#*police brutality

[princessbubblegumandjustice]

You can’t even eat a burger in your fucking car without a cop shooting you.

Good news is that the officer was fired.

[princessbubblegumandjustice]

What Can We Do to Fight Police Brutality and Protect Our Rights?

I see a lot of emotion and turmoil right now, and it’s understandable. Fear, anger, hostility, pain, sadness..

People are throwing around ideas and talking about what we need to be doing and how we need to feel, but all of it is a little abstract and some of it is counterproductive. 

What steps can we take to defend our rights that are concrete and could address the corrupt government and law enforcement system in a way that prevails?

Note: this is merely a starting point for discussion, feel free to add your own thoughts and resources

Here are some steps I think we should consider, support, and spread:

1. Eliminate Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity protects officers from being sued for violating your rights. Originally meant to protect officers acting in “good faith,” this defense has morphed over time to make it exceedingly difficult to prove your rights have been violated by creating an almost impossible criteria: you need to identify a judicial decision that happened to involve the same context and conduct. Without that, the officer is shielded from liability and the case is dismissed, reinforcing the cycle and never establishing a precedent. 

U.S. Representative Justin Amash, a conservative independent from Michigan, is scheduled to introduce a new bill, the Ending Qualified Immunity Act, on Thursday (06/04/2020). Once it is officially introduced I will include a link, and we can all examine the bill and begin taking steps to support it (assuming the bill doesn’t have any riders).

Read: Qualified Immunity Explained Read: U.S. Lawmaker Prepares Bill Aiming to End Court Protection for Police Read: Justin Amash’s tweet on his Bill

2. Implement Police Liability Insurance

When settlements are paid out for injuries caused by officers, its rarely paid by the officer in question. We, the taxpayer, pay for it. We’re footing the bill for the officers violating our rights and the rights of others.

Mandatory police liability insurance has the goal of punishing cops that police badly: the worse their policing, the higher their premium. Eventually, those with very poor track records would either no longer be eligible for police liability insurance (and therefore be unemployable) or be priced out. It would be similar to nurses and doctors’ professional liability insurance, which pays to defend them against malpractice claims and protects them financially by paying out damages.

One major critique is that this method is simplistic and may cause police officers to be overly cautious (i.e. avoiding conflict since they’re afraid of their rate going up).

Read: Make Cops Carry Liability Insurance: The Private Sector Knows How to Spread Risks, and Costs

3. Demand Data & Transparency

Improved data collection and reporting is necessary to identify law enforcement trends. It should be mandatory for police departments to keep track of a list of policing metrics such as number of people killed, use of force and to what degree, and stop-and-frisks, and have the list of metrics standardized to enable direct comparisons between departments and ensure quality policing. This data should be collected and released publically every year. As of right now there is no federal or comprehensive database, but there is one created by the Center for Policing Equity.

Data like this can then be used to create tailored training programs for departments, whether that’s on de-escalation or implicit bias.

See: National Justice Database

4. Take a Stand Against Quota Policing

Quota policing, whether formal or informal, impacts how our actions are viewed by law enforcement and in turn how we view police officers. 

Quota policing is when officers are expected to or awarded if they meet certain quotas regarding arrests, stops, or tickets. Quota policing infringes on our rights as citizens as it can force police to manufacture illegality and dissuade them from using discretion, leading to more unnecessary stops and opportunities for brutality. 

Quota policing can be formal or informal. Event though some states, like New York, outlaw policing quotas they persist nonetheless. One example is in a recent lawsuit against NYPD, in which Officer Adhyl Polanco has accused the NYPD over alleged quotas, stating:

”’The culture is, you're not working unless you are writing summonses or arresting people,’ says Polanco.” ...

“Polanco says he encountered an unwritten rule that officers are expected to bring in ‘20 and one.’ That's 20 tickets and one arrest per month. But it was tough to get anyone outside the department to believe him, because NYPD officials would always deny there were any quotas. They still do.”

5. Fight Private Prisons

Police brutality is one aspect of the corrupt justice system. Private prisons play a role in how we are all treated and how we view and interact with the entire justice system. 

Private prisons are prisons that are privately owned and operated, or leased by private corporations that have total operational control. Private prisons have a financial incentive to incarcerate more while releasing and rehabilitating less. Inmates are not a commodity and never should have became one. 

With contracts that guarantee 65% - 90% occupancy in prisons it is evident that our system is broken. Leaders are pressures to act against their communities’ best interests and keep prisons filled to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t being wasted. How might this be done? Finding more people to incarcerate (more stops, which create more opportunities for brutality) and longer sentences. 

See: Abolish Private Prisons

6. Demand Change in Blue Blood Culture

Police officers have a tough job and face struggles non-officers don’t, and their shared experiences mold a culture unique to them. This, by itself, is not an issue. This is completely natural and part of the human experience.

The problem is that police officers play a vital role in society and hold a lot of power over the public. When an insular culture develops, it becomes very easy to pressure officers into complicity. The nail that sticks out gets hammered in. No one wants to be othered, seen as a snitch, or hated by all their peers. Officers want to be a part of the in-group, but that involves conforming and being trusted.

This means looking the other way when a fellow cop plants drugs, when they beat on people, when they commit fraud, when they break protocol, when they don’t even attempt to investigate, when they take or give a bribe, the list is endless—it’s the blue wall of silence.

Without accountability and transparency, cultures like this are allowed to proliferate. Culture is self-sustaining in the fact that it only continues to exist as those within it continue to perpetuate its existence. Previously listed measures are a necessary step before department cultures like this can be expected to change. Without accountability and transparency, we rely on the good of one’s heart alone. It’s been demonstrated that just isn’t enough. This is the only non-concrete step, but it is dependant on practical changes for it to be successful.

Please also check out: Campaign Zero, which outlines even more solutions than what I have here, researches policing practices, tracks legislation in different states, and enables you to reach out to your representatives.

[cerealmisandrist]

Could you please signal boost Feidin Santana's Indiegogo page to help get the word out about supporting this hero! The link to his Indiegogo account is on his Twitter @jsantanamusic. His tweets in Spanish also show he has been an activist for a long time!

I’m not sure how long this message has been in my box since tumblr is fucking up again for me and not alerting me to new messages, but I’m just gonna go ahead and answer it lol, I apologize if you’ve been waiting so long.

I’ve already given a small donation, but to all my followers who are also interested, Feidin Santana, one of the witnesses of the murder of Walter Scott, has an IndieGoGo page where you can help him out with donations here.

If you can’t donate, please signal boost!

[brostateexam]

Tasered 10 Year Old boy Sues Police Officer

A cop shot a ten year old with a taser. Per the boy, it was in retribution for the boy not cooperating with the cop when the cop asked a group of similarly aged children, "who wants to clean the cop car?" Per the cop, the taser accidentally discharged, hit the boy at short-range in the exact place it would hit if you were aiming it, and accidentally released 50k volts.

Full story here.

This is the first time I've ever seen a story of this nature where people are largely being critical of the cop instead of saying "well there are two sides to every story." I guess because the victim is a child? Also, there are these chill bros: