this post was submitted on 07 Jul 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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• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions

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• 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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founded 3 years ago

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Police officer who shot Aboriginal teen was 'racist', inquest finds (www.bbc.com)

submitted 1 year ago by octopus_ink@slrpnk.net to c/thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world

2 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/41706127

The police officer who killed Indigenous teenager Kumanjayi Walker in 2019 was "racist" and had an "attraction" to adrenaline-style policing, a coroner's inquest has found.

Walker, 19, died shortly after he was shot three times at close range by Constable Zachary Rolfe during a home arrest in Yuendumu, a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory (NT).

Rolfe - no longer a policeman - was charged with Walker's murder and acquitted in 2022, sparking protests about Indigenous deaths in custody.

In delivering her findings, Judge Elisabeth Armitage said Walker's death was "avoidable" and there was "clear evidence of entrenched, systemic and structural racism" within NT's police force.

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[–] octopus_ink@slrpnk.net [S] 8 points 1 year ago

Just fully stealing this entire comment from @ms_lane@lemmy.world:

I'm not just glad this was finally put right but also-

In her findings, Judge Armitage found that Rolfe made a "series of flawed decisions" that led to "officer-induced jeopardy" - a situation where police "needlessly put themselves in danger... creating a situation that justifies the use of deadly force".

She also said Rolfe - a former soldier - found combat situations "exhilarating" and had an "attraction to adrenalin policing". He had also ignored an arrest plan for Walker created by a female officer because he "thought he knew better", Judge Armitage said.

We can finally start to well... police, police being adrenalin junkies and deliberately putting themselves in harms way.