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This is why we need civilian oversight of every police department. Cops are generally too corrupt and/or too incompetent to investigate their own. They've prove

This is why we need civilian oversight of every police department. Cops are generally too corrupt and/or too incompetent to investigate their own. They've proven their inability to hold themselves accountable for their actions, so it's up to the rest of us to do it.

minikites 6y ago
Or we could abolish the police and create a new public safety department without the structural racism and ingrained power-hungry culture.
- vkou 6y ago
  I don't understand why you are being downvoted. The point of abolishing police isn't so that nobody shows up when you call 911. It's so that the right person for the right situation shows up when you call 911. Given the current state of American policing, there is only one situation where I would call the police, and expect the right person to show up. That situation is an active shooter. For nearly everything else, I don't need an armed-to-the-teeth, compliance-at-gunpoint, qualified-immunity-protected man with a gun to show up. He is not the right person for 99% of the work the police currently engage in.
  - coffeemaniac 6y ago
    Yep exactly. In America we used to have SWAT teams who would fulfill this latter role, for situations when violence of action was urgently needed. The first letter in the acronym stands for "special." These days it's not abnormal for regular beat cops to acquire surplus military equipment and roll up to a petty dispute in an MRAP. I think taking away officer's weapons will drastically change who they decide to engage and how they do so.
- austincheney 6y ago
  What would such a new public safety department be and how would it differ from police? What would such a department do differently in the circumstance of failure to follow lawful orders and how would it have no systemic racism?
  - vkou 6y ago
    Having a peace officer department that is not given guns, or a mandate to apply violence first, and ask questions later, would be a substantial improvement for doing 95-99% of the work police currently do. It might still be systemically racist, but at least the consequences thereof will be lower. We've already tried reforming departments. It doesn't work. The entire management structure of your neighbourhood police department resists reform. The line officers resist reform. The police chief resists reform. No amount of winger-wagging at them will result in reform. No amount of sensitivity training or unconscious bias training, or body cams have managed to reign them in. Wiping the slate clean, and starting over might.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      > It might still be systemically racist, but at least the consequences thereof will be lower. If that’s the final output I suspect most people will want to retain the status quo because the primary problem is ignored at great expense.
      - vkou 6y ago
        1. Mitigating harm is not ignoring the problem. 2. Reforms don't work. The SPD has been under federal sanction, and has been the target of numerous reform plans for the past two decades. Nothing sticks. The department is institutionally incapable of reform or accountability. 3. Given #2, it is currently being ignored at great expense. Police are the highest-paid public servants. Police departments consume the overwhelming majority of municipal tax revenue. Why would you hire a cop for a six figure salary, to have them spend most of their time deal with social worker problems, when social workers are already capable of doing that job, for a third the pay? Why do you have that same cop cruise around, issuing parking tickets, when you could have a bylaw officer do the same thing, for a third the pay?
chockablock 6y ago
Effective civilian oversight is made damn hard by the political power wielded by the police. Most of this article is in fact about the ways in which NYC's existing civilian review board is neutered and undermined by police department control of every aspect of its work: investigation, adjudication, and punishment. Investigation: > civilian investigators don’t have direct access to the [body cam] footage. They email requests to the NYPD, which decides which footage is relevant. The department takes its time. Adjudication: > [E]ven if the CCRB substantiates a case, the commissioner still has complete authority over what to do next. He can decide to simply ignore the recommended punishment. The commissioner can also let the case go before an internal NYPD judge (whose boss is the commissioner). If the judge decides punishment is merited, the commissioner can overturn or downgrade that, too. Punishment: >In 2018, the CCRB looked into about 3,000 allegations of misuse of force. It was able to substantiate 73 of those allegations. The biggest punishment? Nine officers who lost vacation days, according to CCRB records.
- vkou 6y ago
  All of these problems come from the department being fully controlled by the police union. I am typically a pro-union person. I even think that police unions, as a concept, should exist. But police unions, as implemented, are the reason that civilian oversight of police is impossible. Typical unions consist of line workers - with maybe line managers. They are then overseen by professional managers, directors, etc, who are not part of the union. The union advocates for the line workers, in opposition to managers. Police department unions are completely different. Every level of management, except for the very top (The mayor and city council) are part of the union. And, unsurprisingly, this leads to a huge conflict of interest, where the line workers aren't opposed by the managers - but are working together, against the civilian authorities. To draw a parallel, it would be like the entirety of GM, including the CEO, being part of the UAW union. Do you think that would represent shareholder & board interests well? Or would it lead to a completely out of control company, that would operate without any care for board oversight?
  - runeks 6y ago
    I’ve heard people suggest that public workers should not be allowed to unionize. To me, it sounds like an extreme position, but stuff like this makes me consider it more seriously. If the ability to cover up criminal acts is a consequence of police unions, there’s no doubt in my mind that they should be abolished. Unions make a lot of sense, unless they can negotiate impunity on behalf of their members. EDIT: Interesting article on this subject: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trou... Quote from the article: When it comes to advancing their interests, public-sector unions have significant advantages over traditional unions. For one thing, using the political process, they can exert far greater influence over their members' employers — that is, government — than private-sector unions can. Through their extensive political activity, these government-workers' unions help elect the very politicians who will act as "management" in their contract negotiations — in effect handpicking those who will sit across the bargaining table from them, in a way that workers in a private corporation (like, say, American Airlines or the Washington Post Company) cannot. Such power led Victor Gotbaum, the leader of District Council 37 of the AFSCME in New York City, to brag in 1975: "We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss."
tejtm 6y ago
Four year (post high school) degree required would do wonders for the level of competency easily weeding out the common whack jobs. Will still get the high function sociopath but they will have to be more careful navigating within a majority of competent peers. hell employers (especially state employers) require degrees and ridiculous experience levels just to wield JS on a crud app.
austincheney 6y ago
Is there evidence that indicates police are more corrupt than anybody else?
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Even if they were equally corrupt to everyone else, they have much, much more authority to use violence and be shielded from the consequences. We should demand that they are significantly less corrupt than everyone else.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    I completely agree, but the point still stands that insinuating corruption is a straw man when it’s not based on anything.
- uoaei 6y ago
  This is a nonsensical question. How does one measure "corruption" and how do you quantify it? IMO these sorts of questions are kneejerk reactions without any significant fore- or after-thought. They only serve to disrupt the conversation.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    Corruption is a provable violation of ethics which is measurable. In so many of these police related threads on HN lately people make absurd claims and then are upset when asked about data or objectivity, which suggests people are looking to complain about something and don’t want their complaint validated with data, which is strange.
    - psychometry 6y ago
      Considering we're not allowed to see officer disciplinary records, even though they work for us (the taxpayer), it's impossible to get the data you want.
      - 6y ago

minikites 6y ago

Or we could abolish the police and create a new public safety department without the structural racism and ingrained power-hungry culture.

vkou 6y ago
I don't understand why you are being downvoted. The point of abolishing police isn't so that nobody shows up when you call 911. It's so that the right person for the right situation shows up when you call 911. Given the current state of American policing, there is only one situation where I would call the police, and expect the right person to show up. That situation is an active shooter. For nearly everything else, I don't need an armed-to-the-teeth, compliance-at-gunpoint, qualified-immunity-protected man with a gun to show up. He is not the right person for 99% of the work the police currently engage in.
- coffeemaniac 6y ago
  Yep exactly. In America we used to have SWAT teams who would fulfill this latter role, for situations when violence of action was urgently needed. The first letter in the acronym stands for "special." These days it's not abnormal for regular beat cops to acquire surplus military equipment and roll up to a petty dispute in an MRAP. I think taking away officer's weapons will drastically change who they decide to engage and how they do so.
austincheney 6y ago
What would such a new public safety department be and how would it differ from police? What would such a department do differently in the circumstance of failure to follow lawful orders and how would it have no systemic racism?
- vkou 6y ago
  Having a peace officer department that is not given guns, or a mandate to apply violence first, and ask questions later, would be a substantial improvement for doing 95-99% of the work police currently do. It might still be systemically racist, but at least the consequences thereof will be lower. We've already tried reforming departments. It doesn't work. The entire management structure of your neighbourhood police department resists reform. The line officers resist reform. The police chief resists reform. No amount of winger-wagging at them will result in reform. No amount of sensitivity training or unconscious bias training, or body cams have managed to reign them in. Wiping the slate clean, and starting over might.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    > It might still be systemically racist, but at least the consequences thereof will be lower. If that’s the final output I suspect most people will want to retain the status quo because the primary problem is ignored at great expense.
    - vkou 6y ago
      1. Mitigating harm is not ignoring the problem. 2. Reforms don't work. The SPD has been under federal sanction, and has been the target of numerous reform plans for the past two decades. Nothing sticks. The department is institutionally incapable of reform or accountability. 3. Given #2, it is currently being ignored at great expense. Police are the highest-paid public servants. Police departments consume the overwhelming majority of municipal tax revenue. Why would you hire a cop for a six figure salary, to have them spend most of their time deal with social worker problems, when social workers are already capable of doing that job, for a third the pay? Why do you have that same cop cruise around, issuing parking tickets, when you could have a bylaw officer do the same thing, for a third the pay?

