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I can't think of a solution other than a massive increase in police funding. Maybe it could be conditioned on being purely for higher salaries rather than for m

I can't think of a solution other than a massive increase in police funding. Maybe it could be conditioned on being purely for higher salaries rather than for military weapons. It'd also help if it was tied to prohibiting the disqualification of applicants with high IQs. More generally, I think it's weird how we tend to hear more about shortages in all sorts of key industries these days. Medical professionals, police, teachers. Well, it seems it was always true for teachers. But I'm under this impression it used to be easier to have a self-sustaining mix of professions in a geographical area, without trying to regulate it all in place. Maybe this is again all going back to the wealth gap and housing costs.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Long term, higher productivity is inevitable. That means more cameras on buses identifying bus lane violations, and cameras in random places identifying obscured plates, no plates, or stolen plates. Ya, we have this tech already, it’s used in some countries…but the USA will be slower to adopt it (but it’s inevitable). People’s labor is just getting too dear, and so we need to up productivity to compensate. For police, this could also be a win against police abuse/corruption, since the machines are unlikely to at least abuse their power.
woodruffw 3y ago
I don’t think funding is the issue here: a junior NYPD cop makes more than the average NYC resident before overtime[1], and gets relatively plum benefits while doing so. Like most forces, they’re also pensioned at 20 years. The issue here is residency and interest: the NYPD is excluded from ordinary civil service requirements, meaning that they aren’t required to live in the city they police. The majority of them choose not to, meaning that the city’s law enforcement is largely made up of people driving their cars into the city and treating as an “outside” place, rather than their home. Forcing them to live in the city wouldn’t fix everything about the NYPD, but I suspect we’d see less petty infringement of traffic laws by the NYPD themselves. [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-benefits.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-ben...

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Long term, higher productivity is inevitable. That means more cameras on buses identifying bus lane violations, and cameras in random places identifying obscured plates, no plates, or stolen plates. Ya, we have this tech already, it’s used in some countries…but the USA will be slower to adopt it (but it’s inevitable). People’s labor is just getting too dear, and so we need to up productivity to compensate. For police, this could also be a win against police abuse/corruption, since the machines are unlikely to at least abuse their power.

woodruffw 3y ago

I don’t think funding is the issue here: a junior NYPD cop makes more than the average NYC resident before overtime[1], and gets relatively plum benefits while doing so. Like most forces, they’re also pensioned at 20 years. The issue here is residency and interest: the NYPD is excluded from ordinary civil service requirements, meaning that they aren’t required to live in the city they police. The majority of them choose not to, meaning that the city’s law enforcement is largely made up of people driving their cars into the city and treating as an “outside” place, rather than their home. Forcing them to live in the city wouldn’t fix everything about the NYPD, but I suspect we’d see less petty infringement of traffic laws by the NYPD themselves. [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-benefits.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-ben...