Fair is fair, if they repeatedly prove to us they’re bad, then they will be considered bad. Btw the mainstream media doesn’t even report the half of it. Follow Injust_Seattle on twitter.com for a week. You will NOT believe the extent of police abuse in this country.

It doesn’t really matter how much training you provide, you’ll never develop a class that will give a sociopath empathy or cure a hard-on for power. Having more government mandated training for cops might increase their understanding of procedure, but its important to understand that the government is going to train in areas the government would like to see better performance. Protection of civil rights isn’t too high up that list for any government.

What we need in this country is to recruit police who are more likely to be educated, well rounded, stable, mature individuals. Right now the biggest hurdle anyone faces to becoming a cop is being able to run a mile in a given period of time, lifting a certain amount of weight, and finding the right connections to get onto the force. After that the formal training they receive is going to be the formal training that the police department has decided they need. How on earth can you trust a government that set these kinds of animals loose on it’s own people to train the horror out of the system that has served them so well?

At one point, we had an au pair from the UK who was planning to be a police officer (in the UK.) She told us that she was shocked by how little training US (in our case, New York) police officers get. In the UK, it’s several years of full-time training; here (NYC? NY State?), it’s 6 months, IIRC.

One difference is that in many countries, training and standards are set by the national government, whereas in the US, they are set by the state or even the local government. I have the impression that, in some areas of the US, the police don’t have to have any formal training at all, but I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong.

It’s good to remember that the police don’t just police us – they police each other. Stand up to a fellow officer and it’s most likely that you’ll end up getting branded a snitch, or worse. It becomes a cycle.

I think that having a good police force is very important, to any society. I grew up in a lawless country (that lawlessness hasn’t really gone away either), and I can’t help but think how much easier life could have been with decent law enforcement. Paying off cops (who then half-assedly do their job) sucks. If you don’t have money or connections, you’re forced to take matters into your own hands. That sucks even more.

Obviously, the issues surrounding this rape probably have very little to do with money – and everything to do with a culture of violence. I am thinking about that junior police officer now – instead of being told that he did the right thing, he’s probably terrified of retaliation from his buddies. I’m sure the victim is probably terrified as well. It does indeed point to a broken system.

Now, I’m thinking – why shouldn’t police academies involve more intellectual pursuits? My cousin in Ukraine went to the Academy of Internal Affairs – by the end of it he knew how to shoot a gun and secure a crime scene and so on, but he also had a law degree. He could choose between staying on the force as a detective – or go into the private sector (unsurprisingly, he ended up choosing the latter within a year or so).

My cousin’s example, despite the fact that it looks bad for the force overall, makes me think about making the police force be more than a magnet for power and control (I’m not saying that all of it is – but that’s the side that is often “sold” to potential cops) – you could also make the job itself more appealing to a wide spectrum of people who otherwise wouldn’t join the force. They would receive valuable training that could prepare them for all sorts of career paths, but could, potentially, make it attractive to stay on the force.

And then you just might end up with an improved force, overall.

what proof is there that the cops did this? some other cop who was probably paid off by al sharpton? innocent till proven guilty. anything else is spitting in the face of the nypd who risk life and limb every day.

So police officers are credible until they tell on other police officers?

Any officer who beats someone who’s handcuffed, who kills his fiancee because she wouldn’t commit to a wedding date, who robs banks, who sodomizes men in police stations and in subway stations, sexually assaults people, and engages in illegal conduct (and all these are examples of recent conduct involving NYPD officers), spit on the face of good law enforcement. But you always get those who believe that if you criticize bad officers and want them to be held accountable, you’re endangering the profession.

It amazes me that it’s the officers who engage in misconduct that always enjoy the most protection and support. Well, maybe it used to.

And its been said before here but there are groups of people where this happens a lot more often and its just taken as routine and nobody with any power gives a shit. This cop may actually be punished for that horrible shit he did (which is good!). But what about the fact that for many sex workers, rape and assault by the cops happens more often than arrest does (usually, but not always, it is by extorting a choice between say a bj or ’sex’ and jail). Oh yeah sex workers don’t matter, or its just thought of as part of the job. To say nothing of the fact that nobody takes violent crimes against sex workers seriously either…the people in power are too busy raping and beating on sex workers themselves.

That brings us to raising the bar for police officers. Being a cop shouldn’t be something someone dreams about because they want to be Kojack or because they can’t imagine what else they’re going to do with two parts brawn to one part brains. I know, thats not how ALL officers are, but the vast majority of people that I have personally known who went into the police force stumbled into the job. A four year diploma in the humanities (not in “criminal justice”) and a thorough psych evaluation ought to be the bare minimum. We expect a lot from police physically, we ought to expect at least as much intellectually, emotionally, and interpersonally.

I think some LE agencies but they’re a minority require bachelors degrees including outside criminal justice/criminology. A lot of the cop shows in the 1960s and 1970s hired LAPD officers as their research or technical advisers and they were thinly disguised recruitment for the LAPD which has had some image problems to say the least.

The third thing you do is get rid of IA and institute civilian review boards that have real authority, subpoena power, and are able to enforce real punishments on problem officers. Make the process transparent and public, and mandate that the names of officers involved in complaints, the details of the complaint, and the findings are all available to anyone. Don’t be afraid to put the fear of punishment front and center in the mind of an officer. Officers should think twice before resorting to force, they should be held to a higher standard than other citizens because thats their job. If they fuck up they ought to be at least fired.

Civilian review is an interesting exercise in struggling to implement them as effective and independent but it’s a very difficult battle in most cities and counties which implement them. I know that personally in my own city. But it’s like that in many places. San Jose has a police auditor, and it had a strong one in Barbara Attard (who directed the review board in Berkeley before that) and she tried to push for more power to investigate shootings and deaths. She was up for a new term by the city council and by one vote, lost her job.

My state, California, has the most restrictions on and the most suffocating laws including in the state’s Constitution regarding access to police personnel information in the country. And every attempt to loosen those laws is met with huge resistance from the state’s most powerful labor union force, police associations. They can and did show up enmass at legislative subcommittee meetings to literally scare agenda items pushed to encourage more disclosure right off the table before they can even be voted down. That happened in 2007. We had one in my city forced to resign and he was replaced by a former officer turned lawyer who had fielded a job offer from a police defense firm. So he gets his instructions from his boss and tussles with the commissioners he’s supposed to be serving.

And even though the state AG issued a legal opinion for LE agencies to release the names of officers involved in shootings and/or incustody deaths, many including mine have spotty records still at doing that, due to the “public safety” exception. So that was toothless. We just figure if the officer’s name isn’t released, it means he or she’s done it before. And that’s probably the truth.