Nan’s blog, ALL THE GOOD NAMES WERE TAKEN, recently
put out a blog post about police overreach – definitely food for thought.
I spent two
years as military base-police where I worked with civilian police, and one year
I volunteered as a diver for body retrieval with the Clay County Sheriff's
Department in Florida. From this
experience I can tell you that more than a few of the cops, who I have known, were
insignificant and insecure until they put on a badge and gun, then they view
themselves as alpha dogs. These are the
cops you need to be afraid of - and there are a lot of them.
Police work,
like the military, attracts people without a lot of professional options. The job especially appeals to people who desire
to be vested with the authority that a badge and a gun provide for their own
self-aggrandizement.
Cops have
absolute power and absolute power corrupts. Then add militarization of police departments
and you have cops out of control - cops who feed their ego by abuse of citizens.
Just like
racism, you cannot get the cowboys out of policing until a whole generation of
police have been replaced. There has
to be a transition of better qualified and better educated people into the
police departments, and the present contingent out.
This is my
solution to the problem:
· Raise the pay drastically.
· Require a minimum of an associate’s
degree in law enforcement to be considered for employment.
· Require applicants to pass a general knowledge
achievement test, comparable to the high school exit, exam with a C or higher.
· Require applicants to undergo
psychological testing
· Have a twelve-week training course
for accepted applicants that focuses at least 50% of the time on community and
demographic understanding.
· Require that every office spend 10%
of his or her duty time (four hours a week) in community involvement.
· Have a standing policy that any
officer that fires a weapon resulting in the loss of life, regardless of the
circumstances, will be permanently transferred to an administration police,
state or civil service position of equal pay and benefits where he or she will not
be armed.
· Have all police forces placed under
and regulated by the Department of Justice.
· Demilitarize the rank and file police
force.
· Have a special military trained SWAT
(not members of the rank and file) whose only job is deployment for hostage and
terrorist situations – never used for crowd control.
· Have an independent civilian oversight board that aggressively investigates all accusations of police corruption and
police abuse of power. This board should
have the authority to suspend from duty and to recommend indictment of any
officer so charged.
· Offer early retirement to all
officers within five years of vested retirement.
The answer to police reform is not to change the attitudes of
business as usual for the existing police departments – that can never be done –
the existing force must have more stringent oversight from the department of
justice, and the goal should be, over time, to replace the existing force with better
educated more qualified career officers.
I have heard cops brag about the number of speeding tickets
they have issued in a day, and brag about ticketing cars for five miles over
the limit. These cops are not serving
and protecting; they are harassing the community. An Ideal police officer would stop a car
driving over the limit, warn the driver about the need for speed limits, and
only issue a ticket if the driver was blatantly driving at excessive speed: in other words, serving the community.
This is all bullshit of course, because it would take
aggressive action of Congress to enact and enforce this type of change; and politicians will never take on a difficult, controversial issues that could piss off the police lobby and affect their own tenure.
the Ol’Buzzard
