I’m dubious. The same survey resulted in only 9% of vinyl record owners not having a record player in 2016. I’d like to see the actual questions asked.
If IP were less restricted, I could envision hundreds of derivative works for each film; nobody would know whether Han shot first; Ted Turner would colorize the first 20 minutes of "The Wizard of Oz", and my mom would star in "Ghostbusters (1984)".
The phrase “the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive” is very unclear.
Very few people know what dopaminergic means. It might not be a real word.
“Is not dissimilar from” is a stock phrase used in an academia and by people trying to sound very smart.
The poster included just enough technobabble and stock phrasing to imply they are a specialist. But specialists know when speaking to non-specialists you should avoid technical language and stock phrasing.
So it really just seems the poster was signaling “I am very smart and possibly have a degree in something related and a current on research.”
"Dopaminergic effects" clearly means something along the lines of 'activity of dopamine within the human brain'. I just think we need more than an analogy to reach the conclusion that social media needs to be banned. The sentence "the dopaminergic effects of exercise are not dissimilar to drugs" is equally as true. Clearly dopaminergic effects alone aren't enough to ban something.
When I read that the top comment thought banning social media was clearly necessary I was flabbergasted. I read the comment multiple times looking for a compelling argument. I read the article multiple times looking for a compelling argument too. I'm still struggling on this.
I would really like to read a concise logical argument for why we should ban social media.
Why the sarcasm? Someone does a bad job, get rid of them. How do you imagine cop culture will change? By letting them get away with everything and sticking your head into the sand?
Ah and before you answer: most of use who are not in the US live in places where police misconduct is much less of an problem, so obviously it can work better. The entire German police force fires less bullets during their patrols and missions in a year than e.g. the NYC police force alone. Sometimes single cops in the US fire more bullets alone than the entire German police force. This is even hard to compare, because the Germans have numbers for every bullet fired at a person during service, bullets fired for warning shots, bullets that hit, bullets that did not etc. That data is wildly mixed and unreliable in the US depending on the state.
If you want to have a police force you can trust they must not be above the law and the law must be even stricter, the standards even higher for them than for the rest of the population. That means longer and better education and training, knowing the law, but also strict measures when police officers break the rules or there is even just the slightest doubt about their version of events.
In many police departments in the US the problem is essentially that there are so many bad apples that every good apple that comes is spoiled or cannot do good. This can only be changed be decisive action from the top.
In many police departments in the US the problem is essentially that there are so many bad apples that every good apple that comes is spoiled or cannot do good. This can only be changed be decisive action from the top.
How many bad apples does it take, to spoil the whole barrel?
I'm not disagreeing with the comment I'm replying to, just trying to challenge the perception that there's anything ok with "just" a few bad apples. The acceptable number of bad apples is zero.
This is obviously idealistic and impossible in the real world (given the size of a police force). What is needed is a system that gets rid of bad apples with time, instead of letting them thrive and corrupting other apples.
The problem with getting rid of bad apples with time is the amount of damage even one bad police officer can do given half a chance, and even if they are punished for what they did it would not erase the bad things they have done. Policing violations are often violent and the effects long lasting.
This is an industry where you can murder someone, get paid leave for it, eventually let go without losing retirement benefits, and then get hired the next county over.
How many bad apples does it take, to spoil the whole barrel?
It doesn't just take apples, it takes time. If you remove the bad apple as soon as possible, the rest of the barrel can still be fresh and healthy. If you leave it to rot, you spoil the entire batch.
What I meant by that is that any police department should be able to handle one officer that falls out of line. One person that has an impedance mismatch with the general culture of an organization should never be an issue. We all know that from our work places: one highly motivated guy won't change the lazy majority, one lazy guy won't change the highly motivated majority etc. If you have one such person in your organisation the rest of the organsation will either work around it, or try to contain/get rid of that person. This self-correction works only up to a certain fraction however.
Where that cutoff percentage is, depends on the single organisation and the individuals within it. But I believe that in this case it is a combination of police culture ("we always did it that way, we need to protect our own") and systemic incentives ("if we hide bad behaviour we look better than if we expose it") are the key to understanding this.
