this post was submitted on 20 Nov 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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Fortunately none of them died as far as I can find. Surgeons had to crack open the skull of the bystander they shot in the back of the head to relieve his brain swelling though. I hope he recovers because he's gonna be set for life.
They spent 150 million on overtime for cops to stop fare evasion. How much were they losing in fares? I'm gonna go ahead and guess it wasn't even a teeny fraction of that.
They spent 1500x more on enforcement than they could have ever recovered from fare evaders. Just like every single other monitoring and enforcement program for public services.
Has there ever been a single program like that which is actually a net positive? Fare enforcement, food stamps means testing, public services with drug screens, "welfare queen" check ups, means testing, etc. I'm not aware of a single instance where it wouldn't have been cheaper just to let a few people get benefits that "didn't deserve them" than putting these restrictions in place
But God's forbid we let poor people have nice things, or just to do good things for our society. Goddamned toxic puritanicalism. ..
Absolutely right. Brings to mind something I read a while ago which I will paraphrase.
"Liberals want everyone to get what they need even if a few cheat the system. Conservatives want nobody to get what they need if there's a chance anyone will cheat the system."
Somebody on Lemmy a while back asked about the phrase, "the cruelty is the point," and whether it was true and fair. Well, here's the evidence: The point is not a net gain on fare collections.
The fact that the numbers are public and they keep doing it proves it: The cruelty is the point.
That's why Seattle largely doesn't bother with fare enforcement and doesn't even have turnstiles. It's simply a waste of money and manpower.
What were you able to find out about the cases? 👀
Just what I wrote above. There aren't a lot of articles about it after the initial incident. Our media has the attention span of a frantic gnat with Level 11 ADHD so it's not surprising.
public transit fares are a steeply regressive tax on the poor
I disagree, the poor would be worse off without public transit since else it'd be much harder for them to move around. In fact many if not most public transit systems are subsidized and operate at a loss.
The richer don't use it and so care little, beyond the macro level that it benefits businesses and such.
I think you may have missed his point. He wasn't arguing against public transit, just the fare. It should be free. For the reasons you yourself mentioned.
Public transit never turns a profit, not because it's bad business but simply down to the economics of providing affordable transit. In fact, fares recover such a small percentage of a public transit agency's budget that there's good arguments being made for making public transit fare free. Public transit is a net good for communities so making it as accessible to those who want or need it is important