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I'm not an anarchist looking for the abolition of police as a concept.
But the institution of policing in America needs a Truth and Reconciliation commission. Complete top to bottom scrapping and rework. And a lot of pigs need to go to prison for a long time.
Start by removing Qualified Immunity.
While this is definitely needed, I don't think it's a starting point.
IMO, a good place to start is instituting policies requiring LEOs/PDs carry liability insurance. Similar to doctors and other medical practices (in the US). An officer is found guilty or misconduct or violating a citizen's right? Penalties are taken out of their insurance and their premium increases. Can't afford the premium? Guess who's looking for a new job?
The way I see, the pigs can keep their criminal immunity, but civil matters will have a more direct financial incentive for them to behave like they have morals.
Fight police with capitalism!
I mean, if it works, it works. We've addressed a lot of societal problems via liability-based approaches. ADA ramps and disability access come to mind. It's not a perfect solution, but it's often a lot more tractable than trying to change the culture of an entire industry or profession. Activists spent decades trying to persuade architects and building owners to make their spaces accessible. But they simply didn't want to change. Designing public buildings with ramps and elevators can have real drawbacks, both practically and aesthetically, and the building industry didn't want to change. Congress could have made it illegal to not have ramps, a misdemeanor or felony, but who is legally responsible for a non compliant school? And does this sound like a law police would spend a lot of time enforcing? Are they going to devote resources to cracking down on inaccessible buildings?
In the end, it was simply easier to empower disabled people to be their own advocates. Let them sue building owners who won't make their structures accessible. No need to convince a prosecutor or bureaucrat that disability access is worth their time. The people most affected can lead the charge instead.
Overall, the approach has worked quite well. While not perfect, it has radically changed the degree of accessibility for disabled people to public buildings and spaces.
That's another "market economy" solution.
Maybe start with the training. It's ridiculously short in the US compared to European countries where the training takes usually multiple years, before you're allowed to go on your own
Makes sense. Make them a liability that not even the most corrupt officials wouldn't want to help because it'd be too costly.
Police have unions (They function as professional organizations, but legally they are labor unions) largely to block legal changes like this. To defeat them, you'd need to somehow pass legislation on the state and federal level that mortally undermines the power of all labor unions in the USA. This would have knock-on effects for all US workers, as unions fight for and uphold labor protections that benefit those outside their ranks. For instance, two day weekends and 40 hour work weeks.
It seems clear to me that ending QE - Which is merely a judicial policy, it's not even law - Is by far the more potent, simple, and safe avenue of attack. But I'm interested in your thoughts on the above proverbial gun that police unions hold to the head of every US laborer.
No, you can have selective limits, tied to how much risk the job imposes on the surroundings (like universal regulation on any job requiring being armed). Unions are supposed to be about worker power against the employer, not against society.
Imagine a world where the top priority of the police team (not “force”) was to help and support the people. “Help” includes stopping confirmed bad guys but also includes finding the homeless a safe place to sleep.
Send all police trainees to social work school.
What a world that would be.
I think you're right but for the wrong reasons - I think it would be an absolute net positive effect but I still think the lines should be drawn between policing and social work and healthcare issues. Fair warning, I'm from the UK which has it's own issues with policing but nothing on the clusterfuck scale as it is across the pond.
Sending police officers (and ambulance staff, maybe even coastguard - in the civilian sense, not the American branch of the military) to do two or four weeks of social work attachment would work wonders. It would provide a great insight into the difficulties and behaviours of those in social or mental crisis, and give more soft tools to recognise and resolve issues.
That said, it shouldnt be policing agencies going to social work or mental health calls in the first place. People in crisis are often acting irrationally or unpredictably due to the very nature of the crisis they're experiencing, and when a lethal weapon is an optional available to the responders, then you'll have a less than spectacular outcome on occasions.
Ideally, additional funding should be centered around social work and mental health teams - perhaps having first responders for both so you don't have cops wading in with the best of intentions, and confronting something they aren't the best people to be dealing with - where a mental health ambulance or a social work rapid response team would bring a welfare call to a far safer conclusion.
I absolutely get that my view is very UK-skewed but if you keep putting armed cops into situations like that - then the public will get hurt, cops will get hurt, the taxpayer coughs up a fortune in legal costs .. all of which could fund better ways to respond to the homeless, the stressed, the neurodiverse, and other non-criminal issues that people phone in with good intentions.
Here in Portland, Oregon the city has a relatively new agency called Portland Street Response, tasked with responding to non-emergency calls located in public places. They have social work and related training, show up with a big van full of supplies, are unarmed, and trained in de-escalation. Sometimes if the call holds the possibility of escalating, they will show up with an armed police officer who's job is to be on the periphery if needed. The program has been wildly successful and popular, is expending, and it's largest most vocal opposition is... The Portland Police Bureau.
Part of what I would call the PSA - Public Service Agency, so named due to the consistency with Public Service Announcements - would be patrol vehicles (Ford Transit Connect, RIP) that are marked with attention grabbing (not camouflaged) vehicles that help citizens with daily public issues.
• Need some assistance / instructions on how to get unemployment or other public assistance? We got you covered.
• Need some basic first aid and / or a call for an EMT? We got you covered.
• Need some information about how to get jobs, update a resume, or understand your skill set? We got you covered.
We need to remove most of the police from the streets, and inject the streets with helpful people who want to improve the cities, and help to mitigate the issues that cause a rise in crime.
