police reform ideas anybody?

prosecuted. It's only in civil suits. If there's no prosecution, there's no need for QI, and many, many crimes by cops don't get anywhere near prosecution.

Have QI.

Make them carry individual policies, just like doctors do.

There are accidents.
And then there is poor training, poor self restraint, poor judgment, and flat racist phucks.

Commit police brutality? Your rates go up. Not the Blue Line's, yours.

You have to make doing their job wrong hurt. Right now, it doesn't hurt. Oh no, they got desk duty. Oh no, the taxpayers managed the settlement. Oh no, you have to retire with a full pension.

These aren't penalties.

Outside of the most egregious, we don't see nearly as many criminal penalties as we should.

Their fuck-ups have to hurt.

That you don’t kill someone.

Frankly, the problem starts at the start.

Training in de-escalation, in finding solutions that don't involve violence...too many of them seem to go to violence as their first instinct.

Mandatory continuous counselling. Policing is a stressful job, they should have an ongoing relationship with a therapist or counselor to help in dealing with it in positive ways (this could also reduce domestic and substance abuse).

Test for steroid use.

There is so much we could do, maybe hire smarter people, that would help too.

VIDEOS of the training, so we are SURE they are trained RIGHT!! Hold the trainer RESPONSIBLE!!

I say "was" because she has resigned from the police forcei

Like the child abuse registry. You can’t get hired to mop the floors in a PA school district without 3 background checks - criminal, child abuse and FBI. LE should be no different. This would also prevent bad cops from just moving to the next town.

I mean, it's not the Catholic Church, for God's sake.

yet most will never, thankfully, ever pull their gun. They will spend hours and hours trying to deescalate situations but get very, very little training in the skills needed to do that effectively. I think the biggest advantage to a heavy focus on gaining those skills is two fold. They will be better police officers and the training is diametrically opposed to the militaristic slant that seems to be prevalent. I think most bad cops would wash out of that type of training if conducted rigorously enough.

And while we’re living in a fantasyland with no basis in reality whatsoever, can we also magically abolish other things like cancer and the Kardashians?

Because that would be great.

the police had been effectively helpful or saved a single situation I might find them essential. In the case of protests they turn them into police riots, in the case of robbery unless it is very high dollar amount you can report the incident on the web, in the case of a violent crime they will help hold the body bag open while paramedics shove in the corpse. For reasons not particularly well described you seem to think there is a reason for the police to exist i do not.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215331390

took the money we spend on police and correctional facilities and divided it among the citizens who were living below the poverty line, they would be a huge drop in crime.

Outside investigator every 3 to 6 months?

That would be a great start. Get revenue through other means that don't involve flashing a gun at unarmed drivers.

There are already red light cameras out there, and technology to photograph license plates on toll roads and bridges, and speed sensors on interstates, and speed gun radar. Southern California had an ultra light and "flying piggers" patrolling I-5 by aircraft.

Traffic stops =/= death sentences or executions.

Expired tags? Fix it tickets? These are not even moving violations. Let the parking enforcement officer issue these tickets. Tail light out? take the plate, notify the DMV, and let the DMV notify the driver by mail.

We need to rethink and restructure how community services, policing being just one piece, along with mental health care, counseling, fire, EMTs, community health care, and administrative licensing services.

Something like expired tags? Take a dash cam pic and send a ticket in the mail. It's not like we don't have the technology.

Speeding, reckless driving, DUI, etc. There are times where we want to pull people over. DUI is obvious. But speeding also because, "Hey, we're watching you. Slow down."

But broken tail light, etc. Just mail the damn ticket.

It should include illegal drugs, steroids, prescription drugs like anti depressants and alcohol.

Then a full length video of the all the departments interviews with the officer(s) involved.

This seems to be what is afforded their victims. Why not the LEO?

There is a psychological problem called "compassion fatigue." In essence, it is a form of PTSD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue

You stick these guys out on the street dealing every day with domestic disputes, casualties, criminals, sovereign citizens and the like, and it's eventually going to get to them. Then add in people wanting to sue them for the slightest misstep (police brutality does not count as a slight misstep), hang a camera around their necks so every word they speak and every thing they do can be torn apart by Internal Affairs, and have civilians like you and I think of more and more awful things to do to cops if they cross the line even a millimeter...from what I can tell, Derek Chauvin was a decent officer the first few years of his career. And then after about 10 years (he joined the force in 2001) he became what he is now.

This is going to take A LOT more cops, and you know in our "tax cuts fix everything" society that will never happen, but do this: There are a lot of jobs that cops can do - and not just in the police force. Once an officer has been certified and has passed probation, have the officer serve the police force for two years then rotate the officer to a job that has nothing to do with policing for a year. And by that I don't mean "give the guy the shittiest job we can think of." It could even be a private sector job, as long as it isn't a security officer job - that's policing. Government subsidies can be used to bring the officer's pay up to his or her police department pay level if the other job pays less than policing because we don't need to trade the officer's worries and stresses about policing for worries and stresses about paying their bills.

