this post was submitted on 24 May 2024

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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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• Know your rights: Filming the police

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• 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

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Victim reports his father missing. Police instead interrogated him for 17 hours, said they killed his dog, and withheld his meds from the victim. Victim tried to commit suicide in the room. (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Potatos_are_not_friends to c/thepoliceproblem

209 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I feel like if someone threatens to kill your dog for literally no reason other than they want to hurt and scare you, than it is unreasonable to expect that person won't attempt to use lethal force to stop you. It is also unreasonable to label that person as a dangerous, unhinged person for reacting in this way.

What do you think they hate their dog?

Sure if it came to me choosing between my dog's life and a human's life I feel like I am going to choose the human probably right? Even if they are a stranger, honestly it just wouldn't feel right to pick my dog idk... but if the human is just casually telling me they are going to murder my dog for no good reason, than I think one has ethical permission to use any action necessary up to and including ending that person's life in an attempt to stop the unnecessary murder of the dog (assuming again the dog is just chilling, existing, not hurting anyone). That is fundamentally an act of non-violence though on security camera footage it will look like an act of unhinged violence without context.

It really doesn't matter how credible the threat is, if someone makes a threat to murder your dog with a straight face they should expect the owner of the dog to attempt to use lethal force to stop them because the dog's owner/human friend is completely 1000% justified in doing so no matter the context of whether the murderer supposedly represents a "justice system" or not.

The only ethical expectation on the dog owner/human friend is to escalate their violent response in a reasonable way that allows for de-escalation at every step (i.e. don't jump straight to the most extreme response unless you have to)... which is kind of hard to suss out when you have two extremely large men threatening you in a small room within a building brimming with bigots and guns that is wrapped up in a brutally cruel justice system you might never escape if you piss the wrong cop off on the wrong day.