[HN Gopher] Police misconduct settlements
___________________________________________________________________
Police misconduct settlements
Author : IfOnlyYouKnew
Score : 196 points
Date : 2021-02-28 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| carlineng wrote:
| This is fantastic. When people ask me "what do data scientists
| really do?" I am going to send them to this repo and the
| accompanying article. This looks like a massive effort to send
| out each FOIA request and then manually process each individual
| report. At the end of the day, their conclusion has little to do
| with actually investigating trends about police misconduct, and
| is almost entirely about standardization of data collection
| practices.
| uneekname wrote:
| I'm 21 years old, going to graduate from college in a year, and
| reading this comment makes me want to pursue this type of data
| science work. For every school or personal project I've done,
| the joy for me has been the collecting, organizing, and
| analyzing of data.
| [deleted]
| mhh__ wrote:
| The world needs more data scientists who actually follow a
| scientific approach to uncertainty and bias - good luck!
| alexilliamson wrote:
| Bingo. I worked for 4 years as a data scientist for city
| governments, and there is so much low hanging fruit to be
| captured simply with better data management. The
| analysis/modeling almost feels perfunctory once you have the
| data system in the state you need.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I worked for a company that gathered medical license
| information from all 50 states into a central source. We
| gathered the "good lists" and the "bad lists" I liked to say;
| the license lists and the sanction lists. I heard stories
| about sanctioned doctors or nurses just moving to another
| state to continue practicing, though I don't personally know
| if those stories are true, it's easy to imagine the value of
| checking all these lists in a central location.
|
| The problem is all this data from every state is very very
| similar, but it's a huge job to gather all this data
| together. The company was doing a very poor job of it as
| well, with lots of tech debt and incompetent management.
| There was lots of legally questionable web scraping and
| manual work. Many states (shamefully) charge money to be able
| to see what doctors and nurses have been sanctioned, and
| actively try to prevent the data from being scraped.
|
| All this could be eliminated with a federally mandated data
| format. That entire company of 300 people could be automated
| away easily. While I was working there I was always aware
| that part of everyone's high medical bill ended up in my
| paycheck: the hospitals and clinics paid this company, and
| the company paid me.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| > I heard stories about sanctioned doctors or nurses just
| moving to another state to continue practicing, though I
| don't personally know if those stories are true, it's easy
| to imagine the value of checking all these lists in a
| central location.
|
| This was one of the reasons "Dr. Death" was able to keep
| practicing as long as he did. He resigned from positions
| and switched facilities/states before the investigations
| could be completed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Duntsch
|
| https://www.nbc.com/american-greed/video/the-real-dr-
| death/4...
| samstave wrote:
| I think that public positions and critical positions,
| such as police/LEO, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers and other
| positions (maybe nuke plant operators) etc - should all
| have a UUID for each person - and one (with appropriate
| reasoning) should be able to track the UUID of any
| employee across the nation - such that you cant just
| shuffle offenders/let them shuffle themselves about
| assuming their is misconduct - and maybe even provide a
| further incentivization program for those who have
| stellar records - like "doctor of the month for the
| state" or Police officer of the year for the nation"
| etc...
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Would be nice, but as a start, if we could just create a
| law that states can't hind their sanction lists behind
| paywalls, that would go a long way. You're less safe in
| state X because state Y charges a lot of money to get
| access to their sanction lists.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| It's strange to me you feel compelled to professionally justify
| your job through the lens of social justice. I feel no such
| obligation when people ask me what I do.
|
| As for my personal time, money, and issues that are important
| to me that's a very different story.
|
| It feels a little bit to me that we've so eroded our personal
| lives compared to professional lives that people are starting
| to have a hard time distinguishing the two.
| uniclaude wrote:
| This is a great thing that people intend to align what
| they're paid to do the greater part of their lives with what
| they find just.
|
| This is hackernews, the place where people intend to make
| positive change with their brain, their time, and sometimes,
| their money.
| avz wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the alleged erosion of personal
| lives.
|
| Money is simply not the only aspect of a job that determines
| how rewarding it is. Other parameters that people find
| relevant include meaningful mission, ethical concerns, work
| relationships, power, travel, ability to open source code, to
| publish and to give talks, access to expensive hardware,
| innovation, leading others, helping people in need... etc. I
| find it a bizarrely narrow view to insist that getting paid
| is the sole motivation to work. In fact, from conversations
| with folks older and more experienced than me I am under the
| impression that as we age all these other aspects of our work
| keep gaining in importance over paycheck.
