ACLU Report Finds Baltimore Cops are Still Using Illegal Practices [b/c Cops Still Have Uncontrollable, Irresponsible Authority to Take Life and Interfere w/Citizens Rights in Their Sole Discretion]
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From [HERE] A new report [pdf] is questioning the progress being made, as the Baltimore Police Department struggles to reform. The report, released by the ACLU on Tuesday, studied 13,000 complaints filed against officers since 2015, the year Baltimore cops murdered Freddie Gray, a Black man under arrest for no reason. The summary of findings states:
“From 2015 through 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland,
» There were misconduct complaints filed against 1,826 individual Baltimore Police officers.
» Ten percent of complaints were for false arrest or imprisonment.
» 86 officers had complaints related to domestic violence.
» There were 40 complaints of criminal association.
» Only eight percent of external complaints, including resident complaints, were sustained.
» Officers remained on the force after sustained complaints of domestic violence, criminal sexual offenses, DUI, DWI, hit-and-run, and theft.
» Police officers used force twice as often in the majority Black Southwestern District, as in the majority white Northern District.
» Less than 10% of force was used in self-defense or to make an arrest.
» Most arrest charges after a use of force incident were low-level, non-violent charges.
» More than 400 individual officers would have triggered a Phase 1 intervention under current BPD policy.
» With a stronger warning system, BPD may have prevented up to 20.4% of complaints.
» Recent legislative proposals by Annapolis lawmakers to reform the Public Information Act would allow public disclosure of between two and seven percent of all complaints in Baltimore City, which is not nearly enough.”
The department is under a federal consent decree to reform. Researchers, however, say many of the same illegal tactics that sent several officers to prison two years ago are still being deployed.
The report states:
“Families across Maryland continue to mourn the senseless police killings of Freddie Gray and Tyrone West in Baltimore City; Christopher Brown, Korryn Gaines, and Emanuel Oates in Baltimore County; Anton Black in Caroline County; Robert White in Montgomery County; William Green, Gary Hopkins Jr., and Leonard Shand in Prince George’s County; and many others across the state.
Meanwhile, police departments, police unions, state’s attorneys, and too many legislators are content to keep in place the culture of secrecy around officer misconduct that shields officers from accountability for wrongdoing. Although a few officers will undoubtedly continue to be arrested and charged with criminal behavior, countless others will escape responsibility, and be known as a danger only to those in the neighborhoods they patrol.
The ACLU report rationalizes: “Police officers are often asked to make split-second decisions, but they must do so in deference to Constitutional rights and the preservation of human life, and uphold the dignity and humanity of Black people. It is precisely because of the extraordinary power officers have – to lawfully kill and deprive us of our liberty – that they must be held accountable when they abuse their authority in the line of duty.”
AUTHORITY IS ABUSE. Advocates believe cops should have authority to forcibly control us & take our lives so long as they “do the right thing” with their powers. Said proposals are necessarily stuck in the statist paradigm and never will release us from this free range prison. If “advocates such as the ACLU or BLM got everything they wanted the granfalloon of “authority,” the right to rule over others, which “is the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed” and the main source of our problem, would remain intact.
Authority, the right to rule over other people and citizens’ moral and legal obligation to obey, is not a force but a farce, literally not real or “make believe.” If a “public servant," such as a police officer, is uncontrollable, unaccountable, can’t be hired or fired by you, has irresponsible power over you and provides a compulsory “service” then he is actually your Master not your servant.
Allegedly governmental power comes from the people. That is, citizens delegate their individual power to the government for it to act on our behalf. However, it goes without saying that people cannot delegate powers or rights that they do not personally possess. So if people have delegated their powers to representative lawmakers who in turn empower police officers to act on our behalf, then how did police acquire the right to commit acts of unprovoked violence on people? Asked differently, if you don’t have the right to initiate violence against another person then how can you delegate or authorize police officers to do so? How did police officers acquire such super-human powers?
Undeceiver Larken Rose observes,
“Despite all of the complex rituals and convoluted rationalizations, all modern belief in “government” rests on the notion that mere mortals can, through certain political procedures, bestow upon some people various rights which none of the people possessed to begin with. The inherent lunacy of such a notion should be obvious. There is no ritual or document through which any group of people can delegate to someone else a right which no one in the group possesses.‘ [MORE]
FUNKTIONARY explains that “The real threat to "authority" is the masses overcoming info-gaps and verigaps through self-knowledge and the proliferation of symbols of opposition, not crime or destruction of property.”
Authority is a “cartoon” or an “image of law” because “people cannot delegate rights they do not have, which makes it impossible for anyone to acquire the right to rule (”authority”). People cannot alter morality, which makes the “laws” of “government” devoid of any inherent “authority.” Ergo, “authority”-the right to rule-cannot logically exist. FUNKTIONARY further explains, “There is no freedom in the presence of so-called authority, i.e. outside of one's Self and Self-Nature.)
Reformers miss the point and their efforts will always be ”Chasing Justice” (the title of ACLU report) and be on a never-ending search to find the right persons to be cops and given awesome, uncontrollable power over citizens to take life and interfere with citizens rights based upon the their sole discretion. Said sleepwalking efforts only seek better relations with their masters and never consider that maybe there should be no masters and no slaves at all in the first place.
