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LAPD officer who recorded colleagues’ racist comments charged with felony eavesdropping
(www.latimes.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
358 points (99.4% liked)
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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• r/ACAB
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• 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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And yet, not one single person was surprised by this outcome. Except maybe the one good cop that was left in the LAPD.
Now that he's gone, we can confidently say ACAB.
It's only 99% of them that make the rest look bad
Oh no! The one good apple
Yes, fixing LAPD is maybe impossible task, I wish the city would try to create a new police department, start from scratch and disband LAPD once there is some momentum. I don't think LAPD is even doing anything useful at this point.
For example, there was (I think) law that police can't stop driver if the only issue is expired license plate registration sticker. They did malicious compliance and I now see cars without license plates (mostly driven by rich fucks) which is very different thing.
The lapd seems so entrenched I legitimately think the only way to "fix" them is a hostile occupation where they are all arrested by the military for being the bunch of gangster thugs they actually are. Oh and don't forget the prosecutors and judges who intentionally enable them. They get to go to jail too.
The rich people driving without plates isn't new. That's been a thing for decades. Famously, Steve Jobs never had a plate on his vehicles. Granted, there he took advantage of a loophole related to grace periods, and his ability to just trade back in and lease a new vehicle twice a year... but the rich ignoring simple laws like that isn't new.
The fine for not having a plate is minimal to them even when they're caught.
All financial penalties across the board should be a sliding scale based on income and net worth. You don't even have to figure out percentages directly for each infraction.. just make it so all financial penalties are relative to something like the poverty line or minimum wage, and then you multiply based on how much they make above that line.
$200 penalty ($197 plus court costs technically, rounding for simplicity) at minimum wage which is roughly $35k/yr in CA currently... If their income was $35M last year that penalty would be $200k instead (I think I did that math right). $200k every time a cop pulls them over for no plate starts to add up pretty quickly.
Didnt work well in West Germany.
The children of barbarians become the new tax collectors and priests