this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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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.
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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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To me, woke isn't "educated". It's more in line with "aware".
Give you an example. I'm white. At the time of Rodnry King I would have been about 9 years old. So, my whole outlook of the world is based on the adults around me, and the tv.
Rodney King was a one of those pivoting points for America. My family was shocked by what they saw. Police? Abusing their authority? That's unheard of!
And at the time, most white people had ZERO idea that was a regular occurance. The video tape is what changed that. The woman who filmed it shined the first light onto injustice that had been going on for centuries.
At the time I went to an all white school. I think there was 1 black kid. He was 2 grades above me, so I never really talked to him.
The next year, when the Rodney King trial was going on, I had changed schools. I was in a mostly black school now. And it was a TOTAL shift from what I had known.
I started learning that I saw Rodney King as four corrupt cops who did an outragious, totally out of character set of actions. I saw it as an isolated incident in a rare time of cops being violent against someone.
What I was then told is story after story from students that never made the news. Stories of their own lives. Stories of our local cops doing similar things. Maybe not as harsh as 4 cops beating one man, but we all know today the types of stories I heard in 3rd grade.
Point is, yes, I was educated back then on the harsh realities that black families go through, and have gone through, for generations.
But the difference between being educated, and being aware, is that I told my sister everything I heard back then.
Two years ago in my apartment building my upstairs neighbor was being absurdly loud.
I was on the phone with my sister at the time. She suggested I call the cops on them. I said "No. I want them to be quiet. I don't want them dead."
And this is where educated vs aware comes in. My sister had been educated just as I was in the 90s what had been happening. I was aware NOT to call the cops. My sister thought I was being difficult and dramatic.
Now, I don't KNOW the cops would have shot my neighbors. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they would have written a fine and left. But the fact that it's a very real possibility is still something I'm very aware of. While my sister had been educated, she isn't aware on a day to day basis that her life is different than others purely because of her background. It's not something that she's thinking about, even if she's been taught.
Thats educated vs aware.