It's already a job very few people want to do and you're making it even less desirable.
This is a good way to ensure you only get shitty cops.
In this case, one could gather data from different countries to see if there's any correlation between the effectiveness of police and their level of legal protection.
AFAIK, police forces in other rich nations function just fine without qualified immunity (admittedly, I have not studied this in detail).
Sure, in a different context it may be a necessary condition, if you consider all other variables immutable. But there's no need to do that. Many variables can be changed, including the legal system.
I think if you observe that your legal system is so janky that you can only have a functioning police force by making police officers selectively immune to the law, your response should be to not accept such a kludge and insist on actually reforming your legal system.
What we want is for the police to behave better.
The mechanism is increased legal liability. That is, both the fear and effects off law suits.
Presumably, law suits would have to rise, especially at first, for this to work because I’m pretty sure the fear of increased legal liability alone will not change police behavior significantly. They will need to feel the teeth of this.
Wtf kind of logic is this?
Women are all different. Some women love the idea of men asking for consent, others would find this a huge turnoff. Not all women do non-verbal consent in the same ways. To make it harder, men are expected to be the one making the moves and taking the lead.
I just made a quick Google search - [1] contains a link to a Reddit post from ~2 years ago. This man keeps getting told "it's not sexy to ask". Some women responding love the idea, others say they would hate it. Ever since #metoo I've made sure to very careful about consent, I even get verbal consent, and I know it's turned some dating partners away. So until women make dating clearer for men maybe you should hold back some of your judgement.
P.S. I'm 35 and have an above average partner count despite actively not sleeping around. I'm not some bumbling awkward guy that's never dated women.
[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/alxofq/me...
Similarly, why would I join a dept with a weak union when I can be in one where I’m backed by a union that for better or worse will assume innocent until proven guilty and protect the paying members.
Then it’s not surprising if you get a bunch of bullies drunk on power with guns. They need to be accountable because they can ruin people’s lives or end them altogether, and regularly do.
> going thru the process to become LE, in general I’m not looking to be a corrupt maniac.
Then the process needs improvements. It looks like there are way too many corrupt maniacs getting through.
> Similarly, why would I join a dept with a weak union when I can be in one where I’m backed by a union that for better or worse will assume innocent until proven guilty and protect the paying members.
Innocent until proven guilty is for plebs. The problem is when they are shielded from even getting prosecuted. This is no justice.
From the society’s point of view some degree of protection of law enforcement is useful, because it helps them do their job in difficult situations. However, the rest of us need to trust law enforcement, otherwise the social contract breaks down. This means we need to trust that they get punished when they kill people they should not or when they bully and harass people for the lulz. Otherwise, what’s the incentive for them to behave?
What I'm hinting at is that a neurotic police force would be less likely to harm people. But also take less action in general, solve less crime.
Police report to elected governments. They are checked the same way the rest of the state is: through elections.
Police pay is high across America because they're widely seen as bringing value to the community. Their strikes are feared by politicians; the cops turning on the mayor signals instant political death in most cities. If that perception of police frays, their leverage disappears.
More pointedly, if a civil servant decides it's too much legal responsibility to not break the law, they should find another line of work.
This describes a lot of jobs. Statistically, police work is less fatal than roofing, truck driving, garbage collecting and farming [1]. With respect to dealing with non-dangerous people who simply aren't nice, talk to a server or bartender or anyone who works in retail.
> will likely fight and resist
A small fraction (about one in eight) resist arrest [2]. Most of this is due to police having been thanklessly given, fairly recently, the job of dealing with our mentally ill [3].
> can just avoid risky situations by doing absolute minimum and not showing up or not engaging
Again, this describes a lot of jobs. If a department is staffed by people who won't work unless they feel free to break the law, it's crying out for overhaul.
We've given police tremendous pay, perks and employment protections. If it turns out a good fraction of a department's staff are too lethargic or terrified to do their jobs (for which we have zero evidence), they were improperly staffed.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-23/how-da...
[2] https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36600547/Terrill_Polic...
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William-Terrill/publica...
There's essentially no penalty for being a cowardly cop. The las Vegas cop who chickened out of confronting the shooter got fired, for instance, but even he was reinstated.
Just checking are you aware that this isn't how it is in most other countries?
The people in similar countries manage to get by with a whole lot less violence just fine.
Lol what?
Training to be a cop often is less than to become a Teacher.
Cops aren't even in the top 20 most dangerous job in America. Loggers, Sailors, Fishers, pilots, construction, oil-industry, roofers, drivers, farmers, etc are all more dangerous jobs.
Honestly, cops should be paid somewhere around what a security guard at a bank is paid.
Below is a list of the top-10 highest-paying states for police officers:
source: https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-stat...
- national average: $67,600
- California average police officer salary: $105,220
- Alaska average police officer salary: $87,870
- New Jersey average police officer salary: $86,840
- Washington average police officer salary: $80,200
- Hawaii average police officer salary: $78,720
- Illinois average police officer salary: $78,350
- New York average police officer salary: $77,490
- Colorado average police officer salary: $75,720
- Delaware average police officer salary: $73,740
- Nevada average police officer salary: $73,660
Compare with teachers, the highest state (New York) averages $85,889 with national average $61,730.
Source : https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-stat...
"As of 2018, the average U.S. household income was $87,864, while the median household income was $61,937.
When the median is considerably lower than the average, it means that there are outliers on the top end. In short, a few people who make a lot of money boost the average. So $61,937 may be a more accurate representation of typical household earnings."
Source: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-us-income/
Have you considered maybe teachers are poorly paid, rather than police are highly paid?
> Cops aren't even in the top 20 most dangerous job in America
Did I say they were? Did I say they should be paid based on danger? So why do you think this is relevant?
> national average: $67,600 .. median household income was $61,937
All your numbers say they earn roughly a basic middle income for their locations. That's not 'highly paid'.
> cops should be paid somewhere around what a security guard at a bank is paid
Why would anyone take the job of being the officer over being the security guard in that case? Why take on the additional duties and responsibilities, the being in hazardous environments like messy crime scenes, and why take on the intellectual work of detection?
I don't get why any member of society would argue for another memory of society to get less money for their job.
‘What we need is lower wages for the working class!’
Baffles me.
Both can be true at the same time.
Your point?
Doctors can be sued for malpractice yet they still perform operations.
If we increase (already high) risk of being a cop, then we will have to be ready to pay 200k-300k salaries.
You pulled the “trigger a European” card. This is not why the US healthcare is astronomically high. The reason is: practically no meaningful regulation and thus free roaming oligopolies of a few providers with insane billing practices (which hospitals are covered, etc.). And much more...
[0]: https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2012/03/comparing-health-ca...
The department can still fire an officer (assuming no union intervention) for failing to do their job, even if they can't be sued.
Eat donuts, ignore the radio and you will be fine.