Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...
https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden/sections/law-and-justic...
That's not necessarily a bad thing! A big problem with existing departments is decades of corruption, poor leadership, and entrenched policies. Tearing the department down and rebuilding it from scratch—even if you end up with a similar size as before—gives you the opportunity to remove the excesses/abuse. You can also do things like hiring more specialized positions and firing all the bad officers (because if the department is gone, the union can't protect them).
This is underappreciated. It's hard to seriously change organizations in less than a decade when employees have long tenures.
Opinions and behaviors are only truly malleable at the beginning of careers, and later change is fighting against the inertia of old timers' "Let me tell you how it's done."
Which isn't only negative. Esprit de corps is what holds together people doing tough jobs for long careers.
But if you want to say "No more of that. Now we're doing this" then a rebuild isn't a bad idea.
A simple first step would be to maintain a national level open registry of fired cops and bad behavior reports. At minimum, if a cop gets fired, then he can't go to the next county and get a job
This is the kind of baby steps solution that is completely not the answer even if it's part of a solution for one of the problems. This is systemic and with strong opposing forces (current police officers and their unions, as one example), you can't believe that a database of bad cops would be enough if they aren't even being fired for the abuses being committed right now, if there is already a system of protecting bad police officers why do you believe that they simply wouldn't fire or prosecute even less abuses to avoid a harsher punishment?
I've not researched enough to delineate a step-by-step process of dissolution of the police but there are enough parallels in history and similar experiences to be studied.
The little I've read about seem to include that previous police officers can re-apply but would need to go through the new revamped hiring process. Such hiring process would be defined by citizens' organisations, experts, human rights organisations and so on. There is enough scientific knowledge in that, there are enough police services in the world that use them, it's a matter of shaking the status quo and removing the old roots that US policing stems from.
This can't be achieved by steps if the roots of it are deeply rotten, you gotta understand that.
All cops nationally would be required to have a license from this organization in order to do some "reserved acts", like arresting someone, using force, firing a taser, etc. Any complaint about cops would be evaluated by this organization, and could result in the suspension / revocation of their license. There would be a strong emphasis on deontology, and the organization's explicit mission would be to protect the public.
This would probably have a similar effect overall to what you're describing, but it'd be more of a whitelist than a blacklist.
Let's not pretend we didn't just see 57 police officers resign from a volunteer position because two of their own were caught on camera pushing a 75-year old man to the ground and held accountable because "just following orders".
And if they didn't carry guns nor drive unmarked cars. Police should be seen and they should be seen interacting positively with the community, not patrolling in a gradient of (un)identifiable vehicles.
Unfortunately, there are now so many care workers that many people with issues are getting fed up with all the people that come to their house for all kinds of help (think a care worker for finance, one for mental issues,one for physical issues,one to help the person get back to work, one for the kids etc. etc.)
So if there will be a shift from 'police as is', to more like a care worker system, this would be something to consider.
But other than that, it seems to work well. The police is considered your friend. They pretty know each of the people that have issues or who ever committed crime.
They continue to offer help to them,but will make sure they also get off the streets when they become a potential threat.
There continues to be a lot of criticism from certain groups within our country that wants the police act tougher, but I think the majority of people are happy with how the police does it's job here.
I'm fairly happy with Dutch police. They're visible and approachable. They're not perfect; there was a case in the 1990s where they cracked down unreasonably hard on a peaceful student protest. And in that case, it turned out that many of those cops were indeed looking forward to a fight, which is a dangerous and harmful attitude. Those instances are fairly rare, though.
I was thinking more of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwrdriLiZc
(It's surprisingly hard to find anything online about events before 2004. This was all over the news at the time, but now it looks like it never happened. My quality newspaper lacks proper archive functionality for searching more than a year ago. Search engines and Youtube have never heard of this, frequently returning 0 results.)
This is a tangent, there also seems to be way, way less paperwork in routine police work in the Netherlands than in America.
How would you ask a police officer to react to a criminal brandishing or firing a gun in public or at him?
How would you ask detectives to work cases against gang leaders if they cannot conceal their identity?
Either police officers need to be trained as social workers and mental health professionals, or part of their work needs to be taken over by those that have that training.
> And if they didn't carry guns nor drive unmarked cars.
Every country has unmarked cop cars in use alongside high visibility marked cars. Every country has armed officers in addition to unarmed officers.
