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We'll have to admit that some cops are just bullies who entered the system to have a legal way of being who they want to be. They need to tighten the psychologi

We'll have to admit that some cops are just bullies who entered the system to have a legal way of being who they want to be. They need to tighten the psychological profile/test required to be and remain an officer of the law.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
I've got no experience with psych tests but I can easily imagine most power abusers would easily pass one, and if not, they soon will because it's now a test and tests become gameable if they matter with takers knowing exactly what the desired answer is. I think the solution rather lies in two other places. One is obviously transparency. This man was acquitted due to video, so let's put video on every police officer. Toronto for example is playing with this, and it makes financial sense. They have about 5.000 police officers on a police department budget of $1.7 billion. We all know how cheap cameras (just look at the cameras on $50 smartphones) and storage have become in recent years, with a per officer budget of about $350k, spending a few thousand a year (much more than you'd need for a solid camera & storage system) on cameras would constitute a 1% cost increase, and you can probably offset that cost immediately due to cost savings in faster trials due to less ambiguous evidence, fewer complaints, less use of force etc (for example we've seen in recent months reports of 70% fewer citizen complaints, 30% drop in use of force incidents in Birmingham). Chicago for example spent $500m over 10 years on police abuse cases (obviously paid for by citizens, not the police officers in question themselves) Second is to stop the bs 'internal investigation'. Police officers aren't diplomats, they're citizens on duty as civil servants, when they're suspected of harming the civilians they're supposed to serve, why have them be investigated by their colleagues and close peers? I mean it's ridiculous. This is so terrible because we see the old 80/20 rule in police departments, too, I don't know the exact statistics from the top of my head but the notion that 80% of the complaints and incidents are caused by 20% of the police officers isn't far from the actual number. A ton of honest and awesome cops go their entire career without any abuse of power, you can't prevent the others from getting in, but you can make sure they get out once you catch them. Donald Sadowy for example has been accused of excessive force 10 times in 2 years in actual lawsuits, imagine how many times he must've used excessive force if he was taken to court 10 times, yet he's still on the force. If you actually run the same 3 strikes and you're permanently fired policy on abuse that you do on citizens smoking some harmless pot who go to jail for years, and have officers investigated by an independent court with bodycam evidence, you'd probably already cut out a lot of abuse from guys like these, let alone if you fire people after one incident and even send people to jail for abuse of power. Beyond that, getting fired should mean losing the ability to be a police officer, period, nationwide. A lawyer for example can lose his license nationwide in most countries, but police officers too often leave one department and simply join another.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

I've got no experience with psych tests but I can easily imagine most power abusers would easily pass one, and if not, they soon will because it's now a test and tests become gameable if they matter with takers knowing exactly what the desired answer is. I think the solution rather lies in two other places. One is obviously transparency. This man was acquitted due to video, so let's put video on every police officer. Toronto for example is playing with this, and it makes financial sense. They have about 5.000 police officers on a police department budget of $1.7 billion. We all know how cheap cameras (just look at the cameras on $50 smartphones) and storage have become in recent years, with a per officer budget of about $350k, spending a few thousand a year (much more than you'd need for a solid camera & storage system) on cameras would constitute a 1% cost increase, and you can probably offset that cost immediately due to cost savings in faster trials due to less ambiguous evidence, fewer complaints, less use of force etc (for example we've seen in recent months reports of 70% fewer citizen complaints, 30% drop in use of force incidents in Birmingham). Chicago for example spent $500m over 10 years on police abuse cases (obviously paid for by citizens, not the police officers in question themselves) Second is to stop the bs 'internal investigation'. Police officers aren't diplomats, they're citizens on duty as civil servants, when they're suspected of harming the civilians they're supposed to serve, why have them be investigated by their colleagues and close peers? I mean it's ridiculous. This is so terrible because we see the old 80/20 rule in police departments, too, I don't know the exact statistics from the top of my head but the notion that 80% of the complaints and incidents are caused by 20% of the police officers isn't far from the actual number. A ton of honest and awesome cops go their entire career without any abuse of power, you can't prevent the others from getting in, but you can make sure they get out once you catch them. Donald Sadowy for example has been accused of excessive force 10 times in 2 years in actual lawsuits, imagine how many times he must've used excessive force if he was taken to court 10 times, yet he's still on the force. If you actually run the same 3 strikes and you're permanently fired policy on abuse that you do on citizens smoking some harmless pot who go to jail for years, and have officers investigated by an independent court with bodycam evidence, you'd probably already cut out a lot of abuse from guys like these, let alone if you fire people after one incident and even send people to jail for abuse of power. Beyond that, getting fired should mean losing the ability to be a police officer, period, nationwide. A lawyer for example can lose his license nationwide in most countries, but police officers too often leave one department and simply join another.