I think this is underscores the biggest issue. Mistakes are made by these power-hungry ignorant police officers, usually due to their fragile ego, and then they face little consequences. Someone sues and gets a nice settlement. Nothing changes. Taxpayers are taking the brunt instead of the police officer. The offending officer will likely get a slap on the wrist, or if it's a really bad mistake that went viral they might choose an early, comfortable retirement. In order for change to happen, police officers need to be held accountable for their actions. Not sure how to implement that but I think that would result in police officers being much more careful about their conduct.
I struggle with labeling them mistakes. They aren't 'mistakes' as in 'oopsie', they are cops prioritizing their pride and ego over their responsibilities. When this happens as frequently as it does, it is not a mistake. Ignorance and fragile ego is not a mistake...they are a choice. Just as someone who is prosecuted in this country for stealing food to survive is treated as making a choice, not a 'mistake'.
Where I disagree with the more recent discussion of police brutality is this idea that they should be financially responsible instead of tax payers.
Taxpayers should be responsible. These are people hired by the state for purposes defined by elected officials. We, the voters/taxpayers should bear financial responsibility for their actions...we should bear the financial responsibility for any actions done by government responsibility because they are done in our name. However, financial penalties are not justice. These cops should not be financially penalized, they should be criminally charged because they are committing crimes. If it isn't a crime, that is something that should be fixed. That should be the norm not a rarity. The criminal justice system is our method of accountability for citizens, it should especially be the system of accountability for them. If that fails, the answer isn't the financial accountability.
It isn't completely irrational to say 'you acted outside of the norms of the justice system as an officer entrusted with its authority, therefore you are not entitled to its protections'. As a strawman, if vigilantes handled violence committed by police officers do you think excessive violence by police would stop? It would be an ugly but interesting experiment.
It's going to be hard to tie financial responsibility to individual officers in a way that doesn't ultimately come back to tax dollars anyway.
Most likely if you hold officers financially responsible as a rule, they'll take out errors and omissions policies. Salaries may be raised to pay for premiums, but either way it's tax payer money. The insured pool would probably be police officers from a wider area, but still tax payer money. So if you ended up getting a claim paid by insurance, it's just coming from a wider pool of tax payers.
If you only allowed people to be a police officer if they were wealthy enough to pay a judgement, that would be pretty gross.
If you force officers to carry malpractice insurance, the city only pays the base premium for a spotless record to the officers (collectively negotiated by the union most likely), anything extra is supposed to come out of their pockets. The insurance would probably disqualify gross negligence too, so police officers as a whole would have to be a lot more careful.
It is far from an ideal solution but it should help start getting the ball rolling towards a more professional and transparent police force.
You are talking about a solution that might work[0]. But the issue is not that this solution has not been tried, rather no solutions are being tried because the police simply refuse to allow any potential solutions.
Most workers in the US are not protected by unions, the police are a stark exception to this. Their union contracts not only protect them as workers, they ensure protections that people absolutely would not believe, such as mandatory cooling off periods before police can be interviewed when charged with misconduct.
Even if the rules were nearly even for police and non-police the issue remains that most enforcement would have to come from their peers (other police or DAs, even other enforcement officers at state and federal agencies will see themselves on the same team). They don’t want to subject one of their own to the criminal justice system because they know how cruel and damaging it is.
[0] It actually won’t work though:
- Taxpayers with police forces that actually avoid incidents that would pay out will still have to pay the insurance tax
- Incidents of gross civil rights violations (such as intentionally arresting or killing someone when it was not warranted) are so injurious that nobody will insure the police forces that actually need it
- In the interim we may see one of the worst possible outcomes: a police understanding that violations are simply a dollars and cents issue
This is the most free-market approach to resolving police brutality that I've seen so far. With no ideal solutions sometimes the pragmatic ones are the best.
The problem is who enforces the law for the enforcers?
With actual financial incentives on the line (their insurance premiums and their jobs) we may see natural behavior change without having to build out a new enforcement apparatus that could be subject to the same abuse as the current one.
I think the only real catching point is that the courts don't care about rights nor are police willing to really investigate claims against another officer. I have some very recent/on-going experience with this. There was a trooper who knowingly held a false charge against us, leading to restrictions in our freedoms and small costs. I contacted a civil rights attorney who told me the courts don't care unless we sustained significant costs/damages. Recovering costs would be great, but we would mostly like to see protections put into place so this doesn't happen to others (and maybe get this bad trooper removed). I filed one successful complaint against him. Then he took further actions and I filed another complaint. That complaint was closed without any investigation or justification - they didn't even tell me they were closing it.
I like it. Even if unions decide to start covering costs bad officers will get expensive quick. Free market will force out bad officers.
We need to stop punting the cost of this to faceless entities like the state and allow the officers themselves to be sued and the free market will do the rest.
There's probably a pretty large constituency willing to give money to bad cops' crowdfunding campaigns. Free market works both ways- lots of people would be happy to subsidize this sort of behavior as long as they can be convinced the cops are being "canceled" by "antifa" or whatever.