Given the US has liberal gun laws, how would that even work? It's shortsighted & reactionary unless you want people who are already in dangerous situations to be lambs led to the slaughter because you'd like to think you live in a unicorn reality.
... from Latin politia "civil administration," from Greek polis "city"
I couldn't agree more. I think there's an appropriate ratio of police/population, though I don't think I'm even remotely qualified to speak on that subject. But when I think about the "police/prosecutorial/prison-industrial complex", I can't help but hope that the only real path to a long-term solution is actually giving a shit and genuinely wanting to help people get better, vs "justice".
Assault, battery, theft, etc., by a police officer is inherently worse than that by an ordinary citizen. They have abused the immense power, privilege, and trust of their position and there should commensurate consequences.
There needs to be a neutral third party to assess risk, because all of the current stakeholders are biased (executive government, judicial government, community organizers, police unions).
I have a slightly different take on this, and to be clear, seeing that video was absolutely shocking and made me feel nauseous and even light-headed.
The officers were part of a unit that was specially trained by FEMA to do exactly what they did;
> "The unit’s training is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA’s, Field Force Operations course. It’s a three-day training which covers skills including baton-holding positions, mass-arrest procedures, and riot-control formations, according to the website." [1]
Suspending the officers is deflecting the blame from where it really lies. The state (politicians) deployed that team to do exactly what they did, and knew or should have known that people would be hurt as a result of those tactics.
I guess you could imagine some sort of active riot scenarios where people are under attack by a mob, and where those tactics are specifically necessary to essentially rescue hostages..., but the situation they were actually deployed into was not remotely that from what I understand.
I think of it this way. When we look back at Tienanmen Square, do we blame the person driving the one tank at the front of the column, or do acknowledge that every driver in every tank was not strong enough to refuse to follow those orders, but ultimately the leaders of the regime are to blame.
That's why I think making the story about the officers is actually missing the point, and further blaming the other 57 officers who resigned doubly-so. The officers are resigning because they are being hung out to dry to take the blame for the leader's mistakes. I was hoping to see the "57 officers resign" story used to pivot the blame onto the police and political leadership rather than reinforcing the notion that the blame is just on bad actors / bad apples.
There are systemic issues with the system, and this is a perfect example of where officers are being trained to act in exactly the wrong way, and then being deployed inappropriately. These weren't rogue officers. The criminal case to charge is not so much assault by an individual officer, but reckless endangerment by the people who made the decision to deploy an aggressive riot control team out into the general populace.
Both. It's the whole "just following orders" thing. It's not an excuse. You (the officers) know for a fact that it's wrong to push a 75-year old man down to the ground like they did. You don't need anybody to tell you that, and no training manual is going to tell you that it's ok or not ok to do so.
The 57 officers resigning, good. They aren't quality police officers that we need on a police force. It doesn't matter what training tells you - and if they can't see that, then good riddance. There are plenty of people out there who can make fine police officers.
Disbanding and replacing a PD eliminates the old police union contracts.
Those lopsided contracts are at the root of the impunity and violence we've seen over the past week.
Many cities have made extraordinary contractual concessions, including:
- Secrecy clauses. Officer Bob might have 31 excessive force complaints against him, but the city is contractually forbidden from making that information public, or in some cases even retaining the records after X months.
- Arbitration for firing. Those clauses can be shockingly strong. The Philadelphia PD fired an officer for having Nazi tattoos. They were forced to reinstate him after arbitration. https://twitter.com/dburbach/status/1269638494466514955
Those clauses and more often add up to police that are effectively unfireable and therefore not under meaningful civilian control. Witness the head of a NYC police union taunting the mayor and openly flaunting the Right to Know Act / announcing that officers will be covering up their badge numbers.
Camden got a start fresh with no pre-existing police contract. For many cities, that's potentially worth a lot.
I'm a paramedic. If I harmed a patient once (let along 31 times), my card would get revoked and that would be that. A cop, meanwhile, is likely to face no consequences at all, and in the absolute "worst" case scenario, they would just get a job in the next town over.
You're conflating allegations of harm vs harmed. Given your position is just assisting the person and not enforcing the law(which the person does not want the cop to do against them), you are magnitudes less likely to have allegations made against you.
Allegations aren't an objective historical fact. They can and are used to spite.
Apples and oranges.
> Officer Bob might have 31 excessive force complaints against him
A complaint is an allegation. It's not a confirmed incidence of bad behaviour.
