Things that I want

[steuard]

I want the whole concept of "juvenile charged as an adult" to be eliminated from the American legal system. (Maybe the US could then stop being the only UN nation other than Somalia not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the ChildI want police officers to be trained under the assumption that protecting innocent civilian lives is even

Comments

[beth_leonard]

[To answer Stu's question in a reply to kirinn] Primarily the ones about training of police officers, i.e. "I want police officers to be trained under the assumption that protecting innocent civilian lives is even more important than their own safety."

Police are very expensive as-is, and asking them to do more is also very expensive because you have to buck union protection. Becoming a police officer in San Jose requires a 2-year degree, and pays $78K/year plus overtime, pension, and benefits, and they can't find enough people willing to take the job because the pay isn't good enough and the benefits/pension aren't sweet enough. (Also, the current San Jose police union has been actively dissuading anyone from taking the job, so that can't help.)

Pensions for older police officers are so generous they were on a path to bankrupt the city, and several cities in California have already gone bankrupt due to inability to change pension promises. Police put their life on the line, and they need to be paid accordingly. People such as yourself generally don't choose to become police officers, so you have to work with the people who want that job, and they generally don't come from the same "enlightened" stock.

While there are many things that can be done, and I don't disagree with any of the things we wish could be done, the list is expensive, as in bankrupting-cities expensive.

Decriminalizing drugs is substantially less expensive, and would allow police to shift the focus of enforcement. Many police don't want to do that though, because it's easy to throw someone you suspect of some other crime in jail for possession or sale of drugs. That's far easier to catch someone doing than breaking and entering, or possession or sale of stolen goods. A bike? Maybe you bought it, maybe you didn't. In America we don't require people to keep their receipts with them for every purchase. A Kilo? Doesn't matter if you bought it with your own money; you're guilty.

--Beth

[steuard]

I see what you're getting at: additional training would definitely cost money. My hope, at least in the medium to long term, is that this would mostly be a matter of different emphasis in the training we already do. I've seen claims that modern policing shifted emphasis significantly in the past 30 years or so (perhaps in connection with "broken windows" theory, or with the drug war); I'd like to think we could to some degree roll that back. And hey: why not make some room in the training schedule by eliminating most officers' instruction in, say, the use of flash-bangs in no-knock raids, or procedures involving armored personnel carriers, or the paperwork necessary for civil forfeiture?

Honestly, though, for a lot of these (not all of them) I don't care even a little bit how much they cost: I would very nearly prefer not to have a police force at all than continue to support some of the breathtakingly immoral practices that have come to be all too common (or even the norm) today.

[beth_leonard]

"Honestly, though, for a lot of these (not all of them) I don't care even a little bit how much they cost: I would very nearly prefer not to have a police force at all than continue to support some of the breathtakingly immoral practices that have come to be all too common (or even the norm) today."

Agreed. How would you recommend achieving any of this?

--Beth

[steuard]

I really, really wish I knew. I was honestly tempted to fly to Ferguson to stand behind the protesters there last year, but that wouldn't really have made a difference (and I'm not ready to take that kind of risk right now). I'm open to suggestions, and willing to throw a fair bit of time and money at a promising solution.

[steuard]

A quick second followup, since I happened to see a relevant comment on Twitter. Training police officers to deescalate situations rather than turn immediately to violence or threats of violence would certainly have an up-front cost. But, just for instance, police brutality lawsuits in Chicago alone averaged about $50 million over the ten years leading up to 2014. NYC recently paid over $150 million in a year. So changing police culture could definitely save some serious cash on that end. (And routine use of body cameras could eliminate a large fraction of false brutality claims, too.)