|
| That said, I understand that in the absence of money the need
| to get it is an overriding concern. However, I find the focus
| on money very surprising for a site full of software
| engineers who by and large can afford the freedom to pursue
| meaning and self-actualization in their work.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > It feels a little bit to me that we've so eroded our
| personal lives compared to professional lives that people are
| starting to have a hard time distinguishing the two.
|
| It comes up a lot on this site that a job is just a job, and
| thus you shouldn't focus so much on it to find meaning,
| fulfillment, etc., but I'll consider this when it doesn't
| take up majority of my daylight hours.
| yunohn wrote:
| +1 to this. Jobs take up the majority of our mental space
| and energy and hours in the day. Why shouldn't we strive to
| achieve something more meaningful within it?
| scsilver wrote:
| The money isnt filling the void man.
| mhh__ wrote:
| If you want to do something that makes a difference in the
| world what's wrong with that?
| tehwebguy wrote:
| It's interesting to see that a number of these cities failed to
| respond with data whatsoever.
|
| If you wanna take a look at some day today operations of an
| attorney whose focus is suing agencies that refuse to respond to
| FOIA requests follow Beth Bourdon on Twitter:
|
| https://twitter.com/bethbourdon
|
| Often the threat of a FOIA suit is enough. It's funny to see some
| agencies say, "this would be way too burdensome" or "your cost
| will be several thousand dollars" until they realize they'll have
| to explain that to a judge and then the data is suddenly trivial
| to provide in a few days.
| ipsin wrote:
| Isn't FOIA something that applies only to federal agencies?
| Many states also have similar "sunshine laws", but I didn't
| think there was a nationwide mandate for all governments at all
| levels.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I worked briefly in a state agency and I recall during a
| presentation of an application we developed, my boss noting t
| hat the users should be careful what they enter into certain
| fields due to FOIA.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Most states have their own FOIA enacted.
| tsaoutourpants wrote:
| Every state has their own public records law that allows for
| requests similar to FOIA.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I've heard even worse. Of course, it's all hearsay, but I was
| told a story of targeted harassment due to someone trying to
| FOIA a department.
| jron wrote:
| The data was used for this article:
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/police-misconduct-costs...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Might be useful to add to the title "based on FOIA requests for
| 50 cities in USA", or at the very least add "(USA)".
| njharman wrote:
| Police unions should pay part of settlements. Say half.
| (Employer, the city, should be accountable too)
|
| The union and police themselves will fix misconduct when it costs
| them money. Currently they have little incentive to not use
| maximal force. And lots of incentive to be maximal, this may be
| the 1 in 100 people with intent and means to kill a cop and if
| I'm soft or lax I may be that cop.
| davmar wrote:
| serious question: what informs your opinions on this topic? i
| ask because cities are, in fact, already paying for
| settlements. however, the problem is deeper: settlements often
| times in results in the cities going into debt that wall street
| buys. the taxpayer ends up footing the bill. they're called
| "police brutality bonds". you might find this interesting:
|
| https://acrecampaigns.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ACRE_PB...
| https://acrecampaigns.org/research_post/police-brutality-bon...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It's interesting because their trading stresses the idea that
| any encounter could be deadly, even though it's far from true.
| Policing in the US barely cracks the list of the top 15 most
| dangerous jobs. In fact the top two killers of on duty officers
| are car crashes and heart attacks. Random accidents and
| friendly fire also rank highly.
|
| Their mistaken beliefs about the dangers of random encounters
| definitely incentivize bad behavior.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Police unions go even further with 'warrior training' in that
| many cities banned the actual police force from paying for it
| and then the unions go around the intention of the law and
| pay for it themselves.
|
| I'm like 55% sure it's something I'm not comfortable legally
| banning individuals from choosing this for themselves - but I
| would like get rid of that style training and mindset. So idk
| maybe I'd be ok with limiting personal freedom here
| specifically because it's harmful to the greater community.
| Maybe similar to other public health laws that put public
| ahead of individual. Maybe there is legal precedent I don't
| know about to sway this tradeoff?
