You’re the one that suggested that “some long-term fundamental changes in society that will make this problem fade away in the future” could be a solution. So PSXer suggested one such change.
I realize that testosterone poisoning is one of the root causes of police criminality, but that seems a bit drastic.
The Camera’s are a good idea, but given the magnitude of the data and expense of archiving, it is my understanding that it not realistic for an officer to have it on 100% of the time when they are on duty. Proposals I have seen, require that the officer himself turns on the camera whenever he interacts with the public. Which of course can lead to the camera having been “accidentally” left off when Tyrone “accidentally tripped” and broke his jaw.
I think another thing that would help would be an ombudsman auxiliary to the police force that is entirely independent of the force and which handles all complaints. Right now the esprit de corps among the police is such that it is difficult for them to be/appear unbiased investigating one of their own.
See for example:
But proper oversight can fix that problem. Make it a zero-tolerance offense to “accidentally” leave your camera off.
If Tyrone comes in with a broken jaw, you ask the see the video. If the video was off, the officer is suspended without pay for the first instance, fired for the second. I’d even be amenable to firing on the first offense.
Simple.
I think a good start would be removing the stupid union arbitration rules that allow some officers to act as Excessive Force ATMs over the length of their careers, causing their employers (read: Cities, read: you and me) to pay out millions in damages with no recourse. You can’t fire the bastards, because the arbitrators will simply force you to keep them.
When police officers start getting fired for repeated excessive force lawsuits, you’ll see that shit stop.
I don’t understand why investigating each incident at the very least as if it the perpetrator were a civilian is controversial. Of course, not the police investigating themselves, but a higher authority (state over municipal, federal over state).
But to say “Oh, Officer Wilson killed so-and-so? No need to look into it, after all, he’s a cop, and therefore everything he does is legal” is just a corrupt and broken way of “dealing” with these unfortunate incidents. Look at the evidence, go to trial, whatever it takes to see that justice is served.
The bottom line is there needs to be consequences. Every cop on every force in the country now knows he can get away with murder, after watching his compatriots get rewarded with paid vacations time after time. No matter what happens, we need incentives that align more along the lines of “If you as a cop unjustifiably harm a civilian you have sworn to serve and protect, there will be no mercy. You think the scum you arrest day in and day out have it bad in prison? Just wait.”
Police should be bound to a higher set of ethics than any other profession. It should be drilled into them at academy, and incorporated into their incentive structure at the very foundation. Beyond that, transparency should be mandatory in every government institution. But I won’t hold my breath.
This times a million.
Drug busts into houses for simple possession carried out by over-armed SWAT teams are completely ridiculous. Not to mention the “Oops, wrong house” cases, where the damaged or dead homeowner has no recourse.
In addition to dropping the war on drugs, it would be nice if something could be done about the prison-industrial complex and their influence on elections and public policy.
Body cameras, as said; and no tolerance for it being “accidentally” lost.
A government agency dedicated to overseeing, investigating and if necessary prosecuting the cops that is not composed of cops.
As said, drop the war on drugs.
Disarm the cops and the general populace as much as possible.
Your understanding is incorrect. It’s not at all unrealistic for a system to stay on all the time and keep the last few hours of video in storage (an hour standard-def TV quality video is a few hundred megabytes; these days 2GB is the smallest storage card you see on the market). Routine video gets purged after a few hours unless somebody saves it before then – failure to do so would be impossible to credibly explain away as simple carelessness.
I have often thought that it would be beneficial for police to spend a minimum of ten of their hours a week either in counseling or community service or both. With community service focused on getting to know the actual people they police.
When you deal with the worst of society every day of your life, it’s not surprising to me that you begin to view people outside of your group as bad. So I think that has to be counteracted.
But you might need to keep video longer than this. What if a cop roughed someone up, or otherwise overstepped his or her authority, and then sent the person on their way? Maybe the person doesn’t make it into the police station to file a complaint for a few days.
We need a way to store more than the last few hours of video. I think that at least a week’s worth should be accessible, and there should be a rule that any complaint or concern raised about a particular incident within that time period automatically triggers a mechanism whereby the video in question is saved and put aside until the issue is resolved.
We should install quota systems for minorities in our police force and these quotas should be higher than the national average of minorities by percentage
Great. Then we’ll have a bunch of incompetent minority officers in addition to the plethora of incompetent white ones. That will solve everything!
While i think that greater diversity in the police force would probably have some salutary effects if properly implemented, studies show that more diverse police forces are, in general, no more professional than majority-white forces, and are just as likely to infringe on the rights of citizens, even minority citizens. This is more of a cop problem than a race-of-the-cop problem.
