3 ms·

If you follow the Amber Guyger case carefully you'll notice that the Dallas Police Chief has a recruitment problem. That officer-involved shooting will be a hea

If you follow the Amber Guyger case carefully you'll notice that the Dallas Police Chief has a recruitment problem. That officer-involved shooting will be a heavy burden on the departmental budget, and it also became apparent that there is a serious discipline problem in the force. Normal people won't join for the salaries that Dallas can offer, and you can't fire the officers with a disciplinary record because they are already understaffed. There's a vicious circle in operation. You'd have to start at the other end, impose severe discipline on the officers, and it would be a good idea to introduce proper drug testing, steroid abuse is a serious problem with police officers. In the short term that would exacerbate the recruitment problem, so no easy solutions. Maybe conscription would be viable, if the military can have conscription, why can't the country have mandatory public service. Bring back the miliz!

jacobush 8y ago
A form of taxation in the form of labour. How about (gasp) raise taxes and pay competitive salaries?
- LeftTurnSignal 8y ago
  I worked closely with local government for a 12 years now. This is just a small rural county (15k residents maybe) in the midwest US, so not much more than cows, fields and meth. I can't think of a single person I worked with and talked about taxes with that wasn't for increasing taxes slightly here. Not too much, but something more than what they have been. I went to whatever meetings I could, wrote to the newspaper, and every single time I got to the board it was immediately shot down without much of a discussion. It's political suicide that none of them want to try, even the ones who are 75+ years old and have been "wanting to get away from this shit for 25 years." It's a power trip for them. Instead of increasing taxes, they voted to spend 1 million plus to fix up downtown to get people from outside the county to come in to spend money. Now a lot of those businesses are still failing, younger people keep leaving and I still get shit on for suggesting the idea. But change doesn't happen overnight... At least, that's what I tell myself anyway.

jacobush 8y ago

A form of taxation in the form of labour. How about (gasp) raise taxes and pay competitive salaries?

LeftTurnSignal 8y ago
I worked closely with local government for a 12 years now. This is just a small rural county (15k residents maybe) in the midwest US, so not much more than cows, fields and meth. I can't think of a single person I worked with and talked about taxes with that wasn't for increasing taxes slightly here. Not too much, but something more than what they have been. I went to whatever meetings I could, wrote to the newspaper, and every single time I got to the board it was immediately shot down without much of a discussion. It's political suicide that none of them want to try, even the ones who are 75+ years old and have been "wanting to get away from this shit for 25 years." It's a power trip for them. Instead of increasing taxes, they voted to spend 1 million plus to fix up downtown to get people from outside the county to come in to spend money. Now a lot of those businesses are still failing, younger people keep leaving and I still get shit on for suggesting the idea. But change doesn't happen overnight... At least, that's what I tell myself anyway.