It’s painfully obvious that there’s plenty of problems with the US police force but I want to take this opportunity to explain a few of the problems with cops and their respective solutions. While it’s extremely unlikely that the police forces across America are going to change, it’s nice to dream, right?
Think about it, Who do you call when the people who have sworn to protect and serve you are the ones that are committing the crimes? The ones who are supposed to defend your rights are also the ones disregarding them. How do you trust someone like that? Well, the truth is, you don’t…
..But maybe the damage can be mended to a degree. Let’s take a look at a few possible fixes that could help get rid of the “bad apples.”
Accountability.
This could be a “good cop” holding a “bad cop” accountable at the most basic level. Seems like a pretty easy concept right? Well, it seems like this is a lot more difficult than it sounds. If I had to hazard a guess it’d be because of this sort of “brotherhood” culture behind the badges. Being seen as a snitch at your job leads to an extremely uncomfortable and unbearable work environment, it’s because of this (and there are other factors) that cause there to be very few whistleblowers. It can be better explained in this interview with a Chicago police sergeant explaining the kinds of treatment they give to officers that speak against topics your higher-ups may not want you talking about.
Going even further, to what I believe is the biggest problem, officers who get fired have an opportunity to be re-hired at another agency. Allowing an out for these bad cops is only one of many horrendous findings when researching the problems with cops. An important excerpt from this I found is the following:
“We have four principal findings. First, during any given year, there are about 1,100 full-time law enforcement officers working in Florida who had been previously fired from other Florida agencies — that’s roughly 3 percent of all full-time law enforcement officers working in the state. Second, police officers who are fired tend to get rehired by another agency within three years. Third, officers who’ve been fired and land another job tend to move to smaller agencies with fewer resources and slightly larger communities of color. Finally, when a wandering officer gets hired by a news agency, they tend to get fired about twice as often as other officers and are more likely to receive “moral character violations,” both in general and for physical and sexual misconduct.”
Because of this, the problem never actually gets resolved, especially if it’s allowed, encouraged, and never talked about. This is why the lack of accountability and transparency through every single rank in every single agency is one of the many problems with cops.
Training.
Doing a quick google search, I think these speak for themselves. One of them carries a gun, works with a different set of rules and is backed by the government. Another is a trade.
Degree Requirements.
The basic requirements to be a police officer are as follows - “Must be a US Citizen, must be 21 years of age, a valid driver’s license, a minimum fitness requirement, aaannnddd a high school degree. As someone who’s gone through the trouble (still don’t know why) of getting their bachelor’s degree, one thing I can appreciate about college is the process of learning values. Now, I’m not saying college makes you a good person but it forces you to become socially aware and culturally sensitive which in their case, could come in handy.
But, unfortunately, this is a problem that goes well beyond this, beyond just police. I don’t know if defunding the police would be the better or worse option. What I do know, not only as a Black man but as a person with an ounce of sense, is that the entire system of police officers needs to be completely rehabilitated. You simply cannot have “bad apples” in a business that allows you to determine whether someone lives or dies. There’s plenty of reasons to hate cops, there’s also plenty of solutions they can integrate to make you hate cops a little bit less but until they do, it is what it is.
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