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this post was submitted on 11 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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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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• NAACP
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• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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I don't know if you've thought about the public health implications of people shitting in the streets but as a man who doesn't enjoy contracting hepatitis and cholera I disagree.
how can you punish people for fulfilling a basic bodily need if there's no proper place to do it
If their basic bodily need spreads disease you're turning a small problem that affects one person into a large problem that affects many.
how about we give them a place to shit then
I have no problem with that. I just dont think that place should be the street.
I just don't think we should punish people if they had no other option
You act like people would want to regularly relieve themselves in public if they were allowed to. Spoiler alert: they don't. It's usually last resort, in which case I prefer that to people having to pee/shit themselves in fear of a fine or being arrested.
And I prefer not contracting hepatitis from walking through human feces.
Let me guess, you're an anti-masker aren't you?
Well good news then, because you won't. People generally don't want to defecate in public, meaning that even if there's no punishment for it, it won't suddenly start happening left and right. Your chances of encountering human poop won't significantly increase.
Quite the opposite, I'm still wearing masks when shopping or on public transit, even when everyone else in my area seems to have stopped caring.
Where I live, we have 25,000 homeless people and exactly zero 24/7 public restrooms, so many neighborhoods do reek of urine and there's poop in every bush.
If you want people not peeing on the sidewalk and not pooping in the bushes, gotta give them someplace else to pee and poop.
I agree, I could get behind deploying public restrooms. I cannot get behind legalizing public urination/defecation.
It's the same thing. Pretty much nobody poops or pees in public if there's a restroom available, and if there's a restroom available, by all means ticket and fine anyone who's publicly pooping and peeing.
The kid in this story did. He was in the parking lot of a law office, while his mother was inside talking to her lawyer, so the place was clearly open.
Well, were the cops right to arrest him then?
I agree with the mom, they wouldn't have arrested a white kid. But unequal application of a law doesn't mean we should throw out the law it means we should apply it equally.
Well, I guess we'll disagree then. "Arrest all children who pee outdoors" is not in my top 100,000,000 bright ideas for a better America.
Best of luck with bright idea 100,000,001, "turn our streets and sidewalks into rivers of piss".