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

[email protected]

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r/ACAB

r/BadCopNoDonut/

Randy Balko

The Civil Rights Lawyer

The Honest Courtesan

Identity Project

MirandaWarning.org

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INFO

A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions

Adultification

Cops aren't supposed to be smart

Don't talk to the police.

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

So you wanna be a cop?

When the police knock on your door

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ORGANIZATIONS

Black Lives Matter

Campaign Zero

Innocence Project

The Marshall Project

Movement Law Lab

NAACP

National Police Accountability Project

Say Their Names

Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration

 

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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28 May 2024 (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/thepoliceproblem
 
 
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According to court records, detectives told Perez that his father was dead, that they had recovered his body and it now “wore a toe tag at the morgue.” They said they had evidence that Perez killed his father and that he should just admit it, records show.

Perez insisted he didn’t remember killing anyone, but detectives allegedly told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories.

At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator.

Court Decision (PDF)

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Crosspost

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More clear version of the unlawful entry by Lafayette police Via Instagram

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The family of a man hit by a speeding Vancouver police vehicle in the Downtown Eastside says the guilty officer's punishment — a $2,000 fine — is "nothing" compared to how severely the 2022 collision altered Dennis Hunter's life.

And following another instance of a pedestrian being struck by a Vancouver Police Department (VPD) vehicle on a nearby stretch of East Hastings Street earlier this week, Hunter's ex-wife and community advocates say they're "outraged" by what they claim is a lack of police accountability and protection for pedestrians in the neighbourhood.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15788619

George Floyd Murdered (2020)

Mon May 25, 2020

Image

Image: George Floyd with his six-year old, Gianna [blackpast.org]


On this day in 2020, a Minneapolis cop murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd's death became the catalyst for protests around the world; by July, more than 14,000 were arrested in the U.S. alone.

Floyd, a 46-year old black man, had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill. The cop, 44-year old white man Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds while he was handcuffed and lying face-down in a street. Floyd was dead before Chauvin's knee left his neck.

The following day, after videos made by witnesses and security cameras became public, all four officers involed were fired. Floyd's state murder became the catalyst for worldwide Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality, which took place on every continent except Antartica.

The scope of civil unrest within the U.S. was nearly unprecedented. Author Malik Simba writes: "the protests have involved more than 26 million Americans in 2,000 cities and towns in every state in the U.S., making [them] the most widespread protests around one issue in the history of the nation. By the end of June alone, one month into the protests, 14,000 people had been arrested."

Initially, the local District Attorney's Office only harged Chauvin with third-degree manslaughter, but this charge was later increased to second degree murder, following mass protests. On April 20th, 2021, Chauvin was convicted and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. The other three officers were also later convicted of violating Floyd's civil rights.

Floyd's murder was witnessed by several people, including children. On the incident, seventeen year old Danella Frazier stated "When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brother, I look at my cousin and my uncle." Her nine year old cousin, also an eyewitness, testified in court: "I was sad and kind of mad and it felt like [Chauvin's knee] was stopping him from breathing and it was hurting him."


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At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator.

Finally, after curling up with the dog on the floor, Perez broke down and confessed. He said he had stabbed his father multiple times with a pair of scissors during an altercation in which his father hit Perez over the head with a beer bottle.

Perez’s father wasn’t dead — or even missing. Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California. But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.

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More people were killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2023 than any other year in the past decade, outpacing population growth eightfold.

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Crosspost

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The creator of a “FUCK the LAPD” shirt sold out not only his entire stock of that shirt but also sold out many of his other designs after the Los Angeles Police Department Foundation made an intellectual property threat against them that claimed they owned the letters ‘LAPD.’

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Parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown called for mental health help in the middle of their son’s bipolar episode this month. Clinical personnel showed up — and so did police shortly after.

Police fatally shot Yong Yang, 40, who had a knife in his hand, less than 10 seconds after officers opened the door to his parents’ apartment where he had locked himself in, newly released bodycam video shows.

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Breaking News: World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler has been detained by police in handcuffs after a misunderstanding with traffic flow led to his attempt to drive past a police officer into Valhalla Golf Club. The police officer attempted to attach himself to Scheffler’s car, and Scheffler then stopped his vehicle at the entrance to Valhalla. The police officer then began to scream at Scheffler to get out of the car. When Scheffler exited the vehicle, the officer shoved Scheffler against the car and immediately placed him in handcuffs. He is now being detained in the back of a police car.

- Jeff Darlington

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This needs to be required watching for everyone here, even and especially the folks who show up to complain that police are somehow unjustly maligned today.

It may say on the wrapper that it's a documentary about Hip Hop. And it is. But it's really also a documentary about roughly the last fifty years of the state of policing in the US, with a quite overt emphasis on the impacts our justice system has had on people of color and the poor.

So many things that I have learned in the past few years are included here in one place, along with so many new bits of information and perspective. And, a great deal of what is shared here is related by people who lived through it.

This is a fascinating goldmine of information and understanding, with a great soundtrack.

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"Don't make a wrong move," the officer said as he pinned the struggling subject to the ground. "Period."

The officer tightened the handcuffs around the subject's thin wrists.

"Ow, ow, ow, it really hurts," the subject exclaimed.

The officer pressed his weight into the subject's small body while school staff watched it all unfold. The person he was restraining was 7 years old.

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