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/05/bob-
| kroll-...
| upbeat_general wrote:
| Source for that data (on the leading causes of death for
| police officers)? Most things I could find show that more
| officers are shot than get into car crashes (tho it's a close
| second). The exception being COVID-19 for the past year.
|
| I think you are right that they are not high up on the most
| dangerous jobs though I'd argue it still makes sense to fear
| deadly encounters the same way loggers should very much fear
| being crushed by a tree.
|
| I do however agree that this fear is taken far past what is
| rational though which does result in a lot of bad behavior.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I think it depends on the year and how they account for the
| deaths. Most of the gun death stats seem to include
| suicides and accidental shootings by other officers.
|
| I actually don't think the should be trained to fear deadly
| encounters, I believe they should be trained to assess risk
| and deescalate.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| In general (pre-covid), it seems like of the officers who
| die in the line of duty, a little less than half had
| accidental deaths and a little more than half had felonious
| deaths.
|
| https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-
| release...
|
| I recall reading about the heart attack stat too, but I
| can't remember where it was from. It could account for the
| number of officers who died from heart attacks while off
| duty too.
|
| Regardless, the amount of time, effort, and attention paid
| to the possibility of a felonious death seems out of
| proportion to the amount time, effort, and attention paid
| to accidental deaths, even though accidental deaths are
| almost as likely to occur.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The scale is important too. For all police interactions
| in 2019, there were 48 "felonious" deaths which isn't
| very many compared to the wild rhetoric coming out of
| police unions.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| What would cause the most expensive liability insurance?
|
| Would spreading the liability out to a union with many members
| lower the cost compared to each police person individually
| buying?
|
| I support whichever is most expensive and has the most personal
| consequence to change their behavior.
| missedthecue wrote:
| The NYPD pension fund for instance is $50 billion. You think
| that a $100k settlement paid from a pot of $50 billion is going
| to bother a cop who can't access it for decades anyway?
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| First, it would be interesting to know how much money the
| average police officer's union has for settlements, and how
| much settlements tend to be. I'm guessing not every union has
| a $50B pension fund, so the impact may be larger elsewhere.
|
| Second, it would be interesting to know if money from the
| pension fund can be used to pay settlements. Until you said
| something here I had assumed that paying for settlements
| would come from the union's annual budget, and not from a
| pension fund which had been funded earlier (but I could be
| wrong).
|
| Regardless - I think the idea of aligning the incentives of
| the officers themselves (through their union) and the
| citizens who are being policed is a good idea.
| frongpik wrote:
| It will bother the PU chief, though.
| segmondy wrote:
| Doctor's have to carry malpractice insurance, I think police
| officers should do the same. That way a bad officer will
| eventually become uninsurable. So I agree with you, "Employee,
| Employer". Now on the city, I don't know that I agree on that,
| but where will the money really come from if not the city?
| hedora wrote:
| Settlements are something, but don't address the root cause:
|
| > _But despite increased attention, it's still rare for police
| officers to face criminal prosecution._
| cb504 wrote:
| Consider making every criminal complaint against a police
| officer a federal case to be investigated by the FBI. Take it
| out of state and local hands.
| williesleg wrote:
| I love how police don't help the honest people anymore. Just turn
| it in to your insurance.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| There's a simple way to effect change at the legislative level:
| force cities to pay for police misconduct settlements out of
| existing police budgets and pension funds, rather than
| apportioning taxpayer money to do so.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Market-focused rhetoric over the past decades has made it
| tempting to think we can just allocate payments the right way
| to accomplish what we want. This is one case where that fails.
| Instead, we need _leadership_.
|
| Police budgets are taxpayer money. Even if cutting a budget
| meant laying off officers, there's reason to think that would
| create problems - the needs of the community wouldn't be
| reduced, so you'd be having fewer officers doing more, which is
| both costly (in overtime) and increases fatigue and the
| likelihood of problematic behavior. And taking it out of the
| pension fund or otherwise spreading the harm to other officers
| is both easily gamed and incentivizes cover-ups.
|
| It matters who we elect. A significant faction of the U.S. has
| been convinced that government is simply bad or ineffective,
| and they vote for people who deliberately prove that. But if we
| want to see change we need to elect people who are willing to
| go to the mat for the things we support.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > Market-focused rhetoric over the past decades has made it
| tempting to think we can just allocate payments the right way
| to accomplish what we want. This is one case where that
| fails. Instead, we need leadership.
