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A sensible approach to police reform

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platocplx

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So as many of us have seen there has been a lot of turmoil and anguish and a feeling of helplessness when it comes to policing today.

Ive been trying to find the right outlet to put forth alot of the feelings ive had and looking to find solutions to a clear and present issue today how to protect officers and the public and give them both outlets which I think is extremely comprehensive and possibly can make their lives easier and have people feel safe.

Ive came across this site: http://www.joincampaignzero.org/

Wholly there are looking to make this the platform to use:
CampaignZero.png


Below is a summary of what they are looking to accomplish and i believe for many who are looking to make a change this agenda maybe one of the most sensible and fair ways to help better policing overall. Wanted to see peoples thoughts on this.

END BROKEN WINDOWS POLICING said:
  • Decriminalize/De-Prioritize certain petty offenses
  • End Profiling and "Stop-and-Frisk"
  • Establish Alternative Approaches to Mental Health Crises
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/brokenwindows

COMMUNITY OVERSIGHT said:
  • Establish effective civilian oversight structures
  • Remove barriers to reporting police misconduct
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/oversight

LIMIT USE OF FORCE said:
  • Establish standards and reporting of police use of deadly force
  • Revise and strengthen local police department use of force policies
  • End traffic-related police killings and dangerous high-speed police chases
  • Monitor how police use force and proactively hold officers accountable for excessive force
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/force

INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS said:
  • Lower the standard of proof for Department of Justice civil rights investigations of police officers
  • Use federal funds to encourage independent investigations and prosecutions
  • Establish a permanent Special Prosecutor's Office at the State level for cases of police violence
  • Require independent investigations of all cases where police kill or seriously injure civilians
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/investigations

COMMUNITY REPRESENTATION said:
  • Increase the number of police officers who reflect the communities they serve
  • Use community feedback to inform police department policies and practices
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/representation

BODY CAMS/ FILM THE POLICE said:
  • Require the use of body cameras - in addition to dashboard cameras
  • The Right to Record Police
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/film-the-police

TRAINING said:
  • Invest in Rigorous and Sustained Training
  • Intentionally consider 'unconscious' or 'implicit' racial bias
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/train

END FOR-PROFIT POLICING said:
  • End police department quotas for tickets and arrests
  • Limit fines and fees for low-income people
  • Prevent police from taking the money or property of innocent people
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/end-policing-for-profit

DEMILITARIZATION said:
  • End the Federal Government's 1033 Program Providing Military Weaponry to Local Police Departments
  • Establish Local Restrictions to Prevent Police Departments from Purchasing or Using Military Weaponry
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/demilitarization

FAIR POLICE CONTRACTS said:
  • Remove barriers to effective misconduct investigations and civilian oversight
  • Keep officers' disciplinary history accessible to police departments and the public
  • Ensure officers do not get paid after they kill or seriously injure a civilian
http://www.joincampaignzero.org/contracts
 
Any one of these measures would help make the situation better than it is now.

(hopefully) before anyone says "this wouldn't address the core problem tho" realize that doing some of this would be better than doing nothing
 
4. INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS

I've bee stating this in practically every police shooting thread. Prosecutors are never going to go full tilt at police when they have to work with police in most of their other cases.
 
Add to that 'pay police more' and it ticks all the boxes I want.
I think this is apart of the talking point i believe cops should be paid more also more incentives for good policing rather than just working overtime which i believe also adds on to some anguish and a poor balance for officers working which adds a ton of mileage to them over the years.
 
I think this is apart of the talking point i believe cops should be paid more also more incentives for good policing rather than just working overtime which i believe also adds on to some anguish and a poor balance for officers working which adds a ton of mileage to them over the years.

Yep. Cops burn out, even good ones, because of shit pay and long hours. If you burn out flipping burgers you're less likely to kill folk in the process. Adds to the frustration of the job which leads to taking it out on the public. Less pay means they are more likely to turn to crime themselves as well, taking bribes and the like.

Better mental health support, better vacation, and better training will help with these issues too. More cops in general will help with overwork issues, and more people will want the job if it pays better.
 
Make the county responsible for property they damage and hold individuals accountable for the brutality and murder they commit.
 
I wish this was a problem money could solve. Like, I wish we could say "fine lets dump more money into police reform to better train our police, pay police better in order to have higher qualified people holding the positions, but also hold those officers to a higher standard for the higher pay." Sadly, I don't think that would fix it in its likely application.
 
Any one of these measures would help make the situation better than it is now.

(hopefully) before anyone says "this wouldn't address the core problem tho" realize that doing some of this would be better than doing nothing

They're always find a way around it. Take 6 (Body Cams) which have been instituted in many police departments. Somehow, and I don't know why, maybe from some force field around black people, these cameras seem to either be malfunctioning, fall off or suffer from other issues whenever a police shoots a black person.
 
Yeah, you can't really combat racism. That's so ingrained early on by life experiences. But, there is stuff in that "platform" that should definitely curb bad behaviour. Like #4 and #3 alone would be a big deal. Cops are too quick to pull their gun out. It's absurd. I totally get that there's seriously violent people out there, but I don't think it's an excuse to react that way to most people since most people aren't violent.
 
Control F "disband".

Nope.

Haha!

I've definitely kept this one on my bookmarks for a while and shared it with alot of my progressive friends. But I know that one of the major problems with this is spreading it around and actually getting politicians to listen to it. With the amount of people that have a random chip on their shoulder about BLM for critiquing police in the first place, it means it needs all the help it can get to reach wider and wider audiences.
 
