Yes. And the issue with all of this is that those more likely to target them are also likely to have power over those that will celebrate them
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The fear of being targeted is probably what what keeps members of the medical community from pushing back against their demands to falsify reports or perform invasive procedures, too:
They know that they’re dealing with killers.
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BINGO!!!
Hitting them in the wallet may be the only way to police their behavior.
St. Louis is making progress. The new mayor refuses to meet with the police union until they replace their union head, who embodies all that’s wrong with protecting , even enriching criminals in blue. Now, there’s this.
I was going to post a gif that says “BRILLIANT,” but lost my appetite for gifs with the tone on both sides of that earlier debacle.
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This is Mississippi Burning level shit and it’s long past the time for the Feds to step in.
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No. When the cops break the law, they need to go to jail. They need to have the same consequences as everyone else when breaking the law. While individual cops can’t get sued, police departments can and have, and it’s not changed police violence towards POC one iota.
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Many of them are bad guys with guns. Some of them are basically in criminal gangs.
Of course. We have to start somewhere and that ship’s currently sitting at the dock waiting for a crew and a course.
Despite remarkable progress in the last couple years, the ratio of cop crimes committed to convicted cops is still waaaay too low, and the number of police victims waiting for justice is not yet zero.
I think not paying the bastards who can’t act with integrity is a good start.
Is there something we can do to help?
Agreed! My post contained an encouraging example of progress toward just that.
Here’s another while we wait for the Jim Clyburns of the world to get on board.
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But this is what we’ve been doing for years now - not holding individuals responsible for their actual crimes and instead letting the tax payer take the hit. This is clearly not been enough to fix the problem.
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I’m not sure what you’re going for here? It seems we agree on the topic at hand.
Individual officer accountability is here and gaining momentum, slowly but surely. I supplied examples from places that have major police violence problems doing something to begin holding rouge cops accountable. St. Louis is going to make cops have the same disciplinary procedures as other city employees. New Mexico has joined Colorado in ending qualified immunity. Having lived in both states, I’m encouraged by these first steps, but your reply seems to suggest something is missing in my own.
Any ideas on what we can do to help?
Sadly, there are plenty of racist assholes who are willing to abuse people off payroll FOR FREE.
Perhaps the cops should forfeit their pension to pay for the legal cases they lose? Have a lien on their property? Obviously be blackballed from not only another cop job but any position of power, too. And of course, jail.
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I think this has been mentioned here before, but why do we CHASE? What’s the damn point? It seems like the hype of the chase just amps up everyone involved, with the added bonus of also hurting bystanders.
If the person isn’t a murderer or terrorist, I feel like the cops should gather evidence, look for where the person lives/hands out, catch them at home/work (daylight, knock on the door like a goddamn human but post someone to the windows/doors) and if they get away, make a reasonable attempt to head them off (use radio, head off elsewhere), or catch them later using detective work. We live in a world of almost nonstop surveillance and computer tracking, why do we chase down people for minor offenses to everyone’s peril?
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Because the suspect was Black. That’s the long and short of it, I’m afraid.
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I hope everybody knows Mississippi Burning was fiction and the FBI were never really civil rights heroes
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As one of those POC and human beings, yeah, I have indeed gotten all that.
My question was intended to get to the legal heart of the matter: given the numerous loopholes, exceptions, concessions, privileges, and workarounds we give cops, is it even truly illegal for them to lie in their reports? Or merely frowned upon?
Granted, it wouldn’t make sense for it NOT to be illegal; but see earlier reference to loopholes, etc.
In California, at least, the answer seems to be “yep, it’s illegal if they intentionally mislead in a report, and the crime, specifically, is good ol’ garden-variety perjury.”
That fact that this is so rarely invoked, and charges brought? Well, that gets back to your two standards of justice statement.
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Sure, there is the law, and then there is the actual application of said law. And of course, this particular event was in Louisiana, which I’m guessing has much more lax laws about what cops can or can’t do.
At some point, though, whatever the actual law is becomes meaningless if it’s not enforced. I’m fairly certain that cops just can’t shoot people at random, and yet, this seems to be a regular occurrence in our country.
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On that note: with the long list of horrible things in the past 2 years to come out of the LSP station that killed Greene it didn’t get much press, but Kaleb Reeves (son of recently retired LSP superintendent Kevin Reeves) wais suspended because while speeding toward some non-violent infraction he accidentally rear-ended a family killing 2 kids in the back seat.
There are many levels to how our incompetent, racist, violent police make us all less safe
eta: Turns out he was suspended for 3 months, but is now back on the road.
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This.
And when cops kill, they need to be exposed to the same potential sentences that joe average citizen would in their state, be that life in prison or the death penalty. Oh noes, but how can we do our job properly if we can’t count on immunity if we kill someone? If that’s honestly a concern, then they need to get a different job.
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Can’t <3, that is horrifying, killer cop should be in jail.
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