ACAB
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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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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MODERATORS
because of a backlog in alcohol and toxicology tests at the TBI, they are forced to wait months for proof of their innocence.
Christ. In a country where even a charge can set you back in terms of your job and other things that might require a background check, maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't be charged until the tests come back positive?
“(The officer) said, ‘I’d like to do a field sobriety test, do you consent? And I said yes, I do consent, but I’d rather do a breathalyzer. And he said, we don’t do breathalyzer in Rutherford County. We do the blood alcohol test at the station based on your behavior.’”
Never consent to a field sobriety test or anything. Never talk to the cops.
I got arrested and got to spend the night in jail because I shouted for a women who was being given a field sobriety test to shut her fucking mouth and stop incriminating herself.
The cops buddy trucked across 4 lanes of traffic to arrest me for “resisting arrest”.
I was put in “timeout” by a cop because his authority was questioned.
The city formally apologized to me via letter and dropped the “resisting arrest” charges but only after I paid too much for a lawyer and requested the body cam footage be ready for my court date.
Fuck the police, I’ve never had a good experience with a police officer. I’ve never felt safer with a cop in the building.
How long ago was that? ~~Sure~~ Sue them ~~off~~ if you're not beyond the statute of limitations. That's illegal as fuck. If they dropped the charges that quickly they might pay a settlement quick too.
Exactly what I was going to say, sue them
That's a federal civil rights violation that the police officer would not be able to get qualified immunity for. Unfortunately the damages would be pretty small.
Here in Australia, there aren't any bullshit field sobriety tests - the breathalyzer just comes out and you get tested. If you blow over, you then wait 15 minutes if you produce a lower reading, before trying again. If you still blow over, you then go to the station to get a proper test done before the police can legally prove anything.
There are obviously freedom-based downsides to mandatory roadside testing, but if the alternative is the kind of shit in this story, then I'm happy with our system here. Never had an issue with it myself... unless we're talking roadside drug testing, which is flawed as fuck, and most of the time produces a positive result the day after, leading to a loss of license. We literally have 'road safety' billboards along our highways plastered with the tagline "get caught long after the high is gone."
Australia is so fucking behind the times in so many ways, it drives me insane.
I believe us yanks are allowed to waive field sobriety tests and request a breathalizer instead.
Depends on where you are.
When I was a kid you could say no at which point they could get a court order to take your blood and test. This was “recommended” to me as a way to get out of you might blow over. The person who recommended this to me was a shitty human.
I don’t think that was actually law but I do know you can decline the field sobriety but then can be forced to breathalyze which while not open for human judgement it is known to be wildly inaccurate. The police can charge you “per se” here which is based solely on the breathalyzer though, so that sucks. That said don’t fucking drink and drive
We found that breathalyzers were giving too many false negatives so we decided to go with taking you to jail, costing you 10-30k in legal fees, having your mugshot printed on the local pos tabloid, and getting you fired instead. Don't worry we'll expunge your record after making you unhireable and fucking over your life for 8 months. Fucking Hell.
Best thing Clarksville ever did was make mugshots private. I mean, it only happened after the sheriff's daughter was charged with something, but it's a good thing either way.
America sure is great, isn't it? Except the South.
And everywhere else there's currently cops. Columbia University sure as hell isn't the South to name an example..
Getting arrested for being Drunk OR Sober is called FREEDOM!
Them: "Are you drunk or sober?"
Me, being sober: "Yes"
Them: "HANDS ON THE GROUND SO I CAN SEE EM MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
I had GBS a few years ago. I fully recovered (mostly) but my balance isn’t what it was. I’m not sure I could pass a field sobriety test so this scares the crap outta me.
If I am reading this headline and understanding the article correctly, "yes they're on a power trip it seems" But... You can be charged with "x" and then found Innocent months later... Which, I think is slow, but at least it's "working" under the f'd up faulty system we (or in this case, TN) have in place.
You can be CHARGED with any kinda bs and be innocent, yes. Me personally, I've been charged with crimes, I've been ticketed unjustly, and usually had some recourse. In Europe I got tickets once and had no recourse whatsoever (a blitzer got me, but I was driving a friend's car).
Issue is that there is no real recourse for you to take against the incompetent power tripping cops, and the arrest itself shows up on your police record and you have to go pay money to get it expunged.
(Non american here) could you even get out of paying? I imagine refusing to pay for months would get you thrown in jail, re-fined or have your license taken away. And once you finally are proven innocent getting any money back from a beurocracy is slightly harder than getting blood from a stone.
You misunderstand, you're paying to get the unjust arrest struck from your police record so it doesn't fuck you when trying to get hired places.