Yeah, you can't really combat racism. That's so ingrained early on by life experiences. But, there is stuff in that "platform" that should definitely curb bad behaviour. Like #4 and #3 alone would be a big deal. Cops are too quick to pull their gun out. It's absurd. I totally get that there's seriously violent people out there, but I don't think it's an excuse to react that way to most people since most people aren't violent.

I think there are ways. A lot of racists change their views the more they experience the spectrum of the people they hate. Getting police involved in community events in more than just a security capacity would probably help. Uniformed African American police in Juneteenth celebrations and the like might help bring them together similar to the police floats in the Toronto pride parade seemed to do according to the photos people took of it.
 
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...en_a_model_for_reducing_officer_involved.html

Among the changes the Dallas police have made since 2012: a new foot chase policy aimed at discouraging officers from making risky decisions while pursuing suspects, new guidelines for reporting encounters involving the use of force, and a policy of bringing in the FBI Civil Rights Division to review all police-involved shootings. Since 2014, the department has maintained one website containing a trove of data on more than a decade of police-involved shootings in the city, and another that catalogues all police encounters that result in an officer drawing a weapon, using a baton, or physically restraining a suspect. In 2015, the department received $3.7 million in funding from the Dallas City Council so it could buy 1,000 body cameras over the course of the next five years.

Perhaps the most significant reforms, as suggested by the mayor’s comments, have centered on training. In 2014, Brown introduced a plan to sharply increase the amount of deadly force training required of patrol officers and began to emphasize de-escalation techniques at the Dallas Police Academy.

Brown’s efforts have coincided with a dramatic drop in excessive force complaints. In 2009, the year before he took over the department, there were 147 such complaints filed; as of November 2015, there had been just 13 for the year. Brown told the Morning News in 2015 that he credited the new training methods with a 40 percent year-on-year drop in police shootings and a 30 percent drop in assaults on officers. BuzzFeed’s Albert Samaha points out that, in the years since 2012 (when Dallas police shot 23 people), the frequency of officer-involved shootings has consistently fallen; according to the department’s data, there were 11 last year, and before Thursday, there had been just one in 2016. The fact that Dallas’ murder rate continues to decline, the Washington Post’s Radley Balko has noted, is evidence that a department “can embrace policing policies that are community-friendly, open and transparent, and dedicated to minimizing the use of force and violence ... and still enjoy the same or greater drops in crime we’re seeing elsewhere.”

Edit: And more data: https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/dallas-police-numbers?utm_term=.gyWDoze9N9#.gfXB4X59D9

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ing-those-things-could-now-be-more-difficult/

This is a post I made regarding Dallas PD in a different the thread and some of their efforts which have led to decreases in complaints, shootings, and other issues with the community since 2012.
 
4. INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS

I've bee stating this in practically every police shooting thread. Prosecutors are never going to go full tilt at police when they have to work with police in most of their other cases.

I think all police shootings need to go to the federal justice department for independent review. No more of these "internal" investigations from within the police department, where there is an obvious conflict of interest.

I am not even saying that it is impossible for those review boards to be impartial but there is a serious amount of doubt when 95% of the time they announce they are innocent.
 
This would be like trying to cure a fatal allergy condition by contracting a disease that destroys your immune system.
He probably means it's more like amputation of a limb diseased and rotting beyond repair. Considering how these problems seem so deeply rooted in the structure of law enforcement in the U.S., I can see where he's coming from.

I wouldn't want police departments to disband outright, but since America has proven it's police are incapable of avoiding killings like these, then I'd prefer every function of patrol officers be split up and accomplished through alternative means (e.g. cars monitoring speed in certain places or being automated so that officers never need to pull people over).

If that sounds extreme, consider how extreme the current situation is. It'd be equally difficult and extreme as disbanding whole departments, but merely removing the possibility of police executing innocent people, since that's 100% unacceptable.
 
They're always find a way around it. Take 6 (Body Cams) which have been instituted in many police departments. Somehow, and I don't know why, maybe from some force field around black people, these cameras seem to either be malfunctioning, fall off or suffer from other issues whenever a police shoots a black person.

This argument is really rather silly. Things are going to break and malfunction but it's understandable that it might draw a suspicious eye.

A lot of the equipment that is worn doesn't stay on during a simple foot chase for example. My radio holder comes off, my microphone clip slides off the uniform button, so things don't always work like they are supposed to. Body cameras my not be new technology, but using them in police applications if fairly recent.

My department researched several body cam providers and each one is mounted and held in place very differently. The best one we found actually uses magnets to stay in place, but there were only 2 companies that used them out of about 10 that we looked into. The others were clips or pins which aren't going to hold up long term or be very reliable. The cameras that we looked at themselves also had a huge quality difference between them. Some didn't do low level light well, others had compression issues, some only offered video but no audio solution.

It really depends on what the department can afford. Because the camera is only the first expense, and honestly the smallest expense of the whole package. The servers that have to hold the data are the real cost barriers.
 
It really depends on what the department can afford. Because the camera is only the first expense, and honestly the smallest expense of the whole package. The servers that have to hold the data are the real cost barriers.

Yeah I agree there are some cost barriers, however in almost every instance ive seen so far they have reduced a lot of false claims and also if there are reduced civil suits these items make for a better thing overall.
 
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