Here’s what I’d do to fix policing in the United States.
Feb 25, 2017 · 2 min read
(Not that I think this is likely but we can dream…)
- Decriminalize drugs and prostitution and institute a blanket pardon for all prisoners incarcerated for those charges.
- Compulsory car and body cameras for all officers. These cameras need to be in a sealed container that cannot be turned off by an individual officer and all this data needs to be by default public (except of course as might be temporarily needed to be hidden in the interests of detective work and actual law enforcement).
- Law-enforcement officers need to be held to a higher standard than individuals, not a lower one. This applies triple for our elected officials.
- The un-Constitutional and morally abhorrent laws involving asset forfeiture need to be completely discarded. That the police can take cash, real estate or vehicles away from you on mere suspicion, and keep return them even if you are never convicted of any crime — this travesty of justice is abhorrent to the very idea of “innocent until proven guilty”. (A similar throwing out needs to happen involving the “one strike, you’re out” policy in public housing, where if a kid is found with literally just a single joint, the entire family can be out on the street by the end of the month…)
- There needs to be a concerted attempt to remove psychopaths and white supremacists from positions in law enforcement. In 30+ years of living in America, almost all the white supremacists I met did in fact work in law enforcement.
- The perverse incentives that encourage false arrests by promoting officers based mostly on their arrest records needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice. Similarly, perverse incentives that encourage officers not to accept crime reports because each crime reported is a black mark on their precinct need extirpation.
- Police should be completely retrained to focus their attention on service to the community rather than aggressive displays of dominance. Two words: Barney Miller.
- The Federal government should be using the RICO act on profoundly corrupt organizations like the Ferguson police.
- Policemen should be your neighbors. The demographics of the police force should closely mirror those of your community. Policing by people who live too far from their beat should be strongly discouraged.
None of these things are impossible or even hard in any way except “politically”. I’m sitting in Amsterdam as I write this, and the police here hit pretty well every one of these points.
