Logan Square Neighbors Question Police Commander On Officer Misconduct, Robberies (blockclubchicago.org)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Five@slrpnk.net to c/thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world

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Nowacki was listed as a member of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government extremist group that played a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He has a series of complaints against him, including excessive use of force, personnel violations, and allegations of misconduct, such as making racist remarks to South Side activists that stem from 2007 which he was minimally scolded for, records show.

In 2020, Nowacki was reprimanded for making a series of Facebook posts during the pandemic that criticized the police command staff, mocked an online dashboard that tracks public sentiment toward the department and showed him wearing a cloth mask, according to the Sun-Times and WBEZ investigation.

The Sun-Times reported last month the officer and eight others with ties to the Oath Keepers will avoid punishment. Neighbors and activists have repeatedly called for Nowacki to be fired.

Linas told the crowd she wasn’t aware of the allegations or the investigation into the officer until it was brought up at the meeting. She said some of the officer’s social media posts were concerning, but the process of firing an officer is overseen by the department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Chicago Police Board.

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[-] Drusas@kbin.run 3 points 1 week ago

Good.

this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024

25 points (100.0% liked)

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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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