Defunding Police not working out.

[Angrboda]

I'm all for solving poverty and/or foundational flaws in our criminal justice system. But that ain't gonna happen overnight. A good interim solution might even be necessary to make the changes you guys want to see come about.

And be careful not to underestimate the power of education. A police force full of social workers with 4 year degrees not only would serve greater benefit to communities, something like that may be instrumental in dismantling the meat grinder in the first place.

I like this idea. It's not like saying "just educate a bunch of rookies and they'll stay beat cops forever." Long enough in the system , they move up the ladder, yeah? So the police chiefs and lieutenants will become those with that education too.

I was watching a thing about this police psychologist who talked about the damaging cycles of building pressure that cops get into. Where they get a rush from working the streets and find trouble relating to things at home. So they work more, in this high threat environment every day, never getting down time because going home and doing domestic stuff feels like a depression of the rush from work. But if they don't get that down time, that high alert mindset builds and builds until they start having stress and trauma responses, making mistakes.

If police officers were educated to understand the psychology of those they deal with, it would extend to understanding what is going on inside themselves and recognizing what they themselves need. I think that cycle sounds addicting and not a lot of people have tools to break down what is going on inside nor having any solutions to fix it.

There was a court case a few years ago where a department refused to hire a candidate because he scored too highly on an intelligence test. The department's argument was that candidates who are overqualified for the position or too intelligent are at greater odds to leave the department sooner rather than later, costing the department in terms of officer training gone to waste. The department won that case.

How would you respond to such arguments if you were advocating for higher educational standards for police officers?