Quote Originally Posted by waffles View Post
A civilian review board with teeth and independence is a no-brainer, beyond that I think you need to take steps to make being a cop an attractive job. Inherent in the job are shitty hours, potential danger, and exposure to conflict on a prolonged basis. To top this off, you have low pay (generally, there are some exceptions) and the main benefit, a pension, is becoming a much harder thing to find. With all that, to say nothing of the current climate of distrust of cops due to continued videotaped atrocities and fuck-ups, the people you'd want as cops aren't applying in the numbers you'd want. Instead, you're getting a lot more people who don't have skills/qualities/education that would let them earn more than they could as a cop, people who want a turn-key lifestyle (these are the guys with the thin blue line sticker on everything, oakleys constantly on, who just can't talk about anything unrelated to being a cop), and yes, the stereotypical blue punisher skull powertripper that is too common.

I think you'd have to increase pay significantly, do things like more common rotations on/off of night shifts (for sleep reasons I think you'd have to still do a few months on/off at a time) so people can both maintain their friendships/relationships with people outside of the public safety shift work groups and so that they could get a more holistic view of the community they're working in, and maybe even little things like discouraging military/tactical sunglasses, haircuts, watches, whatever to help avoid people creating the "us" in the us vs them mentality in the first place.

Beyond that, as I briefly mentioned, I think you'd absolutely need a powerful civilian review board on the federal level. I've heard an idea tossed around that in addition to use of force investigations, all police officers would have to obtain their credentials through this organization, and would be subject to revocation of the credentials by this federal body to avoid state and local authorities ignoring problem officers or sweeping complains under the rug.
I agree with most of your post, except the part about hiring people who don't have "education", circa 2013/2014 that is ALL most of the Denver metro PD/SD would hire, you either had to have education (didn't even have to be relevant), or you had to be a lateral. This attracted all sorts of unqualified individuals with no clue what they were doing, all they saw was a good paycheck, they didn't have real world skills, and IMO is what has led to all the skittish, trigger happy individuals we see to this day. Again, this is just my opinion and my experience in the past.

As to the Oakley/thin blue line thing, you will be hard pressed to find anyone in the LE community that doesn't wear Oakleys, and many of them have thin blue line stickers/apparel, they are proud of what they do, it's no different than [insert military branch here], stickers, shirts, license plates, etc.

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