Why the sarcasm? Someone does a bad job, get rid of them. How do you imagine cop culture will change? By letting them get away with everything and sticking your head into the sand?
Ah and before you answer: most of use who are not in the US live in places where police misconduct is much less of an problem, so obviously it can work better. The entire German police force fires less bullets during their patrols and missions in a year than e.g. the NYC police force alone. Sometimes single cops in the US fire more bullets alone than the entire German police force. This is even hard to compare, because the Germans have numbers for every bullet fired at a person during service, bullets fired for warning shots, bullets that hit, bullets that did not etc. That data is wildly mixed and unreliable in the US depending on the state.
If you want to have a police force you can trust they must not be above the law and the law must be even stricter, the standards even higher for them than for the rest of the population. That means longer and better education and training, knowing the law, but also strict measures when police officers break the rules or there is even just the slightest doubt about their version of events.
In many police departments in the US the problem is essentially that there are so many bad apples that every good apple that comes is spoiled or cannot do good. This can only be changed be decisive action from the top.
In many police departments in the US the problem is essentially that there are so many bad apples that every good apple that comes is spoiled or cannot do good. This can only be changed be decisive action from the top.
How many bad apples does it take, to spoil the whole barrel?
I'm not disagreeing with the comment I'm replying to, just trying to challenge the perception that there's anything ok with "just" a few bad apples. The acceptable number of bad apples is zero.
This is obviously idealistic and impossible in the real world (given the size of a police force). What is needed is a system that gets rid of bad apples with time, instead of letting them thrive and corrupting other apples.
The problem with getting rid of bad apples with time is the amount of damage even one bad police officer can do given half a chance, and even if they are punished for what they did it would not erase the bad things they have done. Policing violations are often violent and the effects long lasting.
This is an industry where you can murder someone, get paid leave for it, eventually let go without losing retirement benefits, and then get hired the next county over.
How many bad apples does it take, to spoil the whole barrel?
It doesn't just take apples, it takes time. If you remove the bad apple as soon as possible, the rest of the barrel can still be fresh and healthy. If you leave it to rot, you spoil the entire batch.
What I meant by that is that any police department should be able to handle one officer that falls out of line. One person that has an impedance mismatch with the general culture of an organization should never be an issue. We all know that from our work places: one highly motivated guy won't change the lazy majority, one lazy guy won't change the highly motivated majority etc. If you have one such person in your organisation the rest of the organsation will either work around it, or try to contain/get rid of that person. This self-correction works only up to a certain fraction however.
Where that cutoff percentage is, depends on the single organisation and the individuals within it. But I believe that in this case it is a combination of police culture ("we always did it that way, we need to protect our own") and systemic incentives ("if we hide bad behaviour we look better than if we expose it") are the key to understanding this.
They do handle cops that fall out of line, but falling out of line in this case means turning in bad cops. The good cops get pushed out and sometimes even murdered
Should we defund and abolish public schools since more than zero teachers are child molesters? Should we defund and abolish fire departments since more than zero firefighters are arsonists?
I think we should get into the habit of changing leadership on the basis of results alone. So a serious incident would result in the commander being reassigned or demoted. And leadership would be held directly accountable for events regardless of their own culpability.
Correct, but also many German police are associated with hard right-wing / Nazi adjacent political beliefs.
These are deep rooted issues that are not as easily quantified and discouraged. Reducing gun misuse is one thing, but reducing police discrimination, selective policing, and misconduct is a much larger ball of wax.
And in Norway the police had to be told to quit strip searches, "squat and cough", searching homes, and other invasive practices just for catching someone with a joint. They have never been allowed to use means so disproportional to the crime like this, but have been for years.
And people think that they need those means (which they never had) "back."
Also institutional racism and all the other shit that's true for most police across the world.
The police in Germany burned Oury Jalloh to death (or burned his corpse after he died in police custody) and every officer involved got away with it.
The German government decided there doesn't need to be an external investigation into police violence because the police can be trusted to have correctly investigated itself finding that police violence is not a problem.
The NRW state minister of the interior abolished ID badges for riot police, then insisted that there had been no evidence of misconduct during police riots because no individual officers (wearing full helmets and no individually identifying features) had ever been charged despite video evidence of excessive use of force.
Demonstrators hospitalized due to police violence routinely receive police visits in hospital because their injuries are taken as evidence of resisting arrest as all police violence is presumed to be justified.
The NRW police literally used the energy company's transport vehicles to detain and transport arrested demonstrators during the raid on Lützerath, where the police was explicitly instructed to show full force to deter future protests at similar sites.
Police officers were found to be part of a neo-nazi group called Combat18 (18 = Adolf Hitler) that had maintained kill lists using police records and a stash of assault weapons and body bags.
Losing your job is disrupting to anyone. Having the entire previous department fired as an example should be a deterrent. Anyone taking the job knows that they're under a microscope.
