Cops lie.
This isn’t actually news to anyone who’s been paying attention, but enough people don’t understand what it means that it’s worth rehashing.
Cops lie. They lie all the time, and its baked into the culture. I hear about “a few bad apples” all the time, and its become long apparent that its more than a few.
When Scott Walker busted public-sector unions in Wisconsin, he exempted police and fire unions, which are the ones that voted for him. But police unions are some of the only unions in the country that still has any power, they just use it wrong.
For starters, there is no master database of bad cops. Some prosecutors have so-called “Brady Lists”, which list cops in their area that are known to lie on the stand and thus cannot be used in court for testimony. But past that, if a cop messes up, they generally just get hired elsewhere. In any other job, word travels, but the thin blue line protects bad cops.
Cops are trained to shoot early, and often against people of no threat. Even when they do get judged against, the local government, IE, taxpayers, pay for the indiscretion. A “Police fuck up” budget should not be the city’s job to manage; if the problem is so bad that they need to set aside money for that, there needs to be a serious look at what’s going on.
Cops also take creative liberties with facts. One common one we hear during arrests gone bad is “the individual left and was going for a knife in their car”. I don’t doubt that this is often true, as many people DO have knives in their car. I have a leatherman multitool, which could be called a knife, because it’s a useful thing to have on hand. Others might be plastic fast food knives, or such. They generally shoot the person before they get to the car, then comb over the car after they’re dead. Certainly convenient.
Cops use various ways to get you to incriminate yourself and monitor you, and refuse to use bodycams under “Privacy” laws. A public servant doing their job does not have an expectation of privacy. Especially when that includes the authority to kill someone.
Particularly concerning is how cops use surprise power tactics, like no-knock raids, to catch people off guard, and when this ends badly, such as busting the wrong house, the bodies are either written off as ‘accident’, or the homeowner who was unaware of what was going on reacts reasonably to a violent intrusion to their home, usually steeped up on news about how bad crime is and how they need to protect themselves, ends up in front of a court for murdering a cop.
Two people were shot dead this weekend pretending to be LEOs on a search, and while they weren’t, the cop in the article noted that “Real officers announce themselves, don’t wear skin masks, announce through a bullhorn, and have a marked car”.
This is a lie, and he knows it. No knock raids and unmarked cars and plainclothes officers exist. With ICE abducting people off the street in masks, refusing to identify themselves when questioned and arresting people who try to make sure it’s not a broad daylight kidnapping, its already happening that malicious actors are impersonating lawless cops to abuse people. The amount of time it’ll take for someone to get shot is ticking down.
They’re also used disproportionately. The number of cases where the cops didn’t follow obvious leads, or botched the investigation, is significant, but that didn’t happen with the Luigi Mangione case. These tools exist (whether they should or not is a separate question), the problem is that in most crimes, they don’t want to bother. That one, though, that caught their attention, because it affected the money.
Defund the police wasn’t “No cops at all”, although I think the current system needs a massive overhaul. But cops are being pushed into more and more roles they aren’t actually trained for, as a one-size-fits-all solution, and they are not trained for things like responding to mental health crises, and we should be funding side projects for that.
-Arrow