(06-06-2020, 02:01 AM)JagNGeorgia Wrote:

(06-05-2020, 10:02 PM)mikesez Wrote: Cops are asked to do too many jobs.
There are not enough social workers in this country, and the government doesn't hire enough therapists for the people who really need one but can't afford one.  All that makes policing harder than it needs to be.

I'd be all for paying cops more, but it's not going to happen.  
Not that they don't deserve it.  Many do.  Not that the local governments couldn't find the money.  Most could.  The issue is deeper.

Every time there is ever any kind of negative story about the police, what do you hear? F.O.P. has his back.  Union has his back. He stays on the job.  The police won't police their own and they make life difficult for anyone who tries to do it for them.  Tear all that down, wait a few years, the public might be on board for a "pay cops more" type campaign.

An FOP doesn’t have a strong enough hand to stop the firing of a dirty cop. They don’t hold the same power as a union. 

The idea that police don’t police themselves is a myth. You can’t imagine how many cops I’ve seen fired for something as little as lying about signing out equipment. This idea comes from the public’s perception when they see a cop like Chauvin get 17 complaints over 19 years so he must’ve been dirty, and the department covered for him. People complain about everything. Often they do it just to ruin your career. 

Tear what down? What does that even mean? You can’t propose ideas without an idea of how to accomplish the goal. It’s easy to say rebuild the police department with less corruption while ignoring that there’s no foolproof method to weed that out. And when the next George Floyd happens, we’ll be back here saying the same thing. 

Your suggestion that paying for good cops will come after they’re fixed ignores that bad cops won’t fix it.

I saw that the US Senate is considering a bill to make a national database of cops that get dismissed from a department for abusing suspects. So that cop can't be hired by some other department that has no idea of his history. I guess that would help. 

I'm not a cop and I never will be a cop. But I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, my tolerance for cops failing to sign out equipment is a lot higher than my tolerance for them using force on guys who have already submitted, or stealing from suspects.  The latter should be just warnings until the third or fourth offense.  Excessive force should be one warning.  Stealing from suspects should be zero tolerance.  
I know none of  this could ever be implemented perfectly, but we need to see them trying.  Police chiefs should give, as needed, press conferences talking about which cops have been disciplined and fired.  No need to name names, just tell us "one officer did this, another did that." and what the remedy was.

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