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by kelnos
1052 days ago
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> * I think a lot of police would leave their jobs (or less people would join the police force in the future) without qualified immunity* I'd rather have fewer police, even if that makes them dangerously understaffed, than the current situation where cops have very little accountability, and are unlikely to be punished when they break the law when interacting with non-cops. Qualified immunity needs to go. Not just because it's a bad doctrine, but also because there's no basis for it in law; courts have just made it up with little legal justification. > Or, to make everything a lot easier, just give every cop a bodycam and ~80% of the ambiguity disappears. Body cameras are much less useful than we'd all like to believe. I think 80% is too optimistic. Cops can turn off the camera (or, "weird, it wasn't working"), and regular physical motion can easily blur the scene and make it impossible to know what's truly going on. I think cops should be required to wear them (and be auto-punished for turning them off), but I don't think they're the panacea many people think they are. |
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Given other societal forces (i.e. decreasing mental health care for those with the greatest need, since about the Reagan era), in my understanding we rely on cops to hold together denser areas. If policing were to substantially decrease, I'd want to be as suburban/rural as possible (whereas currently I'd like to be more urban). I might be in favor of less policing if it came after we had better services for the homeless & mentally ill.
Not claiming my viewpoint is morally or practically correct, only trying to give a better view of my perspective. I'm sure views on the police differ greatly by group membership (I am likely biased by police having low suspicion of me by default; I am also ~never going to "win" a physical interaction without backup.)
Could you expand on where & why we differ?