Even if that's the case, better those people pay for the crimes, than everyone via taxes. And, civil suits are one thing but criminal liability should be a thing too. Can't just pay that off.
No, the region that employs and directs a police officer who ends up violating civil rights must absolutely be responsible for civil remedy (money), the issue is simply that police largely will never be charged for their criminal liability.
If someone is wrongly imprisoned, injured or killed the financial remedy must not stop at the individual officer’s net worth / insurance coverage maximum or be subject to potential coverage gaps.
Additionally, everyone will still pay the cost through taxes, but now an insurance company will try to turn a profit on it and those living in regions with “good cops” will be subject to the tax as well.
If there is no case to be made in defending a cop, nobody wants to make it. But then it isn't a story, because it's only a story if it's a controversy.
That creates the impression that many people are defending all of these bad cops in the clear cases, when they're really only defending them in the controversial cases.
The point is that uncontroversial (i.e. the cop was definitely in the wrong and basically everybody agrees) cases exist, but nobody talks about them because there is no controversy because there is nobody prominent to argue the other side because it's indefensible.
And a system where the cops in those cases end up with unaffordable "malpractice" premiums and have to quit would be a benefit.
The base premium would be the cost of covering the typical available hire, not the cost of covering someone with several years of low cost behavior.
Compare to credit reporting where everyone starts with a decent provisional score and then the cost of borrowing goes down if you demonstrate the correct risk/reward behavior.
I think the problem with this proposal is the us vs them mentality of police departments. I would expect that cops will continue to close ranks around the bad cops, and use these insurance claims as a tool against those that don't.
> If you force officers to carry malpractice insurance...
With all respect, this sounds like an awful idea. Doctors have malpractice insurance because their field is an outlier in many ways. In almost every other profession, people who mess up get fired, not fined, and it works pretty well.
Given that that is largely not the case with police officers, it seems like we should try what works everywhere else before we try the one-off exception we've carved out for medicine.
Downvoters, what am I missing? I'm not saying cops shouldn't be held accountable, I'm saying malpractice is a convoluted way to go about it. The default method (getting fired when you screw up) isn't really done effectively today; while it might be hard to implement, developing some equivalent to malpractice for cops, and making it stick, sounds an order of magnitude harder.
> It's going to be hard to tie financial responsibility to individual officers in a way that doesn't ultimately come back to tax dollars anyway.
Why not just deduct all lawsuits and other costs from the collective pension fund for police departments? This seems like a trivial problem to solve (I mean assuming the goal were to solve it, and not increase police power while minimizing accountability). Once the police have to start paying for their own fuckups, I think they will quickly turn on each other. And in the event they decide to double down and hide it collectively, they risk losing the pension fund for the entire police department (obviously depends on the court settlement). At least they'll have skin in the game for their corruption.
So good cops who have never done anything wrong and never looked the other way or covered up for their coworkers would lose their pension?
Communal punishment is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. While those clearly do not apply in the situation you propose, it may be an interesting datapoint for considering its fairness.
> So good cops who have never done anything wrong and never looked the other way or covered up for their coworkers would lose their pension?
Absolutely, and that's a great change. Currently, 'good' cops are incentivised to cover up for their bad brethren due to institutional pressures (see: 'good' cops getting bullied out of the force). If instead the culture incentivised speaking out against bad actors because suddenly it affected the majority, maybe we'd see the necessary change.
My work bonus depends 50% on the company's performance and 50% on my own personal performance, and the company performance is measured partially by our safety figures. When other people in the company injure themselves, my bonus drops because the company safety performance drops. I'm incentivised to improve the safety culture in general and enable others to be safe, rather than just my own personal performance.
It's an entirely acceptable approach, because you're supposed to be part of a team. I don't see a difference with the pension example.
> So good cops who have never done anything wrong and never looked the other way or covered up for their coworkers would lose their pension?
100%, not even a second thought. We need reform, not excuses. Why do cops even get a pension in the first place? It should be a reward, not an entitlement. And it should only be rewarded if the entire department does its job, not an individual officer. They serve the community, and if the community is not served they should not be set for life.
To be clear here, the bar is "don't break the law." This isn't some extraordinary standard we're expecting them to adhere to. In fact, we're only trying to hold them to the same standards they hold everybody else to.
> In fact, we're only trying to hold them to the same standards they hold everybody else to.
Then convict them. You can't? Fix that. Why this convoluted scheme that punishes unrelated people? You say you want the same standards to apply to the police but on the other hand you accept that they can never be punished directly and their colleages must be fined instead. That's crazy inconsistent, those are not at all the standards that normal people are held to.
So this whole "we should hold them to the same standards" thing is a sham. You've given up, oh no, it's just too hard. We'll claim to hold them to the same standards because it has a nice ring to it, and then do something else entirely.
