Huh, yeah, the police just might be more trouble than they are worth. They could use a little less support. We'd be better off with fewer of them.
The way you convince the average voter is more of that. Talk like that. The way you scare them to the hills is to riot and kill nigh nightly. Average Americans look at unrest and disorder like that and think, ya know, maybe we need to double police. And give them raise.
Who am I kidding. They aren't listening to me, and never will. And many of those folks rioting don't actually want that kind of police reform. They want the madness and chaos.
Maybe we shouldn't make any more Joker movies.
Anyway, in a perfect work, I'd love to see some police reforms myself. Stuff like:
- Cutting out no-knock raids on all but the proven violent. And maybe even them.
- Not using cops as revenue enhancers or enforcers.
- Qualified immunity reform.
- Cops concentrating on the hard cases, rather than easy stuff. Busting weed smokers is easy, instead of robbers. I sympathise with cops not wanting to get hurt going after robbers and murderers, &c., but... That's sorta the job we, the Public, most want them to do.
- War on Some Drugs is awful at its root, and there should be less of it.
- DA reform. A lot of problem people have with cops is really problems they have the Distict Attorneys pushing the cops. I have no idea how to fix DA's though.
- Not confiscating perps' property without due process.
- Fewer laws. We have over-criminalized EVERYTHING. It'd be better if average folks sorta had a handle on what is criminal and what is not. Better for the police, too.
The cop kicking that guy in the back when his hands were on his head? Yeah, that's why #3.
ReplyDeleteRE: Defund/abolish the police.
ReplyDeleteYour car becomes hard to start or the brakes squeak; do you take it to the scrapyard and begin walking everywhere, or do you find a competent mechanic and get it fixed?
It's time to remind law enforcement that they are CIVILIANS too. Why does a police department need an MRAP? We've built little armies all over American, and trained them like soldiers, but that isn't the job. It never was.
ReplyDeleteWhy an MRAP? Maybe because of riots...
ReplyDeleteLot's of people would like to see Qualified Immunity reform, but there's a problem. It is not something that can be done by any legislature anywhere.
ReplyDeleteFor about 100 years there were all kinds of laws about stuff done under "color of authority," but then SCOTUS in the 1960s decided that they knew better than any legislature anywhere and invented Qualified Immunity.
So since no representative made the law, no representative can undo the law. Has to be SCOTUS.
And Stare Decisis - the legal doctrine that says a bad decision is better than a good law - means that they don't like to second-guess themselves. The monument to the vanity of lawyers everywhere. (They all dream of being judges, and justices.)
We might be able to make some headway on some of the other stuff. But the riots have probably closed that chance out for the time being.
The worst part is that judges defer to previous decisions, no matter how bad, as president and won't do anything different.
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