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Comment by foxyv | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this is, even the best funded police departments still suck for various reasons. A great example is the best funded city police departments in the USA: Baltimore PD and Wilmington PD

https://thedailyrecord.com/2022/08/11/bpd-faces-two-new-laws...

https://whyy.org/articles/wilmington-police-samuel-waters-in...

I think Willink definitely has a point though about undertrained and overworked officers. We should definitely have much stricter standards for officers and annual re-certification. Too many officers out there barely know their butt from the fourth amendment. Also, there should be work logging requirements similar to truckers. Some officers work insane hours and are probably barely able to drive, much less deal with a DV call. Police unions should be on top of that, but they seem to be more focused on political junk.

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My wife's cousin is a police officer, who was involved in conflict caught on video that showed a great deal of restraint on the part of officers. None of the officers pulled the trigger until one of the people that they were trying to restrain grabbed one of the officer's gun and got into a tussling match on the ground. The officer was gut shot (non-fatally) first and then the assailant was shot (fatally) by the same gun a second later. The other officers didn't whip out their guns and starting shooting the other assailants, who were using diverse non-gun weapons. Only the shot officer pulled the trigger while wrestling on the ground over the weapon.

The cousin was supportive of mandatory instant retirement for any officer that kills someone, justified or not (with subsequent review BEFORE retirement pays out). His colleague, the shot officer, was in clear psychological distress after returning to the force both because he had been shot AND because he shot someone. If an officer doesn't experience psychological distress after shooting someone, I really want them off the force. I think knowing your work life is over (regardless of justification) might cause officers to hesitate a bit more.

Obviously, it will take careful implementation to make sure this policy didn't have unintended effects, though.

This is one of those messy issues that seems to have no clear cut answer that doesn't involve everyone being perfect or psychic.

How do you balance the lives of people? The lives of the guilty, the innocent, and the police themselves all have value.

How do you encourage someone who is sitting in the moment, being asked to weight those lives in an instant, to make the correct choice? The only thing I can think of is careful screening and training. Something many police lack greatly.

Only the rarity of these situations really makes the current situation vaguely tolerable.

In general, I think we should put a LOT more money into the "justice" system rather than trying to get by on the cheap.

Good luck getting a fair and speedy trial in this era of widespread plea deals that are extortionate (plead to X or I'll tack on Y & Z). And your life will be on hold in a lot of ways until trial. And, if you are found not guilty, you are still out a lot for legal bills.

Getting those things right don't depend on making split-second decisions, just society valuing justice over tax breaks (right) and welfare spending (left). How much would it take to require the prosecutors budget to pay the legal bills of anyone found not guilty?

In general, we need to find ways to make sure people have skin in the game. For example, add the option for juries to find prosecutors guilty of malicious or incompetent prosecution. Or, create the role of prosecutor of prosecutors at the state and federal levels and laws against extortionate plea deals (require all prosecution/defense communication to be in writing?).

There are a lot of great and not so great ideas out there about how to reform our justice system. A lot of organizations have put forward a lot of ideas. I would recommend researching an organization that matches your conclusions and donating. Currently I'm donating to Amnesty international as a favorite. However the EJI seems to be doing good work as well. However, judging from your comment, you may prefer to support the Brennan Center which is focused on prosecutions and prison system reform.

Sometimes "Best-funded" means pays lots of overtime. Many departments determine retirement benefits based on hours worked in your final year(s). Was not uncommon for officers to work 80hr weeks, doubling the amount they get in retirement.

There are many problems to fix.

> There are many problems to fix.

You are not kidding here. San Bernardino California is going bankrupt paying the pensions of LAPD officers who moved there specifically to retire. Not to mention all the tiny PDs that are stealing from innocent people using asset forfeiture. The racial profiling by small town PDs that will essentially run non-whites out of town on a rail.

Everyone has a story, like my brother who got pulled over for a "Suspicious right turn" when he drove through the wrong town with my black friend. Or my other brother who got a ticket for riding his motorcycle on the sidewalk without a helmet while running a left turn light... on his bicycle. He got more community service (110 hours) from the corrupt state commissioner than another guy who beat up an old lady.

Police quality is a huge issue in the US. Justice is a huge issue in the US. We have a LOT of work to do.

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