THE POLICE PROBLEM
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
• 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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Eh, it isn't an over simplification unless you haven't bothered to look into the origins of the initialism and the ideas behind it.
The entire point of ACAB as a movement is that it's a systemic problem, and until that system changes, every officer is part of the problem, even if they as individuals are "good" cops.
And, having family that are cops, and being friends with the sheriff of my county, I agree with that principle, and have argued it with those people. I know plenty of officers that genuinely want to serve their community and help people. But the system they're in is still horrible, and unable to be fixed from within unless there's a top down change.
Even the sheriff here, and again, he's a friend, isn't top enough to make lasting change. At best, he can enforce better policies while in office. And he does. Not everything I've tried to talk him into, but part of that is being obligated to deal with local government and police union.
So, yeah, the movement behind the letters is absolutely, perfectly summed up by those letters, and using them makes perfect sense, even when whoever is using them isn't aware of all of that and is just bashing cops. It allows opportunities like this.
Don't be a dismissive prick. Take opportunities to open a dialogue and make change by doing so.
Cops who want to serve their community quit, and get a real job as firefighters, medics, or fucking line cooks.
Yeah, sadly. I've seen that personally, back when I worked and lived in the city. They either burn out or get run out.
No. They're not serving their community until they do those things; shit society actually needs. Shit that's actually productive.
Tiny little corpses are a want(apparently); not a need .
Eh, there's a point to proper law enforcement. We've just never seen such a thing.
It's been about protecting the wealthy and powerful, stomping on the oppressed, and generally raking in funds for so long, I don't think anyone would recognize good police if they were fucking one.
But that's all laws are for.
The things you want done by 'proper law enforcement' happen from people empowered to step up, and not be bystanders, and close community ties that facilitate intervention.
Thanks for your perspective. Would a tiny little insular department be just as much part of the larger system as any another? Maybe compared to a department say pulling over out-of-state motorists all day.
Glad I’m reading this, since yesterday I shared:
—
To quote you now:
Policing has systemic problems and every officer is part a problematic system. Some officers who are part of the problematic system are not themselves part of the problem. I don’t know the numbers – I could be referring to 10 or 12 cops.
To drive this point home, imagine elder care devolves to the point where 100% of caretakers are abusive to their patients. All caretakers would be part of the problem. If one caretaker quits in as replaced by a non-abusive provider, they would be part of a disgracefully problematic system. Given their behavior is not problematic, they would not themselves be a part of the problem.
If 51% of caretakers are abusive, are 49% of caretakers part of the problem?
If 49% of caretakers are abusive, or 1% of caretakers are abusive, are the remainder part of the problem?
If a trans Lemming in Unix socks sees cops kill trans people and wants to take on the impossible challenge of reforming a department from the inside, I don’t know why I’d try to discourage them. “Noo you’re only allowed to vote, protest, and run as a politician, no ground level actions!” I want trans people on the force. PEB, but trans Lemming cops aren’t necessarily bastards. And if their chief takes 30 days to fire them, “ACAB” insults them unnecessarily during that. Besides opportunity cost, the more good people are stuffed into an evil system, the better… provided they won’t think twice before committing terminable offenses (whistleblowing, disregarding immoral orders).
Thanks for entertaining my verbose, overly literal exploration.
Well, sometimes the smaller departments are worse. You run into places where the cops are a literal organized crime faction.
But, yeah, when the system is geared towards incarceration for control of the populace, with racist roots and power grabbing people throughout, even a small department is part of the problem.
Our county? Like I said, the sheriff really does his best to weed out the racists and assholes, but he's an elected official, and some shit is deeply entrenched. He loses an election, and we're subject to whatever gets in.
Conveniently enough, I used to be a nurse's assistant, so the analogy about nursing homes is close to home. And it is another field where the problems of the industry taint even the best caregivers sometimes. It's only because most caregivers are genuinely trying their best that it isn't as bad as the policing problems.
But you really, really don't want to see what happens in most nursing homes. The profit driven ones are worse than the charitable ones, but there's problems rooted in the capitalist dominance of the medical industry. When you're paying bare minimum for caregivers, abuse, theft, and even worse things can creep in because the keep things staffed, it's often the worst ones that stick with the job.
And! When someone stands the fuck up about abuse, they're the ones that get attacked, fired, or otherwise driven away. There's multiple reasons I stopped working in nursing homes, but being unable to stop abuse, even when going to state oversight divisions, was one of them. You make reports, and you end up mysteriously off schedule. You stop someone directly, and you're on report. It's crazy.
But, unlike cops, the victims of elder abuse in facilities rarely have anyone advocating for them, so the problem isn't as well known
But, after that experience? Yeah, even the good ones are part of the problem because the system prevents them from making change so the good ones never last long. It isn't as bad as the police problem, but nobody escapes without some taint on them, some compromise made to their ethics.
You raise a great point though. It is possible for good people to become cops (or caregivers) with the goal of changing from the inside. But they won't be allowed to they'll get run out, or killed