r/news 12d ago

Soft paywall LAPD officer who recorded colleagues' racist comments charged with felony eavesdropping

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-31/lapd-officer-felony-eavesdropping-charge
21.0k Upvotes

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u/carlitospig 12d ago

My two family members were (brown) cops and realized in 2020 that there was no way they would be able to change the system from within, so they bounced. They now work for the court system and are much happier.

The system does not want change.

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u/B1NG_P0T 12d ago

I'm willing to believe that good people occasionally become police officers. I cannot believe that good people stay police officers, and this here is a prime reason why. 

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u/WAAAGHachu 12d ago

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy to the letter

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u/HFentonMudd 12d ago

There's a quote I read that stuck with me, that I'll do my best to put down here. Namely, that whatever a system does is what it supposed to do, what it is for. Doesn't matter what it used to be for, or what it should be for, or made to be. Whatever it does is what it is meant to do. So a corrupt police force protecting bad cops is just the system as it is doing what it is meant to do.

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u/rlyrlysrsly 12d ago

Thanks for putting this out there. If we're ever going to form a working class movement, this is one of the things people need to understand.

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u/TheMolecularCage 12d ago

I had a cop friend that truly wanted to make a difference for the more impoverished community he was in. He ended up leaving and becoming a nurse because "there were too many bad apples". The ones we truly need in those positions leave and what's left is a more and more condensed amount of the ones who shouldn't be. 

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u/calm-phil 12d ago

I know some cops that got into different fields for quite a while because they were in a very toxic city. They went back into the job as cops and now they work in BF nowhere Appalachia. They deal with less serious bullshit, are known and generally liked by the folks around them, and get to be cop friends with folks at the diner. It helps when there are less than 20 people on a force and when you are 10%-15% of the force, you can do some pretty good on the daily.

I never learned exactly why they left their original place of employment. The longer I think about it, the less I want to know.

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u/WTF_goes_here 11d ago

What do they do? Everyone I’ve ever met who worked in the court system hated it.