Using Chauvin as example (17 complaints), From WAPO:
> A summary of the complaints against Chauvin posted by the department offers no information on why they were filed, and police declined to comment on the nature of the cases. Sixteen of the complaints were closed without discipline. The remaining complaint resulted in two letters of reprimand against Chauvin, according to the summary.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/29/officer-cha...
2. Police are some of our best paid public servants.
If you fire tons of bad cops and you want good cops, you're going to have to hire them.
Poor people hurt the most, while rich and upper middle class likely never has to call the police
No one is saying stop solving crimes. Minneapolis may disband their police department, and get out of the union contract. But they aren't going to stop solving crimes. The lack of crimes being solved currently is explicitly mentioned as a reason for disbanding current police department, and looking for smarter solutions.
So, you end up with stupid posturing shit, like having two units sit in their cars with lights flashing, stationary, in one mostly-empty parking lot a night, like SCPD does by the Chili's on El Camino near Lawrence.
There is so much about America that is worth preserving. One easy example right off the top of my head is the law and culture that enables people to peacefully demonstrate like they are today. Even discussing the idea of doing this in many countries could get you killed - or worse! That's another amazing thing (again, just off the top of my head), in America the worst punishment we have is death, and even that is outlawed in many places. The idea of an internment camp[0][1] is not even considered.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
[1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/17/20861427/india-...
Freedom of expression is one of those things that I'd prefer to keep, but we can see that it is stronger on paper than in practice. In practice, if you gather in the capital city to bring your grievances to the government, unidentifiable mercenaries will gas you. And if you are a journalist reporting in front of your local police station some cop will shoot you in the head with "non-lethal" rubber ball, leaving you without eyes, or teeth.
It is the institutions of American that need to be dismantled, because are an implementation that doesn't reflect the founding ideals of our country.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/us/ice-detention-coronavirus-...
https://www.insider.com/report-detention-centers-use-disinfe...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...
https://archive.is/bxmYQ [WaPo]
What's the point in calling them 'human rights' if they only apply to Americans. The US Bill of Rights does not make any reference to citizenship or legal immigration status in the 6th or 8th amendments (which seem particularly relevant). Not to mention you still need due process to prove the person does not have legal immigration status in the first place.
There isn't really any ambiguity here, unless the law specifically targets citizens or people with a valid legal immigration status the law protects illegal immigrants as well.
I'm not very well versed in US law but it's my understanding you can't shoot a man down in the street for jaywalking because he's a criminal and thus not protected by the law.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
The word 'comment' doesn't appear in your comment, but that's still what it is.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
You should read up on who's in these camps. Most are asylum seekers. Applying for asylum is legally recognized under the Geneva Convention. Hell, I just watched a documentary where an asylum seeker was asked to come to the Tijuana/SD border for his asylum interview, thrown into detention ICE, and then transferred from one center to another before finally being deported a year later. He was imprisoned for asking for asylum, not being in the US illegally.
Applying for asylum is legally recognized under the Geneva Convention
People on HN thrown "Geneva Convention!" (sic) around like it's a magic amulet. There are multiple conventions with multiple articles, and the USA isn't even a signatory to all of them. When people argue random Geneva Conventions nexus for some element of policy without stating a specific Convention and Article, assume that they're bullshitting you. It's like a lazy Support rep saying, "it's in the manual... somewhere."
The tile is What Happened to a Dream Deferred. During the QandA the director told us how she had to get involved because the subject that applied for asylum was arrested at the interview. Then moved through many detention camps. This is done so their immigration lawyers can't find them and represent them during the hearings. I found this to be really shocking.
Do you have a citation on that? I don't think that's true. ICE detains a lot of people here legally, including citizens.
https://www.google.com/search?q=american+citizens+in+ice+det...
Regardless, ICE should be obeying international laws for human rights, which they are not.
It seems to me that ICE is meant to intimidate entire groups of people regardless of their citizenship or legal status.
You also missed Trump musing on the idea of Muslim internment camps, so "not even considered" is a long bow. We might also include "kids in cages" while we're at it.
There are plenty other worse countries, but this seems like a rather low standard for a victory lap ("Freer than China! Less repressive than Belarus!").
If you compare that right to any other country in the West, it doesn't look so peaceful and free.
I would suggest living in a third or second world country without outside support. I had your same mindset, and did that for a few years. I could not wait to come back.