I think you have no idea what you're talking about, and are simply regurgitating "your solution isn't perfect therefore it's horrible."
Please take some effort to understand what the problem is, because it's painfully obvious to me you do not. If I had to guess, you're not even from the United States. I say that solely based on how completely disconnected from this problem you appear to be.
You have to make the consequences of non-compliance greater than the coverup.
Make a lien on the pension which forces the old guard to feel uncomfortable and request department changes.
Make this occur for the slightest infractions of any individual officer.
Make the municipality have to disclose very significant policing stats when they want to issue a bond, and then quarterly. They currently have a complete disclosure exemption from the SEC.
Turn on these consequences every time a police report doesn't match the video. Or whenever one just lies whether there is video or not.
Make the partners accomplices when they don't report, and that alone being a trigger for the wide range of sanctions against the entire municipality.
There are a lot of ways to make them turn on themselves, while keeping their primarily stated concern of being able to make split second decisions and get home safely at the end of the day.
This would be much better than requiring all this fanfare for a small subset of egregious transgressions.
> It's going to be hard to tie financial responsibility to individual officers in a way that doesn't ultimately come back to tax dollars anyway.
Replace individual officer with individual common citizen. Knowingly doing something wrong results in <insert anything> for egg
Knowingly driving a car into a building won’t be slap on the wrist and the tax payer will pay for it. It probably means you’ll be in jail, bankrupt etc. why shouldn’t same standard be applied?
Except malpractice insurance for doctors is a major failure. It greatly increases the cost of care without actually reducing the incidence of malpractice.
>...It's going to be hard to tie financial responsibility to individual officers in a way that doesn't ultimately come back to tax dollars anyway.
No one is going to sell you a liability policy to protect you from committing crimes.
When police officers commit blatant misconduct the officers involved should at least be fired and criminal charges should be applied to them if applicable. This is how it works for every other job, not sure why police should be different.
How about we tie settlements and complaints to police compensation packages? Do any police departments in the US do this now? The idea would be the more of these situations you expose your department to through your own misconduct the more you are financially penalized. You lose pay, matching 401K contributions, access to a pension. This won't be a panacea but it could help tax payers recoup some of the costs incurred by bad cops.
Law of unintended consequences say that, that will lead into even more cops hiding things under the rug for their colleagues, since a mistake can end that persons future life.
How about if we determine that the officer acted unlawfully we just take the entire settlement out of the cops pay including any pay he may get from the state or indeed any other employer under the same terms we take money owed to the IRS.
Cost the state a million dollars because you abused or killed somebody congrats you will now be poor for the rest of your life.
1/3 of 1% of the US works in law enforcement its absurd for the other 99.66% of us to vote in bad terms for everyone unless 70% of us believe those bad terms apply to someone else like a minority.
Okay so this is a genuinely terrible idea because then nobody would be a police officer. Malpractice insurance exists specifically because doctors will make mistakes that harm their patients in hugely expensive ways either in the costs to fix the problem or suffering their patient now has to live with. Everyone makes mistakes at work and so this scheme just produces a workforce with a high luck stat.
Look, I have no sympathy for police officers who intentionally do harm but this isn’t the way to weed them out.
The law already strongly protects cops who make mistakes.
To continue the malpractice analogy a doctor who failed to order a test that ought to have been ordered given the patients symptoms and fails to diagnose a condition leading to the patients preventable death would be a victim of malpractice.
The current and suggested practice is for the government to provide what amounts to errors and omissions coverage similar to professional liability insurance to all police officers.
What isn't normally covered by malpractice insurance is reckless, illegal, or intentional acts.
I'm saying that cops ought to be legally liable for the classes of acts that wouldn't normally be covered by professional insurance. Planting drugs, recklessly shooting someone without ensuring that they actually have a gun not a cell phone in their hand, assaulting someone because you can.
Hey how about using a flimsy pretext to search someone's anus for drugs!
All things that haven happened in recent years!
Reckless or illegal acts are almost certainly uninsurable at any reasonable price because protection for such acts would ultimately be very expensive because in a world where your union keeps you from being held accountable and the law keeps you from being sued personally people would do them.
Malpractice insurance for cops would probably be overkill for actually reasonable mistakes and amount to enriching insurers while it would be useless to solve more serious issues.
It is an interesting solution searching for a viable problem.
How about we tie settlements and complaints to police compensation packages?
I doubt we’d be able to achieve that without the willingness to disband the police. Police unions are extremely powerful and they would never accept this without an existential threat to all of their members’ jobs.
At that point, why not go all the way and disband the police, creating a new law enforcement agency to replace them, with an entirely different culture and mandate?
Maybe. If a single claim could wipe out the pension, there's a good chance the department would close ranks even harder than today. You could hope they would police themselves better, but once something does happen, Johnny Idiot's mistake has put the entire department's pension at risk. This sets up bad incentives.
Yep, currently dealing with a situation like this. The captain of the troop closed my complaint against one of the troopers without any investigation or justification. They didn't even notify me.
