Oooof. Wanting till everything is cooled down?
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
59 points (94.0% 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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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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• NAACP
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• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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MODERATORS
While the delay in releasing footage is heinous, I don't see that the responding officers did something wrong here. They chased down and stopped a murderer who had just killed 2 people, one a child, and didn't hurt anyone else in the process. They also rendered aid to the murderer after stopping him. That's how it's supposed to work.
I dislike that I'm defending police here because we clearly have outrageous, systemic problems with policing. I really appreciate all the work people like Doug and others do to bring police problems to light and help to change public opinion. But we have to be careful not to highlight situations like this (the incident, not the delay in releasing footage) and point to them as evidence for our argument, because it just gives the other side more ammo for their arguments and delays that sway of public opinion that will be required to enact real change.
All that said, I only read the article and I'm well aware of the media bias in favor of police. I didn't watch the video because after decades on the internet I've seen enough traumatic footage to give me issues. So if there is something problematic in the video, I apologize for my above critique.
New to this info too. I think the issue arises from the suspect tossing his gun before he ran, meaning he was unarmed.
I don't know if he was unarmed. He did throw away one gun but may have had another? The article says there was an 'exchange of gunfire' but that might be weasel words that the media loves to use when the police show incredibly poor firearms discipline as they so often do. Like I said above, I won't watch the video so I don't know for sure.
The particulars are moot to me, and like you and for the same reason, I didn't watch the video. All that matters here is that the police withheld the bodycam evidence for ☆four months☆.
Bodycams must be required on all cops, and footage of any incident must be released within a reasonable time after any request. And since cops can't be trusted to be "reasonable," that reasonable time needs to be specified — 72 hours sounds good to me.
Fair enough on your first line, and I completely agree with your stance on bodycams and release of footage. They stonewall and deflect inquiries constantly to hide their corruption. I just hate giving the other side even a tiny chink in the armor of police reform arguments so I'm always wary of highlighting what would generally be perceived as them actually doing their jobs correctly for once.
Understood and I see your point.