They do handle cops that fall out of line, but falling out of line in this case means turning in bad cops. The good cops get pushed out and sometimes even murdered
Should we defund and abolish public schools since more than zero teachers are child molesters? Should we defund and abolish fire departments since more than zero firefighters are arsonists?
I think we should get into the habit of changing leadership on the basis of results alone. So a serious incident would result in the commander being reassigned or demoted. And leadership would be held directly accountable for events regardless of their own culpability.
Correct, but also many German police are associated with hard right-wing / Nazi adjacent political beliefs.
These are deep rooted issues that are not as easily quantified and discouraged. Reducing gun misuse is one thing, but reducing police discrimination, selective policing, and misconduct is a much larger ball of wax.
And in Norway the police had to be told to quit strip searches, "squat and cough", searching homes, and other invasive practices just for catching someone with a joint. They have never been allowed to use means so disproportional to the crime like this, but have been for years.
And people think that they need those means (which they never had) "back."
Also institutional racism and all the other shit that's true for most police across the world.
The police in Germany burned Oury Jalloh to death (or burned his corpse after he died in police custody) and every officer involved got away with it.
The German government decided there doesn't need to be an external investigation into police violence because the police can be trusted to have correctly investigated itself finding that police violence is not a problem.
The NRW state minister of the interior abolished ID badges for riot police, then insisted that there had been no evidence of misconduct during police riots because no individual officers (wearing full helmets and no individually identifying features) had ever been charged despite video evidence of excessive use of force.
Demonstrators hospitalized due to police violence routinely receive police visits in hospital because their injuries are taken as evidence of resisting arrest as all police violence is presumed to be justified.
The NRW police literally used the energy company's transport vehicles to detain and transport arrested demonstrators during the raid on Lützerath, where the police was explicitly instructed to show full force to deter future protests at similar sites.
Police officers were found to be part of a neo-nazi group called Combat18 (18 = Adolf Hitler) that had maintained kill lists using police records and a stash of assault weapons and body bags.
Do people honestly believe this? Maybe in your country police force is completely broken, but it's still statistical impossibility. In my country, I believe, police is generally good and does their job reasonably. Of course they're not the most beloved job, because if you have to deal with them you probably have a problem, but given that situation they're OK. Maybe fix your police, fire the incompetent ones and replace your polititians that allow this instead of generalising.
I live in US and I might be a little biased, because I have cops in my extended family and my parents were friends with local sheriff equivalent in the old country.
In short, I agree with you. It is unreasonable to claim to that there are no issues ( and maybe even systemic issues ), but it is also unreasonable to claim that there is no such thing as a good cop. Cops are just people and people respond to the environment they are in. I think parent may exaggerating for brevity ( or at least I hope so ).
The solution is what it has always been, correct to the extent that you can until you get what you want in terms of results.
Naturally, this line of thinking opens rather uncomfortable set of questions, because:
What if the system works as intended given current incentives?
And that is a hard question I have no idea how to answer.
One question I consider: is a cop that never violates anyone’s civil rights, but also does nothing when their coworkers do, considered a good cop?
For instance, are there any good cops in Louisville? Any good state cops in Kentucky? Seems to me they would’ve done something, anything, about the Breonna Taylor case instead of waiting for the feds to come in.
There were even active coverups, Kentucky’s Attorney General went to great lengths to push the idea that the entire thing was perfectly legal!
Edit: and maybe the federal charges are to some extent the result of an actual good cop in KY blowing a whistle, hopefully we’ll know someday
<< One question I consider: is a cop that never violates anyone’s civil rights, but also does nothing when their coworkers do, considered a good cop?
It is not a bad question to ask. Lets do what lawyers do: change one fact and see how it affects the case at hand.
Issue at hand is bad behavior of individuals in a group. Is individual guilty of actions committed by other individuals while being part of that group?
I suppose it depends.
Is a random US citizen guilty of actions of their politicians?
Is a random US citizen guilty of actions of their sheriffs?
Is a random US citizen guilty of actions of their neighbors?
Is a random US citizen guilty of actions of their partners?
