this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
1155 points (99.0% liked)
THE POLICE PROBLEM
2522 readers
14 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
• !abolition@slrpnk.net
• !acab@lemmygrad.ml
• 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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
i like the romanticism of insurance companies somehow wanting to pay out people who are being fucked over by the police.
Bro they're literally only here to make money, what makes you think an insurance company backing the fucking police of all things, is going to pay out victims lmao.
Also this is kind of a stupid take, because these people are literally paid by tax money, if they had to pay for insurance, that would just be covered with tax money, that has been taxed, so we get like a little bit of return on it. This doesn't even solve the tax payer problem fully lmao, plus now we have an entire business who's entire existence is making money, and actively employs a shit ton of private sector people, which also means now we're paying private sector employees doing a job that arguably shouldn't exist, with fucking tax money.
The insurance company doesn't get to make that call, the courts do. The insurance company gets to dictate the premiums each cop has to pay.
i guess so, but why even have an insurance company at all at that point, just institute proper punishments for offending officers, and pay out a case using tax payer money directly.
Unless we're suggesting a realm where this insurance company is state run i don't see this saving anybody money anywhere.
The point is that the cost of lawsuits would come out of the police officer's pockets due to higher premiums, instead of out of tax payer's pockets which means the officers don't care.
That is a fantastic idea I whole heartedly agree with. Who is in charge of assigning the punishments? Police unions refuse to have civilian oversight.
man, it's a good thing police forces are private institutions funded by their own dollar.
Surely nothing bad could ever come of this arrangement.
legally, it should be the court, and a jury. Though we should also institute some protections against criminal enterprising, because it could be very easy to stack a court against them.
That's the entire point. Police stations are tax funded. They torture someone into a false confession and the station gets fined $900 000, which comes from taxes, so they don't fucking care.
What I said was: the cost of lawsuits would come out of the police officer’s pockets, not the police precinct's. The Officers would be paying the insurance costs out of their paychecks. Each lawsuit means the officer ends up with less money. If a specific precinct keeps having lawsuits against it that will result in higher rates for working in a "high risk precinct". Lawsuits should result in financial consequences for the people involved, not for tax payers.
There should absolutely be legal consequences for the officers involved here. How much do you want to bet there won't be?
the problem here is that they aren't reprimanded or punished, they need to be, not that the tax payers pay someone who was abused by an institution funded by tax dollary doos.
a decent trick here would be forcing the police dept to represent itself, or the officers more specifically. That would come out of the budget fund, and then be an immediate problem.
yeah, we literally run this country though, so i don't know why you're sitting here trying to argue something that isn't actually legal punishment, and then sitting here and complaining about the fact that there won't be, even though you're literally steel manning your own argument there.