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
Fleeing from police while holding a firearm is not a normal everyday situation that a citizen or an officer finds themselves in, nor should it be treated as one. Unfortunately, a consequence of being human is that elevated stress levels can lead to less than ideal outcomes in the heat of the moment. The law regarding situations like this accounts for this reality, and would easily favor the officer.
A suspect fleeing while holding a firearm makes the officer's fear for his own safety reasonable. It may have been best if he had noticed the firearm that was dropped, but I don't know enough to say whether he knew about the suspect's second firearm and was instructing him to drop both. I find it unlikely, and believe that I would have acted in a similar fashion had I seen a suspect that I'd just seen with a gun digging around in his waistband (for another).
At first glance, the officer appears to have acted with vigilance and to the best of his ability in a dangerous and high-intensity predicament, but his history makes that questionable. Ultimately, this outcome was the fault of the suspect for running away from a police officer while carrying a gun in the first place. Safe, sane people don't do that, and it immediately creates a dangerous and hairy situation for everyone involved. It's a line beyond which there are inherently less guarantees for the suspect, as the officer's legally permitted option to open fire relies entirely on the reasonable perception of imminent danger.
Please note the Sidebar:
"② If you’re here to support the police, you’re trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent."
Friendly fire. The reason I know so much about law enforcement methodology isn't because I like them. I just genuinely believe that the community is wrong to chastise in this instance.
We have stricter rules of engagement for the Army when deployed, "Do not fire unless fired upon" also in many circumstances if someone throws down their weapon you must cease fire.
Not only is this a fallacy of false equivalence, but it's also straight up false. This is only one of many rules of engagement that are applied contextually, such as during a reconnaissance operation where stealth is necessary, or a peacekeeping mission where hostile combatants aren't necessarily expected. It is also not usually the role of a peacekeeper to chase down criminals to enforce another country's laws. Obvious exceptions to this rule apply in the same way that they apply to law enforcement to allow them to protect themselves during times when they reasonably believe that a gun-toting individual is an immediate and real threat to them. The same logic usually also applies to ordinary civilians acting in self-defense.
Of course. Until they draw a second one.
Why would I think that it was relevant to the police.