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
It might be constitutional how?
Read the language again.
I did read it.
The union lawsuit claims that the newspaper is legally required to remove or blur the images. But the newspaper responded that the union misunderstands the law and has no case:
If the law puts no restrictions on the public (just like most confidentiality laws), then it is likely to be constitutional.
It's not much different in that regard from HIPAA, which prevents health care providers from sharing health information to the public but does not prevent newspapers or the general public from publishing health information that is leaked to them.
Review-Journal broke a state law that says “images of officers in possession of a law enforcement agency are confidential”.
Read that language again.
Yes. An image in possession of a law enforcement officer is confidential. That means the law enforcement officer cannot share it.
Once the image is leaked, it is in possession of the newspaper. A newspaper can do whatever it wants with its images. Even if they are "confidential".
By this language, any image, even one not obtained by law enforcement, but later procured by them would be “in their possession “.
Get it now?
We get it dude, you’re the one having issues with it.
Ok, dude.
If I have a photo of a police officer in my hands, it is in my possession. Even if they originally took the photo, and I made a copy. The police do not possess things in my hands.
Once it is in my possession, I can do what I want with my copy. Including making more copies, and distributing them. The above law does not apply to my copy, even if they still have their own copy of the photo in their possession.
This is literally how every confidentiality law works. Once a copy is leaked to the public, the recipient can do what they want with their copy.
In fact, this sometimes leads to strange situations in which government employees are still required to protect "their" copy of documents that were already leaked to the public and widely distributed.
Let’s say I take picture of a crime.
Then, in some way a police officer gets a copy of that photo” in his possession”.
By the letter of this law, because the officer has “in his possession” a copy of my photo it is now unlawful for me to use the image that I took.
Because, “images of officers in possession of a law enforcement agency are confidential”.
The language.
Lol tell me you don’t understand the law without telling me you don’t understand the law
Explain how the language makes sense.
LOL.
No, you're misreading this law. Your copy is not "in their possession" only their copy is.
Just because they're the same image doesn't mean your copy became illegal.
He’s not misreading the law because he didn’t read the law. He just blasted off an uninformed hot take now his ego won’t let him back down.
I'm not sure why you think possessing a document is equivalent to possessing every copy of the document. That's not how the law works.
When you buy a copy of a book, you own your copy. You can lock up your copy in a vault or you can leave it on park bench. But whatever you choose does not affect every other copy of the book. If you lock up your copy, I can still freely share my copy.
The same is true of images of police. If the police have a copy, they are required to keep their copy locked up. The copy in their possession is confidential. That's all that the law says.
But the law doesn't affect what I am allowed to do with my own copy. My copy is not confidential. I can do what I want with it. The police have no control over my copy.
The law, as written, makes no such distinction.
It does. Possession is well defined. It means what you have in your hands. It does not extend to copies in other hands.
The law applies to images in police possession, it says nothing about copies of those images that are not in their possession.
But the copies are in their hands and therefore in their possession.
In this case, not every copy is in their possession. The law does not affect the copies that are not in police possession. Like the ones possessed by the newspaper.
Ok. I see your distinction but that doesn’t make it ok. I am not a lawyer, but I do think that plain language is important.
I still say this law is unconstitutional as written
Also
Well you sure had us fooled!
My compliments to both of you for making it through eight rounds without ever a flood of insults. Wrong or right, that's impressive. :)
It's just saying the law enforcement officer can't release or give away the photo (that they received from you), as it is confidential. It is a law against leaking images, not a law against receiving them. That's why they want to know the source (because the source, and only the source, broke the law).
As an example, let's say you have a picture taken of you nude that is being used in a criminal investigation. When you give that photo to a police officer, the police officer (and the agency) is required to keep that photo confidential. You, on the other hand, could post it to your OnlyFans account if you want, but even then, the copy you gave the police would be considered confidential by them.