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
What a coincidence that this cop never did anything that landed himself in jail for his whole career, but then after he retired, he suddenly turned abusive. /s
I don't know exactly what he did, but 17 years seems excessive for what is described in the article. I wouldn't be surprised if the plea deal was specifically giving a long sentence on this sort of crime so that another crime could be dropped.
Like, let's say that in addition to all of these computer chats, he actually abused a child in person. If he pleads guilty to that, he might have a hard time in prison. Also, the child he abused might have the truth come out. So, they figured they'd let him plead to this other crime to save everybody embarrassment, because he's going to die in prison, anyways. It's just a theory to explain why the sentence seems long.
May I ask why you think that sentence is excessively long? It's ten counts. I don't know anything about VA law, but in some states the maximum sentence for one count of child solicitation is five years, so it could have been a lot longer.
Edit: changed PA to VA whoops
Look, I had a comment typed out to explain this, but I don't think people act rationally when it comes to cases involving children, so even if I can perfectly explain why I think it, I'd expect a neverending fight and tons of shitty downvoters.
I think it's enough to say that it just seems surprising to get 17 years in prison if nobody was physically harmed.
I haven't read a lot about this, and the article linked here is pretty light on details, but it may be related to him being a school resource officer, or possibly the search they did at his home. But that's also all speculation, so don't really know.
I'm sorry if I seemed like I was trying to pick a fight, I wasn't being disingenuous when I asked.
I didn't think you were trying to pick a fight or were disingenuous. What I thought was that when I read my original answer that I had written, that somebody would end up reading that and would try to fight with me.
This is just from my experience from some other forums, but on those, they always thought there was no punishment enough for some crimes, especially child abuse, and they even rejoiced in the thought that the person might be raped to death in jail. If you even suggested that might be an excessive punishment, people would fight with you.