What do you think about the police?

[TaraJo]

I don't think police are inherently bad, but I can see why people don't like them.  

Yeah, a lot of laws that they enforce aren't just.  I can get past that, somewhat, by chalking it up to the price to live in a society with other people whose values aren't always the same as mine.

But I do think they get away with WAY too much.  If I'm walking down the street, minding my own business, a cop could probably just walk up on me, shoot me dead for no reason and get away with it.  A random stranger couldn't get away with that, but cops will.

Personally, I think, with all the training and equipment and backup cops get, they should be held to a higher standard than the general public, not a lesser standard.  If we're going to accept as justification for killing someone that a cop feared for their life or they panicked, why can't we accept that justification from the general public?  Better question is this: if fearing for your life is justification to kill someone and we've all see cops kill people under questionable circumstances, couldn't you justify killing a cop because you're afraid for your life?  

And that's not even going into the racial differences in how cops treat black people vs white people or the reaction cops have towards violent right wing protests vs peaceful left wing protests.  

Yeah, police are a necessity but they need major reform.

You get what you pay for.  To be a cop, one only needs a high school diploma.  In Iowa, you could get hired immediately without even having to go to the Iowa police academy right away.  One reform that could take place is to do what sheriff departments do and that is to make all police officers deputies; if a sheriff wants to get rid of an officer, all he/she has to do is to not redeputize that person.  Make police chiefs elected officials as local city sheriffs and see what that does.

That's certainly a step in the right direction.  I have a friend who suggests we start paying lawsuits against police out of police pensions, the idea being that cops will start policing each other better if they know they're going to be losing pension money off lawsuits when they get violent.  Me, I prefer to make police get mandatory insurance against lawsuits; if there's a lawsuit for police brutality or unnecessary force or civil rights violation or something, the insurance company pays and the cop responsible pas their premium go up.  One or two minor mistakes and cops can deal with it but if it's a regular pattern, bad officers are going to have premiums that are so high that continuing police work is prohibitively expensive.