Back in 2018 I got into a serious car accident. I was driving eastbound on Fountain Avenue when another car blew a red light and t-boned my Miata at full speed, crushing my entire driver's side, causing my car to spin 540 degrees, take out a stop sign and land on the front lawn of a nearby apartment building.
I got out of my car, dazed amid a cloud of air bag dust and miraculously unscathed. I was wearing my seat belt and had my convertible top and windows all the way down. I otherwise would surely have ended up with a face full of glass.
The other driver -- about a block away -- also got out of their car. They took a glance at me, got back into their car and sped off. Their car had no plates.
I called 911 and Deputy Penate of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department arrived on the scene. His attitude toward me was immediately hostile.
I was in a completely traumatized state and had just experienced the scariest moment of my life. As I was on the phone trying to arrange a tow, he approached me and said: "Do you think we could hurry this up? I'd really like to have some dinner tonight."
A few minutes later as we were waiting for the tow truck, he got out of his patrol car and approached me again, making sniffing noises: "Why do I smell marijuana right now, sir? If I search your car am I'm gonna find anything I'm not supposed to find?"
I don't smoke marijuana. There was no contraband in my car, which had been laying totaled on the side of the road with its top down for an hour.
I had just been the victim of a serious crime and here was this law enforcement officer, trying to turn me into a criminal instead of assisting me in any way.
That experience was a serious blow to my faith in law enforcement.
I once got rear-ended by a young-ish driver. She was respectful, admitted fault, apologized. Then, the police showed up. At first they were decent, just doing their jobs. Then, almost instantly, their tone changed. Same thing - told me they smelled marijuana (I never smoked weed in my life). Then it turned into an inquisition: "You told me you're going home, which is south, but why are you headed north right now?" "I'm going to my parents' home, which is north of here." "Sounds like you're story keeps changing." One cop said something like, "Are you a mama's boy? Gotta go see mommy?", which was weird, but that's how the tone was now.
Anyway, as I was getting hammered with questions and accusations, I noticed the young-ish driver getting into the back of the second police car. Then, they drove away. I thought they found drugs or something.
Turns out the young-ish driver was the daughter of the chief of police. I spent the next month or so getting harassed by a local prosecutor (the cops smelled marijuana! back in the early-90s, weed was a big crime.). He said the police were "investigating" and he was deciding whether or not to bring the case. Furthermore, my own insurance agent told me I should probably drop my claim because the young-ish driver's insurance company would fight it ("it's complicated because it was dark at the time."), and it would just take a long time so it probably wasn't worth it.
In the end, I submitted the insurance claim, received peanuts (not even enough to fix my car) and dropped State Farm. I didn't care too much because I knew I was leaving town (Modesto, CA). And I've never gone back.
I'm glad you shared this, thanks. Keep sharing it!
They're terrified of losing their blank check to behave this way. The more that people suspect that police are extremely dangerous and stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, the more chance we have of changing how they operate.
When I moved to the US, a friend's dad, a high-powered attorney (and former prosecutor) in our region, told a group of us: "don't ever talk to a police officer unless you absolutely have to. They can make your life hell for any reason they want, or no reason, and they'll always get away with it."
Coming from a country where the cops were much, much less violent and much more trusted, this was shocking to me. But that was a long time ago now and I can't honestly say the advice has served me poorly.
Lawyers always give this advice, because by the time a case gets to a defense attorney, the defendant's statements to police can only be a negative. But in the case of a minor traffic stop, you can often avoid a ticket by being polite and apologizing. Or, stated conversely, you can turn a planned warning into a ticket by being a jerk or totally non-cooperative. (Caveat: I am a white dude. This may not work for all races and genders.)
I'd rather accept the higher likelihood of a ticket and preserve my rights than have to kiss ass just to be given decent treatment as a human being. Fuck the police and fuck talking to them. Also white male with plenty of money for lawyers.
The point is you never know what police is looking for. What looks like a simple traffic stop to you can be police looking for a suspect, and by being cooperative, you risk incriminating yourself. It's not worth it, never.