Here’s a study from 2003, which focused on police killings, and noted that “measures of minority representation [on police forces] had no significant influence on levels of police violence.” The author argues that a better predictor of police violence is the size of the black community. Basically, cops see blacks as a threat, whether the cops are white, black, or whatever. This is especially true, he says, in larger cities (over 250,000 people).
In trying to explain the fact that more diverse police forces are no less violent, he offers the following:
Putting it rather crudely, if the way they train cops is to treat citizens—especially poor and minority citizens—like shit, then that’s what will happen, whatever color the cops’ skin might be.
There’s plenty of reform before we even get to inside the police department.
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We’ve created threats for the police to deal with via the war on drugs. Lots of money flowing through an illegal business produces violent, well equipped, criminal organizations. To deal with them we’ve militarized the police forces which skews training and experience towards use of force.
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No knock warrants. Every time a judge signs one it’s in effect saying heavily armed men are kicking in a door. Where’s the outrage about judges signing and prosecutors supporting these warrants when they are unnecessary or when the evidence is clearly too weak? Whether it’s legal challenges in the approval process for these warrants, or accountability mechanisms this should be addressed.
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Get tough on crime campaign slogans tend to sell with voters. That tends to put pressure on law enforcement to get bigger numbers or it raises the seriousness of charges/punishments making relatively small charges more worthy of resisting arrest. If you want less use of force as a voter you have to really dig in when a politician talks about making you safer. The how may be a way that increases use of force and increases the odds of mistakes.
Crossposting an idea from the other thread, an idea which I have no idea if it’s practical, which may have terrible unintended consequences, which may have already been tried:
Oops payments.
Yeah, sometimes I think it’s unavoidable that the cops, based on mistaken information, are going to give someone a massively crappy day. And I understand that if the cops are really awful in how they do that, they can be sued.
But what if there were an intermediate level? If the cops, based on good practice but faulty information, give you a crappy day, you’d be entitled to an Oops payment, or a reverse ticket.
These reverse tickets would be based on the severity of the terrible day they gave you. Did a cop stop and frisk you on the street, based on incorrect information or assumptions about you? Maybe we peg that at a $50 payment. Does a cop burst into your house, no guns drawn? That might be $250. Guns drawn? $500. Does the cop beat you down for no good reason? Medical bills plus $5,000.
These are of course totally out-of-my-ass amounts, but you get the idea. They should be low enough that nobody in their right mind will risk the inconvenience in order to get them (and of course someone who tries to get one will be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, fraud, or a new crime that specifically targets that behavior). They should be high enough that someone who is undergoing that terrible experience can be reminded of the Oops payment they’ll be due if the police action was unwarranted. They should be available only if the victim does not resist arrest (although I’m ambivalent about this, since it could provide an incentive for police to make up resisting-arrest actions; maybe it’s just that someone could simultaneously receive a payment AND be charged with resisting arrest, in those rare cases). And they shouldn’t be counted against a cop, unless the cop shows a pattern of behavior resulting in an outsized number of such payments, in which case that cop might need to re-examine her procedure manual.
Technically correct but still leaves gaping holes. It easy to know to keep video if you’ve escalated force. I’ve known too many law enforcement officers that had complaints and civil suits filed days later much to their surprise though. There’d likely still be many cases where complaints got filed that the video wasn’t saved… unless they just started saving everything. If it’s “impossible to credibly explain” how much video do you think the typical LEO save? I know I’d save every bit of video where I used a harsh voice, did a pat down, gave someone a ticket, etc.
And, if people go the extra mile and go beyond ‘Obedience and Respect’ — which inter alia sounds like the motto of a police training academy — helping the police, fawning on them, shopping their friends and neighbours, giving frequent little gifts, laughing at their jokes, and polishing their boots when meeting them, the percentage increases beyond the maximum; leading to not merely a lessening of random violence against such civilians but positive love and respect from the police to these people.
So you save, say, $100 worth of video per cop. Figure out how much time that is, and make it known that this much will be saved (let’s say for the sake of discussion it’s 40 hours; I’d guess it’d be more than that). If a complaint is filed within 5 days of an incident, the video will be preserved, and any lapse in preservation will be investigation with great suspicion. If someone files their complaint later, you treat it in the same way you would have treated it before bodycams became ubiquitous.
Edit: also, any incident in which a cop drew a weapon or used any force at all would be preserved for much longer, say, a year.
Smartphone apps that allow users to record police and stream the video immediately to the cloud (in case the cop takes/crushes the phone).