Wishing a very pleasant day to everyone who decided not to become a police officer.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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At one point when I was 18 I almost started down that path. Thank god I didn't.
🍻
I shudder to think of the alternate timeline where I gave up on my dream and became a Mountie.
I didn't expect small town USA to actually defund the police first.
Try THAT in Small Town
Ha!
Yeah. They can't keep up with the funding that big cities have to outfit their cops in cool tactical gear.
My town didn't have cops for over three years, and it was totally fine.
Small town in Ohio, we disbanded our local Police, and instead have county police here now
Which is the way. Or even just state troopers.
The only "benefits" to local police are faster response times in emergencies and the ability to enforce nuisance ordinances. The former is not something you want from Bill's Drinking Buddies and the latter would be better handled by county workers anyway.
Generally speaking: The vast majority of what cops do would be better handled by social workers and bureaucrats with a clipboard. And it reduces the likelihood of a noise complaint resulting in the ritualistic sodomy and execution of a dog and its owners.
And it reduces the power of "sheriffs"
Yeah, if they're going to stick with traditional US law enforcement, county police are the best way forward. Sheriffs offices should be abolished nation wide
Huh? Sheriff's departments are the county police.
They're not police in the way we regularly think of them. There are county police forces and there are county sheriff's and while theres a decent degree of overlap in what their expected duties are, they aren't the same thing. Sheriffs have very little, if any accountability to their community or oversight from local and state authorities. The only leg up that sheriff's have in my view is that they're an elected position. However, the way they're structured makes that aspect even more ripe for corruption. Here's a decent article breaking down the argument against sheriff offices. And a video about it if that's more your jam
this is the reality, we have several overlapping forces who compete for staff leaving some places overflowing with officers and some completely empty.
the whole county vs city vs state police forcing inefficiency needs to be addressed.
Honestly, the USA should nationalize the police. Standards and police academies (just a movie in many places, not an actual thing).
Cops could be rotated, and internal affairs could find and remove bad cops. Less local corruption.
The issue with rotations being "normal" is that it makes it trivial to protect abusers. Just look at the catholic church where it is pretty obvious that any time there is a new priest in town, some kid got molested.
I am also not convinced we would have good national standards considering how many red states are actively trying to cripple education.
I don't know enough to know if nationalizing the police is a good idea, but that's already an issue. Police can and do just move from one department to another.
At the very least there should be a national license or record that follows them.
There already are records that follow them. Arrest records and police reports. Then the police union plays the qualified immunity card and gets them all their back pay.
Solution: outlaw police unions and void their existing contracts. They're the one category of unions I don't support.
Which gets back to "If we lived in a utopia, these steps toward fixing society wouldn't be an issue"
I hate police unions and consider them organized crime. But I am generally going to vote against ANY precedent for the government breaking up a union because that is the kind of slippery slope that actually has consequences. Instead, I push for politicians who want to get rid of qualified immunity.
I mean it works pretty decently in Canada. We have two ways of becoming a police officer and two systems. The College route is a two year program that focuses on police sciences, psychology, ethics and law. Then there is the RCMP route where you get shipped off for intensive training where you live millitary boot camp style for 6 months for a concentrated version with some physical training and then basically get a cadet status to be apprenticed out to a detachment.
Municipalities can choose to either have a police department run by them or to contract a federal detachment of the RCMP. The RCMP are only on the hook to solve federal law and bylaw enforcement is largely outside their perveiw. They are however cheaper for a Municipality because they are paid for in part by provincial government and 30 percent of their cost comes from the federal level.
The accountability is I think a little better than hiring people with just a GED. The investment of time and education makes a difference particularly since there's a pretty heavy emphasis on de-escalation models of policing up here. Having an officer actually draw their firearm up here much less point it at a person is a shock.
At least it's one target to fight to fix rather than every small town's own shitty way to be shitty, and blue states would in theory try to counter the red state shittiness.
Yeah, I was with him until he said some bullshit about 'rotating' cops.
Always something, lol.
There really just shouldn't be cops.
very uplifting news
But then the only white people who get to shoot black people risk being charged for it!
This would be a good opportunity to try out some sort of volunteer community defense system and crisis intervention units. Both would be far more cost effective. If it were arranged appropriately to make volunteers accountable, it'd be a lot safer than traditional policing
george zimmermans
Oh no! Who's going to drive all their tanks?
At least 521 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 2017, according to a peer-reviewed 2022 paper by Rice University Professor of Economics Richard T. Boylan.
In the past two years, at least 12 small towns have dissolved their departments.
That works out to an average of 11 per year. I haven't needed to think about numbers in a long time. Did I fuck that up? Cause if not, this sounds like a lot of panic over losing fewer police departments than the norm.
Law and order? Can't afford'er!
“No one wants to harass black people any more.”
I believe it.
It's ridiculously expensive to hire cops and equip them with gear that makes them competitive with other cops.
