this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
306 points (98.7% liked)

THE POLICE PROBLEM

2515 readers
569 users here now

    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.

♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦

RULES

Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.

If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.

Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.

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.

♦ ♦ ♦

ALLIES

[email protected]

[email protected]

r/ACAB

r/BadCopNoDonut/

Randy Balko

The Civil Rights Lawyer

The Honest Courtesan

Identity Project

MirandaWarning.org

♦ ♦ ♦

INFO

A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions

Adultification

Cops aren't supposed to be smart

Don't talk to the police.

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

So you wanna be a cop?

When the police knock on your door

♦ ♦ ♦

ORGANIZATIONS

Black Lives Matter

Campaign Zero

Innocence Project

The Marshall Project

Movement Law Lab

NAACP

National Police Accountability Project

Say Their Names

Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration

 

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

An inmate whose HIV-positive diagnosis devolved into AIDS died because the medical staff at the California jail where he was housed denied him lifesaving medication even though they had his prescription and were told he needed it to survive, a new federal wrongful death lawsuit alleges

all 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Privatising penal and detention services is so bizarre. Does this happen a lot all over the world or just the US?

As an aside for people who may not realise, HIV isn't a big deal provided that you manage it with meds. I'd rather have HIV than say, back problems.

Due to recent advances in medication delivery, it's just 2 injections a year now.

For someone's health to deteriorate like that in just 2 months, I suspect that he wasn't able to keep up with his meds before he was arrested.

[–] WaxedWookie 39 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're assuming he was on the bi-annual treatment, which I'm not sure would be the case - doubly so in the prison system.

Either way, they had a duty of care that they failed miserably - he couldn't just pop to the pharmacy to get the meds he needed to live (and help prevent a deadly disease spreading in the prison). This is entirely the prison's fault.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

It’s basically just the anglosphere

in 2013, countries that were currently using private prisons or in the process of implementing such plans included Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand. However, at the time, the sector was still dominated by the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison

That is 10 years out of date, so more are probably in on it because capitalism is fucked like that.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

I think it may be time to redefine the term "third-world country"...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Abolish Amerikkkan concentration camps

[–] lapommedeterre 2 points 10 months ago