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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And your still advocating for us to murder our way out of this like a good fascist?
When you can solve the Paradox of Tolerance without the use of violence, then you can try to make a point. Not that I expect you to be able to. You're just not that intelligent.
You're both right. Every ideological movement benefits from having violent and nonviolent factions. You can have violence alone but, if victorious, that often trends towards a different brand of authoritarianism. Nonviolence alone doesn't have enough bite I'm afraid. For every MLK Jr there needs to be a Malcolm X. Bhaghat Singh and Subhas Bose for Gandhi. Mandela was initially nonviolent but, due to that lack of bite, he changed his tune over time.
But I will qualify this with the fact that all of these men stood for oppressed groups (whether minority or majority). Whether violence alone can work depends on where your alignment lies with the state. Violence alone will accomplish your goals if you are aligned with the state.
What often gets ignored in American revolutionary history is that it started with nonviolent resistance. This can actually be enough if you outnumber your oppressor vastly. Violence, of course, is a necessary last resort when injustice and inhumanity persist.
The other option is rapidly degrading to be murdered instead.
Fighting back against fascism and tyrannical applications of force is not being fascist.
Listen, we have already covered this. Fascism was never defeated by violence in WWII. In fact, it thrives stronger than it ever was.
Fascism thrives on violence so you have to be a special kind of useful idiot to advocate that more violence is going to fix things.
People have things so mixed up in their head they think using the authoritarian playbook is going to work for them. That their ideology will magically rise up from the ashes.
It is a fucking fantasy. The sooner you stop living in self defense fantasyland and start working with your fellow Americans the closer we will be to solving our problems.
This is class warfare and the wealthy would love for us to tear each other apart.