Firing cops is a step. Replacing cops with the same breed of cops with no difference in training is just a show.
The fired cops will just get jobs in other departments. Cops won't be better trained, procedures that lead to this won't be changed. No real change is going to happen.
Firing cops at this point is just theater. It isn't trying, it is honestly just more of the same. It isn't likely that they fire the entire department either, and it will do nothing to take care of the folks that were elected in (sherriff and prosecutor, for example).
What changes in training do you think would have prevented this? Do you think the cops didn't know that it was wrong for them to use home invasions to intimidate critics?
>it will do nothing to take care of the folks that were elected in (sherriff and prosecutor, for example).
I won't deny that rot starts at the top, but part of that rot is never firing misbehaving employees. You emphasise training, I emphasise learning, and the only way to learn is not fiddling around with the curriculum, it's not giving cops an extra year of training. What helps people learn is bad cops fucking around and finding out.
You can give people as much training as you want, but if they see other cops getting away with this gang nonsense, they will learn that you can do that and nothing bad will come of it.
If we assume there was a criminal conspiracy among the police to knowingly use fabricated evidence, then the issue is not so much with training (through an ethics class might help). The main issue would be structural in the police organization that allowed a criminal conspiracy to exist, and a significant lack of effective regulations.
No matter how good a person you start out as, when you enter an environment where
- A large percentage of the people are already bad
- Anyone who pushes back against bad behavior is shunned, fired, or left "without backup" in bad situations
- There are no repercussions for bad behavior
- There are positive reinforcements for bad behavior
Eventually, you're either going to be driven out, or you're going to turn. So wiping the place clean and starting from scratch, while drastic (and _certainly not appropriate everywhere) can be a valid approach when the problem is rampant across the entire department.
As parent points out, there is a difference in training: the previous department would've been fired in its entirety. That's a fairly impactful piece of training.
Agreed, but don't expect any big change until they completely rethink the selection methods adding deep psychological profiling. Albeit to a different degree, this happens in many countries as well, including mine, and having known several officers I'm sure it's related to the lack of proper selection: they very often hire people who apply because they "need" to wear an uniform and exercise power over others, then they give them some sort of immunity, which can only lead to disasters.
Eh. Maybe? I personally want to say it has something to do with Douglas Adams principle of power:
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
I will use myself as an example. I absolutely do not want to be a cop despite having a relatively strong moral compass, because I know for a fact that I will agonize over small things and believe most excuses thrown at me. More than that, I do not think taxpayers would want me to be a cop, because I am lenient ( which also why I did not really enjoy having a position of authority in my previous job ). I mostly assume everyone will do what has to be done.
And sadly, that is not nor has ever been the case. Uniform is just a symbol of that power.
As long as we also make sure people aren't driven to violent crime under threat of starvation and loss of home, I am all for it. Police won't protect us from the pathologic thiefs and murderers anyway. Those have installed it.
Last time I had to call cops was when two drunk people started brawling in a bus. One fell asleep and the second, driven to desperate acts by prolonged homelessness tried to steal his phone. In the end, the victim decided that the best course of action after reclaiming his phone was to kick now lying down thief until satisfied.
I and another passenger have stepped in, restrained the aggressive phone owner. We have gotten 4 of us out of the bus. We told the phone owner repeatedly to verify that his phone is OK, in order for him to realize that no harm has been done. We have talked him down. He was still inclined to (way less fervently) take revenge. I had to choose between getting confrontational and sending him home to sleep it off "or else" and calling the cops. Since the first option would put me at risk of being caught breaking the law, I had to call cops.
Cops came in sirens blazing, 3 cars, acting all high and mighty. "Your IDs" and shit. In the end, the phone owner has not even been told not to kick other people. The homeless person has not been checked by a medical professional. He was drunk, might have had some ribs broken, but none of those 7 "public servants" bothered to check. I asked if they were at least giving him a lift to wherever he was residing. "We are not taxi."
This can quickly turn very political so without me assuming, would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on that proposal? How do you see it work out in practice and what would be your plan for the day after?
Ah and before you answer: most of use who are not in the US live in places where police misconduct is much less of an problem, so obviously it can work better. The entire German police force fires less bullets during their patrols and missions in a year than e.g. the NYC police force alone. Sometimes single cops in the US fire more bullets alone than the entire German police force. This is even hard to compare, because the Germans have numbers for every bullet fired at a person during service, bullets fired for warning shots, bullets that hit, bullets that did not etc. That data is wildly mixed and unreliable in the US depending on the state.
If you want to have a police force you can trust they must not be above the law and the law must be even stricter, the standards even higher for them than for the rest of the population. That means longer and better education and training, knowing the law, but also strict measures when police officers break the rules or there is even just the slightest doubt about their version of events.
In many police departments in the US the problem is essentially that there are so many bad apples that every good apple that comes is spoiled or cannot do good. This can only be changed be decisive action from the top.