
Americans' perceptions of police drop significantly in one week - srameshc
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/06/americans-views-police-drop-significantly-amid-protests-survey/3159072001/
======
post_break
When a 75 year old man is trying to return a police helmet to them, and they
push him down causing him to bleed from his head and ears, and they fire two
officers who did it, and the rest resign from the riot group in purpose in
support of the two who pushed him, what else could you possibly expect?

[https://twitter.com/WBFO/status/1268712530358292484?s=20](https://twitter.com/WBFO/status/1268712530358292484?s=20)

~~~
mythrwy
And before resigning, they all walk by the guy bleeding on the ground
purposefully not looking.

Hard to watch that and not be horrified.

I guess this guy has been a constant gadfly at protests for some time. I don't
know if that had anything to do with it or not but shocking.

~~~
rectang
> _they all walk by the guy bleeding on the ground purposefully not looking._

There's another video, slightly longer, which shows that the police stop after
a few more seconds and attend to him. I think they were a bit shocked by
severe consequences of the shove and uncertain for a moment (even though it
was a predictable result of the heavy-handed approach that the police have
been taking that somewhere something like this would happen).

What is absolutely _not_ forgivable, though, is lying that he "tripped and
fell" on the police report. And it's even more outrageous that dozens of
officers are coming together to defend that egregious lie!

~~~
lreeves
That is incorrect; the police continued to walk past and a member of the
National Guard ended up attending to him:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFeewU0HhNE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFeewU0HhNE)

~~~
burgerzzz
I'm trying to understand where the riot was? They pan to the left and there's
like 30 people max in the park across the street. This seems totally
unjustified given the circumstances. Somehow they managed to easily apprehend
the second man in the video without shoving him to the ground. Just disgusting
either way.

------
corty
Public perception of the police degrading is a first good sign.

What is important are the next steps: the police needs accountability, police
misbehaviour must be investigated independently. Not by the police, not by the
prosecutor they work with every other week. The police must be made to
understand they are being watched, very closely, by technical, legal and human
means. Only then will they think twice before stepping out of line. And each
misstep needs to have proportionate consequences that take into account the
misuse of power as well as the crime itself, so punishment must be harsher
than for mere mortals, not the usual slap on the wrist.

Changes in training or authorized uses of force are useless smoke and mirrors
without proper accountability.

Quis enim custodiet ipsos custodies?

~~~
tartoran
This is obvious and I really hope things will change. But I wonder if they
will change meaningfully not just superficially

~~~
corty
It may seem obvious, but I think this needs to be repeated over and over
again. Otherwise nothing will come from this mess, just warm words and
symbolic measures

~~~
tartoran
Yeah, random riots whenever they are prepared the least. Im so angry at how
cops can legally hit, punch, injure, shoot and how they use their power and do
so indiscriminately on whoever they are angry at the moment and face no
repercussions. And when repercussions are possible they hide their badges...

------
ngngngng
A lot of people are talking about changing the laws so that officers aren't
protected by qualified immunity or unions, but as far as I understand, one of
the main problems is prosecutors.

Prosecutors require police to bring them people to prosecute. If a prosecutor
starts going after cops, they've now pissed off a group of people they rely on
the get their job done, so most prosecutors won't prosecute cops.

I imagine this could be fixed by states having a special prosecutor
specifically for those that are now considered protected by qualified
immunity, which is more than just police. Also we should get rid of qualified
immunity, which is an insult to the constitution.

~~~
ardy42
> A lot of people are talking about changing the laws so that officers aren't
> protected by qualified immunity or unions, but as far as I understand, one
> of the main problems is prosecutors.

It's all connected. The police unions push back _hard_ against reforms in the
prosecutors' office that might subject them to more scrutiny.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-
minneapo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapolis-
kroll.html)

> In St. Louis, when Kim Gardner was elected the top prosecutor four years
> ago, she set out to rein in the city’s high rate of police violence. But
> after she proposed a unit within the prosecutor’s office that would
> independently investigate misconduct, she ran into the powerful local police
> union.

> The union pressured lawmakers to set aside the proposal, which many
> supported but then never brought to a vote. Around the same time, a lawyer
> for the union waged a legal fight to limit the ability of the prosecutor’s
> office to investigate police misconduct. The following year, a leader of the
> union said Ms. Gardner should be removed “by force or by choice.”

~~~
corty
I think police unions is the one instance where union busting or just plainly
making unions illegal would be justified.

