this post was submitted on 22 Nov 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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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
• !abolition@slrpnk.net
• !acab@lemmygrad.ml
• r/ACAB
• r/BadCopNoDonut/
• Randy Balko
• The Civil Rights Lawyer
• The Honest Courtesan
• Identity Project
• MirandaWarning.org
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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
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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
As a Canadian, I wish you were right but you just aren't.
Canadian cops drive indigonous people out into the woods and leave them there to freeze to death
So people can have a term to look up about this, "Starlight Tours".
It's so common we have a word for it. At a table of 6 over lunch at work only one needed to ask what it was.... And then when we explained they were like "oh that yeah.... Didn't know it had a name."
Canadian cops are far from perfect, but they are drastically better than the US cops.
For now. Our cancer is spreading.
I'm confident that Russia has even worse police. The morality police in some countries have killed women for not wearing headscarves.
Yes, US police culture is fucking awful and being armed makes it worse. They are not even close to unique though.
Cops aren't bastards because they randomly kill small children and pets. Cops are bastards because they enforce the social hierarchies and protect the rich from the masses.
They just also kill small children and pets sometimes. As a treat. And, as with most other forms of treats, Americans indulge more than those in many other places in the world.
No, ACAB includes all cops, including ones from other countries.
The US might have particularly bad cops, but cops from other countries are still pretty bad.
“All” is quite definitive. I prefer a shorter slogan:
PEB
Policing Enables Bastards
Seems much harder to get hung up in semantic arguments and it gives activists permission to join their ranks and attempt to disrupt a broken system from the inside. Also shows solidarity with cops who are on leave right now for reporting misconduct or disobeying unethical orders, instead of labeling them as bastards in the interim from now until they’re fired.
I hope there aren’t cops who think “well, I’m a bastard no matter what, so why bother?” but if there are, I like the narrative shift of “don’t let yourself fall into the bastard trap; report corruption, speak out, be better”.
I just read it as "American Cops Are Bastards".
oh sweetie, don't mess with slogans you don't understand