chockablock 6y ago

Effective civilian oversight is made damn hard by the political power wielded by the police. Most of this article is in fact about the ways in which NYC's existing civilian review board is neutered and undermined by police department control of every aspect of its work: investigation, adjudication, and punishment. Investigation: > civilian investigators don’t have direct access to the [body cam] footage. They email requests to the NYPD, which decides which footage is relevant. The department takes its time. Adjudication: > [E]ven if the CCRB substantiates a case, the commissioner still has complete authority over what to do next. He can decide to simply ignore the recommended punishment. The commissioner can also let the case go before an internal NYPD judge (whose boss is the commissioner). If the judge decides punishment is merited, the commissioner can overturn or downgrade that, too. Punishment: >In 2018, the CCRB looked into about 3,000 allegations of misuse of force. It was able to substantiate 73 of those allegations. The biggest punishment? Nine officers who lost vacation days, according to CCRB records.

vkou 6y ago
All of these problems come from the department being fully controlled by the police union. I am typically a pro-union person. I even think that police unions, as a concept, should exist. But police unions, as implemented, are the reason that civilian oversight of police is impossible. Typical unions consist of line workers - with maybe line managers. They are then overseen by professional managers, directors, etc, who are not part of the union. The union advocates for the line workers, in opposition to managers. Police department unions are completely different. Every level of management, except for the very top (The mayor and city council) are part of the union. And, unsurprisingly, this leads to a huge conflict of interest, where the line workers aren't opposed by the managers - but are working together, against the civilian authorities. To draw a parallel, it would be like the entirety of GM, including the CEO, being part of the UAW union. Do you think that would represent shareholder & board interests well? Or would it lead to a completely out of control company, that would operate without any care for board oversight?
- runeks 6y ago
  I’ve heard people suggest that public workers should not be allowed to unionize. To me, it sounds like an extreme position, but stuff like this makes me consider it more seriously. If the ability to cover up criminal acts is a consequence of police unions, there’s no doubt in my mind that they should be abolished. Unions make a lot of sense, unless they can negotiate impunity on behalf of their members. EDIT: Interesting article on this subject: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trou... Quote from the article: When it comes to advancing their interests, public-sector unions have significant advantages over traditional unions. For one thing, using the political process, they can exert far greater influence over their members' employers — that is, government — than private-sector unions can. Through their extensive political activity, these government-workers' unions help elect the very politicians who will act as "management" in their contract negotiations — in effect handpicking those who will sit across the bargaining table from them, in a way that workers in a private corporation (like, say, American Airlines or the Washington Post Company) cannot. Such power led Victor Gotbaum, the leader of District Council 37 of the AFSCME in New York City, to brag in 1975: "We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss."

tejtm 6y ago

Four year (post high school) degree required would do wonders for the level of competency easily weeding out the common whack jobs. Will still get the high function sociopath but they will have to be more careful navigating within a majority of competent peers. hell employers (especially state employers) require degrees and ridiculous experience levels just to wield JS on a crud app.

austincheney 6y ago

Is there evidence that indicates police are more corrupt than anybody else?

Pfhreak 6y ago
Even if they were equally corrupt to everyone else, they have much, much more authority to use violence and be shielded from the consequences. We should demand that they are significantly less corrupt than everyone else.
- austincheney 6y ago
  I completely agree, but the point still stands that insinuating corruption is a straw man when it’s not based on anything.
uoaei 6y ago
This is a nonsensical question. How does one measure "corruption" and how do you quantify it? IMO these sorts of questions are kneejerk reactions without any significant fore- or after-thought. They only serve to disrupt the conversation.
- austincheney 6y ago
  Corruption is a provable violation of ethics which is measurable. In so many of these police related threads on HN lately people make absurd claims and then are upset when asked about data or objectivity, which suggests people are looking to complain about something and don’t want their complaint validated with data, which is strange.
  - psychometry 6y ago
    Considering we're not allowed to see officer disciplinary records, even though they work for us (the taxpayer), it's impossible to get the data you want.
    - 6y ago