat had ever won in his district though so he never had a chance.