We need to build a system of citizen empowerment.
Aww man, you made me cry a little bit for what could be.
IMO finding the homeless a safe place to sleep shouldn't be the job of the police. You don't call the police when there's a fire, you call firefighters. You don't call the police when someone's injured, you call an ambulance. Why would law enforcers be involved in helping a homeless person find shelter?
Maybe in this case you could expand the scope a bit. Police are responsible for public safety, and it's unsafe to sleep on the streets. OTOH, policing is law enforcement, deterring and investigating crime, etc. Homeless people are often committing crimes, either trespassing, loitering, using drugs, etc. It would almost certainly be better for them to be helped by someone who doesn't care about that part, and just wants them to get a safe place to sleep and a warm, healthy meal.
Instead of giving more jobs to police, shrink the police budget and hire new people to do those non-policing jobs.
We had that in our European country and it was pretty amazing. Police corruption dropped a shit ton as they were not above the law anymore.
Also get rid of the police Union as it currently is because apparently it is a major reason for a lot of the systemic issues being faced.
I have no problem with unions per-se, but when police officers break rules, they need to be held accountable and that simply doesn't happen most of the time because of the unions and even when held accountable, it's a slap on the hand and worst case, work in the city next door.
You've also got to demilitarise the police. End 1033 and claw back every iota of military gear. End killology training. Fund social workers to replace many of their duties. Etc etc etc too many things to name. It's so bad that anything approaching adequate reform sounds insanely radical
I can’t recall if it was in the Behind the Police miniseries or a more regular Behind the Bastards episode, but there was a breakdown of how even once you’ve completed the police academy, you have to train for a year (IIRC) under a training officer, and if the TO thinks you’re not cut out for the force, you are not permanently hired, and other forces will probably not give you a chance. TOs, by the bye, are typically drawn from officers who have been taken off normal duty due to numerous complaints, like the ones made by people who have been harassed or assaulted by cops.
It’s not just the academy, the whole system selects for bastards.
I had a friend who went through a whole arc of wanting to be a cop. She had pretty much an identical experience I had to squint at the name and photo to be sure this wasn't a post she had made.
Being a woman was a huge setback from the get-go anyway, casual police brutality training notwithstanding.
She never quite got my criticism of wanting to be a cop (She wanted to fix policing by example) nor my lack of surprise when she spent a year wasting her time being tested and strung along by cops who were never going to hire her. (You have a master's degree FFS! You're not what they're looking for!)
(She wanted to fix policing by example)
Might be possible to whistleblow against one corrupt officer if you play dumb until getting hired? Which would be an acceptable use of time for some, though perhaps (or “super likely”, w/e) activism elsewhere has greater ROI
Edit: hey scale this up. Every Lemming plays dumb and gets hired. We each report one rotten apple. Wouldn’t this at least annoy some sleaze out there and cause a very slight delay as they reshuffle their cops?
(Obvy you need a despicable crime on video and luck etc)
We had this in our local, small town police department. Female police officer spoke up and blew the whistle on somebody that was accepting BJ's to let tickets slide.
The department "downsized", let her go, then re-upsized to hire a different person back. Then they said her allegations were just in retaliation for being let go. Then she sued for wrongful termination and I THINK she ended up winning.
I might have some of the details mixed up cause this was all going down JUST as I was moving into the town.
I went to a technical college that had a police training program. Technical colleges sometimes have the reputation of being glorified high schools. That's mostly unfair, but there were three guys in some of my classes who were determined to make it that way. Give you one guess as to what program they were in.
I wouldn't trust those three to be security guards at a shopping mall.
They also don't want people who are too smart:
9/8/2000 (!)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
I remember hearing this. Seems the smarter you are, the more likely you are of realizing something doesn't seem right and chances of quitting increase.
Meanwhile they also teach them next to nothing about, nor verify their understanding of the laws they will be tasked with enforcing, and many absolutely do not understand the law at all.
Remember that's police sued to be able to discriminate against people with high iqs
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
And sued to not be required protect people.
ACAB.
I've been told that my only job is to go home at night.
And yet simply withdrawing from a benign situation rather than escalating it to the point of violence seems to be beyond their grasp.
Or maybe deescalate, like police forces in other countries do.
Apparently, when women first started as police officers, in the UK, they were paired up with male officers. The logic being that the man can provide muscle, if needed.
It's now been found that 2 women officers are far more effective, particularly with drunk men. A male officer can restrain them. A female officer can talk them into coming quietly.
Oh, and the UK police were the first to "raise concerns" when the government suggested arming beat officers with guns. They did NOT want to be armed.
Basically, it's perfectly possible to police primarily by consent, and get the job done.
Another example of why there are no good cops.
because good ones never get the chance to be good.
pretty sure i read somewhere that if you excel in the academic portion of the academy youre disqualified for being too smart under the guise of some other excuse. critical thinking isnt something they want in the force.
They do this with teachers too, selecting only the subservient and weeding out the critical thinkers.
Which is why I will continue to tell people to ensure that the police et al (including ICE) don't get to go home at night, if they get in the way of democracy.
Meanwhile they also teach them next to nothing about, nor verify their understanding of the laws they will be tasked with enforcing, and many absolutely do not understand the law at all.
If your only job is to go home at night, clock in, go home, clock out again later. If you think about it, by deliberately not doing your job as a cop, fewer people are getting killed.
Nothing surprising here. Violent enforcers of capital descended from slave patrols.