Is a random US citizen guilty of actions of their kids?
I have problem with either of those despite seeing clearly what you are getting at. Starting from the bottom, I have a problem with 'sins of the father' justification all the way to the politician. I see an abstract reasoning that can take us to 'yes, inaction is a choice too', but is it in the same category? Does it even have the same weight?
<< There were even active coverups, Kentucky’s Attorney General went to great lengths to push the idea that the entire thing was perfectly legal!
Chicago is not better. Some stories are heart-wrenching and, as I stated before, I would not be able to be a cop just based on those alone, but I personally think you are trying to spread sin way too thin, which, contrary to what you think you are doing, is only distributing accountability even further and alienate even those, who could reasonably agree with you otherwise.
In very simple terms, if you are gonna define me as bad apple anyway by association only, I might as well stick to my tribe, where at least I will have some level of protection from the outside.
There are bad cops, and cops who choose to look away, and I'm sure these are all perfectly wonderful people off the clock, but my example of a good cop is Adrian Schoolcraft and look what they did to him.
It depends on what a cop does when he sees misconduct by others. Christopher Dorner reported misconduct, but was ostracized afterward. He sought justice in his own way afterward:
Not really relevant, but the ridiculous (and secret) police response once they knew they were being targeted had bad consequences for others too. I have a house near where this multi-agency incident (links below) occurred and there was so much gunfire for such a long period that I knew it had to be cops doing the shooting.
Dorner murdered two people who had nothing to do with the LAPD. One was a campus security guard at the University of South Carolina and the other wasn't any sort of cop at all, she was a basketball coach. Even if you believe all of Dorner's allegations against the LAPD, Dorner was still a mass murdering psychopath who targeted and murdering innocent people. In light of that, why would you believe any of his allegations in the first place? Hero worship of Dorner is an insane 4chanism, shame on you. Dorner was nothing more than another murderous cop.
I'm pretty sure that I did not express any sympathy or support for what Dorner did in my post. I do believe though that it's more likely than not that the excessive force he reported actually occurred. His record up to that point was exemplary. After he snapped, his murderous rage was not typical behavior for law enforcement, but it is a fact that psychopathy is far more prevalent in police officers than in the general population. One could argue about whether this is because psychos are drawn to the police profession, or that the nature of the work the police do causes mental problems.
There was no justice in it. You're also taking for granted that the misjustice he claimed to have seen actually happened. Taking seriously the word of a man we know murdered innocent people.
I'm not taking anyone's word for anything. I'm just speculating at what triggered him and why. He obviously believed that he was wronged when the report he filed was dismissed, and he was subsequently fired. If he filed a false report, then he deserved to get fired. If he filed an accurate report, and the (documented) culture of corruption among LAPD conspired to discredit him (and destroy his life), he may have felt that his actions were justified.
Again, you need to stop confusing my analysis for support and sympathy for Dorner. He obviously exhibited some mental problems and very poor judgement, but stressful conditions can do that to otherwise good people:
I think you're overextending the context of "cop".
A cop ceases to be a cop when they take off the uniform. They can be perfectly nice people in outside life (although they can also not) but when the uniform goes on, they're contributors to a system of abuse.
"No good cops" does not mean good people don't go into policing. It means that those who insist on trying to meaningfully change the system get forced out, leaving only those who contribute to it.
In recent cases, off duty cops have shot strangers and benefited from the incestuous cop dynamic and been protected from any consequences, so no, even when they take off the uniform, they are still a cop.
There will never be a good cop until accountability is an actual thing in policing.
Even a "justified" shooting by a cop should be considered a horrific failure of process.
<< Even a "justified" shooting by a cop should be considered a horrific failure of process.
I think this is where we might disagree. I can't comment for other countries. I can comment a little about Chicagoland. If there is a failure, it is not the failure of the process ( here understood as policing ). At this point, 'justified shooting' is merely what I would classify as 'necessary violence'. I am not using that word lightly, because actual violence only creates problems.
It is the failure of:
1. Society that allowed a given issue to fester long enough to move beyond tension
2. Individuals' environment that contributed to it
3. Individuals' family and fiends
4. The individual
Police merely deals with the aftermath. I think you got it wrong.