Even if the intention is a simple traffic stop, police is incentivized to bring their numbers up, so anything you say during a traffic stop can and routinely will be used to pin higher offenses on you. Again, it's not worth it.
Not that I disagree with this advice, but what are you supposed to do if you're the victim of a crime (e.g., like the comment at the top of the thread, another driver crashed into your car)?
Is the answer that the best thing to do is to let it go - and, in turn, to let go of any possible insurance payout that depends on you filing a police report?
I have filed police reports for stolen bikes for instance, that's fine. Especially if you can do it electronically. But never agree to talk to them without an attorney supervision, under any circumstances.
If you are a victim of a severe crime, please talk to an attorney first.
The lawyer who said "don't talk to police" would undoubtably talk to police if he was a victim of a crime. The lack of nuance or thoughtfulness in that video seems to be part of the appeal to folks who like to link to it.
A more reasonable take would be to do a cost benefit analysis of whether an interaction with the police would likely cause trouble for you.
As a random citizen you cannot make that cost benefit analysis. For anything else than a serious crime, you're better off not talking to the police. If you need to talk to the police, only do so after consultation with, and accompanied by, an attorney.
You do realize attorney's cost MONEY right? And the vast majority of people cannot afford an attorney's assistance. I mean if you are in the 6 figures and up club like most of Hacker News you can probably pay for a legal plan where the attorney can file to get paid a couple hundred bucks for the question you asked but still.....
(this is the part where I get sent links for a bunch of "free" legal resource links, that will totally respond to your email and return your phone call. Totally)
So as a random citizen you can't do a cost benefit analysis of whether to talk to the police but you can somehow evaluate whether a law professor, seemingly unrepresentative of his profession, is giving good advise in a bizarre Youtube video? That's some selective learned helplessness.
If you are too ignorant to evaluate whether to talk to the police then you are too ignorant to evaluate the accuracy of the video.
Car was stolen, I found it a few blocks away. Cop showed up to take a report 12 hours later and immediately accused me of driving drunk, forgetting where I parked, then smashing up the steering column to create a cover story. Was very aggressive about it (see my story would change) until I looked him in the eye and told him I'm leaving if he wasn't going to help.
Similar experience in the US. Victim of theft from my garage, cops show up and pretty much don't care but are more interested in poking around.
Latest experience in both countries is utter indifference unless it's a violent crime. Last time my car was broken into I don't even both making a report.
Not LA County, but SFPD - I was hit by a car that ran a red while out for a run. Hard enough to knock me down but not break anything. I managed to remember half the guy's license plate before he drove away, so I called SFPD. An hour later two officers showed up to my house and took a report. They said someone would follow up. No one ever did.
A couple of weeks later there was a report of a hit and run on an SFPD officer. Very similar circumstances - he was not in uniform, he just happened to be a police officer who was hit by an inattentive driver. Hard enough to knock him down but not break anything. They caught the guy within a couple of hours.
Cops care about cops. If they can protect the citizens that they're supposed to, that's a nice little bonus, but given the choice between protecting other cops vs. non-cops, they'll always choose other cops.
Beat cops aren't really empowered to do what a normal person would consider an "investigation". (their "investigations" are stopping people and asking them questions) They write citations and reports of incidents they directly witness to and statements by people they directly talk to.
No way in hell 2 patrol cops are gonna do all the paperwork or are encouraged to go track down the various video footage to find out who hit you. They might refer it to a detective. Who wont action something that will likely result in a misdemeanor offense or very light straight to probation felony at best. Especially when you consider detectives workloads. It makes a certain degree of sense when considering prioritization. The detectives supervisor would probably lambast them for deciding to spend the half day to track all that down when more serious crime could have been pursued instead.
Meanwhile the detective has way more incentives in his social group to prioritize finding the person who hit the SFPD detective. The detectives supervisor might even tell them to drop everything and prioritize to help internal office politics!
Right - that's the point. If it's a low priority crime, fine. I understand they can't track down everyone and prosecute everything.