Yeah this seems really really bad and I’m surprised that people in tech are suggesting it since we all experience the “if you fuck up you won’t be punished so long as you own to it” policy that makes it so that issues are actually felt with.
I mean the poor guy who caused the AWS S3 outage doesn’t need to be personally personally responsible for the millions people lost due to it nor does their teammates via their 401ks. These are structural issues and trying to find someone to scapegoat makes it so people ignore them.
If the developer intentionally caused that outage they'd be fired and in court before you could finish saying qualified immunity.
Accidents and mistakes happen, but a great deal of these incidents are not individual mistakes, they're often an escalating pattern of behaviour which has been ignored or excused until something terrible happens.
It's important that it's at the department level and not the individual level too. It turns the "looking the other way for other officers" dynamic on its head right away.
Disagree - that sets up an incentive for everyone to cover for bad apples. To get the right incentives it's important that it's at the individual level to price bad cops out of the market.
The cop deliberately broke the law because he wanted to.
> police officers need to be held accountable for their actions. Not sure how to implement that
Why is the idea of simply enforcing the existing laws out of the question? The video shows two people in a uniform assaulting another. The two people in uniform should be charged with criminal assault in exactly the same way it would be the other way around.
The point is that the United States is a lawless country, where "lawmakers" and "law enforcement" commit crimes at will, in public, and laugh about it.
But it has to be previously defined in case law or something that is considered defacto through an egregious violation, right?
On a side note, do you know of any case law that shows that leaving a charge stand when you know it is false (no detention/custody) is a violation of Constitutional rights? I have a situation that this would be useful for.
They ultimately supervise and choose the people that hire the police, the people that set the policies for the police, and the people (both in and out of police departments) directly responsible for holding police accountable.
> Inability to fire police officers, even for gross misconduct including unlawful homocide is baked in to many jurisdictions due to PBA contracts.
I'm pretty sure there is no jurisdiction in which you can't fire a police officer convicted of unlawful homicide. It's true prosecutors aren't likely to prosecute police officers, but that's because they are elected officials that are held accountable for being sufficiently successful in prosecuting non-cops, but not for prosecuting cops.
Second, while both Constitutional law regarding due process rights attached to public civil service employment and employment contract terms may make it difficult, time consuming, and procedurally involved to fire police officers, which also makes agencies reluctant to even initiate the process, you are significantly overstating the case even absent criminal prosecution.
And third, the only reason it is possible to have contract terms that make it so hard to fire police officers for misconduct is that the the law doesn't set out accountability standards or qualifications for continuation in such roles that would make such a contract void as contrary to public policy. Which is, even if a negative choice, a legislative policy choice by elective representatives. And the decision to enter into such contracts, given that they are allowed, is also a decision made by publicly accountable officials.
So, a whole lot of different, directly publicly accountable decision makers are necessarily involved, either actively or tacitly, in permitting bad cops to continue to do bad things. If the public cared to stop it, they could through the democratic process.
Looking from the outside, seems like the police system used to work at some point in the past and now it doesn’t. Maybe taxpayers taking the brunt of it in case of police misbehavior is a case of a system “failing loudly”, a useful indicator that the police doesn’t work well and people should elect differently in favor of revamping the police according to current realities.
Okay. You mentioned looking from the outside, so I was curious if there was some “golden age” from news reports or our exported entertainment that you had in mind. A lot of domestic folks think that time was the 1950s, and I wondered if that was your impression as well. It was certainly mine until I started looking into things further.
The reality is that the police in the US are here to enforce the social order, not to protect the public.[0] It has always been that way; as the sibling poster said, it’s just more visible now. I think we have the chance to improve policing now because of that visibility.
Edit: I’m adding this paragraph in response to your other comment, which says in part “Police must have satisfied the primary requirements posed by the people at some point in the past, if we are to believe that democracy works at all.” I understand what you’re saying, but we are still struggling to get equal representation up and running here. Democracy may or may not work, but lots of people were excluded from the process until very recently, and there are continuing efforts to keep it that way. So in a very narrow sense, sure, police did what they were designed to, which is to enforce the social order. The social order is messed up, therefore police are too and always have been.
I think it was always broken, but it’s only since police body cams and everyone carrying a video camera (10 years, give or take a few years) that problem has been given a voice.
Police must have satisfied the primary requirements posed by the people at some point in the past, if we are to believe that democracy works at all. Requirements must have evolved since then, which is to be expected.
Sometimes it feels like the prevailing sentiment is just “police hurts us so we need to create outrage until they remove police and/or give us a better one”, which is understandable but remembering that how police works today is in fact a result of democratic process (and that indeed it works for the taxpayer) might be useful—less “us vs. them” and more “taxpayer today vs. taxpayer of the past”.
Not really. In many places there are huge influences from political parties and heavy stakeholders. For example, in California a well-known financial mogul got a few DAs appointed - it was an election but one could call it "buy a DA".
