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
It sucks that this person was struggling with the death of his partner but I don't see how that justifies his drinking and driving or an award of millions in tax payer money.
He should be awarded zero dollars but gain access to mental health care.
Everybody suffers from losses and tragedy. That's call life. Now we're spoon feeding this guy because he was a cop. That's some bullshit.
PTSD is awful. Really really awful, and I speak from personal experience. Now, I know every case of PTSD is different in terms of triggers and what happens when triggered… but from what I know of the mental disorder that I have, I find it hard to imagine being forced by the mental illness to drink and drive drunk. I can imagine drinking to avoid the results of triggers, but from my perspective, that still doesn’t absolve the choice of drunk driving.
Resisting arrest I can kinda see, depending on the exact form of how he manifests PTSD. My own version is more panic and pass out than get violent, but I know training can make you go the other way. But that still brings us back to drunk driving. I don’t think someone with PTSD is any different than any other normal person when it comes to not getting into the driver’s seat after imbibing.
That’s just not how ptsd works, please correct me if my limited perspective is flawed here.
Literally everyone else who gets emotional and misbehaves gets shot, or institutionalized, or at a bare minimum felonies that deprive them of certain rights for the rest of their lives.
Instead of giving him a tax payer funded handout this could have been an opportunity to fix a thing. Fuck that guy.