Police Coverups, Conspiracies, and Cost to Taxpayers

You are married to this narrative yet you really offer no alternative. When I say tens of thousands, that means within that group you have a range going from just poor performers all the way to being corrupt.

So you want current cops to quit, because you think many are corrupt. So how do you propose to replace them with new non-corrupt cops?

 

David French made an excellent point based upon the defenses of police conduct that it's impossible to exercise appropriate discipline given the danger they face, and that you will destroy morale with accountability.

He served as a JAG in Iraq. He stated that US troops even in the middle of an insurgency with regular attacks exercised more fire discipline than the average police officer. And face more accountability. Not to say that the military system is perfect or flawless. But it is far more advanced than the systems of discipline and accountability we have for most urban police departments.

Then again, most urban police departments are doing exactly what the larger public wants them to do in terms of social control, which is part of the reason that true accountability is so politically difficult

 

this wasn’t directed at me but I would cut the police force by a percentage and raise the salaries of the cops by the amount of savings. I would change the training of all new cops to be more into de escalation and I would stop the militarization of the police force and End most qualified immunity.


With the higher pay I would make cops carry individual malpractice insurance. One wrong action and their premiums go up.

 

OP watches a few videos of cops behaving badly and comes to sweeping conclusions. Perhaps OP should watch millions of videos of every day encounters and see if he comes to the same conclusion.

Op is behaving no differently that the resident anti vaxxers who look at one in a million bad outcomes for vaccines and come to sweeping conclusions about their danger.

 

Soooo... you don't trust the police, but you think we need them? Got it...

 

Perhaps that is a good approach. I have no way of knowing. So if we did all of that, do you think it would eliminate these handfuls of horrific videos of cops behaving badly?

 

So who is going to pay for that?

You’ve come to these broad conclusions from watching a few videos?

I keep seeing all these instances where teachers are sleeping with students, or doing other inappropriate things. I guess that means that we have a big problem with corrupt teachers.

 

Well, okay, I agree with you there. I think you should have made that viewpoint more clear in your original post. It seems I'm not the only one who feels like you're castigating the entire police force instead of focusing on the few rotten apples of the bunch. I agree there needs to be some reform, but overall, our police forces are pretty good. Some of the cops I know are the most personable and friendliest people you'll ever meet.

 

I think videotaping the cops is going to do it. I would also criminally indict all cops involve in not releasing their body cams. Turning it off or not releasing the videos is morally and criminally wrong. I would also indict all the cops present when a cop does anything illegal and the other cops remain silent. Seriously if I was a defense attorney I would be hammering on this all day and night, cops are believed when they testify.

it is definitely more than a handful. If cops are shown to lie on the stand and it is not an unusual occurrence than police testimony becomes useless and prosecutors will need to have this changed.

 

One bad apple spoils the whole bunch. The police form a wall protecting the bad cops. Anyone who protects a bad cop is a bad cop.

 

It's amazing that in all my years, I've managed to never put myself in a position where I ever had to fear what a cop might do.

 

Ok it’s a daily occurrence. There may be a million videos every day or otherwise normal interactions. How many of those have you watched? So your conclusions are based on 365 videos and not the other 365 million?

 

I’ve always been supportive of the idea of videos brining visibility to the situations, but we may be seeing what we see elsewhere on the internet. People are not able to process statistics and proportionality. You have the Dilbert guy who everyday was seeing videos of black people beating up white people, and came to the conclusion that black people are bad and should be avoided. How is this different?

When people cherry pick data and create action plans based upon that data it often makes things worse not better.