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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 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
Why don’t stores that sell books get the same amount of scrutiny? I see A Court of Thorns and Roses books everywhere.
Serious answer, probably because books from book stores aren't available to the poorest classes. Libraries are (and are meant to be!) a threat to every status quo.
This is specifically a school library, not a public library. And no, I do not support book-banning in any way, shape, or form. Just keeping the facts straight.
But public libraries and public librarians are also under attack.
https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/04/10/idaho-libraries-must-move-materials-deemed-harmful-to-children-or-face-lawsuits-under-new-law/
Just so you know, I didn't think you did. I hope my response didn't come across that way.
No, not at all, I just think calling this socio-economic class-based is incorrect. Being in school is not a class (no pun intended).
To support the idea that it is class based, I suspect we will find it is being selectively applied to poorer communities, which specifically drives the most able-to-change-jobs (often the best) librarians to move to other communities where this is not being applied.
I base my assumption on historic selective enforcement of other laws with similar vulnerability to abuse - such as selective enforcement during prohibition.
I believe that if librarians, of any kind, are being targeted, we should suspect class warfare because libraries are historically a source of improved equity.
So my assertion is that any action taken against any library should be examined carefully under a lens of suspected class warfare.
If you don't think that Republicans are interested in an all-out assault on libraries in general, I kindly suggest you check a book out about it from your local library (while you still can).
Because this is a boil-the-frog situation. The path is k-12 school libraries -> public libraries -> academic libraries and bookstores. The way fascists get the public comfortable with the idea of banning books is by starting with examples that look like "common sense" to the uninformed, and then ramp up the attacks as they gain institutional power.
While attempts to ban books from stores are currently few and far between, one notable example was this attempt to get Gender Queer removed from the shelves of bookstores in Virginia: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/20/gender-queer-barnes-and-noble/