But the same crime shouldn't get vastly higher priority because the victim is a cop (situations in which a cop is targeted because they're a cop excluded, but that wasn't the case here).
That’s a bizarre conclusion. Do you not believe in the efficacy of technology like video cameras? In the second case you mentioned it’s easy to imagine they got a full recording of the event and thus had more to work with than half a license plate number.
Where in the parent's comment did you get the idea that:
>"In the second case you mentioned it’s easy to imagine they got a full recording of the event and thus had more to work with than half a license plate number."
It seems like you're deliberately imagining circumstances favorable to the police.
SF police have bodycams last time I checked, which almost guarantees the presence of one recorded video at least.
And also many locations in SF are heavily covered by cameras? Like the downtown cores of many cities?
Isn’t the presence of cameras on buildings in the second case and not in the first case also easy to imagine. Unless you believe that’s implausible in SF? It’s interesting that you ignored addressing the second part of my two part comment while also throwing the same accusation.
You don't get credit for throwing crap against the wall, even if some of it might hypothetically stick ("hypothetically" being the key word, you are still imagining details that weren't in the original account). That's indicative of bad faith.
Making an accusation of bad faith is different from giving credit. The standard behaviour on HN for disagreement is not to immediately jump to accusations of bad faith but to have a polite discussion without necessarily giving credit. I can make the same accusation of bad faith against you but that leads nowhere.
Another one on duty could have been nearby? Anyways I’m not saying that is how it happened since obviously it’s just someone’s story on the internet, but the point is that there are so many possibilities for more solid evidence in a hit-and-run than half a plate number in a city like SF.
I recall reading an article written by a former cop who said 20% of cops are excellent people and 20% are really horrible people. The remaining 60% are doing a job and will be approximately average most of the time but depending on the day or the culture of their department or other circumstances could be a hero or a villain.
I realize its an oversimplification on many levels but I find it useful sometimes in trying to think about cops as people, something which often gets lost.
Didn't that just (roughly) describe a bell curve? And isn't 20% of cops being horrible people way too much? Less than one standard deviation away from the norm and you're already in "make up fake drugs charges" territory?
Did the article talk about what the 60% do about the 20% who are horrible? This is the question that tends to be avoided in discussions that take this line or similar ones. If those numbers are accurate, the majority of average cops outnumber the horrible ones 3:1 and also have the 20% of excellent cops to refer to as examples. I think that's a more useful framing than one which positions the majority of cops as victims of "the day or the culture of their department or other circumstances".
You’ve lived your whole life with LAPD federally indicted under the RICO Act, reserved for literally gangs, and you held that cartoonishly juvenile view of police the whole time “until they came for you”. Amazing.
Pay attention to the ACAB graffiti written everywhere next time. Imagine some of those people either had a similar experience as you, or don't need to personally have one to perceive reality more accurately.
Because ACAB is a dumb, reductive, poorly thought out slogan; and people that are dumb enough to spray paint on random property completely unrelated to the police aren’t people I’m going to listen to. And I’m certainly not alone in that. There are much better examples out there of the dark reality of policing, that’s a child’s tantrum.
> Because ACAB is a dumb, reductive, poorly thought out slogan;
It's not though.
I mean “All cops are made bad independent of their personal ethics by the structural defects of the system of policing” is both more precise and more accurate, but it really doesn’t work as a slogan.
It is though, because it doesn’t at all communicate that message to most people who aren’t already inculcated into that line of thinking. To a large portion of Americans, it just sounds like a personal attack on people doing a necessary job. And you can say “well they need to educate themselves” or whatever, but if you have to say that then it’s a bad slogan.
It is overly reductive, but one point that it succinctly highlights is that the well behaving community driven and collaborative police are accomplices to sheltering the more dangerous ones. And that the incentives to do that can be modified.
Yes, but a huge amount of people don’t jump to that. They jump to “I have a friend/neighbor who’s a cop and their not a bastard, so you’re wrong”. And those are people you need to win over.
This sort of scene happens all the time. The police pulled over my brother in a car full of other young people. That was enough to give him probable cause to search the car, which in practice meant taking all their belongings and throwing them blithely along the shoulder of the interstate.
