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.
♦ ♦ ♦
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.
♦ ♦ ♦
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.
♦ ♦ ♦
ALLIES
• r/ACAB
♦ ♦ ♦
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
♦ ♦ ♦
ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
view the rest of the comments
You think people should be involuntarily committed for sleeping on the sidewalk?
Passed out != sleeping, and yeah, anyone in a mental health crisis should be involuntarily committed.
Passed out but not ODing or other medical emergency sounds like sleeping to me for all intents and purposes (like, passing out drunk isn't the same as actual sleep for the person's brain, but for society there's no real difference)
I'm of the opinion that unless someone is an imminent threat to themselves or someone else we can't be doing involuntary commitments, because a) involuntary commitments are almost always super traumatizing and set the person's journey to mental health backwards a few steps (maybe they get the resources they need from being committed and they leave the facility a few steps ahead, but most often they're just held and medicated for 72 hours and back out on to the street, and either way they're entering the facility worse than they had been if they're being forced into it), b) we just don't have enough beds at these facilities (let alone staff and other rehabilitative resources)
Or, given my town, fentanyl addiction, not sleeping.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fentanyl-fold-drug-user-19561190.php
Being addicted to drugs is not a crime (although I should probably shut up before Thomas and Alito and the rest remember this ruling exists), and I can't believe we'd have weaker civil rights protections for people who are not accused of crimes but just have a health issue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_v._California?wprov=sfla1
Moreover, throwing an addict into detox is just a waste - unless they want to be there they're just going to use again as soon as they get out (and since they lost whatever tolerance they were used to having it's more likely to lead to an OD)
Being addicted to drugs is a mental illness that needs treatment, treatment the addicts will not seek on their own.
If they don't want treatment then treatment won't work. There isn't a magic pill to make someone not addicted.
So people should be involuntarily committed to a mental instituiton for passing out after using drugs? That's insane.
Yup. They are self medicating a mental illness and not very well, they need professional help and won't seek it out voluntarily.
If they were capable of making decisions for themselves they wouldn't be in that state.
So what are you doing as a mod here then if you are pro-authoritarianism to the point that you think police and other non-medical government employees should be locking these people away in institutions and medicating them against their will because you all consider them a nuisance?
"Self medicating a mental illness and not very well" describes probably half the population of the country these days.
They shouldn't be treated because they are nuisances, they should be treated because they are actively harming themselves and are incapable of getting treatment on their own.
Anyone who overeats because of emotional problems & refuses tharipy is doing the same. Should they be forcefully institutionalized?
No, not everyone in crisis needs to be involuntarily commited.
dang how about we just take them to a place they can sleep it off, if they're not in a medical emergency? have you ever been committed? it's kind of terrible? and not helpful?