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Has anyone tried to fire an entire city of cops and start over with everyone reapplying for their jobs? If they had a psychology driven focus towards community, it might work?
Camden NJ did, it helped, but they're still cops.
Interesting, thanks. It reads like a major, serious attempt at solving the problem, something other places should emulate...
Still, there's no way I'm eating hot dogs at a neighborhood cop party.
They had a booth at a community event here in Seattle giving out hot dogs. The officers didn't seem that thrilled and weren't talking to the residents, but it didn't harm anything. This was when it was pretty bad here in Seattle. If they were acting part of that community, I think it would be a great way to mingle with your community.
I forgot about Camden and I don't think people ever laid out exactly what they did when I read about it before. This is a great article. If police forces just trained the deescalation part, we'd be in better shape. I also like that the police becomes part of the community and is vulnerable to it the first day.
It starts from an officer’s first day: When a new recruit joins the force, they’re required to knock on the doors of homes in the neighborhood they’re assigned to patrol, he said. They introduce themselves and ask neighbors what needs improving.
Training emphasizes deescalation, he said, and the department’s use of force policy makes clear that deadly force is the last option.
Now, police host pop-up barbecues and pull up in Mister Softee trucks to get to know residents, Cappelli said. They host drive-in movie nights – recently, the movie of choice was “The Lion King” – along what used to be known as the city’s “Heroin Highway.”
The community-first initiative has made improving diversity within the force a priority, too. Whites are the minority in Camden, so Cappelli said the new department has hired more black and brown officers to serve black and brown residents. (Cappelli didn’t have exact numbers for the increase, but said it’s improved.)
The only thing that works is accountability. As long as cops get away with literal murder, nothing will change.
That is not the only thing, but definitely a part of it.
They're literally trained to profile. When I was a young white dude with long hair and a beater car I was illegally detained and searched dozens of times. Now I record the police but I don't really get pulled over anymore, or hang outon public streets.
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
185 points (97.9% liked)
THE POLICE PROBLEM
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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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