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Comment by koenigdavidmj | Hacker News Reader

Cops need to have their use-of-force rules be softened to exactly the same as what is required of a non-police lawful carrier, unless they are engaging someone who's known to be hostile (serving a warrant, for instance).

The new standard: you only draw if there is an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. If you use "his hand was too close to his waist" as an excuse to draw on someone, or you draw before seeing them actually pose a threat, you go to prison for a very long time.

While we're at it, ban police unions, and don't require a conviction to have a bad cop removed from their job. Better safe than sorry.

Don't like it? Work in another field.

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I agree with the general sentiment, but cases like Trayvon Martin tells that a non-police US citizen can apparently chase a person down for not much more than "he doesn't look like he belong in this street", start an altercation, shoot and kill, and claim self-defense.

If drawing a gun because you think you're threatened is a US citizen's right, then it will remain a US police officer's right. You can have both, or you can have none.

> If drawing a gun because you think you're threatened is a US citizen's right, then it will remain a US police officer's right. You can have both, or you can have none.

I disagree - the police should absolutely be held to a higher standard, because they're empowered by the state.

>because they're empowered by the state.

The state is just the embodiment (imperfect as most things are, but still) of the people's will (and attitudes).

So what the parent said, still holds.

It's that attitude being prevalent that permits it, both in individuals and the state.

Right. So when a police officer is on duty, he's more than just an American citizen - he's the embodiment of the people's desire to enforce law and order, and as such, he or she should be held to a higher burden than "I was scared someone was going to hurt me".

The problem is, the people desire for law and order to be enforced brutally and with "zero tolerance".

And by "the people" I mean, "a heck of a lot of people"...

Body cameras solve this problem.

But here's the thing: imminent threat is exactly what they are allowed to react against now.

I think the issue isn't actual threat, it's perceived threat. And, cops perceive a lot of things as threatening enough to endanger your life upon.

But we know this. How to fix it? I don't think better training is the answer. I don't think cops will allow cams to work. I think incentives need to change.

Here's a fix: give a 40% (or whatever) pay bump to any officer that chooses to work without his gun.

We'll probably start seeing exactly where guns are required vs where they are an emotional crutch.

Better training is exactly the answer.

Most officers get less than six months of training.

In other countries (with much lower rates of officer involved homicides), officers receive years of training.

It is exactly perceived threat.

But they're so untrained that they perceive many things as threats that are not threats (a man with autism rocking back and forth on the ground while holding a toy firetruck, for example).

I think better training might help, but the problem isn't pre-job training, it's the training they get once they've been on the job.

Surely, most average people's first instinct isn't approach any interaction with hand on weapons? I doubt that's due to lack of training. I think that's due to an entirely wrong sort of implicit and explicit training.

Walking around with a gun + license to kill + fostering sense of us vs them for years will probably teach you that escalation and confrontation is the way to get people to back down. So that's what you do.

By incentivizing them to take a second look at their assumptions, maybe we can make progress?

Better training is exactly the answer.

I'd say just the opposite. Normal people don't react to others this way. The violent hair trigger that cops are set on is a result of their training - they're taught to do this.

The solution is not to train them more. The solution is to change the relationship between police and the public, and train them to respect that.

Better training != more training.

Police are presently trained to shoot first, to pull out their guns first, and perhaps not formally trained for this but they're taught by at least their peers and mentors to be hostile and aggressive first.

Better training changes this. Better training fosters their membership and relationship with the community. Better training gets them to pull out their guns only when they intend to use them, not when they first pull someone over. Better training will get NYC cops to stop shooting passerbies while trying to kill suicidal people (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/nyregion/unarmed-man-is-ch...).

The present training is overly focused on violent intervention. And for the majority of police-civilian interaction no violence is intended by the civilians or needed by the police. But their mindset is entirely predicated on "be violent before they are".

Interesting thought on the pay incentive, but what will happen is eventually a cop will get shot in the line of duty without a gun and the media will have a frenzy and that incentive will get canned.

But let's say you get the pay incentive after you go through a class on deescalation. Make it a 4hr online class :)

Now, the debate can center on training again. But, this time with a focus on deescalation vs how to aim for center of body mass.

Anyway, it's probably a bad idea: I haven't thought about it much. But, I do think we need to start thinking about carrots instead of just sticks.

>Don't like it? Work in another field.

It's hard enough to find good people (note the qualification) willing to be police already. Add more restrictions and penalties and you'll soon find that nobody will be willing to take the job.

Or you'll start the end of entire minorities fearing the police, the "system" and everything legal that you expect to represent fairness and justice. Fixing this undermines the gangs that operate in plain sight because locals fear them less than the police. It could even mean that your life isn't limited by where you grew up.

That is all to say by just improving police standards, you improve the entire country.

If you want better, train better. Hire better. Pay better. Don't keep settling for scraping the barrel for these gun-ho lunatics.

(I'm sure there are some very responsible, conscientious police out there but if they want to stop being tarred with this brush, they need to sort this shit out from the inside too!)

I don't accept that this is the case. Restrictions which disproportionately burden bad people in the job may make the job more attractive, rather than less, to good people.

Especially if those restrictions result in improved working conditions by mitigating police/community relations problems (either directly, or by disproportionately burdening, and thus encouraging job changes by, the bad people already in the job.)

> Add more restrictions and penalties and you'll soon find that nobody will be willing to take the job.

That's probably fine. If we really need them we can pay more to get them. What's happening now is that we're paying them with "get out of jail free" cards instead of money.

> What's happening now is that we're paying them with "get out of jail free" cards instead of money.

Which, just to emphasize this, disproportionately (compared to paying in cash -- I'm not saying that the majority of police have this preference) attracts people who prefer payment in "get out of jail free" cards, who may not be the people you want doing policing.

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