this post was submitted on 02 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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RULES

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ALLIES

[email protected]

[email protected]

r/ACAB

r/BadCopNoDonut/

Randy Balko

The Civil Rights Lawyer

The Honest Courtesan

Identity Project

MirandaWarning.org

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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

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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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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Will that even work? With the new ruling allowing warrantless searches? Can I just put one of these up on my front door and LE will just go, "dang, this place looked like a great one to ransack and pillage, but with the sign... Dang."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

Depends what you mean by “work”. Being a cop is not a protected class so yeah you can expel one from your private business for any reason or no reason at all.

But if they are investigating a crime, executing a warrant, or any other kind of official business then no this sign doesn’t do shit legally. This place looks like it serves alcohol and is open to the public so there’s no right to privacy from police when holding a liquor license.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

That's the fun part... You get/have to bring your own enforcibility

[–] [email protected] 97 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Adore the sentiment but publicly calling out a violent gang at your place of business like this is almost suicidally ballsy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Are you old enough to remember when librarians posted signs that their records had not YET been investigated by (I want to say) HLS?

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just hand out leftover food after closing and you'll have a hundred people who also hate cops watching over your place.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And also do that regardless. Throwing out perfectly good food when people are starving is an especially cruel form of waste.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Urban Outfitters makes their starvation wage employees cut up discontinued products so homeless people can't rummage in the dumpster and wear them

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

It's people like whomever came up with that that make me wish I believed in hell 🤬

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I could see cops organizing something where they entice a tweaker to rob the place while they stand right outside going "darn, if only we could do something... 😂!"

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Still probably better than them getting involved.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For real, what would they do otherwise? Show up super late to the crime scene? Launch and "investigation" that takes months?? Let the investigation fizzle out and result no true resolution or justice??? Let the insurance do the real work????

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Give you a URL to fill out a report online and then hang up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

That is them getting involved, by manufacturing a situation that otherwise wouldn't have occurred

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

The option is no better .... allowing entitled power mad idiots with guns into your space that if you piss off or upset will threaten you or even start arresting people just because they can.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Why am I picturing a hostess greeting people with: "Are you a cop? You have to tell me if you're a cop."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Hostess played by Jack Nicholson

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago

They'd have my business forever

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

"Show me your dick so I know you're not a cop"

...oh, you meant another kind of hostess? Carry on, then!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I genuinely have no idea.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 days ago

No shirt, no shoes, badge and gun, no service.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

oh I bet that made the wife beaters happy

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's a public space. The limitations on search warrants are very low for those.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's not a public space, it's a publicly-accessible space. Limits on public access can be imposed by the property owners using trespass law. Violating posted signs is trespassing; cops that enter without a warrant or other special authority (beyond just being a cop, eg hot pursuit) are subject to criminal trespass.