LA Sheriff's also have a gang called 'The Executioners' and several other gangs operating in the force.
Cops are held to a very low standard, especially for people who we place so much trust in. I would get fired for starting a gang at my job called 'The Executioners'.
Came here to post about the LASD cop-gangs. I think some of the best work on this comes from Knock LA [1].
The good news, if there is any, is that institutions as corrupt and violent as American police, who operate freely and with complete impunity and social sanction, respond to the same things that other, similar institutions -- like the mafia, for instance -- do: sunlight.
I think that shining light on this stuff is extremely powerful, and the proof is right in this story: opposition to this POS didn't go unnoticed -- he sought to stamp it out and hide that he was doing it. These people are deeply afraid of a critical mass of the population becoming sick of their shit. So this means it's working. Let's keep it up!
Not sure why this is getting downvoted. I’m sure the sheriffs in many counties are just fine. But even the national and international news covers the AlCo sheriffs abuse (check out the Colbert Report and The Guardian).
While this isn’t directly related to the AlCo sheriffs, you can also look up the “crime reduction” social media scandal from Oakland PD, a law enforcement agency within Alameda County.
He may be right that cops basically can't get fired but he's getting downvoted because he pivots to complaining that have adopted a particular branding he doesn't like. Of course that goes over like a lead balloon on a site where many people's day jobs includes thinking about the difference between specific cases and a general case. Replacing punisher skulls with rainbows and monster trucks with Teslas isn't going to change the fact that the police are capricious, unaccountable and feel enabled to rule with an iron fist.
"Branding he doesn't like" is a whole thing, though. Showing contempt for the norms of society by getting a bunch of obscene tattoos and driving a vehicle that violates every relevant stanza of the vehicle code is not a healthy behavior for individuals and organizations who are granted the exclusive franchise on violence.
Oh please, punisher skulls and lifted trucks are the white dude equivalent of pumpkin spice "outside the betlway".
It's no surprise that a "nice suburb" is serviced by garbage collectors and landscapers from the hood. Why is it a surprise that they have to hire hicks to be their jackboot?
I'd argue that it's less an issue of branding, and more an issue of credibility. If you were about to get surgery, and the surgeon came in and started talking about how the lastest InfoWars really nailed it, and how the US government was being manipulated by space lizards and CERN was just about to open a black hole, would you let him take you under the knife?
If these police are flagrantly ignoring the law, and are getting their news media from conspiracy theorists, they lose the credibility to be trusted in making rational decisions. You don't put people who aren't critical thinkers in positions of extreme power and responsibility.
If they were covered in Nazi tattoos, would you be saying the same thing? Tattoos don't make you into a bad person; bad people get bad tattoos, like ones glorifying ruthless comic book vigilantes specifically designed to appeal to the 70s law-and-order Dirty Harry audience.
Maybe, but it's a simple minded dig to a much better point. He diluted his own post by placing the police and about 50% of the population into a reductive stereotype. Not the best way to be persuasive.
Also, Villanueva, the LA sheriff is not only a Democrat, he was assisted by the Democratic Party in getting elected. Not only was the OP stereotyping but he was trying to shift blame to another party. Maybe Democrats in CA should start looking into their own party for the cause of these problems rather than giving them a free pass and shifting blame.
FWIW, I think the justice system in CA is hopelessly corrupt and brutal and has been for decades. That's a pretty serious problem Californians don't seem to want to address. Maybe corrupt, brutal justice systems suit the bosses of both parties just fine and the voters just don't want to admit their tribe is just as bad in this regard as the other tribe.
Oh well, divide and conquer strikes again. Enjoy your free nightstick massage and lead infusions.
Because they lie and uninformed voters believe them. Villanueva in LA county painted himself as some progressive champion against all this and once he got voted in he took off the costume and now stuff like this happens:
"Sheriff Alex Villanueva met with the Inspector General Tuesday to discuss deputy gangs in the department but the meeting abruptly ended when the sheriff's lawyer advised him not to take an oath to tell the truth"
Because the sheriff runs unopposed because only credentialed LEOs can run for sheriff in CA. And then the sheriffs have a habit of resigning in office and appointing an heir (i.e. incumbent). Our upcoming election in 2022 is the first competitive election in about 50 years.