Do you think it's difficult to consider the cops in family might be bad? It's not like they are going to tell you the horrible things they may have done.
You think the cops in your family are good because they are in your family and are nice to you. That's probably the extent of the details about their job you know
"Have you considered the average hn user is a rapist, of course they deny it and they dont talk about it. You think HN users are good because theyre nice to you!"
Im as anti-authoritarian as they come, but I really dont like hyperbolic arguments.
I think pointing out “I have cops in my family, therefore there are good cops” is inherently poor counterpoint because obviously the cops aren’t going to admit to wrongdoings to civilians (although the poster didn’t mention any domestic violence happens in the home, which is shockingly high in cop families…) is not mental gymnastics.
Have you considered the average hn user is a rapist, of course they deny it
Unless you can show me that HN users are part of a structured organization notorious for rape, this isn't even remotely analogous.
Police are part of a hierarchy and brotherhood that is very well known to abuse its authority, act outside the law, and protect its own, all without legal repercussion.
Agreed, I think it was an honest disclosure that one obviously may have bias, but also that one might have more exposure to police than most. My dad spent about a decade as an undercover narc, some pretty interesting stories, including when he had to deal with police while undercover.
Getting pulled over leaving a bar on the way to a buy, with gun and badge in motorcycle roll. "I'm not unrolling that..." to prove he was who he said, "I think my boss would be more upset about dropping a buy than me blowing over on an alcohol test."
Or, getting caught in the middle of a shootout between the Feds and a biker gang.
Edit: My dad also quit two positions along the way, one because his boss was a clear racist, and another that had some other issues in the dept.
My mom was a dispatcher, and when retired was head of combined dispatch for a region. She mostly dealt with people in trouble, distress, or sometimes the absurd.
Are we talking about hn users? Did someone say "Hackernews as an organization of people is bad" then another person said "well, I know a few people and they are good"
<< Do you think it's difficult to consider the cops in family might be bad?
Not at all..I accept we are all humans.
That said, define bad for me so that we are not talking about fairly relative and abstract terms and can be easily misconstrued.
For example, I do not want to get into specifics and you are certainly right that they would be foolish to disclose their own transgressions if any were committed for several different reasons.
However, the conversations we did have on some events[1] they were not involved in painted a relatively close picture of their thought process and considerations at play. I am going to paraphrase and try to capture the gist of that conversation in sentences that follow where 'they' refers to the cops on the scene ( and to an extent the blue shield/line phenomenon ).
In short, one of their own fucked up. They knew he fucked up, but they tried to protect him from immediate fallout. As related, they said family was paid off, but 'could not keep their mouths shut', which is where the resentment was with those who did not hold up their end of the bargain that was supposedly struck. And naturally, when the case made national news, everyone was pissed, because assumption was that money bought silence on the matter ( who footed the bill for that silence was not clear, but, presumably taxpayer ).
Now, the political fallout makes it more complicated, because the rank and file has had the impression that case was informally settled and, from their perspective, it was 'over'. Rank and file finds out they get no cover from leadership and so the thin blue line only grows stronger as a result.
Now, you might be thinking: "This is exactly what I am talking about. If you participate in any way in this, you are the bad guy.'
I urge you to consider what you would have done. This case was a clearly fucked up case. I would like to think I would have stood up.
That said, as a cop, just like when you are a doctor, or a lawyer or any other high stakes job, you will eventually make a mistake that will result in someone dying. You will fuck up. And in some extreme cases, you will kill someone. That is the reality of that job. And it is a lot to take in.
There are logical consequences to what I just said and I absolutely recognize it can be horrifying. There is a reason I compared cops to doctors and lawyers, because I think this could help offset some of the issues should we ever get to an actual working improvement of police in US, but I don't want to get too far ahead of this conversation.
With that in mind lets go through some of the scenarios:
'if you know your actions in the course of work may end up killing someone are you automatically a bad person?'
'if you identify with a group, because you understand the toll it takes, are you automatically a bad person?'
