This article is about a different kind of “police pullback,” but the underlying phenomenon—cops won’t work when they’re challenged—is the same. https://www.propublica.org/article/what-can-mayors-do-when-t...
Eg, one police officer interviewed says:
> “I made two arrests two days in a row one week, and both turned into paperwork clusterfucks,” the former officer said. “When you’ve accumulated two or three use-of-force complaints in a week, you’ll say: ‘I just need to stop. I need to stop doing this.’”
The article later interprets it as "police officers opposed to the consent decree that McGinn negotiated [engaged] in underpolicing".
Which is technically accurate, but also... The article implies this is political retaliation, as in "we'll let people commit crimes, that will teach you", while the interviewed officer's reported experience is "when you get reprimanded and asked to fill time-consuming paperwork every time you do X, at some point you stop doing X". (Or you keep filling the paperwork, and therefore spend less time patrolling and responding to calls.)
Don't get me wrong, police brutality is a thorny problem and police often actively resists solving it. But when there's a tradeoff, if you act like the tradeoff only has one side and the other is that the people whose jobs you're trying to regulate are lazy corrupt assholes, you're not going to make a lot of progress on solving the problem.
And while the officer's stance is not an outright "we'll let people commit crimes, that will teach you", it certainly comes close to "policing our style, or none at all".
I also admit that a large part of why I often just walk during lunch breaks at clients instead of eating sometimes ridiculously good lunches might be because I hate collecting those papers/digital notes and have to force them into the accounting system at work.
Don't underestimate the dread of certain kinds of paperwork for certain kinds of people.
But no #M4A for the proles, because that's SOCIALISM.
It is disheartening that you appear to be so willing to go along with with whatever police do all in the name of safety. Do you really view the world in such a way that you can’t comprehend having a police force that does it’s job without beating suspects who are already in custody?
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/2/3/22263444/new-chicago-p...
Note that Burge was arrested for lying to a jury during a civil lawsuit not for torture.
In most states, anybody can use force to arrest criminals,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest#United_Stat...
Of course the devil is in the details. I wouldn't risk my own neck by attempting a citizens arrest in a place like SF, because I think the prosecutors/etc there would be more interested in making an example out of me for daring to care, than punishing the actual criminal. Evidently the police of SF feel similar.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery#Peop...
In fact, by treating the two as the same, you commit a deep injustice, because a violent action does not get judged the same as its violent reaction.
I don’t think you understand the implications of what you just wrote. I thank you for stating this because it means we are in complete agreement. When a cop breaks the law they are in fact a criminal and, as you just stated, prosecuting criminals gets a high priority.
We agree. Criminals ought to be prosecuted. I’m glad you are in favor of prosecuting police who break the law.
No one is complaining when a cop uses force, they are complaining when a cop goes out of their way to murder, torture, and beat the shit out of normal citizenry who often put up little to no fight.
They are complaining about when the cops drop flashbangs into baby's cribs and getting no charges. https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/us/georgia-toddler-stun-grena...
If this is the conditions the police would like to return to, they should all go to jail.
What a totally normal democratic thing to say.
You are taking what is written and applying an interpretation that clearly is not intended or made. You act as if those wanting reform seek out the most extreme, nonsensical standards. You are unreasonable in your responses. I hope for you that you may one day learn and understand logic and nuance.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...
This isn't just limited to intelligence. Police departments will not hire people who will do the job properly, and they'll force out the people who maintain high ethics. That's why people say there's a systemic issue with policing in this country.
> New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.
This is visibly not about "refusing to hire people who are smart enough to do the job well", but
> a rational way to reduce job turnover
Furthermore, since they interviewed only people who score higher than 20, where 21 is said to be equivalent to an IQ of 104, then those aren't stupid people.
Finally, I will say that the conspiracy theory that police departments are pro-crime and try do their best to do their job the wrong way seems out of touch with reality.
This is, actually, completely impossible. A very simple example: an active shooter situation requires an immediate non judicial punishment. Therefore, the laws need explicit carve-outs for cops.
> When one of their own is treated by the law like anyone else would be they retaliate by refusing to work
was incorrect: if you were going to be arrested for killing an active shooter, then you would not do it. And it would be wrong to charaterize this as a retaliation, as it is a rational decision.
Please read what is written in the context it is written in.
