Two people died at a Virginia jail. Officials waited nearly a week before saying anything.

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Two people died at a Virginia jail. Officials waited nearly a week before saying anything.

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Doug Holland@lemmy.worldM to

The Police Problem@lemmy.world · 1 year ago

Two people died at Charlottesville's jail. Officials waited nearly a week before saying anything.

web.archive.org

Both deaths occurred while The Daily Progress was in contact with jail officials regarding a story on living conditions at the facility.

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The Police Problem@lemmy.world

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“The public should know with certainty that today’s arrest does not reflect on the rest of the department. One bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch.”

—every police chief everywhere, every time every cop is arrested

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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.

When there’s an investigation, the details are kept quiet, the officers’ names are often withheld, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release.

When police are punished for misconduct, it’s often a suspension with pay (obfuscated by the term “administrative leave”).

When police are fired, they’re usually hired by another police department nearby. (It’s called the “Wandering Cop” phenomenon.)

The legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” renders police officers and departments invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do, and in practice, getting past ‘qualified immunity’ is so rare that it makes headlines.

Of course, the vast majority of police misconduct is never investigated, never punished, and never makes the news at all, because almost without exception, cops protect other cops. If they don’t, they aren’t cops for long.

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 disciplined, and for anything more serious than a DWI or jaywalking, lawbreaking cops must be prosecuted, fired, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.

That’s the solution.

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