'if you become a member of that group, because $absolute_number_of_members did $bad_thing, are you automatically a bad person?'
I have more questions along those lines, but I worry that I already threw out a lot into the ether so I am curious of your response.
I believe that "there are no good cops" is a reasonable and useful shorthand for a complex situation, yes.
Capricious violence, racism, and corruption are so endemic to american policing that every cop is either an active participant, or aware of specific instances and complicit in this lawlessness. The internal culture of policing enforces this through peer pressure, hazing, and threats and violence if necessary. Good people can become police but they can't stay police: they ultimately either warp their morals to conform to this system or leave it entirely.
Considering this a problem of individual cop incompetence is naive honestly. This "problem" is so widespread, so universal, that you can't understand the role of police in society without accounting for it. They aren't incompetent and failing at their job: this is their job! Terrorism against the dispossessed is an important part of what they do, and they are doing it.
Fine, maybe some individual cops somewhere are good in their heart of hearts. I'm even willing to entertain that the ones in Germany are mostly so (at least this decade), but the real meaning of ACAB is that /it is not possible to be a good cop, even if you are a good person/. The /concept of policing/, however implemented, is inherently fascistic, classist, and racist. Police are tasked with keeping order among the hoi polloi but not the ruling class. They are always and everywhere an instrument of entrenched power (private, public, or mixed as befits the particular time and place).
The concept of policing is to be measured against the alternative, which is a state that does not have a monopoly on violence. The warlordism that emerges in such a scenario makes the low grade fascism of a police force seem absolutely utopian in comparison. The police, however corrupt, need to at least superficially appear to uphold law and justice. Warlords do not.
Yes, a lot of people believe this - and with ample cause.
Try googling ACAB, and you'll see just how popular this view is, and the justifications behind it.
The origins of police, the purpose they serve, the actions they take, and don't take - the beatings, the broken cameras, the gang behaviour, the covering of asses, the nepotism, the shitty training, the domestic abuse, the collusion and corruption, the straight up murders: It's all the tip of the iceberg really.
> Lucky you. I live in France and police "misconduct", brutality, utter incompetence and systematic lies are a huge problem, compounded by the fact that all politicians refuse to even consider the possibility that not everything is perfectly fine.
Everything is relative. Hearing comments and watching investigations in police abuses in France is chilling (e.g. there was recently a video of a cop, without his number prominently shown on the uniform, which is illegal for them dragging away and beating a protester), until you look into comments and investigations about police abuses in the US, and you're downright reassured things aren't that bad. Yeah, reforms are needed, the IGPN (authority that surveils and investigates the French Police) needs to be redone from scratch, and the first steps for that are non-crazies running the Interior Ministry (the last two guys were... special and hardliners), but seeing that extreme care needs to be taken, I completely get why no active politician wants to touch this issue. Remember when police were protesting due to working way too many hours without pay (basically they have an overtime budget for the year, and due to multiple long running protests, the budget was blown through in the first couple of months of the year and they had to work weekends for free) and how tense the situation was, with the Gendarmerie having to police the police protest? Nobody wants to piss off the police forces, because they are necessary and powerful.
The only upper hand we have in Europe is far less reverence to the police and armed forces in general.
The military is so intertwined with US national identity that it's embedded in just about everything from sports to science. The US police forces are the closest to military turned inwards.
Well, the popular and deep support for armed forces did not, by and large, make Europe any better off. On the contrary, last time we glorified armed forces it led to some 80 million dead and unimaginable destruction across the continent (and world). On the other hand, the US seems to have been served well by their army, so it's not strange for normal people to support soldiers and such.
The US was in the unique situation of never having to face existential consequences for its nationalism and militarism the way the rest of the world did after World War 2, having escaped the war relatively unscathed. We see ourselves as Superman punching Hitler, instead of the middleman who bought up every Nazi and Japanese war criminal we could get our hands on, and parleyed the world's losses into superpower status through loans and asserting military and business hegemony.
Unfortunately the fetish for violence in American culture is baked into the core of American identity and has been since the Second Amendment and the archetype of the armed American revolutionary patriot was seared into the zeitgeist. Americans love Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer and the gritty, no-nonsense cowboy who shoots first and asks questions never.