~~~
morvita
I don't think making police unions illegal is the solution, unions play an
important role in preventing the employer from taking advantage of employees.
What we need to do is limit the scope of unions. Unions making sure their
members have decent pay, benefits, safe working conditions, etc - GREAT!
Unions protecting corrupt, abusive, dangerous members from facing punishment -
BAD! This is true for any profession.

------
bovermyer
Ancedote: my father-in-law is a prison guard in Minneapolis. HIS opinion of
police has plummeted in the last week.

~~~
SN76477
Powerful stuff.

------
nickt
If you're in a position of appointed authority, then surely special rules must
apply.

How about starting with 3x the sentence of a normal citizen for breaking the
same rules?

~~~
Mirioron
I'm not sure that increasing the punishment would help. They need to actually
be punished for breaking the rules. Not sometimes, but every time they break
those rules.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I advocate we make a specific law that witnessing a felony action by a fellow
police officer and not reporting it become a chargeable offense on its own. We
also make it illegal to not make the officer investigations private after some
threshold, like 5 diff cases. I get that there are false accusations but they
have too much power and we need to go the other way.

------
irrational
My 10 year old son keeps saying, "I thought the police were our friends?"
Frankly he is traumatized by the actions of the police he is seeing on the
news. Yesterday we were driving to the pharmacy to get some medicine and he
suddenly started crying and freaking out. It turned out that he saw a police
car and was convinced we were going to be pulled over and killed.

Thankfully my state has just passed a law making it illegal for police to
enter elementary or secondary school grounds except in the case of an
emergency. At least he will probably be safe from the police at school.

~~~
robotron
I feel as if I should explain something to my child but have been kind of
shielding them. I'm seriously conflicted.

------
aswanson
I'm black, got my license to drive the year Rodney King got assaulted by cops
that got exonerated by an all white jury. Glad some of my fellow Americans
woke up to my reality.

~~~
tartoran
We knew about your reality but were as powerless as you were. Look who became
president in 2016 because we had the nerve to vote a black president. And I
really do wonder what they’re up to next. After Bush I thought it cannot go
lower but it did. I really want to be positive but am still shocked by whats
been happening

~~~
viklove
You'd be shocked if you looked into how little (read: nothing) Obama did about
police overreach and lack of oversight. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump... when it
comes to police brutality they're all the same.

This isn't a partisan issue, the color of your tie does not wash your hands of
blame here.

The Dem party's marketing dept should all get raises, though. For some reason
you seem to believe that having a black president who did absolutely nothing
for black people was better for black people than Trump. When it comes to
policy or enforcement changes, this could not be further from the truth.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
It is a difficult watch, but the past days brought up a lot of videos that
probably would not be more than a blip on a regular day. It is possible that
what we are seeing is a straw that broke the camel's back.

As I may have disclosed before, I have some cops in my family and I do think
they have too much power compared to Europe.

edit: corrected the idiom

------
saalweachter
[EDIT: For context, this was detached from post_break's comment: "When a 75
year old man is trying to return a police helmet to them, and they push him
down causing him to bleed from his head and ears, and they fire two officers
who did it, and the rest resign from the riot group in purpose in support of
the two who pushed him, what else could you possibly expect?"]

You can only have one absolute moral principle; everything else must
ultimately be contingent on not violating that core principle.

I am usually bringing this up on HN in the context of free speech, because I
think free speech is a poor choice to make your absolute moral principle.

In this context, there's another example of a poor choice for an absolute
principle.

Brotherhood, fraternity, loyalty to your group is frequently a good thing.
Many things only work with trust.

But this is what it looks like when brotherhood -- loyalty to your fellow
police officers, in this case -- is your absolute moral principle. Upholding
the law and protecting the innocent come second to protecting your own.

~~~
jariel
This is a very good point.

To me, the cops quitting in solidarity is a far worse problem than the cops
pushing the old man.

We need to grasp that in a national eruption of 1000's of interactions, some
of them will be bad. There will be emotions, stupidity, even racism and true
bad acting. I fully expect that even in a highly professional and well-trained
police force ... that stupid ____will happen.

