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
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Every jurisdiction I have ever heard of (in the United States, at least) allows emergency vehicles to disregard traffic rules when they can do so safely. This is why you will often see that speeding police/fire/EMS vehicles with lights and sirens activated will still slow down for intersections, and then speed off once they have safely cleared the intersection.
The officer in this case was probably permitted to drive as fast as they were driving, and to drive through a red light, however they had a superseding duty to operate their vehicle safely. It doesn’t matter what kind of an emergency they’re responding to, that doesn’t give them the right to cause harm along the way. If the officer could not know with reasonable certainty that they would not collide with another vehicle (or pedestrian) when going through that intersection, then they shouldn’t have proceeded through the intersection at that speed.
Similarly, police officers are permitted to carry their guns under circumstances where most people would not be allowed to carry a gun. However, if they accidentally shoot an innocent bystander, they are still liable for that shooting. They can’t go waving their gun around just because they’re allowed to have/use guns under specific circumstances. Sounds like an extreme example, but cars can be just as deadly as guns.
I would hazard to say they aren't allowed (maybe not explicitly, but through gross reckless endangerment) to go through an intersection at 79mph when red, because there is absolutely no situation where the green traffic would have time to even see/hear the sirens without an atypically vast sight range of hundreds of yards.
I agree, I was just trying to be very conservative in my judgement. Realistically, a scenario in which you could be sure that it was safe to go through an intersection at those speeds is going to be very rare, even if you had a green light. There are just too many variables.
Perfectly said! I would add:
Cars are arguably more deadly than guns. The CDC numbers vary slightly year by year, but total vehicular deaths vs. gun related deaths are always on par. Take suicides out, of both kinds, and vehicular death is far more common. And one thing is far more random than the other.