this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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THE POLICE PROBLEM

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    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

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

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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

 

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MODERATORS
 

The creator of a “FUCK the LAPD” shirt sold out not only his entire stock of that shirt but also sold out many of his other designs after the Los Angeles Police Department Foundation made an intellectual property threat against them that claimed they owned the letters ‘LAPD.’

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[–] [email protected] 183 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Better be careful. It's dangerous to to speak out against powerful local gangs.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 months ago (2 children)

But what is the ~~taxes~~ protection money I pay them for, for?!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago

Better arming them, of course.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

It’s for your protection. You can always tell how well you’re protected by the number & severity of the injuries you receive from your protectors.

If your protectors kill you, be honored, humbled, & thankful! Rejoice in knowing you were served & protected the best!

[–] UltraMagnus0001 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I like the Black Eye Peas where is the love? Also Tupac and the NWA singing about LAPD gangs. The Wire is an excellent show that explains the system from the top to the bottom. We Own the City by The Wire creators is a mini series about gangs of cops terrorizing their neighborhood based on actual events. Jon Betnthal is such an underrated actor.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Streisand Effect working as expected.

[–] kamenlady 38 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart has set a high bar.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 months ago

As an Aussie it brings me so much joy knowing the world is mocking that racist fat cunt. She is a disgusting example of a human being.

[–] strawberrysocial 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)
[–] Armok_the_bunny 12 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ironically I actually copied this link after selecting view desktop version in Firefox.

[–] Armok_the_bunny 2 points 6 months ago

It's a copy paste I try to have on hand because probably more than half the wikipedia links I see are mobile ones. The fact that you make the effort is very appreciated.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

It works just fine on my desktop. And yeah, posting sanitized urls is just good practice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That sounds like a you problem buddy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Some day Wikipedia will learn how to use the "media" tag in CSS.

[–] aeronmelon 33 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I own a pretty nice CTS-V and I had a cop and his buddy try to shake me down to sell it to him.

It was fucking bizarre like "is this America?"

[–] massacre 7 points 6 months ago

How does that even work?

[–] dohpaz42 19 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I’m all for anarchy, and IANAL, but being that there is an active trademark for word LAPD in the clothing industry, I could see the City of Los Angelos (the actual trademark holders) having a leg to stand on. Note that the address on the trademark is not the address of the LAPF.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Here’s the thing about Trademarks though:

Trademarks exist to protect consumers from confusion in the market, NOT primarily to protect the owner of the trademark.

So, like, a restaurant calling themselves McDonald’s could reasonably be assumed to be operated by the McDonald’s Corporation.

This makes trademarks distinct from both patents and copyright.

Do you honestly believe a rational consumer would mistake this design for one originating from the LAPD?

https://academic.oup.com/book/41769/chapter-abstract/354401357?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

‘’’

European Trade Mark Law Kur Annette and Martin Senftleben Contents Contents Search in this book CHAPTER 3 Rationales of Trade Mark Protection Get access Arrow Kur Annette, Martin Senftleben https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199680443.003.0002 Pages 1–26 Published: March 2017 Annotate icon Annotate Cite Icon Cite Permissions Icon Permissions Share Icon Share Abstract Although trade mark law is generally regarded as forming part of the larger body of intellectual property, the protection mechanism underlying its functioning is distinct from other intellectual property rights. Patents, copyright, or design rights award creative or innovative achievements with a limited period of market exclusivity thus creating artificial scarcity of the respective commodities. This grants the proprietor of such rights the possibility to raise prices above the marginal costs so as to recoup the investments made. Whether and to what extent that strategy is successful and even allows gaining a premium is determined by the market. Trade mark law coincides with that scheme insofar as it also engages market forces to determine commercial gains or losses. However, instead of creating artificial exclusivity of the goods or services offered, it provides a communication channel for entrepreneurs, so as to identify the goods or services originating from their business, distinguish them from competing goods, and transport product-related messages they want to convey to their customers. This, by reflex, provides information to the market, guiding consumer choice towards goods satisfying their demands, and helping to avoid those they do not want, at minimal search costs (see paragraph 1.08 et seq.). Thus, instead of restricting competition on the production level, trade marks are designed as an enabling tool without which competition in today’s mass markets would not function at all. ‘’’

[–] SkyezOpen 50 points 6 months ago (3 children)

This, and the dumbass lawyer representing the LAPF sent a DMCA takedown, explicitly calling it copyright infringement, which is most certainly is not

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/14/when-lol-no-is-not-enough-lawyer-explains-why-bogus-takedown-over-fuck-the-lapd-shirt-should-result-in-paying-legal-fees/

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Great read, thanks for sharing.

FYI there's a link in that article that goes to the initial, and much more brief, walkthrough of the original letter, and it's comically short response.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

That was a great read. Thank you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

DMCA is only copyright so it had to be a copyright claim. You could probably argue that this claim was in bad faith, but that's a lot of work to actually prove.

[–] SkyezOpen 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No seriously, read it, it's fucking hilarious.

I'm almost afraid to ask you to explain how you might have formed such a belief, but feel free to take a shot at it.

In a footnote on page 3

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Mike Dunford, Cola's lawyer, is fantastic. He has a Twitch channel (questauthority) if you want to hear more from him.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Why wasn't this good enough to protect The South Butt? Or was it just a legal might makes right kind of thing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] Aecosthedark 1 points 6 months ago

Can explain why you think its different? They both seem like they are obvious parodies and should fall under similar rulings/precedents.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago (3 children)

This might actually fall under 1st amendment and parody laws

[–] stoly 7 points 6 months ago

This is exactly the case.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm conflicted about this. I think some smaller companies that individuals should have the ability to protect their intellectual property but at the same time I think it's far too long for mega corporations to own IP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's not something we can do overnight. It would require a strong culture of patronage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I agree. I think one thing we can all agree on is that patents that used any, even a cent of public funds cannot be granted a patent. Also at the same time, our government should have their own drug research center that creates drugs that are available for all humanity to use.

[–] Glytch 1 points 6 months ago

Especially the one in the thumbnail, given that it parodies the Lakers logo as well.