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Comment by axus | Hacker News Reader

The current systems definitely have problems. There are parallels with content moderation and government in general. How do you attract the right people to do the job, limit the damage from the wrong ones, and reform the system to be better for everyone?

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Accountability would be a start. There are very few risks to becoming a criminal police officer so it's clear it'll keep happening.

i think that would require total replacement or abolishment of police unions. if youve never been to an LEO union hall, its alot like 4chan

1. Demilitarize the police force. Stop with a Ranks, and organization structure that mirrors that of a military

2. Bring back sheriff;s instead of having police forces report to a mayor or other executives, the head of the police force should be an elected position accountable to the people

3. Expand open records laws to include policy manuals for every police force, and create a Citizen Review Board that can have no more than 1 retired or former police officer, judge or prosecutor on it. Today many "Citizen" review boards are filled with insiders of the force, retired cops, family members, prosecutors,etc

4. Mandatory body camera's for all public interactions with at most a 3 strike policy where if the officer fails to record an interaction more than 3 times they are terminated

5. End Qualified immunity

Good list. Any actual accountability or repercussions would be a start.

Assume people will abuse power if given the chance. Build system / rules accordingly.

That’s why the constitution is all about limiting the role of government.

My impression (from a number of sources, over time) is that, in American small town police departments, the standard for new-officer hires is usually little more than "he's been a cop, has no serious criminal convictions on record, and seems like our kinda guy". And that serious investigation into "problematic" officers often shows a pattern of job-hopping.

A Really Basic police reform step might be to institute minimum standards for hiring police. And assign the "background checks" job to a carefully monitored central specialty office.

Eliminate the job all together and refocus the money and effort into actually improving peoples lives instead of forcing them to live in fear of incarnation/death by state employees.

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