And if you look at the vote totals, most people under vote on the sheriffs office (i.e. people just leave it blank or write in dumb stuff like “deez nutz.”)
I don’t want to get in to conspiracy theories. But imagine you’re a good cop with a nice life and a happy family. Do you put it all on the line to run against an entrenched incumbent? What kinds of dirty “tricks” might you be worried about?
Because if you run against literally your own boss in the primary election and lose, then your life will be sad. It's a bad system that requires reform at the state level.
Democrats demand the same results of their cops as Republicans do, they just can't stomach the process (which is a common cop critique of liberals.)
Relying on cops to fix a broken society is as bad as relying on teachers to fix a broken society. You end up with a bunch of sadists as cops, and a bunch of martyrs as teachers.
You actually have to change something, you can't just let the status quo continue and expect a different result.
But Dems don't demand the same results of cops as Republicans. There simply isn't any room for "both sides" logic in this instance. Only one side even entertains demilitarizing police forces, curtailing Civil Forefeiture, dismantling police immunity, legalizing recreational drugs and redirecting police funds to social services so that police don't have to get involved in the first place.
There is a reason that Punisher stickers, and Thin Blue Line imagery exist in law enforcement and Republican communities.
Get your Democratic majority to put forth a clean bill ending Civil Forefeiture and it'll pass easily. Other than one highway patrolman I know, nobody I know of supports that evil law.
"Democrats" is a broad term. That's possibly true of "centrist" / "moderate" DINOs, but if you look at, say, folks who set up the CHOP in Seattle (who might not proudly call themselves Democrats, but are far more likely to vote for a Democrat than a Republican), they very clearly did not want the cops to so much as investigate an actual murder.
I think most people realize that if they call for less policing, they're calling for less policing, and they really do mean what they're asking for.
(To be clear, I'm speaking about my own beliefs here: I think there should be less policing, and I fully realize that means less investigation of murders. You cannot give up essential liberty for temporary security.)
I can't take any source seriously when they push a clearly false narrative. Nazi helmet? Those tattoos look nothing like Nazi helmets. If anything, they look like US WW2 paratrooper helmets, but that obviously does not evoke the same sort of reaction they are looking for.
Well, it's straight from a citation from Loyola Law School. Following the citation takes us to Maya Lau's article titled, "Inked with a skull in a cowboy hat, L.A. County sheriff’s deputy describes exclusive society of lawmen at California station"[0]. This article makes no mention of The Executioners or the tattoo they use. For that you need to look at another LA Times article titled "After decades of problems, new allegations surface of a secret clique within L.A. County Sheriff's Department".[1] If we find the relevant quote in that article here's what we get.
"Aldama described a tattoo on his calf as a skull with a rifle and a military-style helmet with flames surrounding it. On the helmet are the letters “C P T” for Compton."
So at some point "military-style" was switched to nazi. I don't know why, but since there's apparent conflict let's do our own research. Googling Nazi helmet gave me plenty of images, and they generally have a large flare on the back and the brim turns up. The helmets also seem to typically have badges on the side and I didn't see any that had a band on them like in the tattoo. I think these helmets look far more like the type worn by US troops in the Vietnam war.
Where did you even come from? Absolutely nothing to with my comment, the comment above mine, or the one above that. I'm talking about helmets and issues in how Loyola cites their sources, not the effects of the Vietnam war on domestic policing. Go make your own thread if that's relevant to the article but you won't get a good discussion here.
You're right. See my other comment in this thread but it seems like Loyola changed the quote where it initially said 'military-style'. Personally the helmet reminded me of helmets worn in Vietnam but they definitely do not match the design used by Nazi's in WWII.
No, Nazi insignia buffs are far more likely to be (or sympathise with) Nazis than random people. It's a real problem anong historical reenactors (who are otherwise awesome imo, nothing cooler than living history.)