Nothing will change as long as we have public employee unions. Nothing. They had such control over politicians at all levels people should honestly be frightened. Through that control they protect abuse by their members either individually or as a whole
unlike private sector unions there is no accountability, the contracts are actually written to forbid any real means to hold members or the union as a whole accountable for actions.
So unless they are reigned in nothing is ever going to change. More likely you will be told and you will buy into the idea that more money and more staffing is needed.
and nothing will change except the public will be on the hook for even larger and more outlandish suits and worse pensions
Sure, but I haven't heard much of an argument against his stance. This is especially interesting since he was a very progressive and pro-union leader. This is just a small excerpt.
"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters."
Workers in the public sector are still workers, and can be mistreated by management. They can be underpaid, be forced into dangerous workplace conditions, etc.
Who determines what is fair? Is it not The People? The point is that government employees shouldn't need a union because the voters should be enacting laws and electing leaders who make fair policies. Also, that the government services that people rely on should not be held hostage by the workers.
It's charming you think that we people to try and achieve a fair outcome. The incentives are way, way out of line for that.
Tribalism rules the day, even in the face of more or less objective facts.
Collectively bargaining to ensure you are being treated fairly is not holding anyone hostage. Your melodramatic language doesn't do your argument any favors. Folks like our mail carriers deserve to be treated well, to have decent pay and functional equipment. Yet legislators time and time again do what they can to cut funding and decrease worker compensation.
"It's charming you think that we people to try and achieve a fair outcome.
Tribalism rules the day, even in the face of more or less objective facts."
It's charming that you think unions try to achieve a fair outcome. Aren't they a tribe fighting for a they can get? I've seen businesses go under due to never ending demands.
"Collectively bargaining to ensure you are being treated fairly is not holding anyone hostage. Your melodramatic language doesn't do your argument any favors."
And your condescending language doesn't do your argument any favors. The ability of the workers to hold the services hostage from the people until thier demands are met, is very much true. This can be extremely inconvenient, in cases such as teacher strikes, even forcing some people to miss work to stay home with the kids.
"Yet legislators time and time again do what they can to cut funding and decrease worker compensation."
This isn't always bad. Do you really think the government should be giving everyone a pension? It would make sense to move people from defined benefits plans to defined contribution plans. This brings them in line with the vast majority of industry.
People shy away from this, but public sector employees already have huge advantages:
* The jobs are largely undesirable, so threatening to quit is viable
* The jobs are public facing (for the major unions like police and teachers) so they can rally the public on their behalf
* These professions have extreme leeway for "work to rule" (doing the minimum requiremed) that applies pressure on employer without violating employment agreements.
* note: When most people debate unions, they mean collective bargaining obligations, not free association "minority" unions. A minority union can still speak up for its membership and provide financial support for victims of management.
There must be some uncomfortable truth in regards to police officers, the type of thing you only understand if you are responsible for leading/paying them.
Clearly police officers are above the law in America.
Clearly blue lives matter/thin blue line is a very deep cultural problem within the force.
Clearly police unions protect people who shouldn't be protected.
Clearly police officers protect their peers when their peers commit crime.
Clearly there is some level of infiltration by white supremacists into police forces.
Clearly police in major cities do not do a very good job of de-escalation at all.
The average citizen has almost certainly seen a video of a police officer acting outrageously and not ending up in prison. Everyone here has theories that will solve it: end qualified immunity, fix incentives, destroy police unions. Most likely none of us are experts. I can't shake the feeling that there is some truth or barrier to this problem that the average person doesn't know about/the government doesn't think we can handle being told.
If nothing else any reform must have the blessing of police officers. If police officers quit en masse that is something society at large isn't willing to tolerate. Just like the old slashdot e-mail reform meme of ol' (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/04/04/06/1629219/analysis-of-...), I suspect we need a similar meme for police reform.
If bad behavior is common in the police force, but the majority of officers aren't badly behaved, wouldn't a sign of success be if police officers quit en masse? The only real reason turning over the entire police force is a scary prospect is that de-ba'athification resulted in ISIS.
I absolutely deny that resignation of the vast majority of police officers would result in a significant loss of useful institutional knowledge or talent. These are rotten institutions from the top down which is what really enforces the no-snitching culture. People above you will destroy you for snitching, and pull strings for you when you don't.
The people above are also the ones whose "blessings" are listened to. Low-level cops don't get to speak for themselves, we only listen to people who achieve in a culture that rewards bad behavior. It's how we handle everything, not just police.
>> Clearly police officers are above the law in America.
I think many law enforcement officers view themselves as 'the law' and therefore believe that the ends justify the means. The popular, although dated, culture backs them up on that and there are many laws that favor law enforcement over suspects.
Police in the US think they are above the law because in many ways they are. The good ones know how to find the balance and keep the peace.