I mean, just look at our response to 9/11. That should have been an opportunity to reflect on the policies that brought that kind of retribution about, and a chance to reconsider our assumptions about the world and our effect on it. Or at least to bring the world together under a rare common bond of global unity and do something good. Instead our jackass cowboy President said "you're either with us or with the terrorists" and went all Yosemite Sam across Iraq. We'll put a boot in yer ass 'cause it's the American way.
We're insulated as a culture (despite our bragging about our guns and revolutionary spirit, it's mostly bravado) and depressingly immature. It's no wonder our police are the way they are.
Armed forces are a pretty big deal in Finland and Switzerland as well as far as I can tell. South Korea probably, too.
For the German situation in regards to sport and the military, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportsoldat (You might need Google Translate or so, if you don't speak German.)
Armed forces are definitely not a big deal, in fact there's hardly any mention of them in public discourse, no parades or events involving the military, you hardly see them except occasionally you'll see soldiers going to their training on weekends on the train since Switzerland has national service.
There's also very little jingoism or mention of historical military activities. Really, hardly at all. And that's a good thing, and as far as I can tell that's how the Swiss like it.
I’m an American. I lived in Switzerland. There is no glorification of the military. It’s a job that people have to do. It’s less, “I proudly serve my country,” and much more, “Aw crap. It’s time for my annual marksmanship certification.”
Also known as, "power corrupts". You give a person power without consequences, you turn them into a ticking time bomb, and the timer determines when will they turn into a self-serving piece of shit.
That's the thing, the statement "there are no good cops" doesn't mean that no individual person that is police can be an ok person, it means that police as an institution will make people bad.
My understanding is that it should be seen more as the starrtng point of a reflexion about the police (what should we therefore do?) rather than a conclusion.
> That's the thing, the statement "there are no good cops" doesn't mean that no individual person that is police can be an ok person, it means that police as an institution will make people bad.
I see it as a fundamental problem of humanity - we cannot trust people to do "good" by themselves, because doing "good" often requires giving up personal benefits that would be gained from doing "bad".
The best example I know is videogames. Ever see anyone play GTA without shooting everyone on the street? In GTA, there are no real consequences for your actions, so our true nature comes out. I imagine that, in the real world, when a person has power without consequences, it starts feeling like a game of GTA to them after a while - not exercising the power available just feels "lame".
> what should we therefore do?
Restrict power, increase accountability. The only way to train (human) animals is through punishment when they piss on the rug.
> Ever see anyone play GTA without shooting everyone on the street?
I disagree. The game is built to favor this behavior. If you wanted to, say, make a living in the game by selling pancakes, the scenario would not be supported to the same degree (in this case: not at all).
Look at flight simulators. Most people try to fly properly. Occasionally, people explore "what if" scenarios. But most certainly most people do not use it to practice or experience another 9/11.
Ignorig the what if's
The "enjoyment" of playing a FlightSim is trying to be as much of a competent pilot as you can, in GTA you derive said enjoyment by acting as someone with complete disregard for consequences. (Both steer you to something, still, because no consequences people try the alternatives, like everyones short lived attempt to follow laws in GTA)
People intentionally torturing the Sims seems a lot more appropiate, and comparably common
Removing consequence from action means that the only thing stopping you is your own morality, which is dangerous (Would you rather destroy the life of a random no one you will never see, or that of a lifelong colleague/partner/friend?)
Power does corrupt. But more than that, it attracts authoritarians who live for power abuse. And the top authoritarians are the ones who hire low-status authoritarian thugs and give them a uniform and (more or less) free reign to bully, abuse, and intimidate.
Police abuse starts at the top of the culture, not the bottom. Replacing the people on the ground will do nothing without also replacing the people who use police power for their own ends.
That won't happen without political and economic change. A traditional redistribution of wealth and power won't be enough. The problem needs a new political system with checks and balances that provide strong immunity to authoritarian capture by narcissists and sociopaths of all labels and persuasions.
Losing your job is disrupting to anyone. Having the entire previous department fired as an example should be a deterrent. Anyone taking the job knows that they're under a microscope.
