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On books, everything you say makes sense in the ideal world. But in practicable reality, things are a bit more complicated. Re: item 1, Baltimore is the birth
by pp19dd 9y ago
On books, everything you say makes sense in the ideal world. But in practicable reality, things are a bit more complicated.
Re: item 1, Baltimore is the birthplace of the "Stop Snitchin'" movement, a heavily distributed and well marketed street campaign defining a dynamic that a wiki entry can't possibly describe accurately. The bigger point is that it had a counter-campaign on the police side which retaliated against it, and that thinking got ingrained in the troops. In other words, officers stick together and no policy change will realistically affect that.
After the Baltimore riots, there was a change on the police side - cultural change, not policy or regulation based one. As a result, homicide rate shot up through the roof and appears to be rising year after year. This behavior is a defensive mechanism and so incredibly tribal - not something you can set through policy, short of replacing 3,000 cops.
To that point, most of Baltimore PD cops DO NOT live in Baltimore. They travel to work from outside. In other words, despite having 3,000 job positions in the city, they couldn't fill them locally so they expanded outward, allowing officers to take cruisers home as a commuting incentive. Think about evaluating that factor - would you want to employ cops who live in your neighborhood, or ones from a neighboring town? Would there be a difference? Then think what would happen if you didn't have a choice.
Re: item 2, you're describing lex talionis, which we as a society abandoned centuries ago. You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is, even if they're cops.
In Baltimore, there are 3,000 cops for 600,000 citizens. Median cop salary is $50k and it's a dangerous and difficult job. Tons of them turn to overtime work to make ends meet and are drained of energy (look up Baltimore Sun overtime database if curious). Meanwhile, the vast poor citizens there have a median income of $30k. That's an indicator of why people turn to crime and its volume. Living in the city is prohibitively expensive (sweet mercy, the property taxes are terrifying - it's no incentive to buy a house there.)
It's really messy.
- joatmon-snoo 9y ago> You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is, even if they're cops. As much as I want to agree with this statement, I can't help but feel that it's highly problematic in some sense. When it comes to court cases (IANAL, but this is my understanding), law enforcement officials' testimony is treated with a certain measure of elevated credibility (there's SCOTUS precedent for this, but I can't seem to find the cases). Violation of that trust - as in this case - should be penalized, but I don't know what kind of remedy would be appropriate.
- wholinator 9y agoPreface: i am not a lawyer either and i welcome criticism as this is just an idea. I think the solution wouldn't be to charge robbery twice as hard for cops, but to have an additional charge. Something like 'abuse of federal trusted power' or something like that which would carry its own penalties. This, i think, wouldn't cause the strict separation of penalties that could be problematic, but it would address the problem of people entrusted with federal power abusing it.
- unabst 9y agoYes this. Hate crime is a crime that adds penalties to what otherwise would be the same act. The problem with hate crime is it assumes we can know someone's thoughts, but with a "violation of trust" crime, being in a superior position of elevated responsibility would be enough.
- mcappleton 9y agoWe did not give up "lex talionis". In fact, shooting a police officer is currently punished more harshly than regular people, at least in Texas. It's called "capital murder" in texas
- luca_ing 9y ago> You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is, even if they're cops. But isn't that common practice? Someone with prior convictions will get a harsher sentence. By that same logic it's conceivable that someone might receive a harsher sentence based on being held to a higher standard. > It's really messy. Agreed.
- vkou 9y ago> Re: item 2, you're describing lex talionis, which we as a society abandoned centuries ago. You can't practice treating crimes differently based on who the person is, even if they're cops. Practically, our juries can, and do.