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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 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
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I keep reading about some stupid American saying this, that. ELI5, are there any normal people in America and if there are, why do they elect the stupid ones?
Yes there are normal people in America. I don't have time to explain gerrymandering and all the other fuckery Republicans use to get elected. And I know this question isn't real because I trust you're not so bigoted as to judge an entire people of a country as one
I do not condemn the whole country, nation, religion, race, ... football fans, ... whatever, based on some small (or large) group of people from that community.
FYI, I live in a country that is problematic, a lot of corruption, untouchable and dishonest politicians, slow changes in society, divisions of all kinds, mostly on national, religious and political grounds. In every country there are normal people and those who have some kind of problem in their heads and the ability to project that problem, transfer it to others.
Somehow the USA was a "beacon" of democracy, where only during elections it matters who you vote for. It turns out that the USA is a shithole country like the others, only it has a much better economy (for some) and better propaganda.
Calling it a shit hole country is condemnation. I see I was wrong.
I am sorry that you didn't understand me that "I don't judge an entire people of a country as one".
I'm sorry that you demonstrated that your claim is untrue.
The US is a shithole country. You'd have to be dumb to think that statement means every person in the US is a shithead.
Okay, you caught me. I'm dumb.
Also there are tons of Americans with no desire to think
Are you American?
Currently yes and it blows my mind how often the wealthy people around me don't see what is going on around them or what the cause is (wealth inequality).
edit: boows to blows
I doubt what you're noticing is very specific to America. Every country is in danger of falling to this.
We are all in danger of becoming fascist provided we are in a capitalist economy.
America has made concerted efforts to ignore the best practices in education policy for about 20-25 years now. It is stunning how many people lack critical thinking skills.
Bruh some of the knuckle dragger bumpkin maggot tyrants are pulling in 200k...we are a peak corruption... Next is the death camps
I know. Im related to a bunch.
Nah, we did the El Salvador prison camps, and now we’ve already got the “border” camps, next up is firing lines. I’m not even being hyperbolic, I give it a week at most, they literally just told us we are free game.
a few things.
in the presidential election, you can basically split it 3 ways. one third for Trump, one third against, and one third couldn't be bothered to vote.
if you tally the pres votes, more people voted for notTrump than Trump, but that doesn't matter in America. Trump got the plurality of votes in enough states. so now, apparently, their policy is to disenfranchise, oppress and kill the majority of Americans that don't fall in line.
America is fucked. it doesn't have the systems in place to correct this. it's simply too late.
It should also be noted that Dems repeatedly rejected popular calls to neuter the fascist state - reforming immigration laws to guarantee a path to citizenship, defunding ICE and the DEA and other proto-fascist organs of the Federal government, reversing mandatory minimums, prosecuting bureaucrats for abuse of power, beefing up public defender budgets, nationalizing and dismantling prisons, etc.
All popular goals. All achievable through reforms out of any single branch of government. All smothered within the last three decades of periodic liberal control.
Biden/Harris siding with the genocidal Netanyahu government and going on an anti-immigration crusade during her VP tenure blurred the lines between Dem and GOP so heavily that people couldn't distinguish a difference.
Just like with Gore in '00 and Clinton in '16 and their scramble to the far-right of the party to shore up support with mega-donors, the Dems seeded their own defeat and handed power willingly to fascist regime after fascist regime.
by and large i agree with you.
Rs have a whole toolbox of ways to keep ppl from voting. but i don't want to pretend there isn't ALSO an apathy problem in the US.
and yes, Ds have failed to act over the decades to stop this and update the country. i'm sure there are a mix of reasons for this, including capital capture, ignorance, hubris, etc. Ds own this too.
imo, the American experiment has failed (insofar as it existed at all.) the only way truly forward will be bloody, to try and build something new from the rubble.
I think you'll discover the apathy in two main places:
Like, if you go to Dem stronghold states in NY and MN and MA and CA, what you'll get isn't this well funded highly technocratic compassionate liberal meritocracy. It's Eric Adams shilling Bitcoin and Dianne Feinstein drooling her way through SCOTUS appointments. You can't go into the district of Lori Lightfoot or Henry Cuellar or Bob Menendez and complain that people aren't sufficiently enthusiastic in their support for Team D. Not when you've got the national party propping these crooks and assholes up.
Similarly, when you're living in a county that's got a big "No N- Allowed" above the voting booth and the Obama/Biden DOJ just looks the other way... What do you feel like you're voting for in this instance?
Billionaires have all the money in the world to buy all the propaganda they need to manipulate all the poorly educated people they can to get the politicians they want elected to rule the country as they wish.
Don't gloat too much though, they are coming for you as well. AFD, Reform UK, RN, Sweden Democrats, all the same thing.
My casual observation living in the US is that a sufficient percentage of the population is cursed. In a first past the post system %50.1 are enough. The appeal of racism and violence in US-society predates its independence, the indigenous peoples and the enslaved know it too well.
I believe most will be explained if you watch the movie Idiocracy. When Trump got elected the first time the director of the movie said he never intended for it to be a documentary.