Pure invention, if you want to restrain your context then use precise language not a large variety of hyperboles like "It’s possible for police to do their job without needing to beat whomever they want, whenever they want."
In the end, I will sum up this discussion from my POV: you view cops broadly as criminals waiting to get caught (they are domestic abusers after all!) and if I were one I would never want to police your neighborhood.
I suspect this all comes from you living a sheltered life, and because your view of police and, especially, of criminals is informed by TV shows. And yes, "gotcha!", those aren't the same, no matter how many screenwriters enjoy subverting expectations.
It's quite clear to me that the application of your ideas has given this headline, so I'm comfortable ending this discussion on this note: I hope that your anti-cop views are eliminated ASAP through the voting booth.
After a few years of having retired, he came out being a cop.
Even when police make arrests, they are back on the streets. Any rational police officer is bound to wonder, why make the arrest in the first place that only puts them at risk if nothing after them will actually be done.
There are few jobs on Earth where you fix everything once and it stays fixed forever. Almost everyone is working to keep a type of entropy at bay. Doctors help people get healthy who get sick again, I fix outages that will get caused again, and police need to arrest people who do crimes and will get released again.
It's the job they chose and trained to do. If they don't like it, they can get a new job.
Someone is starting these fires. The police go in and take care of it, the DAs literally release them with zero or nearly zero consequences to the offender and the next day (often literally) they are starting "fires" again.
We are human, not machines, we are not idealized automatons.
It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with demoralization. Most cops simply want to do their job and not consistently be undermined or called liars.
To cops, that means "DON'T QUESTION MAH AUTHORITAH!"
Screw that. If cops policed their own ranks, getting rid of the "few bad apples" they claim are so rare, then perhaps they wouldn't be scrutinized.
Even so, 99% of the US is perfectly happy with the way the police generally operates and are always willing to support the Blue.
However that's not what I meant in terms of undermining. If a DA undermines the work of the police force they are supposed to support that has negative consequences on the actions of the policing body. This would happen regardless of whether or not the policing body were true peace keepers or aggressors. I would argue that in fact the DAs actions affect the PD-types-we-like more than the bully types.
A DA needs to allocate resources towards cases that are significant to the community, aligned with the desires of the people who voted the DA into office.
I have a boss who doesn't always "support" what I think should be done. And that's fine, because he has different goals that he tries to communicate to my team, but in the end, he answers to his boss. I don't have the full picture on why he makes decisions, how he allocates budgets etc. I just have insights from what he tells me and what I see.
But I'm a professional, and I don't get my feelings hurt when my boss tells me to do something different, or to do something I don't agree with. Yet cops are just different. In the US they get kid glove treatment when they break the law, either from fellow cops or the courts. They get idolized by TV shows as the only thing keeping people safe when they do little to actually prevent crime. And they continue to claim being underfunded, overworked, under appreciated and under constant threat of death at the hands of "civilians", since they tend to break communities into three categories (perps, civilians, and cops).
It shouldn't be surprising that the DA’s office and police need to work together.
Because prosecution was never supposed to be the primary goal of policing. See Peel's principles.
https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/welcome/crimj408/history...
Prevention is deservedly mentioned first. Prosecution is not mentioned at all, though the last point could be read as a veiled rebuke of those who believe it's a primary goal.
"The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."
There's plenty for police to do in preventing, protecting, and investigating, even if no prosecution occurs. The problem with US policing (and the associated justice/prison systems) is that these original principles have been completely replaced by a punitive and largely anti-community attitude or approach. And it doesn't work. Just as higher medical costs don't correlate very well with better health outcomes, intensive policing and imprisonment as they're practiced here do not lead to better public safety. Sometimes it's not enough to do more of what you're already doing, and a paradigm shift - by it's nature something that can feel very scary and might even produce worse results in the short term - is necessary.
If you just remove prosecution from the equation of policing, without making any other changes, you won’t be left with a better system but a worse one.
Agreed. To be clear, I think a blanket refusal to prosecute is a terrible idea. I was responding to a specific question - "why bother arresting" - in a context where arrest would have been easy and at least locally beneficial.
> If you just remove prosecution from the equation
Nowhere close to anything I suggested or implied. I was merely pointing out that successful prosecution is not the only or even primary purpose of policing. My interlocutor's implication that we can only continue policing with a focus on prosecution or give up on policing at all is a pernicious false dichotomy. We can police differently. Prosecution is a part of that, but only when alternatives have been tried and failed.