|
| No, we don't. We need a system at rewards good behaviour and
| punishes bad. The market solution is really the best. A
| solution bound on a single leader vanishes as soon as the
| leader goes.
|
| > It matters who we elect.
|
| Things were bad during Obama's reign, as they were under
| Trump. Biden won't bring change, unless systemic change will
| be implemented.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Why focus on presidential elections when we're talking
| about policing? It matters who we elect at the local level.
|
| I think your knee-jerk focus on who the president is (and
| denying the possibility of change) demonstrates what I was
| saying: the rhetoric has convinced people that it doesn't
| matter and it's all some national team sport. That's just
| not true.
| alentist wrote:
| Did you reply to the wrong comment?
|
| Your (knee-jerk?) characterization is the opposite of
| what that comment is saying.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| What are you talking about? The comment dismissed what I
| had said about it mattering who we elect, in a shallow
| and narrowly-focused way. My characterization is indeed
| the opposite, because I disagree with the comment's
| premise. That's why I replied.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe they won't up the budget to
| account for this?
| curryst wrote:
| I don't think cities can run a deficit. They would have to
| pass tax increases to fund that, which would be unpopular.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Any reason they wouldn't move the budget away from other
| services?
| yonig wrote:
| Hello from Chicago
| mark212 wrote:
| You're right for cities and counties (and the state itself)
| in California. None are allowed to operate at a deficit,
| hence the creation of the state "rainy day fund" by Gov.
| Brown after the 2008 recession which has worked very well
| in tempering the current fiscal issues in the Covid
| pandemic, at least at the state level.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I don't think cities can run a deficit.
|
| Lol
| smnrchrds wrote:
| In Alberta (and perhaps elsewhere in Canada), cities are
| legally not allowed to run deficits.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| New York City is running a budget deficit of
| $5,250,000,000.
| zamfi wrote:
| > They would have to pass tax increases to fund that
|
| Or reallocate money previously allocated to libraries,
| social workers, community colleges, public transportation,
| etc. etc.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > force cities to pay for police misconduct settlements out of
| existing police budgets and pension funds, rather than
| apportioning taxpayer money to do so
|
| Err that is taxpayer money?
|
| Police budgets aren't the police's personal money. They don't
| care if you take it away it's no problem for them as long as
| they're still being paid.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Take it from their pension (and cut their budgets). Yes,
| that's wasted taxpayer money but I'm sure the police also
| view it as their own personal money.
| xupybd wrote:
| What if that happened in your company? Another person's
| misconduct resulted in you getting your pension drained?
| kortilla wrote:
| Maybe they will pay more attention to hot heads and
| prevent them from getting hired in the first place.
|
| > Another person's misconduct resulted in you getting
| your pension drained?
|
| This happens quite frequently in companies with public
| stock and/or profit based bonus contributions. If someone
| fucks up and the product kills someone, it impacts
| everyone's retirement that's based on company
| performance.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > This happens quite frequently in companies with public
| stock and/or profit based bonus contributions.
|
| Wait there are companies with their pension funds
| entirely invested in... their own stock?
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I don't have a pension.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Pension / retirement fund, whatever.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| There's a big difference. Pensions are paid by the
| employer and retirement accounts are paid by the
| employee.
|
| Excessive benefits aside, the culture of the police is
| rotten and policing in the US needs to be rethought from
| the ground up.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > There's a big difference. Pensions are paid by the
| employer and retirement accounts are paid by the
| employee.
|
| You make it sound like you're paid more if you get a
| pension!
|
| If the company pays into a pension for or gives you the
| money which you then pay into a pension... guess what
| it's the same money just a slightly different setup.
|
| I've got a pension I pay into myself, so it doesn't need
| to be your employer which does it.
| xupybd wrote:
| Rethought from the ground up scares me a little. Yes I
| think some places need some fundamental changes but you
| don't want to try a rebuild on a system like that.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what are you afraid of?
| xupybd wrote:
| When you attempt to build something from scratch you run
| the risk of creating something worse than the thing you
| were replacing.
| danaris wrote:
| There is fairly strong evidence of broad complicity among
| police officers in each other's misconduct, to the point
| that there are dozens of stories out there of new police
| officers joining some of the most prominent police forces
| in the country, seeing bad things happening, and trying
| to get them to stop--only to be told, persuaded, coerced,
| and threatened into shutting up or quitting.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This literally can happen. If the company causes enough
| harm lawsuits can drain their coffers and cause the
| company to go under or nearly so and restructuring to
| stay afloat temporarily can harm pensions.
