Police should be held to the highest standard: as they have a monopoly on legal force. The end of 'qualified immunity' and the start of personal insurance akin to what surgeons have would do a lot to reform the police.
They should also be trained better (certainly longer than 1 semester), actually study the law they have to enforce, and pass a bar-like exam: They should be exceptional people.
Police should be self-insured, backed by their pension fund. They have no skin in the game for accountability of their abuses, and the taxpayers end up paying for it.
"According to the data, 65 out of the nation's 300 largest cities spend 40 percent or more of their general budgets on policing."
https://www.statista.com/chart/10593/how-much-do-us-cities-spend-on-policing/
The system that they serve could be held to higher standards. If prosecutors had to defend the behavior of the police when trying to convict someone, at the risk of having to set a guilty person free, the behavior would improve. Instead, we make it easier to convict people, for instance by allowing broader surveillance, plea bargaining system, etc.
Of course this is an idealized concept, related to Deming's point that quality control is a manager problem not a worker problem. An issue within police forces today is that not all the "training" comes from above. Police and the military -- and many other people of course -- are immersed in fascist, fundamentalist propaganda.
Yes. In the same way doctors are intelligent without qualified immunity. If doctors gain qualified immunity: I would expect the quality of doctors to go down.
Qualified immunity only attracts bullies, and opportunists. Qualified immunity rewards bad behavior, it does nothing to promote good behavior.
I'm all for this, but we need a different type of person to be a cop ultimately. A lot of cops see something like this and just stop doing there job altogether. I frequently ask cops in my city wtf they're doing when parked next to 20 people doing meth and they blame the democratic mayor almost every time.
What point is there to doing anything if the officers know that the DA won't press charges or that the system will just let them out in a few hours on no-cash bail? 1/3 of all (reported) shoplifting incidents in NYC happen because the justice system there cannot hold ~300 people that are responsible for that huge chunk of stealing. [1]
As a counterpoint to your argument: in many places I've lived the police would refuse to do their job even for things such as property theft that was caught on camera. Or enforce basic road laws for things like speeding or driving without plates. This was especially annoying in Austin where the police would continually blame a lack of budget despite having an insanely bloated budget.
I've become more and more cynical as I've gotten older and convinced that the police are largely conditioned to never do their job and just collect a paycheck for free, because then they can leverage their refusal into even more pay. It's corruption and kickbacks all the way through, and it's been a consistent trend in multiple cities.
20 might be hyperbola but in SF cops ignore lots of drug use on the streets. They used to care up until the end of the Brown mayorship. Once Newsom and the new wave of progressives took control over the city they began pulling back from enforcement incrementally —it peaked with Breed and is now slightly retrenching but very very slowly.
Willy might have been corrupt but at least he took care of crime meaningfully.
Well, meth people are pretty fragile (no joke). If they die of overdose under your watch, you are in tons of troubles. Any normal person would refuse to deal with such risk.
Maybe meth people should become cops! And we could call Antifa to fight meth cops!
I’m ostensibly a proponent of this, certainly of its aims. That said, I’ve never been comfortable with registries. I think they are quite vulnerable to being misused, and frequently tend to become facades to cover a broader lack of more significant actions to address root causes. Institutions, bureaucracies, and most large human enterprises are more than happy to throw an individual (or dozens of them) under the bus to keep the franchise going. Especially if it means they can avoid more meaningful reforms that threaten the status quo.
What’s up everybody is there any tricks for earning money being a hacker without doing the wrong thing could use some help definitely strapped for cash
I just wish the police would be more comfortable turning their co workers in for infractions. It seems it’s culturally to easy to look the other way.
I don’t expect perfection but I hate gradual dishonesty. Unneeded overtime charges, phony disability, and too many people employed.
Readit News
They should also be trained better (certainly longer than 1 semester), actually study the law they have to enforce, and pass a bar-like exam: They should be exceptional people.
Instead, we have a system that prunes people that are 'too smart' to be cops (https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...).
Of course this is an idealized concept, related to Deming's point that quality control is a manager problem not a worker problem. An issue within police forces today is that not all the "training" comes from above. Police and the military -- and many other people of course -- are immersed in fascist, fundamentalist propaganda.
Qualified immunity only attracts bullies, and opportunists. Qualified immunity rewards bad behavior, it does nothing to promote good behavior.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre... (https://archive.is/VCKkk)
I've become more and more cynical as I've gotten older and convinced that the police are largely conditioned to never do their job and just collect a paycheck for free, because then they can leverage their refusal into even more pay. It's corruption and kickbacks all the way through, and it's been a consistent trend in multiple cities.
Willy might have been corrupt but at least he took care of crime meaningfully.
Dead Comment
Maybe meth people should become cops! And we could call Antifa to fight meth cops!
My hope is the data informs of a few (even one is too many!) problematic individuals among a giant mass of good folks doing their best every day.
Removing problematic individuals (if politically possible!) radically improves the average quality of policing.
With luck and a few years, trust can rebound.