Once the officer comes back to the force, a one-month refresher course will be in order before they resume their police duties.

A year away from all the crap cops are faced with will do them a LOT of good.

Good ideas!

and they spend their time 50/50 being cops and fire fighters. This costs more in training, but when emergencies arise, you can instantly have twice as many cops or fire fighters.

And crisis managers.

I watch some of these cases and think, if I were assigned to deal with these cases, "Yeah, so, my vacation in Barbados starts that week. If you want to assign anyone else . . ."

I see someone like Chauvin, for example, and I couldn't unpack that one even if it were a two week cruise.

Part of the job is to read people really well. It's more art than science. It requires a lot of empathy. I was a really good social worker because I could read people and situations very quickly. You get a sense for it.

So, seeing what I have seen of Chauvin, there's a deep lack of empathy. He genuinely believes he did nothing wrong. And his justifications are piled higher than Babel. You'll never convince him he did wrong. When he's convicted, he's going to blame politics for it. And he'll do so in an unironic racist way, I imagine.

Then there's the Daunte Wright case. It was so obviously a fuck up, the officer was so clearly horrified. It pisses me off a bit to see people really pressing that she did it on purpose. It's so obviously not.

It's important we set the monsters aside from the fools.

Part of that would be putting expired tags in the purview of people that don't carry guns.

Just saying!

which you liked above, is defunding the police. Just saying.

Is what i'm saying. We can do the above but NOT use THIS term.

I keep seeing people say things like, "England doesn't have armed police in many cases!" Yeah, because England doesn't have an armed populace in general.

And it has to do with training. There's an infamous video that cadets are shown during training. You can find it on YouTube. It's a routine traffic stop. The patrolman approaches. He's friendly, affable, just doing his job. Then the driver grabs a gun from his truck and shoots the cop. The last few minutes of the dash cam are just listening to the last, desperate, rattled breaths of a highway officer who didn't assume a threat.

Imagine what that does to psychology.

Everything and everyone is a potential threat. Everyone is potentially armed. And so, our police are armed.

This all has roots in our 2nd Amendment problems. Say "2nd Amendment" and "racism" aloud, and you've just identified, like, 90% of our policing issues.

The whole concept of policing has gotten out of control. I've listened to segments of the Chauvin trial where senior officers have said what happened to George Floyd was not condoned police policy. If it's not policy then it has to be the men and women in uniform--the way they're trained, the bigotry and white supremacy brewing hot within the ranks, the idea that maintaining the status quo is good enough.

It's not.

Certainly qualified immunity needs to be kicked to the curb. Make officers personally accountable for their actions. Police Unions need to be stripped of the ridiculous power they've exerted over clearly dysfunctional/violent behavior and the societal damage and death that that power has wrought. Militarized policing is a grotesque abuse of power on all levels; private property seizure is another abuse.

I'm still against using slogans like Defund the Police because the slogan has been used and will continually be used to block any and all change through basic fear-mongering and propaganda. We need a different message. But if we do not get a handle on the issue itself, reinvent the idea of policing from the inside out, then our society itself will blow up. With good reason.

It must stop. Yesterday.

We give police officers an extraordinary level of authority. The converse of authority is responsibility and accountability. That happens best in a transparent environment.

#1. Any uniformed police officer on duty may be videotaped or recorded by anyone. Sorry, if you want privacy, find another line of work.

#2. In each county, there needs to be standing jury, NOT under the control of the D.A., that investigates allegations of police abuse or corruption. This jury should be supervised by a judge and must have the power to subpoena documents and witnesses, and deliver indictments. The county/city DA works hand-in-glove with the police and long experience has shown that they are reluctant to threaten that relationship.

#3. End qualified immunity. Any act by a police officer outside of the written department policy is not covered. The officer is personally and criminally liable.

#4. Much of the work that police departments do is better handled by social workers and conflict negotiators. Reduce the number of armed officers and put that money in the hands of social workers who are enormously better trained to do it.

#5. Throw away about half of the motor vehicle code, that is, the half that is in there that gives police cause to pull people over for what amount to minor equipment issues.

#6. Make it illegal for a police department to hire as a police officer anyone who has been fired from a job as a police officer.

#7. The vast majority of police should not carry sidearms. (Yes: most Americans will not like this idea; I will point out there is a first world nation that does not arm the vast majority of its officers.)

There are other good ideas out there. A good dictum is: a policeman's job is easy only in a police state.

J.

should be a disqualifier, not a qualification. We need to demilitarize the police.

I agree with you as it should disqualify them from police force. Maybe a security profession would be a better match for them. Somehow i agree that maybe some of the soldiers might have some PTSD, which could cause major problems in the police dept.

1. We the tax payer would no longer be on the hook for their misdeeds
2. Cops would soon find policing their own quite easy knowing the bad cop is f..king with his pension