THE POLICE PROBLEM
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
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.
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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
view the rest of the comments
Let it go...
What's the premise of the ticket?
The premise is that a broken tail light doesn't indicate a turn or a stop to other drivers, who should be paying attention anyway... It's safety, public safety...
So to mitigate the risk of a collision because one of your three brake lights isn't working, we gotta chase someone? Or in the case of going to their home, we're gonna pay two cops an hours wage, reduce their ability to do anything else for anyone, and basically convict someone without any process whatsoever (unless they spend the time to contest it, and likely fail anyway just because cop says they did it) on circumstantial evidence?
Apply that to speeding... Apply it to rolling a stop sign... Apply it to 90%+ of the shit that gets ticketed...
The benefit to society for most traffic tickets is negligible at best. Let it go...
This is an extremely naive view. While the cops enforcing the law are almost always corrupt and do it in a corrupt way
The "benefit is negligible" is a mistake. The fact is driving around without brake lights IS a problem, driving without a seatbelt IS a problem, speeding IS a problem. That is why these laws came about in the first place. The facts and statistics are very clear about the increased accidents.
You appear to be assuming that I'm suggesting citations be done away with entirely...
I'm suggesting that a citation doesn't warrant a pursuit.
I'll go a little further and say that a "no pursuit" policy isn't appropriate either (and that sounds contradictory I'm sure, but if you publish it as a policy it becomes an incentive, not good), but a pursuit over a citation is negating, in a huge manner, the safety those citations provide...
Someone fleeing the police is a ridiculously more dangerous condition than an occasional citation getting skipped... how many people flee? 1%? I doubt it's even that... The statistical deterrence isn't affected by that, and arguably, the citation won't have a statistical impact on that fringe group anyway. The reduction in accidents happens in the 99% that pull over and simply pay the fines.
The facts and statistics would be, I'd guess, exponentially more clear about the increased accidents from police chases.