Why Are Police So Bad at Their Jobs?

The only profession that has more legalized stealing than law enforcement is baseball.

 

Reading Elie Mystal's "Allow Me to Retort". Great perspective on these issues. Highly recommend

 

Shrewdest politicians.

Strongest ant.

 

There is a YouTube channel called LegalEagle. He gives his legal opinion on things that are topical. He just did a video on the Texas killings. His opinion is that the courts have been consistent in saying the police don't legally need to do anything in an active shooter situation. The solutions are legislative not courts.

 

Gonzalez v. Carhart. During Oral Argument, Scalia found humor in a woman futilely hoping the police would enforce a restraining order being repeatedly violated, and died as a result. Heidi Schreck plays that part of OA in “What the Constitution Means to Me”.

 

And stealing is legal in baseball where the average player gets 7 million a year to steal and to hit a baseball where no one is 3 times out of every 10. Whereas a police officer who has to deal with the monsters of our society every shift that he or she goes to work might make 50K a year if they are fortunate. And you wonder why some police steal. If you paid police one-tenth of what you paid overpriced athletes there would be little or no corruption in the police force. This country screams about violence and crime and screams about a 30 million a year player who strikes out every three times he gets to the plate. Misplaced values.

 

When you contrast this to what the Greatest Generation did (giving up their pots and pans so the gov't could make weapons and ammunition for WWII, not to mention fighting in WWII), we really should call almost all the younger generations "The Least Generations". Watch the progression of self-entitled behaviors in subsequent generations, and you can see why the Roman Empire eventually collapsed. Obviously, not all people are entitled brats, but what used to be the exception is now the norm. They say that the difference between native Americans and everyone else here is that the natives will talk non-stop about their responsibilities (to nature, to the tribe, etc.), while the rest of America prattles on endlessly about their rights.

What's to blame for this problem? I'm sure that education and parenting bear the biggest responsibility, but I would also say that entertainment is partly to blame. What kind of behavior would you expect someone who was raised watching professional wrestling to have (i.e., what percentage of wrestlers are polite, thoughtful, or respectful)? Video games will teach you how to steal cars and run from the police, or how to gun down people without knowing or caring who they are ("obviously, they are bad guys--I just shot them in the head"). Movies will teach you that superheroes exist, and can use their special powers to defeat whomever they decide is evil (if you have trouble developing your superpowers, a good short-cut is to get a gun). Movies also desensitize people to violence; movies about someone's character, or feelings or inner conflicts just don't sell like violence does. And then you have TikTok--a forum where idiots encourage other idiots to perform really stupid, dangerous, or disrespectful stunts.

 

Haven't read the thread, but the answer is obvious. Like most all government jobs there is no accountability to actually perform your job well. This isn't private sector.

 

Hi chem, appreciate your narrative. Personally, IMO, we should be looking very hard at what this nation and our culture represents, the quality of character of our elected officials and the value systems and actions of every individual American.

 

More defunding. This must kill morale


TAMPA — Hillsborough County commissioners will consider a nearly $8.56 billion budget for the coming fiscal year, a 14.4% spending increase financed by rising property values, new construction joining the tax rolls and proceeds from the community investment sales tax.

County Administrator Bonnie Wise’s budget proposal, released Wednesday, is heavy on public safety spending. It includes nearly $40 million more for Sheriff Chad Chronister’s office, $10 million to renovate the county jail, more than $4 million for a new fire station in Sun City Center and 21 firefighters to staff it, upgrades to other fire rescue units and $29 million for construction of a new warehouse for the emergency management and fire departments.

“There is a real emphasis on this budget on public safety,” said Commissioner Harry Cohen. “The value of keeping our citizens safe is first and foremost in all of our minds. This is an expression of that.”

Hillsborough’s budget proposal tops $8.5B - Tampa Bay Times

 

I've recently been watching more First Amendment audit videos.

It's striking how vastly different interactions with the same individual auditor can be across departments/agencies and even within the same department or agency. One common scenario is a public employee or owner of private property who is being recorded from public property freaking out and calling the cops (often using 9-11 when it's not an emergency) and getting the cops fired up by exaggerating about or lying about what the auditor has done or said. That doesn't help obviously.

Then a young cop typically shows up and doesn't know what to do with the situation - or is acting like he doesn't know. A slightly higher ranking or more seasoned guy will then show up and may have an attitude, offer some clear misstatements of law and physical intimidation efforts. Often, a Sergeant will eventually arrive on the scene and have to explain to the citizens and other officers that the auditor is correct and is allowed to record what he can see on and from public property.