BUT - the cops quitting ... this is 1) not a decision made 'in the moment of
passion in the blink of an eye' and 2) as you say, it arguably contradicts the
very nature of their oath.

My cousin, a Marine, said to me that a common creed is 'Unit, Corps, God,
Country'. I don't know if that's official, colloquial, or even widely true ...
but ... I found it really deeply wrong to put 'unit and corps' above 'god and
country'. But I never got the chance to discuss it with him.

~~~
A4ET8a8uTh0
I feel obligated to point out that, based on what I read thus far, they did
not quit the force; just that particular unit ( supposedly over union not
covering legal fees -- but no idea how true that is ).

------
softwaredoug
I think a lot about how so many police officers are Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans. How much has this experience altered departments perception of what
it means to police? Or influenced to baddest actors to behave like they do?

~~~
pmorici
I don't think so if anything veterans of those conflicts probably have way
more restraint because half the crap police have been shown doing wouldn't be
allowed by the military. If soldiers shot and abused people as routinely and
willnilly as police do it would be a major scandal.

If you go read through US military documents about the use of force and rules
of engagement you will find things like it requires _presidential approval_ to
use riot control agents like pepper spray and tear gas. You aren't allowed to
use non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets and bean bag guns without special
training because they are dangerous if use improperly. It's against the law of
war to target noncombatants (police have been specifically targeting
journalists in a number of high profile incidents)

[0]
[https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/TBS/B130936...](https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/TBS/B130936%20Law%20of%20War%20and%20Rules%20Of%20Engagement.pdf)

edit: I agree with the sister comment that the faulty police mentality largely
comes from really bad training that instills the mind set that there is danger
behind every corner.

~~~
corty
Afaik the pepper spray and tear gas approval requirement stem from the fact
that those are classified as chemical weapons in international treaties. Shows
that the police treat their own population worse than the military does
enemies and the rest of the world...

------
alerighi
So after all of that, still 61% of white americans stands by the side of the
police? As a normal european citizens, americans what is your problem?
Something like that here would have been considered unacceptable by everyone,
beside some stupid neo fascist parties that fortunately are a small minority:
not only killing a person for nothing, but then using violence against
peaceful protesters.

~~~
nojvek
The issue runs deeper. America is really divided amongst the political lines.
People either identify as Democrats or Republican. The Racial injustice and
protests are seen as Democratic and mostly happening in coastal states that
vote blue most of the time.

The inner states (which are mostly white) vote the opposite.

This really doesn’t surprise me. America like its political polarization is
also quite divided racially.

Our president further propagates this with Xenophobia.

We’re quite backwards compared to Europe like that.

------
l0b0
This situation reminds me of an interesting series on the first UK police
force, how basically it grew out of robber gangs and went back and forth
between a force for good and a force for consolidating power at the cost of
ordinary citizens.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvMQY_y4qx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvMQY_y4qx8)

------
jumelles
It has been terrifying and astounding to see the police response to protests
against brutality with... more brutality.

~~~
koolba
Versus what though? Outnumbered 25:1, rampant looting and mayhem all around,
and seeing your mates hit with bottles of water filled with quikcrete, it
doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

Just because something makes you feel bad for society doesn’t mean the actions
at an individual basis are purely malicious or unreasonable.

~~~
NoSorryCannot
In both absolute terms and by averages, the protestors have demonstrated
better individual restraint than law enforcement.

