
Ask HN: How can we prevent excessive force by police? - i_like_news
What steps can we take to build a safer society for everyone regardless of class, race, religion, gender, disability, or anything else?<p>I think that police departments open sourcing their policies would go a long way. Or wearing body cams in more situations.<p>What do you smart (non-cynical) internet people think?
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respect4othrs
"The 50 Years of Crowd Control Research Police Are Ignoring"
[https://slashdot.org/story/371676](https://slashdot.org/story/371676)

"New Era of Public Safety: An Advocacy Toolkit for Fair, Safe, and Effective
Community Policing" (2019)
[https://policing.civilrights.org/toolkit](https://policing.civilrights.org/toolkit)

[https://policing.civilrights.org/](https://policing.civilrights.org/)

[https://civilrights.org/](https://civilrights.org/)

Criminal_justice_reform_in_the_United_States
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_reform_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_reform_in_the_United_States)

Are there points in these resources that could be summarized here?

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igrekel
Training and drilling to stay calm and de-escalate situations. Training on how
to handle confused individuals or individual with mental illnesses.

Be better at working as an organisation and not rely on the action of a single
cop. Change laws procedures so that persons of interest can still have hope
and that being arrested does not equal to the end of life as they know it.
Strangely enough, fair process and trials and forgiving laws help make it less
likely that people being arrested attempt desperate violent actions against
the cops. In return, it makes the cops job easier and reduces their likeliness
to use excessive force.

Again, the probability of getting caught is the most effective deterrent to
criminal activity , not the severity of the punishment.

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Finnucane
I wouldn't look to an industry that produced Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel,
Dorsey, Kalanick, etc., for answers.

~~~
respect4othrs
Who would you look to?

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rm445
The US seems to have a fairly adversarial, legislative rules-based
relationship between policing and people's rights to justice, if that makes
any sense. This is just speaking as a layman observing from outside. (Contrast
with other countries. There are many places which achieve even less control of
their police, or the police serve corrupt interests, but there are also
countries which seem to have more public consent and less excessive force).

So, the USA - the bill of rights, search warrants, Miranda rights. It's not
exactly policing by consent, it's more like an understanding that the police
will go to any lengths they feel necessary, so there need to be hard rules
that completely invalidate the case against someone if breached.

I guess the same model can continue to be refined through the democratic
process. Technology can play a part. One can imagine future laws that impose
strict rules about body cams (e.g. that absence of a recording implies
innocence, or that 'lost' footage carries a presumption of guilt in police
brutality allegations). Ubiquitous surveillance, not to say it's a good thing,
but if it's happening anyway, it should be useful in preventing excessive
force by police too. Laws could be passed specifically enabling (and
preventing treatment as a crime) various technological forms of monitoring of
law enforcement by the public.

> What do you smart (non-cynical) internet people think?

I don't know how one would start to rip up American policing and produce a
kindly institution that was accepted universally by the community. No-one can
be that non-cynical. But I guess I'm non-cynical in thinking that there's
still some mileage in democracy and the rule of law, and progress might still
be made via the normal channels. Of which, by the way, protesting is a part.

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sudoaza
Accountability!!

Racism and abuse are cultural and deeply rooted, don't know how you change
that without dismantling it. But abuse is learned and cheered upon, then is
covered and rarely punished.

You have cases like a cop shooting with a machine-gun an unarmed teen and then
not only going unpunished but retiring to cash in a milionary pension because
of "PTSD".

~~~
giantg2
I'd be careful about that PTSD statement. If the officer really has it from a
duty related incident, then it would be best to retire. They could be a danger
in that profession if they are "jumpy".

On a side note, the retirement requirements for non-medical retirement should
be more stringent.

~~~
sudoaza
I'm talking about this case, the officer wasn't punished instead now has a
huge pension for his traumatic experience
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ooa7wOKHhg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ooa7wOKHhg)

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halfcat
Redesign police departments with separation of roles and responsibilities.

In most any other organization, especially ones where there aren’t enough
qualified workers, you don’t have one main role where the entry level people
and under performers are all doing the same work as seasoned veterans. You
separate out roles, and entry level people do work that requires minimal
responsibility and can inflict minimal damage.

You have a swat team, and they get called in when needed, but they don’t get
to decide when to jump into action, someone else decides that, and the swat
team doesn’t drive around looking for things to get involved in. There’s no
reason the shooters and the deciders need to be the same person.

Is there any reason a cop writing a traffic citation:

* Needs a gun?

* Needs to approach another car on foot?

* Needs to exit his own car at all?

What if there was a role for traffic cop, which is entry level, unarmed, where
the cop never exits their own vehicle, and where the only job is to write a
citation, but _not_ also to run warrants and try to search the citizen’s car
for illegal items?

If you had that role, the traffic cop isn’t on edge, worried he might get shot
in the face for pulling over a guy with warrants. The guy with warrants
doesn’t need to run, he just gets his citation and moves on.

Eventually technology will help enable this, say, once we have remote control
drone cars to issue traffic citations.

Sure, there are tons of details to sort out, like a reliable system to
identify drivers independent of the physical car (so there’s no person-to-
person interaction required to write a ticket), but I suspect this is an area
where the motives are so misaligned that technology will have to show up which
forces these kinds of forward progress. The same way people fought for women’s
rights for a long time, then the pill shows up and advances things forward by
an order or magnitude.

~~~
i_like_news
This makes a lot of sense.

Why does a cop have to prepare for the absolute worst case scenario when
interacting with the everyday public?

The research (and the recent 538 article) show that, by the cop preparing for
the absolute worst, it makes the other party feel disrespected ("He thinks I'm
going to attack him?? Well..") and ironically, is much more likely to lead to
a worst case scenario.

I'm not saying that cops as a whole shouldn't have guns, riot gear, or
bulletproof vests. But those should only come out after being shown necessary
in an interaction. Yes, this is likely to shift deaths initially to the side
of police from the side of the general public. But overall, deaths should go
down dramatically over time. Plus we'd live in a healthier society.

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giantg2
Body cameras would be good. This would also need to be joined with some policy
and law changes, such as amending or abolishing qualified immunity and
requiring personal liability insurance.

Along these lines, it would also be good to dissolve or restrict the police
union. The union protects bad cops. The goals of the union are in conflict
with the interests of the community in these situations. Even FDR was against
public unions.

They aren't going to release many their policies or tactics for opsec and
efficacy purposes.

A good book (content-wise, maybe not execution-wise) is "We Get Confessions".

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respect4othrs
> _amending or abolishing qualified immunity and requiring personal liability
> insurance._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity)
(1967, 2005,)

What other professions (other than legislative civil servants) offer
exemptions to personal and business liability?

~~~
giantg2
The SCOTUS ruling that created qualified immunity only applies to government
workers such as police and politicians, so the answer to your question would
be "none".

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chewz
Disolve Police Departments and let citizens organize new police force that
they will trust.

~~~
giantg2
This could be a disaster. Knowledge of the law and training in policing would
be necessary to avoid chaos and deviation (further than we are already) from
rule of law.

In theory the community already does this, but in a safer way - by electing
mayors and sheriffs that share their beliefs. These leaders should be able to
institute changes or appointment people within the rule of law.

~~~
respect4othrs
Is due process by the justice system sufficient for responding to violations
of rights?

How can bias in administering due process be addressed by criminal and civil
prosecution?

Due process #UnitedStates:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process#United_States)

Use of force:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force)

~~~
giantg2
If due process and rule of law is not followed, then you will be violating the
rights of the accused.

