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Since everyone is going around complaining about cops or rioters (and rightfully so) I thought I'd take an opportunity to offer actual solutions. These are the solutions I would impose to solve the problem.
Most of the solution centers around just one important problem that is the root of the whole issue. Police are above the law. They tend to get leniency for crimes due to be officer, especially when it is the result of carrying out their "duty" and even when there is an attempt to hold them accountable they cover up each others mistakes in various ways that get them out of it. This is where all the solutions lie.. so here they are:
1) eliminate all police unions, I'd say any government job that makes or enforces policy of any kind should not be allowed to unionize. Unions generally use theie collective bargaining power to wipe police officers with bad records clean and thus allow them to avoid getting in trouble.
2) Ensure the law has just as strict a consequence for an officer as it does a citizen and that them being an officer doesnt give them any greater latitude in that regard. If anything their consequences when on duty should be stricter. If they shoot someone because of a mistake because they thought they had a gun when they didnt, murder, no exceptions, no different than a citizen.
3) any officer on the scene when #2 happens and a officer breaks the law is expected to immediately stop the incident if they can and at a minimum arrest the officer immediately. If any officer fails to arrest another officer they will be consider an accomplice and equally as guilty as if they carried out the offense themselves
4) retroactively apply the #2 and #3 to all officers currently on the force to serve as an example. Give a 2 week grace period so any officers who would fall under the category of #3 have a chance to arrest their fellow officers who have in the past commited a crime under #2. After two weeks any officers guilty of #2 or #3 will be arrested with no forgiveness. Resigning from their position will not grant them immunity.
5) Require body cams, ensure the body cams can not be turned off
6) Any officer intentionally hiding their body cam during an incident will immediately loose their job and be fined one year back pay. If there is evidence of wrong doing they will be tried and this action held against them as evidence.
7) officers are always required to be in pairs or more.
8) Reverse broken-glass policying policies from the top down. Have officers focus on real crime as a priority and deprioritize non-violent crimes.
#GeorgeFloyd #Protests #protest #riots #PoliceBrutality #UsPol
@freemo I agree with most of your post here - I think eliminating the unions won't eliminate the brotherhood and protection setup, and is probably infeasible politically. Bringing accountability is necessary though.
@finity I agree eliminating unions is the hardest part. but it isnt intended to remove the "I got your back" aspect, that is done with the other points.
The issue with eliminating the unions comes from direct observation. Each year unions renegotiate contracts. When they do so they use their collective bargaining power to ensure that if they dont want the whole of the police force to go on strike the precinct must wipe prior records of abuse from cops records. Ultimately allowing cops to go unpunished.
While eliminating unions wont prevent them from sticking up for eachother (strict legal repercussions will), it will prevent this renegotiating that takes place and is a huge problem in all this.
@freemo interesting! Perhaps the law should require these types of records to become public and open, and/or require a judge's order to expunge them. That could make that type of negotiation impossible.
@finity I'd support police records and activities being more open for sure.
The key is protecting the identity of the victims in doing so.
@lnxw37a2 yes and no.. we already have laws in place where if a person breaks the law, and someone else assists, they are equally guilty.. they just dont enforce it on officers.
So should be possible to do #3 considering it isnt really a new law, we just arent giving them a pass like before by actually prosecuting it now.
@freemo as I understand it, the problem isn't a lack of rules defining unacceptable behaviour, or even consequences prescribed for breaking the rules. The problem is that the prosecutor is usually disincentivised from going after the cops, so the prescribed consequences are only rarely imposed.
From the prosecutor's perspective, maintaining a good working relationship with the police is important, since they're responsible for collecting the evidence the he uses to win convictions every day. So he does them little favours which ultimately make it unlikely an officer is convicted for on-duty behaviour in all but the worst cases.
And I don't know how you fix this. You might appoint a special prosecutor who only targets cops, so he doesn't need police cooperation to score convictions against civilians - but this role is eventually going to be subject to regulatory capture and wind up in the hands of someone friendly to the cops. You might create a separate unit tasked solely with investigating their fellow cops - but the ones appointed to this unit are going to be the doofi who aren't more valuable in other roles. How can you guarantee both the independence and competence of your oversight solution?
Any solution you come up with is going to be pitting you against perps who have a better-than-civilian understanding of the law, the rules concerning evidence, and ways lawbreakers can escape consequence. So you need to have as robust a system as possible, because the people searching it for weaknesses are very good at finding them.
@khird Thats a good point.
The DA and State Attorneys are the ones who would serve in both capacities int he current system. On the one hand they rely on police to bring them evidence and thus need a good working relationship with them, thus are disencentivized to prosecute them.
They would also be the ones responsible for prosecuting them, so it creates a conflict of interest...
Seems to me the solution is clear.. Split the DA's office into two parts. one group of attorneys who job it is to work with police to convict criminals, and entierly separate state departmartment of attorneys who job it is to prosecute police officers.
Conflict of interest solved.
