Skip to main content

See also:

Out of control cops costing Dallas millions in lawsuits

Out of control cops, according to WFAA Channel 8 News, is costing the City of Dallas millions of dollars in lawsuits.

Dallas Cop Block exists to expose police corruption and abuse, hold them accountable, educate the public about the growing police state, and to support the victims of police brutality.
Dallas Cop Block/Facebook

Cases cited in their newscast includes cops firing a dozen shots at a man talking on his cellphone with his 4-year-old son just feet away; shooting at "an unarmed mentally challenged man" who was standing still; and shooting an unarmed passenger in a car that was "believed stolen."

These Dallas shootings, along with countless other egregious abuses, are part of the nationwide growth of the police state in which officers of the law attack, beat, threaten, falsely arrest and even kill the very citizens they were established to protect from such abuses.

Ongoing police abuse is routinely reported by Dallas Cop Block, established in 2012 as part of the "decentralized project" begun nationally by libertarians Pete Eyre and Ademo Freeman in January 2010. The goal of all Cop Block activists in cities nationwide is the same: "to change the statist quo that currently allows for double-standards for those wearing badges" by educating the public, making police transgressions transparent, and supporting their victims.

The root of the problem is lack of accountability – asking a police department, a city council, a prosecutor's office or any other public official to hold their own police officers to account is like asking a street gang, a drug ring or a corporate board to investigate themselves and hold themselves accountable; it happens sometimes but not often enough to stem the rising tide of abuses.

More often than not offending officers get wrist-slapped with temporary suspensions with full pay, brief transfers to desk jobs, notations in their personal records, or their abuses are simply covered up by the police union, higher officials and fellow cops.

Channel 8 reports that there are even more unsettled cases of police abuse that could reach $10 million. But maybe that's part of the ultimate solution of curtailing police corruption: lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit.

Frequently money talks when nothing else does. If everyone who is even marginally abused by a cop files a lawsuit demanding millions in compensation that might cut deep into city official's own graft those officials just might begin to take notice.

It's a double-edged sword of course; the millions paid out to victims is all tax money, making all taxpayers victims.

Ultimately it's the social and political culture that makes the police state possible that must be changed, and for now hitting the politicians in the pocketbook seems like the only viable solution.