[chucksmash]

Thanks for sharing. It makes sense that moving from an opt-out model to an opt-in model changes who stays, who goes, and how they feel about it but I never would have thought of it that way.

Do you think there would be meaningful changes if the police moved to using terms of enlistment? I can imagine a hypothetical society where signing up to serve as a police officer/constable/whatever would be mostly something people did for a single term because they felt it was a civic duty, or maybe because it let them access govt-provided education benefits.

Nobody on the right or left is really at ease with the militarization of police forces in terms of equipment, tactics, and outlook towards the policed. Even those who support harsh policing implicitly support it as something to be used against other people; no sane person would choose to be on the receiving end of a pre-dawn, no-knock warrant themselves.

Given that, it'd be ironic if it was a different sort of militarization which improved the state of policing.

[watwatinthewat]

I honestly can't say I know if moving to opt-in would change police forces. I'd guess that military provisions of the GI Bill and training towards some tradecraft also help make the decision to leave easier. I wonder if there is something along those lines that could sweeten the deal to get people both in and out with less friction.

Just riffing now, let's say you add benefits the police officer can use after a term (versus only retirement type benefits that incentivize staying in) and some means of assistance into a new occupational field within the first term. It would seem the force also gets the added benefits of (1) more and a wider range of recruits, (2) workers who hate it have incentive to leave or at least don't feel/aren't trapped, and (3) just guessing, but I imagine the cost of the whole force goes down. Between a drop in average time in service of police officers due to more dropping out and fewer staying to retirement, the cost of the whole police force would drop. The new benefits' costs are an offset, though.

Edit: I wonder how an ROTC-type program would do. Make the rule police officers need a degree. That gets the level of officer up. The department pays for the four year degree and perhaps some living stipend, but you commit to an equal number of years on the force. As an office approaching end of that first term, you're making some new-ish public worker pay despite having a good Bachelor's degree (and no student loan debt). That gives incentive to leave.

Having to graduate first is a definite pro for the department, but it does run into problems if the recruit student fails a class, doesn't graduate, etc. Not sure how you deal with that. Maybe they work a lower level job for the department while in school to help offset that.

[netflixandkill]

It's not too hard to imagine what a national civil service equivalent of the GI Bill might look like, put in X years of service on multi-year enlistments with the same style of benefits and get sent where your discipline and training was needed.

It would have the side benefit of discouraging the phenomenon of people camping out in the same government job for decades, long after they stopped giving any sort of a shit.

It could even make use of the same training programs as the Army but the individuals would be under a civilian authority where-ever they were sent, and potentially even tied in with the military reserves and state guards.

Cities and counties might not even need to maintain their own expensive departments, union relations, and attendant pension problems if this was effectively handled at a state or national level. But aside from disintegrating ossified and diseased institutions, it also provides much more financial security to young people instead of pensioners.

[lenkite]

Do you really think that ordinary civilians will sign up for a term of enlistment as police where ~40-50 officers are shot and killed every year? (This only includes deaths by gunfire alone and not knifes/assaults/beatings). AFAIK more police officers got killed in active combat than American soldiers in the last couple of years.

You also need to work 70-80 hours in high stress situations.

[watwut]

Being cop is not all that dangerous job and most deaths are traffic accidents. This is trying to create a sense of it being something more dangerous then other occupations and it just is not.

There is also nothing fundamental about policing that would require 70-80 hours of work per week.

[heavyset_go]

Not only are most deaths traffic deaths, the next largest reason for deaths on the job are heart attacks, which are preventable with a proper diet and exercise.

[lenkite]

Please re-read - those figures are from deaths from hostile gunfire not traffic accidents. 89 officers died in the line of duty in 2019. Offenders used firearms to kill 44 of the 48 victim officers. Only Four officers were killed with vehicles used as weapons - the traffic accidents.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...

My apologies, your second statement is fundamentally false in a very deep way. There is no metropolitan city in the US where the police are not overworked.

But perhaps we have disconnect in meaning - what do you define by policing ? My definition is the maintenance of law and order. But I have observed that activists refer to it as simply keeping the peace. These are two fundamentally different things. Tyrants and Crime bosses keep the peace far more effectively than the police.

[watwut]

The "cops work 70-80 hours a week" thing is a policy choice. Nothing more nothing less. I agree that this has negative impact on policing, maybe more then it would be with other jobs. It makes it less effective just like any other person working 80 hours a week becomes exhausted and ineffective.

But, it is still a result of policy and culture, not something inherent to the task itself.

Given that overall cop deaths are not unusually high, no I have trouble to see that as some kind of super high risk occupation. Overall, being cop does not make me more likely to die and most of deaths are actual traffic accidents due to cops being in the traffic a lot.

Traffic is the primary danger for cops.

[heavyset_go]

Cops make a median salary of $105,100 a year before overtime and bonuses[1]. They can make over $250,000 a year with overtime[2].

Many cops want to work overtime, because they can make more than double what they do otherwise.

[1] https://www.nj.com/news/2017/05/how_much_is_the_median_cop_s...

[2] https://www.nj.com/somerset/2019/11/4-cops-in-this-nj-town-e...

[prirun]

I have heard of a scam with firefighters, and it wouldn't surprise me if police do a similar thing.

There are standards for how many firemen are required to be working: https://www.iaff.org/wp-content/uploads/Departments/Fire_EMS...

To increase their take-home pay, firemen call in sick on a coordinated, rotating schedule, and the minimum staff requirements force off-duty firemen to be called in to work and get paid overtime.

[eaandkw]

Back in the years from 2003 to around 2008 Iraq was very dangerous and hostile. You should check out the historical press releases from the DOD. The ones where the DOD announced the casualties. It was depressing. However, there were always people enlisting in the military and in fact the USMC and the Army expanded.

I think going to a term of enlistment would be a good think and would allow the police department to only retain the best. The default could be that the police department could only retain 50% of the first term police officers.