I guess it stems from a time when all you really had to work with was physical evidence and the only records being what officers had written down. So it really wouldn't have worked any other way. A suspect is always going to say whatever makes them seem innocent. "I wasn't holding that knife when you arrested me" would be impossible to disprove if the suspect was wearing gloves at the time or forensic evidence wasn't yet available. So in some ways the officers word had to hold more weight.
It seems like the only solution is for every single interaction to be digitally recorded.
>I can't shake the feeling that there is some truth or barrier to this problem that the average person doesn't know about/the government doesn't think we can handle being told.
I think the truth is simple. Police officers are regular people, not supermen. They work an awful and dangerous job where they interact primarily with the worst individuals in our society. There will always be bad apples.
Being a cop is dangerous, but the danger is drastically overstated. Being a cop is significantly less dangerous than a bunch of other jobs that typically get ignored, such as construction, landscaping, being a crossing guard(!), pilot/flight engineer, roofer, gargbage collector, mechanic (several types), mechanic supervisor, or even a delivery driver. None of those other groups seem to have developed the same siege mentality that police officers have, despite having a better statistical argument for it.
Even on the violence front, it's overstated. In 2020, 45 cops were shot to death on purpose, 5 shot on accident, 13 were purposefully struck by a car, and 1 died from an unspecified assault. That's 59[0] purposeful killings out of an estimated 665,280[1] police officers in America, or 8.8 per 100,000. Meanwhile COVID19 killed 221 cops, and various vehicular accidents killed 39 cops. Obviously 8.8 per 100,000 is not great, but it's far from how being a cop is portrayed in popular media.
For a grim comparison, consider the risk of being murdered as a cop to the risk of being murdered as a pregnant woman. A 2005 study connecting female homicide deaths with pregnancy information came to the conclusion that the homicide rate among pregnant women might be as high as 10.5 per 100,000, or about 25% higher than the murder rate for cops.
Given that the estimated domestic violence rate for police officers is 40%[3] and the known link between domestic abuse and homicide[4], a pregnant woman married to or living with a cop might have a higher chance of being murdered by her cop partner than her cop partner has of being murdered on the job.
It does strike me as an awful job though. No disagreement there.
Thanks for engaging. I agree that there are other jobs that are more dangerous in terms of on the job deaths.
I think that an interesting distinction is that when it comes to police, the danger comes from other humans. That is to say, their threat model is people intentionally trying to kill them, opposed to workplace accidents. In this way, the police are more similar to military forces, who also have a siege mentality.
While you point out that there were 59 police killings, this number may not capture the full picture. It is worth considering that there were 1000 fatal shootings by police and an estimated 2000 non-fatal shootings.[1] That is 450 per 100,000 per year. This is just the tip of the iceberg as it doesn't include shootings where nobody was injured, or violent interactions without guns. Violent nonfatal injuries and illnesses resulting in days away from work among police officers occurred at a rate of 121.7 per 100,000 FTE workers in 2018; the rate for all occupations was 7.3. [2] In one study 10% of police surveyed reported that they had killed or seriously injured someone during the first three years of their career. The average officer experiences 188 traumatic events in their career and have PTSD and depression rates 5X the general population, and the highest suicide rate of any profession.[3]
For me, this paints a picture of a job where violence and hostility is the norm.
I point this out not to excuse the bad behavior of some police, but increase our understanding of it.
>Given that the estimated domestic violence rate for police officers is 40%[3] and the known link between domestic abuse and homicide[4], a pregnant woman married to or living with a cop might have a higher chance of being murdered than her cop spouse.
This would not surprise me at all, given what I stated above. The really interesting question is WHY and what conclusions can we draw from this?
> While you point out that there were 59 police killings, this number may not capture the full picture. It is worth considering that there were 1000 fatal shootings by police and an estimated 2000 non-fatal shootings.[1] That is 450 per 100,000 per year.
You raise a good point; being involved in a shooting even as the shooter is a traumatic event. It's not terribly uncommon for people to have PTSD after shooting someone, even if they didn't catch any return fire. There are also the cases where cops were seriously injured (as compared to "injured" in order to increase criminal penalties) but did not die or retire due to the injuries. Getting shot in body armor is still a pretty injuring event, especially soft body armor.
The important, and difficult question to answer is how many of these violent interactions were triggered by police, and how many were likely to happen no matter what the cops did? American police kill a lot more people than our OECD peers do; we're between Angola and Iran on the international stats, about 3.5x more than our nearest OECD peer (Canada). It's not unreasonable to assume that non-lethal violent encounters scale similarly[0]. Certainly some part of that is American culture in general, but it would be unreasonably deferential to cops to presume that they have no part in the problem, especially with so many high-profile anecdotes of cops escalating or using force unnecessarily. If using violence is traumatic, then doesn't a lot of the blame for that trauma fall onto the same people who decide to use it unnecessarily, and onto the same people that have willingly adopted a warrior mentality[1]?