We don’t disagree, but so far humanity as a whole has been unable to find as efficient prevention method as prosecution. Indeed it would be a better society which could abandon the measure without negative repercussions.
These two quotes seem to be at odds with eachother. A cops job is only to arrest criminals, if they are prosecuted should not be their concern.
Good thing the psych eval for cops has questions that relates to this, and someone with your sentiment would not be selected for training.
Are you saying they shouldn't value their own lives, but instead behave as instruction-following robots.
2. You're still asking him to take a small chance with his life.
"A cop should uphold the law they swore an oath to protect, even if it means putting their own life at risk"
Can and have. Because if I didnt then I am still at fault, just like these police.
I know you were contrasting arrest with prosecution, but "only arrest" is still an idea that shouldn't be put forward even in that context. A cop's job is to preserve public safety. Sometimes that does and should mean arrest, whether or not that arrest leads to prosecution. More often it should mean prevention. That might just mean being visible as a deterrent. It might mean intervening to arbitrate or de-escalate a situation before it leads to a criminal act. It might mean investigating suspicious activity. It might mean helping a desperate person find the aid they need before their desperation turns into criminality. The possibilities are almost endless. If police did their job according to Peel's original principles, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that the DA's actions are irrelevant.
Police departments don't have enough resources to arrest every criminal, so they should try to maximize their effectiveness and avoid wasting what resources they do have by deprioritizing arrests of criminals who they know won't be prosecuted.
Over the last 7 years, arrests by sfpd have gone down. This includes before the election of the prosecutor that "legalized stealing" (how?).
Chesa specifically complained about this a few times, trying to work with sfpd on why they were simply bringing less criminals to his office.
The common argument is that the police were doing as they promised: the union came out hard against Boudin during his election, and then held public safety hostage until the public finally recalled Boudin.
Now he is recalled and crime continues to rise.
How does your argument square with the data?
It's not hard to see why they stay in the car and keep driving if the arrests don't even lead to prosections.
I don't think it's a suitable metaphor though.
Additionally, being a cop is a pretty safe job! It’s not even top 10 most dangerous jobs. Most injuries are because of the cops own traffic violations or, more recently, Covid.
No, my commits are perfectly fine, as are the vast majority of my peers' code. Only an extremely small number of complaints are generated, across a number of commits many magnitudes larger -- and not all of those complaints are of equal merit.
> If you felt that way, quit so someone who is willing to do the work can get hired.
Unfortunately, recruiting is down across most (maybe all) major cities. Maybe the would-be recruits see it differently than you -- with nothing to stake -- do?
Unfortunately, the matter of fact is, the police force decide to stop enforcing laws when they’re criticized for problems the police force caused. It’s childish. Police steal more money than actual amounts of theft in the country through civil forfeiture. Police are more likely to commit domestic violence. Police hired defense to argue that they don’t have any obligation to protect individuals or intervene in crime, instead of punishing cops who shirk their work. And then when any cops are critiqued the entire force stops doing their jobs and blames the critics for it.
The question is: why aren't police making as many arrests (commits). And the answer I'm proposing is: because DAs are reverting their work.
They are not reverting their work only in the cases of supposed police misconduct, so your counterpoint about bad commits is a diversion from the point. The DAs are not doing their job because they believe, frankly, that criminal justice as constructed cannot work. They don't believe a lot of crimes should be prosecuted even. For example, in DC something like 60% of gun possession cases are dropped. In Chicago and Philly it's higher than 90%. That has nothing to do with police brutality (bad commits) [0]
(And btw, these are the same people who think guns should be banned flat out)
What that means is the PM (district attorney) has the developers working on a product they have no intention of shipping (actual justice). Police are people too, and nobody is going to do purposeless work. You wouldn't at your job, and neither would they at their much more dangerous and stressful job. Nor is anyone in a great rush to sign up for this job, despite offered salaries being very high right now.
Police misconduct is a distraction from this point, unless you think 90% of gun possession charges were generated abusively -- which would be a completely innumerate claim.
0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/29/us-attorn...
Nevertheless, “risking their life” is what their Job description is. If they are not willing to do it then they should not have been given a badge.
Only 130 officers died in the line of duty in 2021.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...
This is not true nor is it verifiable. This is a bullshit political talking point. And it’s ridiculous.