Why Are Police So Bad at Their Jobs?

I think its harder because people are far more aware of the abuses of those in such prominent positions. The police were corrupt long before you and I were born (and you don't have to just limit that conversation to their relationship with people of color either) Of course there are quality individuals who work in those positions, but the same can be said about any other occupation. The difference is? Those other positions cannot arrest you, abuse you, or violate your rights. That higher standard comes with the territory.

 

Back to the OP….I swear one of the reasons I thought crime was down was cuz it’s so easy to get caught now with technology. Guess maybe not.

 

I will agree with almost all that except that I think the caste system is highly racialized as much as class, and I avoid red pill metaphors. But overall exactly what I was trying to say. Well done. The police do what "we", meaning society at large, demand they do

 

That bolded stuff is insane. First, where does that money come from? If you have a 10 million dollar drug bust, what, the citizens are supposed to provide additional compensation for every officer involved? That is crazy. And we are already seeing evidence that precincts getting to keep stuff they confiscate in busts leads to insane corruption. Civil forfeiture is already a huge issue in this country. Paying the cops even more to aggressively police is a recipe for DISASTER.

New Proof That Police Use Civil Forfeiture To Take From Those Who Can’t Fight Back - one example

I'm not paying the police a dime more, until they can prove the accountability piece. That is really what we should be working on in this country. Accountability. We need a separate office of non-law enforcement officers to hold LEO accountable. Because they have proven time and again, as a group, that they can't be trusted en masse. Hell just look at Uvalde right now, smdh...

 

Some departments have auxiliary employees, often non certified, that handle the lesser calls that don’t need immediate attention. Usually misdemeanor type offenses. The ones deemed serious enough are forwarded to certified officers.

As to some calls being better handled by “specialist” like mental illness related, most police officers welcome the opportunity to hand those off reducing their call load. I wish I could have done that back in my day. One call I was able to hand off was auto accidents. When the Florida Highway payroll was available they would take some of those calls for me. That was a win win situation as FHP are accident experts, work scenes faster, and I was able to return to service.

 

While we are asking, Why are congressmen & senators so bad at their jobs? Why is the DOJ so bad at their jobs? Why is the POTUS so bad at his job? Maybe we should just do away with government all together.

 

If murder is so less frequent for instance we should have more resources and we know we have more tools like video to catch. Seems weird clearance rates are down.

 

Why do they suck at their job and why can’t they do anything? Could it be they have to abide by policy, laws or rules, are under staffed and over worked? Are any of these possibilities? I wasn’t in patrol long but remember how peoples opinions changed when they rode along with a patrol officer. Everyone has the answer but when it comes to details they are lacking reality.

What are your suggestions to improve on each?

I think you need to ride along with a real cop for a month rather than throwing out ignorant comments because you don’t like the police.

 

Such a generic question, I dont think cops in general do a bad job. They are asked in alot of cases to respond to and act in situations that they have little to no control over. The politicians and media have thrown them under the bus because of a few incidents and failure for them (the politicians) to make changes.

 

It’s hard being a cop in a country where everyone is armed.

 

This is absolutely the answer to your question. We started a war (which you also correctly pointed out was because people felt like the social order was being overturned due to civil rights movements) and then were shocked when it turned out that starting a war on your own citizens made the citizens not like the people fighting that war against them and that there is spillovers in trust to even those that aren't actively in the war.

At their best, police would be friendly with the community and would have tons of people willing to tell them who the car thief is, who is likely to commit domestic violence, who is trying to sell stolen goods, etc. But, instead, we have chosen to start a war, where even the "good" cops are afraid to turn in the "bad" cops because they will hurt their own career or be left as part of that war with a highly armed populace without support.

 

I want to be clear. We are talking about group vs individual behavior. As a whole, the law enforcement community have hurt their credibility by not aggressively prosecuting bad cops.

I think that, more than anything, would really go a long way in changing public perception about how good or bad cops are at their jobs, on the average.

To someone's point - why is congress so bad at their jobs? Same thing! They should aggressively police themselves so that bad politicians don't survive in congress. Instead they can live their forever, doing things like insider trading that makes them millions, when most normal people would be in prison already.

 

I think it depends on what you think their job is. If their job is the prevention of crime, it is hard to argue that they are doing a good job by any objective measure, although that is just as much due to the systems set up as the individual failures of cops (probably more, honestly). If their job is to keep the social order, by using the justice system to establish the social order through differential policing, then they are doing a good job. Unfortunately, while I think very few would admit to it, I think plenty of people are okay with the system being oriented towards the latter rather than the former (they don't really care about crime as long as it is kept away from them).

 

This goes to the system and the drug wars. You are asking soldiers to turn in their fellow soldiers for criminal activity. There is almost no way that anybody who has studied human behavior would ever believe that this would happen on a regular basis. You are asking somebody to turn a person that they identify with in for a crime, knowing full well that this risks their own membership as part of an in-group (in this case, cops), and, given the context, puts their own life at risk if the heavily armed populace decides to open fire on them, where the other cops might not view them as fully in the in-group and worthy of risking their own lives to save.

 

It will get worse as the pool of applicants for police jobs continues to get shallower. Hard to keep screening people out without a pool to choose from. Then the training police gets is abysmal. A CNN article talking about the Chief fiasco, he has had 16 hours of training (minus lunch of course) over the past 2 years. More training costs more money, quality training even more.

 

FHP also like to work accidents because they are lowest paid and have referral fee understandings with garages that are towing destinations

 

Amen, Amen, Amen. War on Drugs one of the greatest policy disasters of our Republic

 

It's a very difficult job. Everyone in the world--from law-abiders who don't want to get involved, to the criminals themselves, the judicial system, budget shortages, a grotesquely armed citizenry, the media, etc.--make it their business to make it so.

The wonder is that they do their job as well as they do. (Not saying there isn't a ton of room for improvement.)