| [deleted]
| jaredmosley wrote:
| They'll just increase their base pensions and budgets to
| calculate in the expected costs from the settlements. All
| this will do is destroy the budgets and pensions in one-off
| cases where the act is egregious enough for the cost to be
| 10x any expected costs.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| That's why I also said budgets need to be cut.
| souprock wrote:
| Not sure how else to make sure you saw this, but FYI there
| is an answer to your comment on a different HN submission:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26285917
| d_watt wrote:
| If a police department has a 10m/year budget, resulting in 80
| police officers employed, a 2m settlement coming out of the
| budget means they have to lay off 16 police officers to pay
| it.
|
| That would create an department incentive to force out risky
| officers, as they know their jobs are on the line.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Presumably the city employs 80 police officers because
| they's how many they think they need?
|
| If the voters are happy with 16 less police officers then
| why not fire them right now?
| kortilla wrote:
| Government agencies don't willingly cut headcount because
| it looks like they're overstaffed. What a quaint notion.
|
| If the job is getting done and you have 500 employees and
| the budget for 500 employees, there is literally no
| incentive to even determine if it could be done with 400.
| Leaders don't get a portion of money saved or anything
| like that. They just lose the budget that was for the
| extra employees and get a bunch of pissed off employees
| that now have to work harder for the same pay.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The police don't set their own budget, if that's how
| you're imagining things.
|
| They get given money by government, representing the
| voters.
|
| If the voters think they're happy with less police of
| course they can drop 100 employees worth of budget. The
| police can't stop that.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| This sounds good but the only way to actually fix the problem
| is to hold individual police officers _criminally_ liable.
|
| Currently they avoid criminal liability in a number of ways:
|
| - They are never arrested - other police simply fail to arrest
| them
|
| - They are never indicted - DAs across the country are
| extremely reluctant to press charges
|
| - Charges are dropped by grand juries - in some states, like
| NY, all felonies must be confirmed or dropped by a grand jury
| unless the defendant waived their right. A DA has full power to
| effectively force a drop by portraying a weak case to a
| completely secret grand jury, publicly washing their hands of
| the decision while still getting the result they want.
|
| Then, when a DA is elected who actually says they will hold
| police accountable they often simply will not (as in Jackie
| Lacey, Los Angeles' previous DA) or if they make basically any
| strides toward actually investigating police they will be
| stonewalled and face a recall with support from the local PD
| and/or SD (as in LA's _current_ DA, George Gascon).
|
| Police are given unbelievable rights: we will see over and over
| again that officers with complaints will never actually see
| them investigated and even sustained complaints have barely any
| consequences. Additionally if they are implicated in a serious
| crime on the job they often have union rules barring them from
| being interviewed / interrogated until after a cooling period
| (this blew my mind).
|
| Compare this to basically any other profession, even so much as
| yelling at a client or failing to help customer who asked would
| be a final strike almost anywhere else.
|
| The biggest problem may be that the US justice system is so
| unbelievably cruel that police refuse to ever put one of their
| own through that type of hell.
| [deleted]
| darksaints wrote:
| I agree 100% with everything you've said, and yet I still
| think those reforms would fail to effect change under current
| circumstances. Because current police culture basically says
| "Let me do my job however I want, without consequences, or I
| just won't do my job". And it has already started to show,
| with major police departments like Minneapolis, Chicago,
| Boston, NYC, and Seattle effectively pulling a depolicing
| strike in response to criticism and legislative action trying
| to hold them responsible for their failings.
|
| What you've prescribed would have prevented this from
| becoming a problem in the first place, but it can't do much
| anymore, because the prevalent police culture in the US will
| punish the public for punishing the police. And we've allowed
| this to happen to us.
|
| At this point, nobody knows what can actually fix the
| problem, but I'm increasingly inclined to think that firing
| them all, potentially imprisoning large quantities of them,
| and starting over from scratch, would be the only thing that
| works. Which is mind-blowing...it is practically an admission
| that even though we're a wealthy country, in terms of rule of
| law, we're not much different from a 3rd world failed state
| like Venezuela or Myanmar.
