Without adversarial third party oversight police will continue to abuse the public.
The problem is that due to the underlying need for police cooperation in unrelated cases, no sane DA or judge would dare challenge a cop (or the police union) who can claim "oh it was a malfunction" or "oh uh the battery ran out" when it comes time for video footage to be reviewed and made public in the case of a police officer breaking the law.
My proposal: make it someone's (or an anonymous board of lawyers') job to review any and all police video footage. The police union is not allowed in any circumstances to know who is doing that job, nor are they allowed to protest. Make it federal law that every officer when on duty has no expectations of privacy, and their body cam must be on 100% of the time when on duty, no exceptions.
If you are going to work (and retire) on the public's dime, using equipment the public paid for, you must without question bow to public demands of complete transparency and full accountability. I don't give a damn what the union thinks, they are on our dime.
How many Attorneys General worked as public defenders? I bet out of the current 50 US AGs, it's probably close to zero.
More training is more pay and benefits, and they have to keep it current by reapplying and showing they've done recent training, like teachers.
You have to memorize and demonstrate understanding of law, pass an obstacle course, meet marksmanship standards, pass a driving test under extreme conditions, and more. It's no joke. And they have to recertify on a lot of this yearly.
Nobody's perfect. None of their critics can actually do that job. Most couldn't clear the first fence in the obstacle course. You'd hate being subject to the same surveillance at work as well.
I don't want my comment to be taken as anti-cop because I'm not, but an office worker being monitored all day and a cop on duty being monitored aren't really equivalent at all. Shit, if lives depended on me & my actions and I worked in a field where big, heavy decisions could fall on me at any point, I sure as shit hope there's someone or something there to document it all.
And surveillance? Give me a break. At my job, all my keystrokes are logged. Every website I go to is logged. My email and chat are archived and searched for keywords and AI. And I'm not tasked with "Protect and Serve." I work for an insurance company. Cops have life and death power, so as Spidey tells us, with power comes responsibility. Don't like it? Don't pick up the badge...
You should look at the educational and training requirements used by European police forces. They make the "police academy" look like the joke that it is. Or look at how the military trains MPs. MPs have a much better understanding and usage of force than the majority of police forces in the US.
LOL, what? Police unions have consistently fought against recertification requirements, particularly the CPAT that police and fire use (candidate physical ability test).
"Demonstrate understanding of law" - police have claimed, and courts have consistently upheld that police do not need to know the law. They repeatedly arrest photographers in public places, and it ends up in appeal after appeal while they defend their abuse of 1A, and even after all that Chiefs will still stand on court steps saying "We can't expect our officers to be constitutional lawyers".
American police training is some of the lowest standard in the developed world. It takes more time to be certified as a hairdresser in most states.
> None of their critics can actually do that job.
Get out of here with that attitude. That's right up there with "If you're not behind our military, feel free to stand in front of them" bullshit designed to shut down any criticism, valid or otherwise.
>You have to memorize and demonstrate understanding of law
No shit...that's the entire premise of the job. Someone whose job it is to enforce the law needs to actually know the law.
>pass an obstacle course
You should see some of the cops in the cities I've lived in (Bay Area, NYC, PHX, Miami). Some are/were quite fit, but a bunch couldn't pass an obstacle course even if the only obstacle was "touch your toes" or "run a mile in under 15 minutes".
>meet marksmanship standards
You don't say? Someone whose job description includes "the ability to use lethal force when necessary" needs to know how to properly use a lethal firearm?
>pass a driving test under extreme conditions
Weaving in and out of traffic with lights blaring is NOT hard. People are required to get out of your way. You also have a great car with tons of upgrades, all paid for by the taxpayer.
>And they have to recertify on a lot of this yearly.
Good. Plenty of professionals in other fields have to do this too, and they don't get backed by a taxpayer funded union.
Seen plenty of obese cops too. No idea how they stay on the force.
I'm not an expert, but I don't think that'd be possible at the federal level. Politics aside, local policing is controlled by states and federal control over those issues is largely limited to things like withholding funding for states that don't comply with federal program requirements.
If police fail to produce the footage, judges should instruct jurors that the adverse inference may be drawn (in case they're insufficiently skeptical to do so themselves).
We need to either change the culture—and adversarial third-party oversight is a forcible way to do that—or remove the tools the police use to abuse the public.