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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
48 prevented fatal accidents sounds great! Now how many accidents would we prevent if we criminalized alcohol?
And how many more if we banned cars?
If we just criminalized dying, we wouldn't have to worry about fatalities at all.
It wouldn't be very good for those empty-ish parts of Ohio. Maybe if we also gave everyone a horse.
Always wanted a horse...
This guy fucks
... cars!
!fuckcars@lemmy.world !
Not sure if satire, or bad at history...
Or maybe times have changed?
Criminalizing any drug just means gifting billions to organized crime and destroying the lives of millions of consumers by criminalizing them. Legalization and a focus on protection of minors, education about drugs, addiction prevention and rehab programs is what improves peoples lives. If you think criminalizing alcohol might be a good idea you should read about "The Prohibition" and how it made the american mafia the stinking rich empire it is.
What should be strictly criminalized is driving under any influence and that is the case in most countries.
Imo also driving cars in urban spaces should be criminalized but that is a different topic.
Generally speaking I agree with you. I was trying to highlight the simplified moral calculus on display that equates the immeasurable harm that strict prohibition has created to the potential harm of losing dozens of lives. Due to the inherent complications of these questions, neither is unequivocally good or bad, but they're presented as a dichotomy that simply does not exist in reality.
There are plenty of other ways to go about it, just like we compromised on alcohol a century ago. As a society we agreed that it comes down to personal responsibility, so how is weed really any different? Pointing to the potential harm that legalization could cause while ignoring precedent and common sense is disingenuous at best and purposely misleading at worst.
I doubt strongly their criteria for linking those accidents to pot goes beyond "this person smoked pot recently enough for it to show up in urine".