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Comment by SkipperCat | Hacker News Reader

US police forces should be nationalized. Having small fiefdoms just encourages bad and undisciplined police behavior. If you look at any US Federal staff, they're typically superior in their level of education, training and professionalism compared to their state counterparts.

Plus, having a national system would prevent small towns from answering to a single person with ultimate local authority.

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Changing the structure would not magically educate them. It would only introduce worse problems (of centralization).

But at least they would have a command structure to which they would be accountable. There's too many small, local police forces that are accountable to nobody. Without any checks on them, they run amok.

The checks are the legislatures that give them laws to enforce, and the courts/judges that constantly choose to allow their lack of education of the law they're enforcing. Ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, unless you're a cop. It's the judicial system's fault. This is one area where I heavily dislike the traditionally conservative brand of politics. Consistently pro-cop rulings, even in shady situations, under "qualified immunity." That crap needs to be abolished, or God save us all.

Luckily the pendulum seems to be swinging, finally. Ending qualified immunity used to be a left/liberal policy, but now I'm seeing more right-leaning people advocating for it. Maybe it'll only be a matter of time before we can have pro-2A rulings and pro-citizen/anti-cop-hypocrisy rulings. Just gotta get the boomers and old borderline millenials out of the courts first.

But checks without oversight are worthless. Local police having a supervisor would be a tangible check on their authority.

Totally agree with you on your 2nd paragraph even though I'm a borderline millennial.

At some point the supervisor has no supervisor. I'm curious how you'd want that implemented.

> even though I'm a borderline millennial.

I simply say that because I dislike the establishment, and the majority of the establishment comprises currently of that age range. No insult meant to you.

No insult taken - totally understand the overlap of politics and age groupings.

That's how it works in many (most?) other countries. Police depends on a distant, more "neutral" authority. The system has also problems but making the police depend on local authorities has a very big one: the smaller the community, you're more in the hands of a very short list of persons that probably have reasons to prey on you unrelated to law.

It's a system that made sense when the US where in a revolutionary fight with the UK or later a new nation with isolated communities separated by huge distances. Not so much now.

Equating federalism with "fiefdom" seems like a stretch. Switzerland, and, to a lesser extent, Germany, have federalism and are doing just fine.

I'd like to lower the Germany part to "okay". German police, and related to that secret services, have maybe not systematic but serious problems (racial issues, corruption, etc.). Public perception isnt great and any sort of internal investigation into these problems is being prevented. Of course the US is on another level, as they are so often, both positively and negatively

Local police is local, not state-level.

In the US, it would probably be enough to state-ise them, rather than nationalise them (and far easier constitutionally). The key thing is to remove the authority of tiny local government leaders over the police.

Oh, and stop electing sheriffs and judges.

Is this supposed to be a joke? Haven't read such an authoritarian comment in a while.

I think what he means is that anyone can be elected a local sheriff and because of that, you wind up with sheriffs who have no education or training in law enforcement. Often their lack of knowledge of the law creates situations where they violate other peoples rights.

There will always be situations where someone violates someone else's rights. At least sheriffs are representative of the preference of the people. They can be regular people. I'll gladly take that over a police chief any day.

"If you look at any US Federal staff, they're typically superior in their level of education, training and professionalism compared to their state counterparts"

Don't they also receive way more funds?

I think they do receive more funds. And those funds go to training, education and oversight. We need more of that because many of our police really do not understand the roles of their job and the rights of the people they claim to serve and protect.

Sounds great, but probably legally and politically impossible due to the US's federal structure and the 10th Amendment.

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