NYPD once again acting like dystopian SciFi is aspirational rather than a warning.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
145 points (98.0% liked)
THE POLICE PROBLEM
2463 readers
251 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
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.
♦ ♦ ♦
ALLIES
• r/ACAB
♦ ♦ ♦
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
♦ ♦ ♦
ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Definitely. We've been in the early stages of the dystopic cyberpunk age for awhile now and it's definitely not fun. That being said, you know drone hacking is about to start becoming very common and I'm definitely here for it, heh.
NYPD giving me free moving target practice with my air rifle. Much appreciated!
Edit: sigh, i forgot this was the internet i need to put my /s.
Just make sure you can fire from an obsucued position like a bush you patriot 🫡
Make sure you're aware of the potential consequences before pulling the trigger.
18 U.S.C. § 31
(1) Aircraft.— The term “aircraft” means a civil, military, or public contrivance invented, used, or designed to navigate, fly, or travel in the air.
18 U.S.C. § 32
(a) Whoever willfully—
(1) sets fire to, damages, destroys, disables, or wrecks any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States...
...shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both...
I hope the prison sentence is worth it! Good luck in there.
I just keep wondering... are all cops bastards?
Yes.
No, but enough of them are that it’s really hard to tell.
They are all bastards by association.
If you read the article it seems like they're basically sending drones to deal with neighbor complaints about parties rather than having human cops do it. Which is... still dystopian, but they're not just flying drones around randomly to spy on everyone, they're doing it in cases where somebody has actually asked them to send a cop over (presumably to weed out the high % of those cases that are just some random old person complaining about a dozen people having a barbecue in their backyard).
The article actually says they send drones first to determine how many police officers they need to send. So they're essentially doing illegal drone recon without a warrant before dispatching their goons.
OK, but isn't this also going to mean fewer officers actually visiting places, and hence less risk of them showing up at a random doorstep and "he's got a gun"ing their way to shooting an innocent person?
(the overriding desire of every cop is to get away with doing less work; it's hard for me to imagine they won't take advantage of this to extend their donut-eating hours by deciding that the vast majority of cases do not require a follow-up)
Possibly. We'll have to wait and see what the empirical evidence shows some time down the line.
Regardless, this is setting an unnerving precedent, in my opinion. It further erodes the expectation of privacy when cops can just deploy drones that give a high degree of visibility from the sky (i.e. yards with privacy fences or private rooftops with privacy fences now no longer discourage police spying). I'm not sure the argument you're presenting will justify the cost to privacy in the long term.
My family lives in a small town of like 10k and my mom knows the police chief. This tiny ass police department apparently has a drone with a telescope lens capable of just looking into people's homes from far away
Is it illegal to shoot at drones yet?
Is it illegal to discharge firearms into the air? Yes. Very much. And it’s dangerous as those bullets need to go somewhere.
I know you’re joking, but still some asshole is going to be doing this and putting innocent people at harm.
Birdshot is pretty safe when it falls.
Awww but I wanna shoot guns at robot birds. Pretty please?. :-(
Has been since day one. It's just as illegal at shooting your neighbor's car.
It's way more illegal than that. Lol.
A drone is an aircraft. Shooting at it is just as illegal as shooting at a news copter or a passenger jet.
I really hope that several get shot down.
Well, they're branded and brought to you by NYPD, so I expect they'd have killer defense. Open fire on one, six other fly to your address and jointly open fire on your house. And the're officiers, like police docs are officers, so if you pour Elmer's Glue into its eyeballs you'd be charged with blinding an officer.
Birdshot baby
They’re going back to their roots