this post was submitted on 18 Jun 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.
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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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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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I do understand this is reasonably doable, but it also seems like a niche skill for someone really into their hobby. Gun nerds are less likely to be careless or to hurt anyone. Aside from preppers, I very much doubt this is common among problematic gun owners
Police don’t need to be a hammer. They don’t need to focus on hammering skills above all else. While they sometimes do need to be, they need the judgement to correctly find those times, they need to understand better options when it’s not those times, and they do need to understand when compassion/caring is the answer. Police also need the pride in ther role to hold each other to the Hodges’s standards, otherwise they’re a hooligan with a badge. Police forces should focus on “public safety”, not “law enforcement”. I understand that’s a lot of “should”
Sure, but we're discussing a world where ammo is made artificially scarce. At the height of "wtf is going on with weed", 1/3 of all pot-smokers I knew were growers, and some were hardcore at it. It's far easier to make ammo than grow decent weed. And unlike weed, we're talking serious logistics problems trying to ban DIY ammo.
I agree it's not common now.
The most effective police forces in the world are in countries where they generally go unarmed... but I daresay that movements like "defund the police" are looking for that same thing - a force of social workers with at least some logical separation from the guys-with-guns.
But that's not just about skills and the right employees, it's about the right list of responsibilities. And frankly, I think they've got enough on their plate they can't do to add animal control in areas where they currently don't do that anyway. If you look at other emergency services, they do one thing INCREDIBLY well. Then you have police that do a dozen things terribly. And often times when they are called to do one of the peaceful things, they escalate the situation due to their training in others of the things. I am not so jaded to think that the world doesn't need SWAT teams occasionally. But I don't think the training that leads to SWAT teams and the training to deescalate a loud drunk are remotely the same.