| croissants wrote:
| > we're not much different from a 3rd world failed state
| like Venezuela
|
| In 2016, Venezuela's murder rate was well over 50 per
| 100,000, and the USA's murder rate was slightly over 5 per
| 100,000 [1]. This gap is pretty consistent.
|
| [1] https://dataunodc.un.org/crime/intentional-homicide-
| victims
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > ...effectively pulling a depolicing strike in response to
| criticism and legislative action trying to hold them
| responsible for their failings.
|
| That is a vast overgeneralization. Check out how many
| extreme repeat offenders are immediately released without
| punishment:
|
| https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?t=496
|
| Seattle Police officers are literally reduced to _bribing
| criminals with candy_: https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?t=865
| darksaints wrote:
| Seattle prosecutors may not be the best, but they also
| get nothing to work with. When the police decide to show
| up 8 hours after a crime occurs because they were
| dragging their feet in protest, or they don't have video
| evidence because their body cams were turned off, is it
| any surprise that there is not enough evidence to charge
| a criminal?
|
| Collecting evidence is the primary responsibility of the
| police, and prosecutors declining to prosecute a criminal
| for lack of evidence is a failing of the police, not the
| prosecutor. Unfortunately, given the abundance of
| evidence against criminal cops, they still don't
| prosecute them, so maybe the culpability is shared to
| some degree.
|
| https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-officers-used-
| excess...
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| How do you know that police were collecting insufficient
| evidence before they started reducing policing of some
| crimes as a response to non-prosecution?
| geofft wrote:
| That's because the _voters_ , the people who should
| actually have the right to say how they want their
| government to run, have either voted for legislators who
| write laws that do not punish repeat offenders, or have
| voted for prosecutors who use their discretion, or have
| voted for judges who use their discretion.
|
| That is the right of the voters. The police (and
| certainly not the police unions!) do not have any power
| in a republican society to override that.
|
| It is certainly true that the way that Seattle police
| (and SF police, and NYC police, and NJ police, and...)
| want to maintain public order is different from the way
| that the voters want to maintain public order. But that
| is the very problem at hand - as the comment above says:
| ' _current police culture basically says "Let me do my
| job however I want, without consequences, or I just won't
| do my job"_'.
|
| Police overpolicing because they don't want to do their
| jobs as they're told is not very different from police
| underpolicing because they don't want to do their jobs as
| they're told.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Your analysis is hypocritical. People voted for
| politicians who voted for judges who ruled that police do
| not have to enforce the law.
| geofft wrote:
| If they don't want to do their jobs, then hire other people
| who actually will.
|
| Reagan did this with the air traffic controllers in 1981
| (which I'm not saying I agree with in terms of policy, but
| it was both legal and effective). They went on strike, and
| Reagan said, look, federal workers aren't allowed to
| strike, and if you don't report to work we'll fire you. ATC
| took a hit, flights were slowed, but they found other
| people who were willing to the job and demanded less than
| PATCO demanded.
|
| Which is ultimately how unions _should_ work. They
| aggregate the bargaining power of the employees into a
| unified voice, nothing more or less. If that combined
| bargaining power is low - e.g., because the employer is
| willing to risk the work not getting done, or because
| potential workers don 't actually want to combine their
| individual bargaining power with the union - then the union
| has no additional magical power. Unions just make it
| logistically easier/possible to negotiate things that the
| workers could in theory but not in practice negotiate on
| their own. They don't have any power to negotiate benefits
| for workers that the market couldn't theoretically support.
|
| If a (say) truckers' union says "We want a 20% pay increase
| and more time off," and other potential truckers agree with
| those demands and the logistics companies can manage it
| without going out of business, then they'll get it. If the
| trucker's union says "We want a 10x pay increase and we
| want you to take all legal accountability for anyone we hit
| with our trucks," they would _rightly_ lose that
| negotiation - any company that said "yes" would not last
| very long, and the company would do just fine saying "no."
|
| If a society has no public safety resources without the
| cooperation of a single union, such that it's less of a
| "negotiation" than an acquiescence to whatever that union
| demands, then _that_ is the thing that 's caused us to be a
| failed state. So I agree. Fire them all, at the very least
| ban them from being rehired, and start over.