Given that a lot of war movies try to have the uniforms correct, I think that anyone who likes to watch war movies will have a good idea how uniforms of bygone wars looked like.
That is obviously a much larger set of people than closet Nazi admirers, even in the U.S.
And the previous poster might be an European from a country once occupied by Nazis, or even Germany, where such knowledge is part of the historic memory.
Most Czechs with at least elementary history knowledge could distinguish Nazi helmets from other ones at first sight; the Stahlhelm is a very distinct design and it is part of a very dark memory for us. It had some innocent uses too (Austrian firefighters or Chilean cavalry, IIRC), but it is tainted here forever.
How hard is it to perform an internet search for 'Nazi helmet'? I personally thought the tattoos looked like US army helmets so I did the search to see what a Nazi helmet looks like. Well, it is obvious the "researchers" never performed that research.
This is A LOT of research, and none of it surprises me. One thing that I'm not a fan of is that they are using imagery and slang associated with criminals, while operating with the legitimacy of the state. It comes across as someone who wanted to live a life of crime, without criminal consequences.
The police are just the biggest gang. They operate like criminal gangs because they recognize that way works.
The only thing that does any good is independent civilian oversight, with teeth. Bodycams and dashcams required, with recordings held by the oversight board, and dismissal for turning them off.
Disarming them while on patrol would be a useful intermediate step toward defunding.
Its actually becoming a larger problem than people might realize. More organized gangs sending people "inside" the system to get them intel and also make sure things go well overall for their people.
It's especially a problem in corrections which has laxer standards and background checks where gangs will send people to be the guards that are in charge of their people. "Gang infilitrator" has started becoming a serious concern and something they look out for at police and correctional academies.
There are also ongoing investigations into gangs within the LA Sheriff department and a fraud lawsuit coming from the City of Compton against the sheriffs. LASD might be one of the most corrupt police departments in the country.
It's nice to know that in an ever-changing world, one thing I have always been able to rely on in my 45 years on the planet is the overwhelming shittiness of LA law enforcement. Daryl Gates would be proud. This is straight out of "LA Confidential" with the gangs within gangs within the sherriff's department.
This happens in every police department in the country. Who polices the police? They have a complete lack of accountability either codified into law or labor contracts — why would they not do this to anyone who pledges to hold them accountable?
I've thought about this a lot, and have some thoughts about what we need to achieve police reform in the US
1. Re-organizing police departments into a hierarchy. Currently we have a bunch of different districts with their own regulations and leadership. In some the police chief is appointed by the mayor, in others there's the sheriff system where the law enforcement leader is elected. But I don't think local elections are a sufficient check on power, same for appointments my mayors. Departments need to be re-organized under a hierarchy, with police departments of individual districts reporting to a regional police department (which can be on county lines or some other organizational system, though this level could be skipped for less populated states) which in turn reports to a state-wide police department. While there are state-wide police organizations now (AKA state troopers) with responsibilities broken up by jurisdiction (i.e. only state troopers enforcing traffic laws on state highways) there isn't an actual hierarchy of command. Setting this up will actually make things more efficient, because you can better pool resources, but the main benefit is that it makes it easier to regulate police conduct across the entire state. Currently each police department has their own regulations. It also opens the door to creating more centralized internal affairs divisions and prosecution, so that the local district attorney who works with the police department every day isn't the one deciding what police misconduct cases to prosecute.
2. We should establish an accrediting body for police departments, made up of legal experts, law enforcement professionals, and others. This body should determine and publish best practices (for use of force standards, training, organization, etc), and be able to review and certify departments. Then states and the federal government can require that police departments be certified by this agency in order to receive funding. Public outrage doesn't seem to be doing much to compel changes in behavior, lets see if the threat of denied funding and re-possessing military surplus hardware will do it (fun fact: the program by which most police departments get surplus military gear is structured so that the department doesn't actually own the equipment, and the federal government has the power to rep-possess it if they see fit).
