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
view the rest of the comments
Let's pretend the shooting was valid. You are allowed to use reasonable force to stop a threat. That doesn't mean death, death may happen but the force has to stop once the aggressor is no longer a threat.
Does anyone think 51 shots are reasonable?
Public execution happens anytime a cop gets shot
Egh. If, in theory, I'm firing and I think there is a danger there 6 bullets ain't really excessive. I'm not saying these idiots were justified but there were eight cops.
If it was a valid shooting, then the number of shots is irrelevant.
8 officers and 51 shots is ~6 rounds per officer. That's not completely insane if you take into account how quickly someone can fire 6 rounds and addrenalin/the situation.
That's literally 2-3 seconds.
I'm not defending the cops one way or the other, but again, if we are stipulating that it's a "good shoot", then number of shots doesn't matter but even if it did, 51 rounds from 8 officers might be in the realm of reasonable (obviously depends on how you define reasonable).
Sorry it is relevant.
The academy stresses you are only authorized to use deadly force to stop a threat. You are not authorized under law to kill anyone.
It’s why we were trained to figure two rounds then evaluate if there was still a threat.
We were never trained to figure six rounds in a panic because that isn’t stopping a threat. Thats trying to kill someone.
In court cases you’ll see them evaluate each shot for that reason. I’m all for giving cops reasonable doubt but 51 shots is insane.
16 I could see. 51 is just stupid.
What academy is teaching you to shoot two rounds then reassess??
You shoot to eliminate the threat. You don't shoot to kill, you don't shoot to wound, you don't aim for the leg, you don't take an arbitrary number of shots then pause.
I went to evergreen. Where did you go?
Two shots, then reassess — that makes sense to me.
Come the adrenaline and it's just squeeze the trigger til nothing happens any more.
What doesn't make sense to me is shooting this guy. Maybe it'll make sense if/when we're allowed to see what happened. That happens, sometimes.
Not often, but sometimes.
When you just magically drop. You lose aim and might start shooting bystanders. Also you’re wasting ammo.
In my academy, it was heavily stressed two rounds, evaluate, two rounds.
People have the impression can’t are allowed to kill. It’s semantics but they’re not. It’s enough force to stop the threat.
Now if the guy had a machine gun and was shootings hundreds of rounds. You can justify 51 shots.
I’m tired of cops shootings 50+ rounds as that is just murder In my eyes.
The only time we were taught to “kill” was active shooter drills. That’s it. The only time the word kill was used was during active shooter drills.
It's not a split second decision when they already plan on killing the person.
How long does it take to fire those many shots? It wouldn’t be “mere seconds”, would it?
8 cops all shooting at once would only need to fire 7 times and that even has a few misses. That could actually be done insanely quickly.
With that said, I don't think we need to play "devil's advocate" to justify this situation at all and I think it's highly inappropriate. Either the cops are highly trained professionals or they're scared idiots. If the police with all their 'training' can react like scared idiots then at least the same level of leeway should be given to the people they constantly assault.
You could get 6 shots off easy in a few seconds.