They could save themselves some time and money if they didn't escalate these sorts of events, and I think what irritates many people is that some (or maybe nearly all) of the officers know better at this point yet attempt - and are often successful - in bullying or tricking all but the most skilled and knowledgeable auditors out of their rights. You can also see them scramble to come up with other pretexts to threaten arrest.

Some of the auditors are jerks, but I think most return respect if it's given to them. Being a cop is a tough and dangerous job. I wouldn't want it. But you can tell almost immediately when one of them has a temper or ego that is going to escalate a situation because they care more about obtaining compliance than being right on the law. Some just don't have the personality to do the job. There are many great ones, too, though as with any job.

 

I wish I had seen this thread when it got started. I want to post my take and support others' just as profound, but I find myself having to peruse too many posts. Sorry if you made similar points and I did not give you props.

Let's go all "out there." The first premise is that, if I lived alone, I would not have a problem at all with what my neighbors are doing or not doing. Introduce one additional person to the equation and the potential for neighborhood conflict grows from absolute zero to something a bit higher. And the trend continues as long as there are additional neighbors with the potential of having their priorities change. At best, we are talking about civics and politics. At worse, we are talking about losing your life or property via tyranny. And so, we usually choose to be civil rather than a Battle Royal where the end means one person living.

Now it gets kind of dicey. Let's go first to our founding fathers and the gist of the US Constitution. What they decided was that, while totalitarianism is a REALLY bad idea, pure democracy is equally disastrous. And so, we decided that the least-bad idea was a Republican form of government. That means we are not entirely in charge and we elect (and in this instance hire) persons to do the regular daily rituals of keeping everything civil. It simply means that neither you nor I can not be expected to be faithful to true civility 100.000 percent of the time.

First things, we elect representatives to do what we think is correct. And then they do the work to secure what we think is necessary. One conundrum is what is defined as trash and what is defined as treasure? And in the light I want to use this, we can not expect our neighbors to faithfully execute the plan 100.000 percent of the time and dispose of the trash in the correct way. And so, we decide to raise taxes to pay for trash collection. I know many communities do not have municipal trash collection but I would say that communities that are sufficiently populous to have fire and police departments (ie, we are NOT going to fight criminals and put out fires collectively in viable numbers), trash is right there with them. Now that we get to a place where "taxing and spending is a necessary evil", we can get to THE biggie: who is representing our interests?

Any community that is not on a path to destruction (eventually) must have good/great elected officials. Because with civic minded reps, they then do the second most important thing: they hire quality leaders/managers to run the government services. And they do not just hire them, they give them feedback as to the big picture assessment of the quality of their departments as well as keeping tabs on anything that looks like the person's priorities are no longer aligning with those of the community. And they remediate the situation in any manner that is effective.

Now we come to the OP. Why do some police forces somehow act incompetent at best and malevolent/ tyrannical at worse? The simple answer is because the elected representatives are not good enough to hire and nurture/remediate the police forces. And yes, it is up to the leader/manager to do what the reps do: hire, direct, give feedback, ask for resources, and remediate when necessary.

So for those who are in the TL/DR mode, the answer is...because the community is so screwed up from the top down, this is what you get for your silly efforts. Or the best line I have heard, regarding a business, "your business is perfectly designed for the results you are achieving." In other words, garbage in, garbage out. Don't like the outcomes? change in inputs.

 

awfully broad brush you paint with. I know some detectives that are very smart people.

 

too much of the general populace has no respect for anybody besides themselves.

 

Probably because criminals are glorified in certain populations, traditional family values are abhorred, and there is really not much in the way of punishment.

Letting a bunch of criminals hang out with each other and have free food and board while becoming better criminals is not punishment. Labor camps, farm prisons, chain gangs, etc... and stop letting death row take decades. If a jury of citizens hands out the death penalty, give that person a expedited appeal, if it's handed out twice just get rid of them.

 

Let's not forget that funding of generous pensions detracts from funds available to do actual work and it will likely only get worse as the pensions are so underfunded already.

Underfunded Police Pensions Strain U.S. Cities - HGExperts.com

 

There's some truth here I think. I notice a lot of people who seem to think others' jobs are easier than theirs, that most other people are overpaid, and/or they make assumptions that they could have done a different job.

"I thought about being a Marine but decided not to." - Okay, it's a bit presumptuous to think you would have made weight - much less become a Marine.

"Those dentists have it easy. I picked the wrong line of work." - Sir, you made a D in high school chemistry and can't do basic algebra.

 

So no?

 

In a perfect world we would have trained 911 operators who could triage the complaint. Do we need an armed person to respond to every traffic accident? Some calls to houses would be better served by a social worker being dispatched instead of a cop. This would take real reform implemented by people interested in helping society instead of protecting police unions.