Which is quite an indictment considering the protestors can be joined by, as
you noted, and random opportunist or provocateur.

~~~
flippinburgers
Is there actual data about this that can be viewed somewhere?

------
jariel
So the keyword here is 'perception' \- which is ultimately a game of populism,
which dry realists may loathe a little bit.

There are some very good arguments for 'critical masses of sentiment'
necessary to effectuate actual change, at the same time, populism is a war for
'hearts and minds' and the first casualty in every war is of course the Truth.

Personally, I'm far more interested in _real_ nature of every day policing,
which is a complex and nuanced subject, not likely suitable for the narrative-
driven vignettes proposed to use every night on cable news.

I believe that 'narrative and populist driven change' is usually not the best
way forward. We've seen this very poignantly with the rise of the 'doctors and
bureaucrats' to the fore of public display during the Covid epidemic. It's
been mostly heartwarming to hear from the dry, mundane, secular, academic
mandarins managing our pandemic responses behind the scenes.

Dr. Bonnie Henry managing British Columbia's COVID response as a fairly good
example; we're now getting _actually charts and data_ to explain and validate
the inherently complex nature of COVID, and the impetus for the resulting
action.

On TV, the narrative-drivers and those trying to make big statements
completely drown out a much-need opportunity for dispassionate discussion
about this issue. I feel that people are being highly misled one way or
another to the point that when real facts and hard evidence don't align with a
narrative, they become anthemic to the presentation, and anyone proposing to
discuss them becomes a heathen to the cause. A lot of people are spending a
lot of time, decades even, in bubbles of 'very incomplete information'.

America has made _huge_ strides in all sorts of areas, and in most ways 'it's
better than it's ever been'. I wouldn't for a second give Trump (or any
incumbent president) credit for this but as avg. Black income, wage-gap, and
unemployment-gaps become historically low even during _his_ tenure, this is
saying a lot. If you look at the broad measures of ostensible progress, they
don't really jump at points of social contention, really, it looks _mostly_
good over broad units of time. Progress is mostly a steady grind, made by a
lot of thoughtful people.

Particularly disturbing is the entrance of major brands, deciding to
participate in the situation - though sometimes it's hard to see how earnest
intention may be exploited ... it definitely is. Master marketers don't sell
you products really on the basis of function, rather an aspiration - and if
that aspiration has moved off the court onto the streets, you can be sure that
someone hustling you shoes because of a deeply held political or social
conviction ... it's a huge red flag.

It takes a real kind of mindfulness to 'see something bad in a video or tweet'
as a data point, instead of an emblem. A quick gander through Pew polling,
actual police stats, victimization reports, and decent research paints a
totally different picture than one would form from reading headlines or
drowning in Tweets.

~~~
ComputerGuru
What you are saying does not go against what people are complaining about. No
one is out in the streets complaining that the economy sucks or that their
education opportunities are too limited (although every single metric says
that blacks are very unfairly disadvantaged here across all walks of life) -
they’re saying that black people in America are still not treated as equals in
one-on-one interactions and in particular when the police are involved. A
black kid playing in the street shouldn’t be shot because the cop thought he
was a gangbanger. Finding a counterfeit twenty on someone that probably had no
clue it was counterfeit in the first place should not result in their
execution. And the chances that a cop would ignore a dozen people screaming at
them to stop literally killing someone just are not the same when the
individual in question is black instead of white.

The fact is, while all the other metrics may have improved, the police force
in lots of major cities are still White Boys Clubs, police unions are bastions
of corruption, racism is the norm, and incidents are constantly swept under
the rug.

~~~
jariel
You've helped demonstrate my point: 'populism and press-driven narratives lead
to false views of reality'.

Your statement: " lots of major cities are still White Boys Clubs, police
unions are bastions of corruption, racism is the norm," \- is false, and
almost bigoted.

The vast majority of PD's in America, the Police themselves generally reflect
the racial reality of the communities they manage.

Chicago PD is about 50% White, 25% Black, and 25% Latino. [1] Black and Latino
police are _overrepresented_ those forces. This is not uncommon.

Why don't you have a look at the actual data - all the PD ethnic composition
is right there for you to see.

It's false to suggest that these PDs are 'a bunch of White Boy Clubs' \- when
they _literally_ are not, but not only that, just the opposite, fairly
multicultural and excellent examples of 'functional diverse workforces'.

Ironically, the police are _considerably better than hight tech_ at
demonstrating how representation and getting along matters.

The fact that Police forces generally well reflect the ethnicity of the people
they manage is probably something most people wouldn't necessarily know, and
it's 'real-world information' that adds nuance to the situation.
Unfortunately, since this reality doesn't fit the narrative, it doesn't get
talked about.

Even this incident in Minnesota: we have 'assailants' who are _diverse_ : two
white cops, an Asian cop, and a cop 'of Colour' (possibly Black?) - does that
fit the 'Team Racist Redneck' narrative? No.

It's ridiculous to suggest 'racism is the norm' on teams that are
overwhelmingly diverse, wherein partners, managers, chefs, officials are of
every stripe and creed. Also, it's kind of insulting.

So how could it be that people have this view of PD's when the data shows that
this would be highly unlikely? Why is this kind of information not made part
of the discussion on various media outlets? There's a lot more where this came
from.

Populism leads to misinformation, poor analysis, and crude thinking. The
situation is far more nuanced. We need dispassion and reason.

[1] [https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-
dep...](https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-department-
officer-demographics-minority-representation.html)