Firing cops is a step. Replacing cops with the same breed of cops with no difference in training is just a show.
The fired cops will just get jobs in other departments. Cops won't be better trained, procedures that lead to this won't be changed. No real change is going to happen.
Firing cops at this point is just theater. It isn't trying, it is honestly just more of the same. It isn't likely that they fire the entire department either, and it will do nothing to take care of the folks that were elected in (sherriff and prosecutor, for example).
What changes in training do you think would have prevented this? Do you think the cops didn't know that it was wrong for them to use home invasions to intimidate critics?
>it will do nothing to take care of the folks that were elected in (sherriff and prosecutor, for example).
I won't deny that rot starts at the top, but part of that rot is never firing misbehaving employees. You emphasise training, I emphasise learning, and the only way to learn is not fiddling around with the curriculum, it's not giving cops an extra year of training. What helps people learn is bad cops fucking around and finding out.
You can give people as much training as you want, but if they see other cops getting away with this gang nonsense, they will learn that you can do that and nothing bad will come of it.
If we assume there was a criminal conspiracy among the police to knowingly use fabricated evidence, then the issue is not so much with training (through an ethics class might help). The main issue would be structural in the police organization that allowed a criminal conspiracy to exist, and a significant lack of effective regulations.
No matter how good a person you start out as, when you enter an environment where
- A large percentage of the people are already bad
- Anyone who pushes back against bad behavior is shunned, fired, or left "without backup" in bad situations
- There are no repercussions for bad behavior
- There are positive reinforcements for bad behavior
Eventually, you're either going to be driven out, or you're going to turn. So wiping the place clean and starting from scratch, while drastic (and _certainly not appropriate everywhere) can be a valid approach when the problem is rampant across the entire department.
As parent points out, there is a difference in training: the previous department would've been fired in its entirety. That's a fairly impactful piece of training.
Agreed, but don't expect any big change until they completely rethink the selection methods adding deep psychological profiling. Albeit to a different degree, this happens in many countries as well, including mine, and having known several officers I'm sure it's related to the lack of proper selection: they very often hire people who apply because they "need" to wear an uniform and exercise power over others, then they give them some sort of immunity, which can only lead to disasters.
Eh. Maybe? I personally want to say it has something to do with Douglas Adams principle of power:
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
I will use myself as an example. I absolutely do not want to be a cop despite having a relatively strong moral compass, because I know for a fact that I will agonize over small things and believe most excuses thrown at me. More than that, I do not think taxpayers would want me to be a cop, because I am lenient ( which also why I did not really enjoy having a position of authority in my previous job ). I mostly assume everyone will do what has to be done.
And sadly, that is not nor has ever been the case. Uniform is just a symbol of that power.
As long as we also make sure people aren't driven to violent crime under threat of starvation and loss of home, I am all for it. Police won't protect us from the pathologic thiefs and murderers anyway. Those have installed it.
Last time I had to call cops was when two drunk people started brawling in a bus. One fell asleep and the second, driven to desperate acts by prolonged homelessness tried to steal his phone. In the end, the victim decided that the best course of action after reclaiming his phone was to kick now lying down thief until satisfied.
I and another passenger have stepped in, restrained the aggressive phone owner. We have gotten 4 of us out of the bus. We told the phone owner repeatedly to verify that his phone is OK, in order for him to realize that no harm has been done. We have talked him down. He was still inclined to (way less fervently) take revenge. I had to choose between getting confrontational and sending him home to sleep it off "or else" and calling the cops. Since the first option would put me at risk of being caught breaking the law, I had to call cops.
Cops came in sirens blazing, 3 cars, acting all high and mighty. "Your IDs" and shit. In the end, the phone owner has not even been told not to kick other people. The homeless person has not been checked by a medical professional. He was drunk, might have had some ribs broken, but none of those 7 "public servants" bothered to check. I asked if they were at least giving him a lift to wherever he was residing. "We are not taxi."
This can quickly turn very political so without me assuming, would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on that proposal? How do you see it work out in practice and what would be your plan for the day after?
