691
Texas cops arrest 11-year-old honors student and put him in solitary confinement for three days
(www.texasobserver.org)
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
691 points (98.6% liked)
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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• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• Killings by law enforcement in Canada
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• 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
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• Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States
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Too bad. Make it part of what you sign up for when you become a cop. "You wanna be a cop? Well a few people may end up seeing you pee, just so you know that."
There are people who have to piss into cups in front of people constantly. Surely that's not an onerous demand to ensure the integrity of all bodycam footage. Who would ever see the raw uncut (lol) footage anyway? A jury maybe? in which case, blur out the dong. Easy.
I don't know... I'm just not convinced by the "privacy" angle.
Edit: I guess other people's privacy could be a concern. Though I bet AI is good enough that, if we really wanted to be honest about it (lol), we could figure out a way to filter other people out completely in a way that can be verified etc. etc. But that'll never happen.
They don't work for us anymore; they're not "public servants." They're a (militarized) force that serves the interests of capital. They don't defend people, they defend private property. That's where the root of the problem lies. These people aren't becoming cops to make the neighborhood they live in a safer place, most of the time they don't even live in the neighborhood they serve. No, these people become cops because it lets them hurt people.
They're just a gang of thugs that happens to serve the interests of those with the most money and power.
I don't know. I hear the anger and I think there are some bad cops. But I think they are good ones out there. And they are people too. I can't punish someone's rights because of some assholes.
I hear what you are saying and there should be a way to handle it. I'm just not convinced that running them full time is the solution. Maybe limiting the turning off and if it's done too many times in a row there is lockout and automatic reviews.
People always seem to forget the second half of the old saying about "bad apples." The full phrase is, "a bad apple spoils the bunch."
In other words, all it takes is one rotten person to bring an entire group down.