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
Some relatives of those found buried behind the jail simply thought they were missing. They object to having to pay a fee for the removal of their loved one’s remains that are needed for a proper burial.
They’re still trying to charge a fee to move the bodies from the mass grave just in case you’re wondering if something good came out of it.
Evil people are still evil and seem to outnumber good people these days.
That's why I chose to highlight that paragraph. :(
Not to make excuses for this EVER happening ...
At one time, this story used to be a fairly common one around the US. Like the one from Florida's 'School for Boys' (a 'reform' school founded in 1900). Or the Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA (founded 1879). Probably most states have one like it, at least before the 1950s.
In Washington State, a 2023 story developed about an abandoned former State Hospital (asylum), opened in 1909, closed in 1973. It developed after death records, sealed for 60 years, were unsealed. The facts about tens of thousands of inmates had been unknown to relatives.
Furthermore, "Initials and numbers stand in for names on the hospital cemetery headstones, most now sunk beneath the mud. More than 1,600 patients are believed to be buried on the campus or elsewhere in the valley — close to 900 of them cremated and interred in metal food cans." - https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/lost-patients-two-peoples-consuming-quest-to-unearth-the-truth-about-washingtons-abandoned-psychiatric-hospital/
https://projects.seattletimes.com/2023/local/lost-patients-WA-abandoned-psychiatric-hospital/
Thanks. I was born and raised in Washington and never heard about this. Truly chilling.
I grew up near the Florida school and I remember hearing horror stories about it as a child. And it was always used as a threat by teachers for unruly students.
It was a truly horrible place.
If you don't still live there, or haven't heard of it recently, the site's been partly excavated (authorized by Gov. Rick Scott) starting 10 years ago. Several men sent there as boys and still living testified about it in 2007. The most recent news I heard (in 2019) was that 27 more graves had been found. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article229136219.html
I moved away 20 years ago, and I still hate going back to Florida for any family event, that state was a horrible place to grow up.
That’s the most Mississippi thing I’ve ever heard today.
Although horrifying, Jackson, MS is probably the least surprising place I would have imagined this happening.
The south ™️
That's not good
Fuck the police.
Everybody pretends to be surprised. I'm not surprised at all.