
We found 85,000 cops who’ve been investigated for misconduct - notRobot
https://www.knoxnews.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-revealing-misconduct-records-police-cops/3223984002/
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tracker1
I'd like to see officer body/car cam footage being publicly accessible. Beyond
this, I'd like to see a hard requirement that if a batton or firearm is
unholstered that body cam must be on, a single offence may be fireable, and a
second in a ~5yr period is automatic firing.

Any civilian death by the hands of police or in police custody not captured on
body cam should have an automatic 2+ week suspension, grounds for firing, and
require trial (not _just_ a pass via grand jury) for at least manslaughter.
That doesn't mean they will always be convicted, but methods need to be put
into place that allow for absolute limits to be in place.

Those would be a good start... civilian access to footage means footage needs
to be taken... from there, largely, citizen groups can provide additional
pressure.

Beyond this, I'd like to see civilian volunteers to try to pair each officer
with a trained volunteer at least 2 shifts per week per officer (armed). Along
with ongoing interaction training.

Beyond all of the above, reduction in military weapons, tactics and hand-me-
downs. SWAT is/was supposed to mean "SPECIAL Weapons And Tactics" as in, not
the norm... and rarely to be used.

~~~
Rumperuu
Regarding your fourth line about pairing officers with volunteers, this
happens in (some/all?) UK constabularies, for example:
[https://www.lancashire.police.uk/ridealong](https://www.lancashire.police.uk/ridealong)

On a related note, we also have volunteer Independent Monitoring Boards for
prisons: [https://www.gov.uk/volunteer-to-check-standards-in-
prison](https://www.gov.uk/volunteer-to-check-standards-in-prison)

And voluntary magistrates' courts which try all cases first (although they
pass serious ones on to the Crown Court): [https://www.gov.uk/become-
magistrate](https://www.gov.uk/become-magistrate)

And Patient Participation Groups for all GP practices:
[https://www.napp.org.uk/ppgintro.html](https://www.napp.org.uk/ppgintro.html)

I don't know if any of these are also the case in the US, and the UK
definitely has problems of its own, but it does seem to be leaps and bounds
ahead in terms of citizen oversight and institutional transparency.

------
sschueller
Well that pretty much negates the "A few bad Apples" line. The whole basket is
rotten.

It is very obvious that the issue is training and hiring requirements. Add
military arms to the equation and you have an even bigger Problem. Why is it
that when I get pulled over I am the one that is trying the deescalate the
situation?

And this is all before you add the racism issue into the pot.

~~~
tracker1
It really depends.. there are like 17k police agencies..., assuming that the
average is 100 officers per agency that/s 1.7 million... further assuming 1/2
the offenses are bogus, meaning 40k/1700k meaning a 0.02% bad cop.. or 2:100.
Given it's a high stress job, which lends to certain personality profiles over
others, it's still pretty bad.

Now, that's also assuming those infractions are the worst kinds, which most
won't be. Repeat offenses within a given timeframe are more serious though.
And I'd like to see soft limits on infractions in a ~5yr window leading to
automatic dismissal.

For that matter, up to 2% of the worst offenders being able to be dismissed
per year as policy (this is where the union becomes a problem) as a
possibility.

There are other things that could improve things, mostly around required
camera footage being taken, and publicly accessible. There are of course
caveats.

~~~
bluesign
30k dismissed from 85k is very high ratio. That clearly shows 85k is very low
number to begin with. And these numbers are for last 10 years.

~~~
tracker1
I wasn't aware it was for 10 years... yeah, that's _really_ low in general. I
was under the impression it was a single year, I only quickly skimmed TFA.

------
Semaphor
For those in the EU:

[https://eu.knoxnews.com/story/in-
depth/news/investigations/2...](https://eu.knoxnews.com/story/in-
depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-revealing-misconduct-records-
police-cops/3223984002/)

And the title needs (2019)

------
CawCawCaw
The article mentions that there are "30,000 people banned from the profession
by state regulators".

I wonder how many more have committed similar offenses without getting
sanctioned.

------
self_awareness
Full disclosure: I'm not American, and I don't really follow recent news from
US, so I certainly don't know much about the protests, haven't been there,
etc, etc.

Having said that, here's my 3 cents from a bystander perspective...

I've seen some videos from this list. Lots of them are taken in an environment
when a person violates the law in some way, often in front of the police
officer. I'm not saying that every video has a situation like this, just the
few I've encountered. So if the job of the police is to enforce the law, maybe
the protesters should rather try to change the law instead of trying to oppose
only the lowest execution layer of the law enforcement? I mean, trying to do
the opposite of what the police officer says the citizen should do, seems to
be a unintelligent thing to do, from my perspective.

Downvotes are welcome ;(

~~~
VorticesRcool
People do the opposite of what the police say in other countries, but it does
not end in police brutality.

Dealing with people who may be unintelligent, drunk, mentally unstable, or
distressed etc is part of the job.

~~~
self_awareness
That's... not true...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaEOeyANSVM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaEOeyANSVM)

in Poland we had an 'a protest of entrepreneurs' recently against government
lockdowns caused by covid-19, and there was some pushing with the police (even
a candidate for the president has been detained I think)

This doesn't change the fact that the protest did violate the 'no gathering'
rule, so the police could be used to enforce this rule. It's all I'm saying.

If people would respect the law, however pointless it is, then police wouldn't
be able to do anything at all.

~~~
VorticesRcool
Other counties is not strictly a category that includes all other countries.

The issue here is police breaking the law, and then the law not being
enforced.