East Berlin used to be second World, but many of my American friends moved there because they were tired sick of being harassed by their own country brutality and would never go back.
Even many African countries are safer than the US if you are black.
On the other side, one of the most annoying kind of tourist you can find in my city, which is Rome in Italy, are Americans.
They lack the basic notions about "respecting others cultures and habits"
There's a lot to learn and improve by looking at how other countries solve their problems.
This was also the topic of Michael Moore's Where To Invade Next. Instead of taking other countries' oil, the US should take other countries' ideas, and Moore had a couple of suggestions for interesting ideas from other countries, like school lunches from France, prison system from Norway, etc.
For example, municipal government and school boards. Yes they can go bad. But as the protestors in Minneapolis are showing, the city is extremely responsive because it is local.
If there was a similar protest in Birmingham (UK), I can’t imagine the city disbanding the police department under any circumstances.
It might result in parliament taking action. But the idea of independent municipal government is very lacking.
Municipal governments in England are very much subordinate to Parliament.
There’s a reason Blair was so pathetically and stupidly pro-American. America actually has a lot to offer.
I'm proud of my America, even if it does have warts (some of them ugly.) I have confidence we'll get better in the future.
And I guess I could say the same about every country in Africa. NOTHING WORTH PRESERVING. Oh look suddenly people have their eyes bulging out.
It’s possible the PD will be rebuilt in a nicer form, but that’s not guaranteed.
It’s just as likely the PD will be absorbed into the County Sheriff.
Is the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office better?
They're very highly compensated too.
Probably, at least in the case of the specific precinct that killed George Floyd.
https://www.startribune.com/third-precinct-served-as-playgro...
> One officer kicked a handcuffed suspect in the face, leaving his jaw in pieces. Officers beat and pistol-whipped a suspect in a parking lot on suspicion of low-level drug charges. Others harassed residents of a south Minneapolis housing project as they headed to work, and allowed prostitution suspects to touch their genitals for several minutes before arresting them in vice stings.
> These and more substantiated incidents, detailed in court records and police reports, help explain a saying often used by fellow cops to describe the style of policing practiced in the Third: There’s the way that the Minneapolis Police Department does things, and then there’s the way they do it “in Threes.”
I'll be very interested in how this works out for them and how similar the new solution ends up being to the old one. I suspect it won't be as different as many commenters are suggesting.
Have they released any details about how they expect the new solution to be different?
> He led the city’s high-profile pivot to community policing from 2013 until last year and oversaw what turned out to be a steep decline in crime. Homicides in Camden reached 67 in 2012; the figure for 2019 was 25.
I'm not familiar with Camden or the reforms, so maybe there are other metrics by which things have improved. However, "top 0.2% of American cities in terms of per capita crime rate" is an awfully condemning statistic.
That's significant improvement. Waiting until you can "solve crime" seems unproductive.
Also, "Most software at Google gets rewritten every few years." https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.01715.pdf
That's hardly point in favor, given Google's "reputation" for long-term support and stability, and the sheer amount of engineers that they can throw at literally every problem.
There's a consensus against pointless rewrites, but that's different.
Fascinating parenthetical. Sounds like they dissolved the city PD organization and expanded the county PD. I don't know what Minneapolis plans here.
Yep, sure seems like a success story....
[1] https://nj1015.com/the-10-most-violent-cities-in-new-jersey-... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_Ne...
https://www.newjersey-demographics.com/cities_by_population
[3] https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/blog/top100dangerous
[4] https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2012/10/compared_to_cities_...
https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden/sections/law-and-justic...
> Homicides in Camden reached 67 in 2012; the figure for 2019 was 25.
yes, I would call almost a 2/3rds reduction in homicides a success
Corruption came back, but in the meantime, a lot of operation efficiency was lost.
Swapping out a police department is much like swapping out a dev team - you are losing a LOT of tribal knowledge, and you have few guarantees that the new dev team won't make their own, potentially different, mistakes. They also lack experience in the domain.
How? Is Minneapolis also disbanding it's entire civil beaurcracy? Is Minneapolis also blacklisting the current police from other jobs? Are they letting the current police take home any equipment they currently have access to?
Your Ukraine comparison is slightly better, but "corruption came back" doesn't address whether the move was beneficial or not. Nobody expects the result of disbanding the police to be a perfect racism free police force.
The removal of one public official is nothing like the deBaath party decision. Acting like there is a possibility this situation mirrors Iraq is ridiculous.