THE POLICE PROBLEM
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.
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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.
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RULES
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ 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.
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ALLIES
• r/ACAB
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INFO
• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• 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
• When the police knock on your door
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ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
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does anyone know self hosted video recording software? so if you record the cops, and they take or break your phone, the footage is on a nas?
First thing that comes to mind is to host your own jitsi server and record to that. I may just give it a go now.
Well for now until they disable the Internet you could just start live streaming. There is the one app designed for police encounters that connects you to a lawyer but it's a subscription and IDK what they can do about ICE, Attorney Shield.
The ACLU used to have a "Mobile Justice" app that automatically uploaded video, but they discontinued it at the beginning of last year for some reason.
yeah this is what i want to replicate.
A lot of phones will automatically upload your photos and videos to a cloud account. Example:
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/sync-photos-videos-icloud-iph961b96c4d/ios
Does nothing for a phone that gets snatched mid-recording though
If the cell connection and/or WiFi is active, it uploads. If you’ve disconnected your cell connection because you’re at a protest, maybe. 🤷♂️
So you're telling me that if someone breaks your phone during a video recording or stop and delete the recording, they can just find this video on their cloud service? I genuinely didn't know.
Depends on how damaged the phone is after stopping the recording. Modern phones are fairly tough. Stepping on it might break the screen, but the inner workings would likely still function for example. Simply knocking it out of someone’s hand isn’t going to have any effect at all.
I think the ACLU, EFF, and some other orgs also have apps that similarly automatically upload footage, but regrettably I don’t have any links.
I use syncthing for this exact purpose. Its p2p, so it requires no hosting experience, and can sync to any number of private or public devices. Just sync your main camera folder to any (ideally always-on) PC, laptop, a secondary phone or your friends/families devices.
mp4 files generally get corrupted if the recording isnt properly ended, so i have my camera app set up so that it starts a new file every minute or so. That way even if my phone is destroyed/snatched, the last clip that makes it to safety is pretty recent.
Syncthing website - https://syncthing.net/
Syncthing Android App - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingfork/
OpenCamera - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.sourceforge.opencamera/
Doesn't Syncthing have to be on the same network?
No it does not, otherwise i wouldnt have recommended it. There are public discovery servers hosted by syncthing and community members that handle the initial contact.
https://docs.syncthing.net/users/stdiscosrv.html
It works completely seemlessly over the imternet.
Ah neat, thanks. I've been using it on my home network but haven't tried the public discovery stuff as of yet.
There really isnt anything different about using it over the internet. Just exchange QR code or device ID once and from then on they automatically find each other as if they were on the same LAN. Takes a few seconds longer to connect than over LAN ofc.
Tailscale should get you over that hurdle I would think.
I'd like to have this for my home PC, but I also don't want it to be always on. Creating a home server is one of those bucket list items I have for when I can get a dedicated device for it...
I just use an old phone with either a big SD card or an external SSD connected over USB. Uses ~1W and takes up very little space.
There used to be an ACLU app for 16 states that immediately sent the video the yourself and ACLU whenever it stopped recording.
Stream live to (insert platform here)