"How the hell do we measure a police department's effectiveness?"
A good question, I would not base it on arrests though, that is like measuring developers by bug reports.
Start with the purpose of a police department, law enforcement and in carrying out that duty a mitigation of unlawful activity. So in terms of achieving their goals one would start with comparing unlawful activity in their jurisdiction vs a similar jurisdiction with a different agency. Compare per capita costs (hence the tax burden) and compare customer satisfaction (the citizens).
In a squishy way, do the citizens feel safe? Do they engage in activities that would not be possible if they felt danger? And How much do we spend compared to other cities with similar economic demographics ?
So we reward arrests that accurately convict the perpetrator responsible in as short as time as possible. Always finding your crook, but taking on average 14 - 18 months to do so, not good. Solving 90% of your caseload in under a week is good; Having more than a 1% false positive rate is bad. Citizens trusting/partnering with the police is good, people who can't trust their police is bad.
That's one of the reasons I have pushed for the 'civil treason' sort of crime for violating the public trust. In order to trust the integrity of a police officer, I need to know that the risk they would face of violating that integrity is so high they don't do it. Life in prison for a police officer that commits perjury for example. Not regular citizens, but someone entrusted with enforcing the law. Similarly for judges that take bribes. In order for democracy to work you need a justice system that is harder on itself than it is on criminals.
I would be more comfortable with the surveillance request if I knew that if the officers were lying about the need for it they could be sentenced to life in prison. That makes them less likely to lie.
"This just seems like a no-win solution for honest departments and civil rights."
My thesis is that the root of the problem is that its a "no lose" solution. There isn't any penalty for being a bad cop, you might get a reprimand for misstating that surveillance was the law but that's it. If the penalty, the 'lose' part, was there, then the conversation changes.
Life in prison for a police officer who commits perjury might carry a risk of convincing the honest potential police officers who don't quite trust the system to not become police officers, while not deterring those who have no long term fear of consequences.
A good question, I would not base it on arrests though, that is like measuring developers by bug reports.
Start with the purpose of a police department, law enforcement and in carrying out that duty a mitigation of unlawful activity. So in terms of achieving their goals one would start with comparing unlawful activity in their jurisdiction vs a similar jurisdiction with a different agency. Compare per capita costs (hence the tax burden) and compare customer satisfaction (the citizens).
In a squishy way, do the citizens feel safe? Do they engage in activities that would not be possible if they felt danger? And How much do we spend compared to other cities with similar economic demographics ?
So we reward arrests that accurately convict the perpetrator responsible in as short as time as possible. Always finding your crook, but taking on average 14 - 18 months to do so, not good. Solving 90% of your caseload in under a week is good; Having more than a 1% false positive rate is bad. Citizens trusting/partnering with the police is good, people who can't trust their police is bad.
That's one of the reasons I have pushed for the 'civil treason' sort of crime for violating the public trust. In order to trust the integrity of a police officer, I need to know that the risk they would face of violating that integrity is so high they don't do it. Life in prison for a police officer that commits perjury for example. Not regular citizens, but someone entrusted with enforcing the law. Similarly for judges that take bribes. In order for democracy to work you need a justice system that is harder on itself than it is on criminals.
I would be more comfortable with the surveillance request if I knew that if the officers were lying about the need for it they could be sentenced to life in prison. That makes them less likely to lie.
"This just seems like a no-win solution for honest departments and civil rights."
My thesis is that the root of the problem is that its a "no lose" solution. There isn't any penalty for being a bad cop, you might get a reprimand for misstating that surveillance was the law but that's it. If the penalty, the 'lose' part, was there, then the conversation changes.