|
| And it's mostly amazing to me that Reagan felt comfortable
| firing 11,345 air traffic controllers, who are clearly
| operationally needed to put planes in the air and get them
| down again (unlike police, whose role in public safety is
| much more indirect), at a time when he had himself
| acknowledged that ATC was understaffed... and meanwhile,
| there is basically only one story of a US local government
| (Camden, NJ) that felt comfortable firing its police
| department and starting over.
|
| Or maybe put another way - I don't really understand why
| the PATCO decertification prompted the weakening of private
| sector unions in the decades since then, but police unions,
| who like PATCO are public sector unions in safety-critical
| roles, only seem to have gotten stronger.
| eagsalazar2 wrote:
| This is really _not_ getting at the root of the problem (not
| saying we shouldn 't _also_ do this).
|
| Police are trained to see citizens as enemies and to see
| themselves as "warriors". The specific tactics they utilize
| are tactics they have been trained to use and/or are widely
| used in practice so new recruits are immersed in a culture
| where these things are the norm.
|
| Additionally the reason cops get away with things in all the
| ways you list above are because of unions and lack of
| independent accountability.
|
| Persecuting individual officers for doing the job they were
| trained to do actual _inflames_ the problem because they
| already see themselves as the victims (that is crazy, but it
| is 100% true they feel this way).
|
| Of course individuals play a large role but focusing on
| charging officers isn't likely to be an effective strategy
| for changing things.
|
| A much better strategy would be to take officers themselves
| out of the blame/change equation. They get the most political
| sympathy so going at them increases divisions and decreases
| likelihood of any compromise. What's needed to to change
| police training, yes add independent accountability, and
| change the charter of police forces by breaking away social
| services to take over most calls that don't involve felony
| crimes or immediate life dangers.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I agree with most of this but I also think it leaves out a
| huge piece of the puzzle: systemic racism.
|
| Which obviously doesn't have an easy solution.
|
| Maybe mandating more diverse forces, that officers actually
| live in their city, and training/culture accountability
| from the top down (that unions can't block).
| alexashka wrote:
| I don't know why you think racism is a 'huge' piece of
| the puzzle.
|
| You may be surprised to find out there exist countries
| other than USA that have far worse corruption and abuse
| at all levels of society that have nothing to do with
| race.
| Shivetya wrote:
| - Eliminate police unions (get teachers unions too as they
| also cover up some serious crimes against children and have
| even more means to prevent it ever being published)
|
| - Eliminate pay to union members by the government while
| performing union duties; they actually require the state pay
| members salaries and bonus money will performing many union
| duties, go look it up.
|
| - Eliminate law enforcement officer bill of rights" (LEOBOR)
| style legislation
|
| - Require all misconduct records any public employee to be
| published and easily and freely queried
|
| - All investigations must not reveal who is filing the
| complaint nor witnesses to the officer or anyone not in the
| investigation, releasing this information should be a Federal
| offense
|
| - Cities, State, and localities, must be liable even if the
| officer is off duty and the misconduct includes use of their
| issued firearm or other accouterments
|
| - Qualified Immunity language must be modified to remove
| clearly established clause (QI started as a carve out from
| Civil Rights law but clearly has expanded)
|
| - With regards to QI and civil suits. At no time if a
| government agency or member pays out can they include the
| qualifier boilerplate language that explicitly denies that
| the municipality or the officer accept any blame for the
| incident."
|
| - three strikes and your out requirement with no future
| employment by any similar agency in the country. three
| strikes rule not to be used with any loss of life misconduct.
| That is one and out if not resulting in criminal prosecution
|
| You are not going to get anywhere while public sector unions
| exist for public employees. Even if you somehow managed to
| rid yourself of the police union the others would simply be
| used to pressure politicians.
|
| I am all for banning public sector unions from expending any
| money on political activity under the idea that they are
| spending public money to do so.
| StreamBright wrote:
| > to hold individual police officers criminally liable.
|
| Under qualified immunity that most police officers have this
| is not going to happen.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#Police_brut.
| ..
| [deleted]
| stefan_ wrote:
| Qualified immunity is for civil cases, it has nothing to do
| with criminal.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| As another reply mentioned QI is not connected to criminal
| liability (only civil), and it's also a bit of a red
| herring.
|
| In my opinion it's vital that when an agent of the state
| (police officer) deprives someone of civil rights that the
| maximum possible restitution is not limited by their net
| worth or professional insurance carrier's cap (which to my
| knowledge is not a thing for cops, but it is often
| suggested here).