~~~
ComputerGuru
> Chicago PD is about 50% White, 25% Black, and 25% Latino. [1] Black and
> Latino police are overrepresented those forces. This is not uncommon.

Chicago is 32% non-Hispanic white, 32% black, and 28% hispanic. So, no, white
cops outnumbering black cops 2:1 is not black cops being overrepresented.
(This is as of the latest census.)

------
codeddesign
Why is this even on HN? Leave this stuff to google news. The great part of HN
is that it’s an amazing space for tech news, rather than political,
sociological, or world news.

Deviations like this just bring down the original purpose and integrity of
going to HN.

~~~
camel_Snake
So don't click on it? I respect your opinion, it's a common one on this site,
but I don't see how it's any different than a post about a technology you're
not interested in.

~~~
codeddesign
See my second comment as per the guidelines of HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

The argument is the type of content, not the content itself. This content
falls into mainstream events which would be against HN guidelines.

*edits for grammatical errors

------
reminddit
graph is like unemployment. Several deviations drop from mean. Expert's models
say they are rare, but they are always wrong. Now the anger is toward those
experts whose models always break because they don't handle the extremes,
while they are drinking coffee in their ivory towers.

~~~
rsynnott
Rapid shifts in public opinion in response to high profile events aren’t at
all rare, and I don’t think any experts were claiming they were...

------
tw000001
I won't deny that there are corruption and accountability problems among US
police forces, but I also can't help but feel like many people, especially
now, don't appreciate the fact that American police deal with people who are
violent, disrespectful, and frequently mentally ill on a sometimes daily
basis.

These are humans too and they're watching society (and especially media)
totally dehumanize them. To some degree their anger is arguably justified.

I feel like it's impossible to get an accurate feel for how many people are
protesting and what proportion of the population supports the protests. But I
have a feeling it's a minority, maybe 10-30% of the population, in which case
you cannot let a fraction of your population hold your entire city hostage,
especially when opportunists are simultaneously looting and burning, though
that seems to have calmed down recently.

Point being, if the protestors won't listen when asked to leave, and if they
are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of 70-90% of the population, I don't
see any option other than gradual escalation, which typically precedes gas and
rubber bullets.

The police in a city in Canada went on strike in the late 1960s[1]. Things
didn't go well. And we've already seen that American demographics are willing
to burn and loot even with police present...so I don't mean to defend police
but I really don't see anything good coming from police standing down or
refusing to use force.

1.[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-
Hill_riot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot)

Edit: Downvotes are intended for discouraging low effort or otherwise poor
comments, not to shame people for disagreeing. Whether you like it or not at
least half the country supports police, they play an important role in
society, and that makes this a discussion worth having.

~~~
rsynnott
> don't appreciate the fact that American police deal with people who are
> violent, disrespectful, and frequently mentally ill on a sometimes daily
> basis.

Lots of people have difficult stressful jobs dealing with people who don’t
have much respect for them. That’s not an excuse for criminality, though. Take
medical professionals. In the public mind, there are few things more
horrifying and reprehensible than the doctor or nurse who deliberately kills
or neglects their patients. There’s pretty much universal agreement that this
is not okay, and that it is in fact a morally worse crime than normal murder
or neglect, as it is done by someone in a position of trust. It should be the
same for police.

~~~
flippinburgers
In defense of the OP the interaction between doctor and patient is not at all
like the interaction between police officer and criminal.

There has to be a way forward when it comes to police reform, but it is a
valid question to ask whether or not policing itself takes a particular toll.

~~~
tomlagier
I've wondered over the last week whether a strategy to fighting the perverse
psychological changes that seem to settle in the minds of many police officers
would be term limits? An "up or out" mentality like in the armed forces[1]?