3. Establishing federal and state resources to actively audit police conduct, investigate corruption, and prosecute cases. This should actually be expanded to all local governing bodies, because there is plenty of corruption in small local governments that goes unnoticed, but there should be a specific focus on police abuses.
You're suggesting that some totalizing entity can ensure that this total reorg happens without any influence by the current sources perpetuating the status quo. The article reflects a level of sophistication in coopting reform efforts most moderates aren't capable of accounting for:
>"The unit, named the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, has pursued a long-running investigation into one of Villanueva’s most vocal critics"
>"The idea for the team was rooted in Villanueva’s upstart campaign for sheriff in 2018. While trying to persuade liberal voters he would be a progressive reformer, he also vowed to address what he said was widespread corruption among the department’s senior ranks that led to deputies being unfairly disciplined."
>"After taking office, Villanueva took steps to make good on his campaign promise, including hiring back deputies who he said had been wrongly fired."
In this case you have a unit which reports directly to the sheriff, who in turn answers to no authority besides the voters. And the people (and journalists) have a very limited ability to audit the inner workings of a police department. With the reforms I mentioned we're adding additional, independent forms of oversight. A regional police administration could be required by law to randomly audit and publish reports on the activities of a local department, and an accreditation board can require their own audits.
Most importantly, is tying accreditation to funding. Officers will report corruption if that corruption could lead to de-crediting, which in turns means layoffs, pay cuts, and reduced equipment. It will even change the incentives for police unions. When police misconduct has the potential to cut into the bottom line of officers, it is in the best interests of unions to also help minimize misconduct. And collective bargaining agreements are with the police departments, not with the accrediting body, meaning unions would have limited influence over certification standards.
Absolutely these sorts of solutions are not a panacea, and there is still plenty of room for things to go wrong. Corruption at the higher echelons of state-wide authorities would have more impact due to this centralization of authority. The accrediting body has to walk a fine line: it needs to be seen as a body of peers by police officers (in the same way lawyers view the BAR association) while at the same time enforcing best practices and leading reforms. There's a balancing act there that has to be done right. And even with all of this corruption can still happen, but it might re-align incentives and work to reduce some of the serious issues we see with America's police forces.
I'm saying that in attempting to control the reorg you're proposing, its adherents would fail and not achieve the described reorg. Perhaps a reorg would happen, but there is no way to achieve the hermetically sealed version of a reorg that would need to happen to achieve what you're describing.
0. Eliminate police unions, period. A group entrusted with upholding the law through sanctioned violence must not be allowed to have any other command structure. When a factory's union goes against management, the factory shuts down. When a police union goes against their management, we get the police riots of 2020.
Police unions are some of the most representative unions we have. The police are small-minded sadistic racists, and that is reflected in their union.
The way to improve the police is to improve the set of laws they are called on to enforce, and to strengthen the limitations on their behavior (and to dress them like mailmen again rather than soldiers.) If the police aren't called on to act unethically/cruelly as a duty, better people will become police, and the ones who thrived on being bullies will quit.
Different avenues of reform are not mutually exclusive. Yes, better people and removing the mandate to act like Rambo would make the police better. But simultaneously the bullies occupy the positions of power within the union, and they aren't going to leave quietly. We've seen plenty examples of good cops who have turned in their coworkers (ie actually doing their job) and have been consequently forced out despite union "protection".
The problem is that a police union can define policy that is extralegal, but carries more weight than what is legal, since they're the ones tasked with actually enforcing the laws. You haven't really addressed that.
I know unions are in a sad state in this country and I agree that isn't a good thing. But police having a monopoly on violence makes their union into a completely different beast.
> When a police union goes against their management, we get the police riots of 2020.
Or we get that time that the Baltimore (I'm like 90% sure it was Baltimore) PD stopped enforcing everything that wasn't an obvious danger to the public. The only two groups who didn't like that were the government who was missing out on revenue and upper middle class types who were really pissed off that people were riding unregistered dirt bikes on the street. It was kind of a nice break for the common man.
