Former New Jersey cop sentenced to five years for killing Garfield man on Garden State Parkway

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Former New Jersey cop sentenced to five years for killing Garfield man on Garden State Parkway

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Doug Holland@lemmy.worldM to

The Police Problem@lemmy.world · 1 year ago

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The Police Problem@lemmy.world

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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.

When there’s an investigation, the details are kept quiet, the officers’ names are often withheld, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release.

When police are punished for misconduct, it’s often a suspension with pay (“administrative leave”).

When police are fired, they’re usually hired by another police department nearby.

The legal doctrine of ‘qualified immunity’ renders police officers and departments invulnerable to lawsuits for anything they do, unless they obviously and intentionally violate a person’s constitutional rights. In practice, getting past ‘qualified immunity’ is so rare that it makes headlines.

Of course, the vast majority of police misconduct is never investigated, never punished, and never makes the news at all, because almost without exception, cops protect other cops. If they don’t, they aren’t cops for long.

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 judging what cops have done, and issuing genuine punishment when warranted.

Police who break the law must be disciplined, and for anything more serious than a DWI or jaywalking, lawbreaking cops must be prosecuted, fired, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.

That’s the solution.

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