0 - Perhaps higher still. American emergency rooms are very good at treating gunshot wounds; part of the reason why gun fatalities are down since the 1980s despite still high shooting rates. It's not unreasonable to assume that the ratio of shooting to fatality by American cops is higher than say, Canada, implying that it's even worse than the death statistics imply.
American police kill a lot more people than our OECD peers do, but again, it is worth noting that overall gun violence is higher is the US. US police killings are 3.5X that of Canada, and the US gun homicides are 6.5X that of Canada.
>it would be unreasonably deferential to cops to presume that they have no part in the problem, especially with so many high-profile anecdotes of cops escalating or using force unnecessarily.
I think that the cops are one cog in a poorly designed machine, and in my opinion, not the most impactful one. Changing police policy is necessary, but not sufficient change to reduce police violence. We live in a relative police state, and it is convenient to place the bulk of the blame the replaceable enforcers opposed the system of laws and policies which perpetuate violent crime and violent police. Only changes to the latter will result in lasting change. To tie in the Canada comparison, The US also has 6.5X the incarceration rate.
>it would be unreasonably deferential to cops to presume that they have no part in the problem, especially with so many high-profile anecdotes of cops escalating or using force unnecessarily. If using violence is traumatic, then doesn't a lot of the blame for that trauma fall onto the same people who decide to use it unnecessarily, and onto the same people that have willingly adopted a warrior mentality
There are some cases where there is obvious misbehavior by officers and they should be held accountable for their actions, although I think this effect is overstated by focusing on the most outrageous examples. Most often, my understanding is that police shooters are acting in accordance with police training and policy to use lethal force when they perceive lethal threat from others. In these cases, think much of the "blame" falls on the policing institutions. The question becomes if a different policy exists would result in fewer unnecessary civilian deaths, with minimal increase in officer deaths. Perhaps there are win-win solutions where both death rates are reduced by avoiding dangerous scenarios entirely (e.g. avoiding unnecessary no-knock raids).
To a pizza driver, a more dangerous job than being a cop, the biggest threat is another human as well. That doesn’t mean they can go around shooting undeserving people. You’re rationalizing criminal behavior.
I’m not rationalizing or endorsing anything. I’m describing the nature of the problem. We will never see any change unless people understand the problem.
Always on body cams, ending civil forfeiture, replacement of police unions with individual liability insurance, third party review boards are just a few.
I think the strongest are review boards and body cams, and the weakest are busting the unions and individual insurance. For the latter, I haven't seen any data showing public support over 50%.
I think the most productive changes would be legalization and demilitarization of the the war on drugs. A centralized database of police violence and complaints would be the next step, and this could go hand in hand with third party review boards.
Even if your proposals and mine were adopted entirely, I don't think they would resolve the fundamental problems with police violence and bring behavior in line with expectations.
The police unions have too strong of an influence on government and are rife with corruption, nepotism, favoritism and worse. Breaking up the union and individual insurance are the number one priorities to break the back of the excessive authority the cops currently wield. Everything else is a nice to have.
The US problems with this are like Apples laced with VX.
The issue isn't that police work is hard but that from the start US police officers take an us vs. them approach to everything they do and in many cases can get away with just about anything by default.
It’s not even in the top 20 most dangerous jobs in the nation. It’s simple, they are an armed gang with authority and are using their teamism to keep their power. It needs to be wrenched away and cops should be what they are everywhere else — servants for the public good.
> If nothing else any reform must have the blessing of police officers.
This statement right here is a pretty roundabout way to speak the truth that "reform" is unlikely to ever change anything. Even these moderate proposals that are just pointless theatre are opposed tooth and nail by police officers and unions everywhere.
Hell, in the midst of everything going on last year, many police unions insisted their budgets needed to be increased at the expense of all other city departments facing cuts.
"end qualified immunity, fix incentives, destroy police unions"
- end tenure, fix incentives and destroy teachers unions
teachers' union in America have destroyed many more lives by failing to fire bad teachers & doing misjustice to students.
The interesting thing is that they only stopped him for a few minutes and, once they realized he wasn't suspicious, declined to do anything and let him go, then neglected to return his phone until it was demanded back. Despite the headline, they didn't go back and invent charges for the guy, they determined he was innocent and dropped it, though they neglected his phone.
One problem with making a federal case out of this is that it tends to incentivize the cops to make their own federal case out of this in defense, i.e. to make stuff up so they have a defense if they made a mistake.
You are making light of some serious constitutional violations.
The ruling says quite clearly that they illegally arrested him. They also illegally searched him if you watch the video, but for some reason neither court addresses it. Perhaps that wasn't brought up in the original complaint. Also, they didn't neglect to give him his phone back like it was an innocent mistake. They illegally seized it to search for evidence of a crime.
Making a federal case out of this is the only avenue for justice for him.
The "arrest" was that they said he was arrested when they detained him for 12 minutes or so. That might count as one technically for legal purposes, but it's hardly what most people would consider an "arrest."