Sure, a parallel command structure may make a good decision while the nominal command structure is corrupt. But I'd still say it's better to focus on the problem with the nominal command structure (eg why is the bike registration bureaucracy so overbearing) than to hope that the parallel structure will choose public benevolence when protesting their own issue.
Furthermore I'd say that more often than not, a parallel structure for the police is going to choose actions that are not in the public interest. Hence how you're remembering this singular example of some temporary mostly harmless anarchy.
The state governors already have a personal army in the national guard ;)
But yes, I didn't flesh out some of the details on how to add civilian oversight. I think you could model it roughly around the federal Justice Department. You would have a head law enforcement official, appointed by the governor and approved by the state legislature, perhaps serving a longer term than the governor so that the position isn't nearly as tied to the administration. And then a head of a state "Justice department" of sorts (a broader agency covering the state law enforcement agency, the department of corrections, and some additional sub-organizations like state capitol security, a state-wide internal affairs office, etc.) which is also appointed by the governor and approved by the state legislature. This justice department head would then act as a buffer between the governor and day-to-day law enforcement activities. The idea would be to limit state-level control of law enforcement to regulatory changes (either advanced by the governor in a limited capacity, and the state legislature more broadly) and not individual investigations. But, as we saw in the Trump administration, this separation isn't exactly ironclad, and depends a lot on politicians and officials obeying certain cultural norms and standards. When you're creating a brand new organization and system from scratch at the state level, you won't have those ingrained cultural norms. Another options would be making law enforcement an independent agency headed up by a council. This would work in a similar way to the FEC, the FTC, the FCC, or the Federal Reserve. Leadership is made up by a group of board members who serve either for life or some long time period. Vacancies are filled by governor appointment, but subject to state legislature approval. Because the governor can't fire council members (excluding perhaps special circumstances, but that's beyond the scope of this post), and can only appoint new ones with the cooperation of the state legislature, this provides a significant degree of insulation from governor and legislative control.
The accrediting body also provides a significant degree of oversight in a different manner. This body would function like the state bar associations, meaning they would be completely independent from the government. This means the people have essentially no democratic control over them, except for the extreme step of repealing the law requiring state funds go only to departments accredited by that association. So you would have to be very careful going about setting up such an organization, and make sure it is organized internally to continue to function well. And of course, by definition this wouldn't really count as "civilian oversight", since the association would be completely independent and made up at least partially of law enforcement professionals, but would very much protect against the "governor using the police as a personal army" scenario.
They are also in constant violation of the equal protection clause. It's well known that celebrities get ripe treatment and free services. It's also common practice for the dept to issue concealed-carry permits to celebrities but not common people.
I would believe it if it weren’t written in the LA Times. They’ve lost all credibility in the last few years, which is a shame because occasionally they have really stellar bits of journalism. But alas, I can no longer trust them, and local politics is an area where their reporting is especially prone to bias. I guess they aren’t alone in falling prey to the same economic forces as other formerly renowned journalistic institutions.
I got out of my car, dazed amid a cloud of air bag dust and miraculously unscathed. I was wearing my seat belt and had my convertible top and windows all the way down. I otherwise would surely have ended up with a face full of glass.
The other driver -- about a block away -- also got out of their car. They took a glance at me, got back into their car and sped off. Their car had no plates.
I called 911 and Deputy Penate of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department arrived on the scene. His attitude toward me was immediately hostile.
I was in a completely traumatized state and had just experienced the scariest moment of my life. As I was on the phone trying to arrange a tow, he approached me and said: "Do you think we could hurry this up? I'd really like to have some dinner tonight."
A few minutes later as we were waiting for the tow truck, he got out of his patrol car and approached me again, making sniffing noises: "Why do I smell marijuana right now, sir? If I search your car am I'm gonna find anything I'm not supposed to find?"
I don't smoke marijuana. There was no contraband in my car, which had been laying totaled on the side of the road with its top down for an hour.
I had just been the victim of a serious crime and here was this law enforcement officer, trying to turn me into a criminal instead of assisting me in any way.
That experience was a serious blow to my faith in law enforcement.