this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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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.

♦ ♦ ♦

RULES

Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.

If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.

Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.

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

 

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[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 73 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Fire this dude. This isn't protecting and serving, this is abuse.

Officer Joseph O’Brien.

Ensure we use his name.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 32 points 10 months ago (2 children)

O man, gonna need a date of birth or social or something. Doubt this is the only Joe Obrien on the MA police force.

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[–] TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Pretty sure Protect and Serve was made up for TV.

[–] stephan262@lemmy.world 72 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Why is the police even involved in this. Unless the book in question is banned by law, or at least a court order, then there's no reason for the police to be involved.

This is one more case of the police overstepping their authority.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 33 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If the book is banned by law and this is how the police are triaging what they need to do to fight crime in Massachusetts, I hope the tax payers are getting their pitchforks out.

[–] BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But police don't fight crime. That's not their job

[–] Chocrates@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Yeah for sure, the Supreme Court held that cops have no duty to protect citizens. Why do we still have them?

[–] MJKee9@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago

This is one more case of the police being police.

Fixed it for u

[–] Someonelemmy@lemmynsfw.com 60 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Yeah, and the sexual content in network TV shows is totally fine, but content trying to help adolescents understand their body, and how being different is also normal, must be obscene....

I've never been able to wrap my brain around how these moral crusaders make decisions. Hetero sex and graphic violence is ok? But a biography about growing up gay or trans, with depictions of natural processes and organs, is not?

[–] ZILtoid1991@kbin.social 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They want kids to be obvious to those facts, while also wanting the general public to believe "if kids don't know about sex, they won't have sex". In Hungary, we're already seeing a pretty steep increase in teen pregnancies and abortions, and our "sovereign" overlords likely did it after Republican command.

[–] DougHolland@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

"If kids don't know about sex, they won't have sex." That's the first verse of the mantra, but it goes on:

If kids don't know about gays, they won't be gay.

If kids don't know about trans, they won't be trans.

If kids don't know about science, they won't be anything but Christians.

If kids don't know about history, they won't be anything but Republicans...

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Yeah funny thing about comprehensive sex Ed. It doesn’t just lower teen pregnancy rates, it lowers rates of teen sexual activity as a whole

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Many of these people are strongly against sexual content on TV. It's the deeply ingrained puratinism.

But, they are cool with letting their kids see movies full of graphic violence.

[–] TheJims@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

They’re also cool with electing a sexual predator with 3 hooker wives and bangs porn stars. As puritans do.

[–] Icalasari@kbin.social 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's about control. What they really want is rich white Christo-Catholic men on the top, and everybody else subservient to them

[–] frezik@midwest.social 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This right here. If you try to treat them like they have a specific better world in mind, you'll only get confused at the contradictions. When you realize there is no right-wing utopia, and they only promise an indefinite system of control, it makes more sense.

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

No, they have an ideal world. They want to go back to the 20s where brown people, poor people, and women were second class citizens.

They will contradict themselves trying to avoid saying this.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 3 points 10 months ago

The 20s were more complicated than that. For example, a huge chunk of priests either identified as socialist outright or leaned that way. It took decades of effort to switch Christian religious leaders in America over to the Prosperity Gospel, and the early attempts were laughably transparent and self serving.

And that's all kinda what I mean. They don't want that, not as it actually existed. The constant struggle against some kind of Other is what they want.

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[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It’s simple, they don’t believe being different is normal or ok. The conservatives want everyone to be cis, straight, and Christian, preferably white as well but if you can’t be that at least be the first three.

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[–] AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 60 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Cop and chief are wiping their asses with the First Amendment, they are obviously Trumpers trying to own the libs. Losers.

[–] crsu@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's strange seeing schools being raided for books

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 42 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is what the beginnings of a fascist dictatorship look like. We're only a few bad elections from it becoming a reality.

[–] Optomistic@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

This response is so important, a few bad elections locally are leading to these types of interactions. We have paid so much attention to national issues (rightfully) that we missed the LOCAL religious fascists at the door. We are on the verge of some very dark times unless a systemic understanding and change of state and local politics takes place quickly.

[–] colmear@discuss.tchncs.de 37 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It’s not strange if you paid attention during history lessons about Germany during the time just before WW2

[–] Buffaloaf@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Good point, we should ban those history books as well.

[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Republicans sure do love creating the nanny/police state that they accused Democrats of wanting to create through… (checks notes) public health measures like temporarily wearing masks to protect against a global pandemic. And Republicans are doing it all over a non-existent problem (or at least their claimed reason for doing it).

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[–] sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 53 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The school is trying to be helpful and do whatever is necessary to molify the cop, which is understandable. However, the school's best bet, once they became aware of the cop's intentions, would have been to whip out their phone cameras, refuse to answer questions, and refer him to the school board's lawyer. What's the cop going to do? He either has to leave and try to get a warrant, or he can double-down on a school-wide search, on camera, and look like an even bigger jackass.

Like everyone else, schools should remember to Shut The Fuck Up (tm).

[–] FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Every day is Shut the Fuck Up Friday

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[–] bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml 44 points 10 months ago (3 children)
[–] derf82@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago
[–] redundantgrouch@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

The rest are too.

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[–] Human@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 10 months ago

on top of doing nazi shit - in the 7 or so minutes he was covering his camera, he only uncovers it for the second or two that the teacher bends over in front of him. what a scum fuck

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

Neat. history in Real life. Kids .. these are Gestapo. They are going to ensure you think only approved thoughts.

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

(413) 528-0306 Let them know they have a Nazi problem.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

What a free country

[–] BigMacHole@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

To bad there wasn't a School Shooter killing all the kids. Then the cops would have left everyone alone!

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