The article makes much of the idea that they "make a suspicious activity case" but the fact is that they didn't fabricate anything, they dropped the matter when they saw it was unrelated to any criminal activity.
This may not be constitutional, but a norm of not cooperating with law enforcement is a terrible one that leads only to further bad outcomes. If this guy had simply given his real name and said what he was doing--despite not being required to--he likely would've kept his phone and not wasted so much time.
Maybe things have changed since I was last in Des Monies, but I don't see this case going anywhere with a jury.
It is unfortunate that you don't appreciate how his actions further establish and protect our rights. I suggest you read the case of Turner v Driver to see how standing up for your rights can establish important legal precedent that benefits everyone.
This case is, in my opinion, highly unlikely to go in front of a jury. I have seen many cases similar to this end in five to six figure settlements.
The important constitutional violation here was that the cop misspoke and said he was arrested when the actual encounter was effectively detainment, which may result in a few tens of thousands to be paid on lawyers. Yes, I'm sure you can find many examples like that.
I don't see the "benefit" here. I've been pretext stopped in the middle of the night while driving a beaten-up car in an out of the way area. The cop asked me to get out and walk around to see something and I did so, etc. We both went our separate ways a few minutes later, because nothing was wrong.
If this guy had simply said "my name is X, I'm videoing these illegally parked cars for my blog at Y" this would've ended without incident. Instead, it will become an incentive to cops to either "find something" (which, despite the headline and a quote in the article that makes it seems otherwise, I would point out that the article says the cops did not do here) or make sure they never bother to investigate anything happening in plain sight, even if that leads to bad outcomes for people.
But those are invisible, because you can't see that but-for event and someone acting like a Karen with the cops will get tens of thousands of dollars for it.
Being a police officer is an unskilled position. Something that can be filled in an afternoon. Break up the union, force them to quit en masse. The good ones can be rehired on individual liability insurance like nurses or doctors.
I saw an article of a real lawyer that explained the decision, but he also included a priceless information: qualified immunity does not come from a law or statute, it is a made-up term by the SCOTUS a few decades away. It is mind-boggling that such thing exists and it is also very hard to believe that legislators did not remove it into oblivion.
The only union in America that needs busting is the cops union. Low skilled work that doesn’t even rank in the top 20 most dangerous jobs. Bring on personal liability insurance and call it a day.
> Superintendents and Chief superintendents are represented by a separate staff association, the Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales (PSA),[3] while the most senior officers are members of the Chief Police Officers Staff Association (CPOSA).
And the teacher's union... which will not allow the firing of bad teachers ("reassignments"), resulting in mis-justice to student in US who then fail to get necessary skills to succeed in this world.
I agree. I cannot think of a justification for public sector unions.
The typical pro-union argument for companies is that they protect workers against abuses by the company.
In the public sector, the union is supposed to protect workers from the citizens? I haven't ever heard of a good theoretical argument for them. Would be interested if someone knew of one.
Perhaps public entities should not enter into collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, but freedom of association is guaranteed in the constitution, it's not going to be possible to ban unions in the US.
There is no bigger abuser of workers than we the citizens. We don't intend to, but we do generally expect extraordinary results for a pittance investment of resources with all sorts of strings attached.
Sure. Let's start with the police, and then we'll go after whichever next union is killing people across the country.
Edit: Your downvotes only make it more obvious that you don't really have a counterpoint to the police's homicidal tendencies nor their unions' participation in crafting legal protections for their actions.
Even CDC says it's safe to open schools - kids are not a major transmission vector.
How come private and Catholic schools are open and there isn't a massive spike in Covid cases?
Do you think it's fine for American kids to be even further behind in today's global skill race?
> Even CDC says it's safe to open schools - kids are not a major transmission vector.
The last time I heard of a local government opening schools with the "not a major transmission vector" argument was in Berlin, and they had no grasp on infection tracing. Yes, kids tend to be asymptomatic. But asymptomatic carriers are still infectious.
> How come private and Catholic schools are open and there isn't a massive spike in Covid cases?
Because that's just a small section of the population.
What's "the rest of the developed world"? France has 21k new covid cases in a day, and a population of 67 million versus a population of 328 million in the US, so the per capita rate is almost identical. Other west European countries at least are similar, usually slightly lower, but not dramatically lower e.g. by orders of magnitude.
The rest of the developed world isn't in a very different position with respect to covid.
The US is around 30 cases/100k/day and the EU is around 20 cases/100k/day
I think this is underscores the biggest issue. Mistakes are made by these power-hungry ignorant police officers, usually due to their fragile ego, and then they face little consequences. Someone sues and gets a nice settlement. Nothing changes. Taxpayers are taking the brunt instead of the police officer. The offending officer will likely get a slap on the wrist, or if it's a really bad mistake that went viral they might choose an early, comfortable retirement. In order for change to happen, police officers need to be held accountable for their actions. Not sure how to implement that but I think that would result in police officers being much more careful about their conduct.