State Eyes in the Sky: On the History of Helicopters in Policing

lareviewofbooks.org

State Eyes in the Sky: On the History of Helicopters in Policing

lareviewofbooks.org

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THE POLICE PROBLEMEnglish • 1 year ago

In a preview of the new LARB Quarterly, no. 39: “Air,” Nicholas Shapiro, Kate McInerny, Matyos Kidane, and Jacobo Pereira-Pacheco discuss the effects and racialized nature of police-helicopter monitoring and the noise pollution these machines produce....

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/qWFtd?wr=true

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THE POLICE PROBLEM

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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.

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

• [email protected]

• r/ACAB

• r/BadCopNoDonut/

• Randy Balko

• The Civil Rights Lawyer

• The Honest Courtesan

• Identity Project

• MirandaWarning.org

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INFO