this post was submitted on 20 May 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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• NAACP
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• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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That last part really sounds like "Well, what did you do to deserve getting hit in the first place?" to me.
We have rights to privacy and willfully giving them up for policing activities should be met with resistance. As Ben Franklin intimated, those that would give up liberty for security or power deserve none of those things. The founding fathers were pretty pro-privacy and went to a lot of trouble to be very outspoken about it. Not only in the Constitution, but in lots of original state's Declarations of Rights, and they seem pretty into the idea that people shouldn't be being targeted for punitive legal action unless there's a warrant or probable cause, and passive surveillance is targeting anyone and everyone that passes by it all the time.
ETA an Upton Sinclair quote that seems relevant: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." I think about that a lot. Others should, too.
One more edit, a link to the actual Sinclair text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1558/1558-h/1558-h.htm#link2H_4_0047
So what do you propose for the narrow subject of speed limits or other rules of the road? It seems enforcement of them (which btw is very lacking otherwise people wouldn't speed so much) is off the table since that's a violation of privacy in your opinion. So honor system?
I agree with you on a broad scale, privacy is more important and government doesn't belong in many places. But using a speeding post to bounce that off of is a weird take. There are many rules and regulations written in blood, and road laws are included in that. And without someone enforcing the laws (but not using that enforcement as a way to abuse power) it's a free-for-all.
We could certainly discuss the details of traffic stops, speed trap designs and motives, and of course abuse of power. My little comment was simply that if you aren't speeding, and there isn't that abuse going on, why would they pull you over, and why would you care if they are watching for others who are going too fast?
Right, it still boils down to: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. I get that you're accepting that philosophy. I reject it. Using robots for surveillance state activities is a thing we, as a society, should emphatically take a stand against.
No, it boils down to whether or not you want some enforcement at all of the laws. If you don't, then monitoring speeding and driving shouldn't be done. Using privacy arguments for how you behave on a public motorway is a ridiculous stretch. It also muddies the water of the real problems with law enforcement issues, aka the police problem. Catching speeders is not one of these.
We've had enforcement without cameras and automation for generations. Gimme a break. You're just advocating for enforcement by robots instead of by actual people. That's not a good future to continue working toward.
If you're wanting to beat strawmen, fine, but I never once mentioned robots, you brought it up and it had nothing to do with anything I've said. I even agree that automation is a dangerous route, as the AI craze is showing, but that's not how this thread started or even was about.
Cameras watching and enforcing traffic laws is giving control to robots instead of people.
Edit to add: look into Clearview AI and then tell me you are still ok with copious public cameras and AI for police use.
Police officers should be people, and they should be seen, especially when patrolling
Lol, I never said any of that. Arguing just to argue.