| damagednoob wrote:
| > out of existing police budgets and pension funds
|
| So the incentive here is:
|
| I better keep tabs on my partner or else I'll lose some of my
| pension
|
| Or
|
| I better cover for my partner or else I'll lose some of my
| pension.
|
| I don't think this is the solution you think it is.
| [deleted]
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Why isn't insurance an option here? You mess up and you
| become too expensive to employ.
| marwatk wrote:
| This has always seemed like the proper solution to me.
| Force individual officers to have malpractice-like
| insurance that pays for these fees (individual liability).
|
| Any way of spreading the liability to the department or
| city bypasses individual accountability and will insulate
| bad actors.
| thelock85 wrote:
| I like the idea but you still have the challenge of
| transparent reporting. At least it should be easy for
| civilians to accurately report alleged misconduct (I think
| Raheem.ai is trying to figure this out.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Sure - but isn't transparent reporting always a problem
| everywhere? At least it would solve _some_ of the
| incentive misalignment.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Professional insurance of the variety that doctors get
| doesn't cover reckless or malicious behavior. Insurance
| that covered the things that cops presently ought to be
| sued for would not be affordable.
|
| What you are describing is another complex layer which
| would be liable to be perverted to serve establish
| interests because that is inevitably what happens with
| complex systems with powerful entrenched interests.
|
| 5 years after implementation we would be talking about why
| it had fixed none of our problems and how we needed to fix
| it which would be politically as hard as implementing it in
| the first place with the primary difference between now and
| then being paying a big bundle of money to the insurance
| industry. Instead of political pressure to just pay off the
| people the officers shot there would be political pressure
| to just subsidize the problem officers insurance payments
| and then STILL pay out for most of the egregious stuff that
| isn't covered. Most of the time a "market solution" makes
| as much sense as the people who faced with a technical
| problem yell "BLOCKCHAIN!"
|
| Personal liability is still a complex system subject to the
| same forces but the less it is polluted with cop specific
| process the more likely that it will actually work because
| its harder to pervert the entire process of civil
| litigation than it is to pervert an incestuous insurance
| market that services the law enforcement industry.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Fair enough.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| Award cash prizes to reporters and whistleblowers funded in
| the same way.
| taxidump wrote:
| With little to no repercussions financially to the department
| or employee and no major career punishments, what do you
| propose instead?
| damagednoob wrote:
| 4. Independently investigate & prosecute
|
| 6. Body cams/Film the police
|
| 8. End for profit policing
|
| 10. Fair police union contracts
|
| https://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Force individual officers to carry liability insurance
| similar to malpractice insurance for lawyers and doctors.
| If the insurance is forced to pay out a couple times the
| officer would be uninsurable and thus unemployable.
| opo wrote:
| This is suggested quite often, but 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.
| threatofrain wrote:
| But is that accompanied with officers being exposed to
| individual liability? And removing qualified immunity?
| Because that would be the bigger argument.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Limit qualified immunity and require officers to carry
| personal liability insurance on the job.
|
| Increase police training requirements. They're woefully
| undertrained in the US (at least relative to Germany and
| several other Western European nations).
|
| National LEO registration or something similar to stop the
| movement of bad officers from one department to another.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You are right but its not merely the degree of training
| but how they are trained as well. As it stands many are
| trained that every interaction with the populace might
| get you murdered and you ought to be ready to murder them
| first.
| antattack wrote:
| That would also increase an incentive to cover-up the
| misconduct.
|
| I think the best first step would be to increase transparency
| and accountability. For example, large number of cities did not
| even respond to the FIOA request. Also, I read that many Police
| misconducts are not even tracked at federal level and civil
| forfeiture has little oversight.
| alostpuppy wrote:
| I like that idea.
| JarlUlvi wrote:
| A big problem with this data is quite simple.
|
| Legal defense is expensive, and time consuming. Due to the cost
| of an expensive defense, and a potential large settlement,
| defendants with alot to lose are incented to settle for a small
| payout, rather than go to trial. This is whether or not there was
| actually misconduct.
|
| This is the same rationale used for corporations settling
| lawsuits, rather than defending them. Merely the cost of defense
| with having a corporate lawyer defending said corporation can be
| prohibitive. Better a small settlement than dragging out a
| defense. Medical malpractice lawyers vs ambulance chaser lawyers
| can treat it the same way for that matter.
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