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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
The article implies the swat team was sent due to an armed carjacking that morning. Someone got a warrant for search and seizure based on geolocation results from the airpods and they assumed the carjackers would be hanging out at this address.
It's a rental home. Nothing is mentioned about the identity of the owner of the home. After looking up the house on zillow though it's about 113k. It's a dead end street surrounded by homes that are valued under 100k. I didn't realize that federal minimum wage would be enough to pay a mortgage in 2024, but apparently it is possible. This isn't super relevant other than the fact i'm looking at buying a house near Boston and I did a double take that a home exists in this price range and isn't in a trailer park. 113k here won't even buy you a parking spot.
After looking up the address it looks like a group of juveniles were involved with the carjacking so names are impossible to find. The most bizzare thing though is that a couple hours after the carjacking the car was picked up 3.5 miles / an 8 minute drive from the house in wylin court with the suspects bailing from the car and the cops arresting them... I wonder when the swatting happened at 630pm who they thought they would find?
Fun fact, the murder rate in St Louis per capita is the 7th highest in the world, after six cities in Mexico. #1 in the US. 87.83 per 100k. https://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-by-murder-rate-per-capita/
I'm not justifying anything. I learned a lot that I never knew about St Louis MO and holy fuck is it rough.
downtown st louis is actually pretty nice. i wouldn't recommend too many places in the south, but st louis seemed kinda nice.
I didn’t know that about St Louis, I went there for a conference a few years ago and mostly stayed downtown but I drove around a bit one day and it just seemed like an old Southern city. I never felt unsafe but I also lived in an old Southern city with lots of crime for a while so things outside of downtown didn’t seem much different.
There are still many places in the US where you can get a decent house in the lower 100s but they are mostly all rural.