In the future I will add this as a 9th point to my ramblings, thank you.
@freemo Maybe. But it seems to me the police-prosecution department is still going to be subject to regulatory capture or defanging. What happens when a new mayor gets elected on a law-and-order platform? He'll appoint a cop-friendly leader of the department, or reduce its funding, or promote the better prosecutors away from the job leaving only the idiots who aren't effective at convicting cops. Then he can speechify about how he's fighting the deep state which is obstructing the police from doing their jobs, destroying America, etc.
@khird Well thats not a very good argument. You are basically saying "What if we have stupid politicians who refuse to support the laws that fix the problem".. well sure, that is legitimate.. Thats why we are rioting, and, when your not busy rioting, how about just not voting for those politicians?
Any solution will ultimately require the people to vote and elect politicians that support and maintain the solution. You cant protect against that in any way other than having a society that votes responsibly.
@freemo Maybe this will help
https://policeconduct.gov.uk/
@zleap I'm not entierly sure the UK is a good system to model to be honest. I have often posted tons of police abuse of entierly different nature before. I cant say im happy with how they handle things.
I'd be much more likely to look to nations like the Netherlands as a better example personally.
@freemo Yeah, good point, The UK is not really a beacon for very much.
@freemo
Hm looks that america is really a mess
@freemo
I think the problem that city government is having is that cops are almost universally hated, most people don't want to be universally hated, so most people don't want to become cops.
Now, and I can see the planning meeting now... everything that you do which makes it harder to be a cop makes fewer people apply for the job, which for a police chief means either they have to pay more (i.e. the mayor has to raise the budget) or they have to accept lower quality applicants...
Not sure that would be much better.. nothing actually solved, and all the same problems would crop up. Just in the chaos as the rules are laid out shit would get ugly... I mean we can sorta see a mini version of that when CHAZ formed, they tried to do their own policing and kept police out.. and then the deaths started.
@cjd very valid points and I would agree. In fact its why you wont find anywhere in my suggested 8 point plan anything about defunding or reducing budget. In fact I'd go so far as to say that **if** these 8 points were adopted then it should coincide with increasing their funding not decreasing it.
1) i kinda support redemption mechanics but .. hmmh. expunging isn't quite the right answer.
2) people tried but juries tend to consist of people with law enforcement bias.
4) ex post facto laws are banned (and also bad ideas.)
5) they already do
8) is this a reference to broken window theory?
@icedquinn My stance here is that minor offenses should be deprioritized in comparison with more significant offenses. Especially when those minor offenses do not directly cause harm to persons or property.
So that means deprioritizing the sorts of things most police man hours goes into such as minor traffic stops, drug users, jay walking, whatever (which is often used as an excuse to search vehicles and other attempts to find more serious crimes that they dont directly suspect). You will generally find real crimes that require some degree of investigation is often ignored.
that sounds like the typical city ticket quotas to pad their budgets.
as in if the area is required to look nice, people who live there will be more invested in protecting it (Pygmalion effect happens i guess) so protecting the clean image becomes part of the defense strategy.
or rather, if the area looks like shit it probably is.
i dunno how well it translates to policing at large. london doesn't look like shit but they have daily stabbings.
trying to exploit psychology to prevent vicious cycles -> making mountains out of molehills
scrutinizing people from outside the community -> xenophobia
modeling suspect stops after past crime instances -> racial profiling
staffing most of the police where the crime tends to happen (pareto principling, 'predictive policing') -> i forget what the complaint about this one was
City still shouldn't be profiting either but it seems to help.
@icedquinn To some degree you are correct, the origin of the theory is that if crime, however minor, is seen by the general public then it encourages more significant crime to be carried out.
The target of proponents isnt so much "lets clean up graffiti and broken windows" but rather more along the lines of "lets arrest people who commit minor crimes because the public will witness that, including arresting people who commit graffitti, break windows, jay walk, speed"... in other words it promotes the lazy approach of cops focusing on small crimes that are done in public view or easily inferred by the public and putting less priority on crimes that are carried out in a more secretive (and thus harder to catch) fashion, which goes hand in hand with more serious crime.
Moreover the philosophy has changed a lot in its life, while originally the discussion was around obvious signs of crime like graffitti and such it has evolved to be used in a context that is more encapsulating of minor crime vs major crime, in that focusing on easier to handle minor crime they can prevent major crime with a fraction of the effort.
After discussion I wanted to amend this with a 9th point:
9) As it stands right now the DA office generally is on the same team as the cops. This means they rely on cops to collect evidence for them and have an incentive to keep a good working relationship with them. This also means there is a conflict of interest when it comes to the DA persecuting cops and thus they often do not. Part of the solution has to come from creating a new division completely independent of the DA, the DA continues as is when persecuting civilian crimes. The other division of State Attorneys would be entierly devoted to persecuting the police when they behave criminally. This division into two independent departments eliminates the conflict of interest the DA currently has and will allow more aggressive persecution of cops by the state.