It seems like many of the worst offenders have been mostly stagnant at their
posts for many years - surely getting in fresh faces that have had a chance
for more modern training would help break some of this mentality of "corps
over country".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_or_out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_or_out)

------
moneytide1
In Total War: Rome II, you can commission the training of "spy" agents with
multiple abilities that can be exercised against opposing faction cities.

One of these abilities is "incite unrest". Across several turns, this can
enable a war of attrition ( a turn represents a year or a season I cannot
remember). Death by 1000 cuts is a way to reduce the morale and economic
output of a city in order to eventually conquer it.

Here is an excerpt from a forum dialogue about the game:

"Incite Unreast give "X" public order penality, depending on your agent skills
and traits. Army gives "X" public order boost depending on army size and
general traits and skills.

So yes.

The best tactic would put as many agents as you can get into far positions,
champions can decrease public order as a passive, spy like you already know
they pay for it, armies can raid, which decrease their upkeep and steal some
of their income for youself."

[https://steamcommunity.com/app/214950/discussions/0/61956934...](https://steamcommunity.com/app/214950/discussions/0/619569341074772436/)

~~~
noobermin
Real life isn't a video game.

~~~
moneytide1
Here's an excerpt from an article:

“It is an open secret,” he said, “that secret services of imperialist powers
and foreign anti-Soviet centers actively join extremist nationalistic actions.
Later on, they start playing the part of open instigators of hostile actions
aimed at kindling hostility among nations. One should not underestimate the
danger of this method of subversive activity.”

[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1988-04-14-mn-1958-s...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1988-04-14-mn-1958-story.html)

(a red flag here is that the word "secret" is repeated rapidly in succession.
Timeless "click" bait before Jobs ever visited Xerox).

We must first consider credibility of a dot com site. LA times does not
represent vast majority. But this is from 1988. Fear mongering conspiracies
can get tongues flapping. This is also before digital proliferation of media
injection into cultures (click).

Behind "video games" are 20-50 year old minds digesting their environment and
historical records made available to them by their coordinated government(s).
My "real life" has not been affected by rioting and widespread respitory
pandemic (destroyed storefronts are not selling things I want, economic
furlough gifts me spare time and empty streets to hone new skills and more
quickly traverse new domains). I am interested in the Phoenix that rises from
this reset (dust is still in the air and must settle).

From the wikipedia article for Principle of Charity:

"The first to state this hermeneutic principle was Rabbi Meir ... 'A person
does not say things without reason'."

The video game designers are steadily sculpting their audience's perception of
"real life" via their own art form.

------
creative_bud
Imagine isolated anectdata determining people's opinions of police! One of the
first rules of understanding the world is to not let emotionally charged
anecdotes, isolated events and individual mistakes determine how you judge
groups, trends and collectives.

What's happened in the last week is that targeted propaganda has flooded
people with a few isolated examples of bad things happening and letting
people's emotional response mechanisms do the rest.

Did you know that tens of thousands of people die from medical malpractice and
medical errors each year? There are many thousands fewer people suffering from
police brutality, yet somehow the police have an infinitely worse reputation
than doctors and surgeons yet your chances of being killed by a surgeon is far
higher than being killed by a cop.

The police do one of the hardest jobs in the country, dealing with the worst
elements of society every single day. It's shocking to me that there isn't far
more "brutality" every year than there is, and I commend the police for
keeping us safe while having to deal with people that hate them and want them
dead every day.

The judgement callously meted out on police on HN and elsewhere is completely
unjustified.

~~~
Someone1234
Your analogy kind of works against you:

Doctors have their own personal liability insurance, if they make too many
mistakes they literally cannot afford to continue working in medicine (or have
to move to a lower risk sub-field that have lower base premiums).

If police held their own individual liability insurance, and it too could
become uneconomical for them to continue to practice law enforcement, I'd
consider that a huge improvement over the status quo.

If you want law enforcement to be comparable to medicine, then oversight is
going to raise tenfold.

~~~
creative_bud
Police act in a hostile environment which can't be compared to the environment
in which surgeons and doctors operate. Where their lives are not at risk.
Mistakes are more understandable and more likely in hostile environments,
which makes it a wonder that there are not more instances of police making
serious errors given all the interactions police have with hostile and
combative people.

