Why not clean house?
At this point I can't imagine the local community, particularly minorities, have any trust in the authorities. Isn't that failure, why not train a new police force with new uniforms and then phase out the old?
At this point I can't imagine the local community, particularly minorities, have any trust in the authorities. Isn't that failure, why not train a new police force with new uniforms and then phase out the old?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Service_of_Northern_Ire...
Worst year of Troubles: 1972, 479 troubles-related deaths. I'm unclear as to whether that includes "background" non-political crime, so I'll round it up to 500 (current NI murder rate is about 1/100k pop).
Current Baltimore murder rate: 373 in 2017.
Murder rate for three Baltimores: 1119.
That makes today's Baltimore twice as lethal as Troubles NI, with all its carbombs and troops on the streets.
It's a mess that to me would seem to warrant national intervention. https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21724399-americ...
edit: add a dodgy esimation
Belfast poulation in 70's: 431k
% of troubles deaths in Belfast : 43%
=> murder rate: 479 * 0.43 / 431 = 44 homicides per 100k
But as you note, the NI figures is only the political murders so it can only really be compared against a similar subset of Baltimore homicides e.g. "gang violence".
So replacing the actors would either need to be done periodically, or would have to be done with an entirely new set of rules.
This is also my bias for things like the banking crisis. When something like that happens, it's too easy to blame something like greed. But that's missing the point. If you don't change the rules or some other aspect of the game, you are going to get the same situation again.
Obviously there is an issue with the environment but that doesn’t really affect the current situation: namely bad behavior in the police department.
Corrupt and criminal cops need to be prosecuted. The system needs to change going forward (equipment, policies, training, community outreach, etc).
That's definitely true. Punishing the egregious cases is a step in the right direction. But, there are a million other things that need to be fixed, including many things outside the police department's control.
Dropping the hammer on police may sound like it would be satisfying, but if I lived in a place where the community suddenly decided to cast the whole police force as villains, I'd move my family out for fear of the spike in crime that will certainly result. I can't think of a city in the US that hasn't endured a murder wave once the vilification of police became fashionable.
Or is your argument that police brutality and dirty methods are necessary to keep minorities in line?
Is this like Minority Report's Pre-Crime division, where the Baltimore PD just knows these kids are gonna commit murders when they grow up, so it's better to plant guns on them and remove them now?
Also, "vilification of police" has never been "fashionable"; it's arisen for decades in response to police crimes, and will continue until we restructure wholesale how PDs work.
Where are you going to get the people and money for a “new police force”? BPD is already severely understaffed.