this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
552 points (98.8% liked)

THE POLICE PROBLEM

3974 readers
605 users here now

    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.

♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦

RULES

Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.

If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.

Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.

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.

♦ ♦ ♦

ALLIES

!abolition@slrpnk.net

!acab@lemmygrad.ml

r/ACAB

r/BadCopNoDonut/

Randy Balko

The Civil Rights Lawyer

The Honest Courtesan

Identity Project

MirandaWarning.org

♦ ♦ ♦

INFO

A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions

Adultification

Cops aren't supposed to be smart

Don't talk to the police.

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

So you wanna be a cop?

When the police knock on your door

♦ ♦ ♦

ORGANIZATIONS

Black Lives Matter

Campaign Zero

Innocence Project

The Marshall Project

Movement Law Lab

NAACP

National Police Accountability Project

Say Their Names

Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration

 

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ooterness@lemmy.world 93 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Weapon is visible at 0:06, appears to be a paintball gun. Unclear if it's pepper balls or something else.

Still illegal use of force, but thank goodness it's not bullets.

[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 20 points 13 hours ago

Eventually, someone will panic and shoot back, then they'll put away the non-lethal and start killing people, for safety reasons. For examples see any interaction with local police.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 8 points 12 hours ago

Almost certainly pepper balls. I don't know what else it could be. It's something powdered at least, and that's the only thing I know of that acts like that fired out of that weapon.

But yeah, I read the title and assumed gunpowder bullets. It sucks that we're thankful for "only" this level of violence.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 51 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Let's treat it as just as deadly as the police would if you fired it at their car.

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 hours ago

depending on where you are, using a paintball gun as a weapon gets it treated as a firearm

and if somebody's shooting at you with a firearm, you goddamn well have the right to shoot back. or at least that's what I've been told about the US by the people who voted for this kind of shit to happen

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

If some masked asshole is pointing a weapon at you while standing in front of your SUV, floor it.

This isn't going to stop until ICE actually gets the response Puppy Killer keeps saying they're getting.