Police should be held to the highest standard: as they have a monopoly on legal force. The end of 'qualified immunity' and the start of personal insurance akin to what surgeons have would do a lot to reform the police.
They should also be trained better (certainly longer than 1 semester), actually study the law they have to enforce, and pass a bar-like exam: They should be exceptional people.
The system that they serve could be held to higher standards. If prosecutors had to defend the behavior of the police when trying to convict someone, at the risk of having to set a guilty person free, the behavior would improve. Instead, we make it easier to convict people, for instance by allowing broader surveillance, plea bargaining system, etc.
Of course this is an idealized concept, related to Deming's point that quality control is a manager problem not a worker problem. An issue within police forces today is that not all the "training" comes from above. Police and the military -- and many other people of course -- are immersed in fascist, fundamentalist propaganda.
pstuart · 15h ago
Police should be self-insured, backed by their pension fund. They have no skin in the game for accountability of their abuses, and the taxpayers end up paying for it.
"According to the data, 65 out of the nation's 300 largest cities spend 40 percent or more of their general budgets on policing."
https://www.statista.com/chart/10593/how-much-do-us-cities-spend-on-policing/
FireBeyond · 14h ago
Over the last decade, NYC has paid out an average of one million dollars per week in settlements for abuse of force by NYPD.
pstuart · 9h ago
And we collectively pretend like there's nothing wrong with that.
Like so many other subjects, we have Left and Right pitted against each other to allow this to be the status quo. It would be technically "simple" to reform the police but it will never be easy because people aren't willing to have the challenging conversations of what's wrong and what needs to change.
mathiaspoint · 17h ago
You think ending qualified immunity would attract intelligent people?
altruios · 17h ago
Yes. In the same way doctors are intelligent without qualified immunity. If doctors gain qualified immunity: I would expect the quality of doctors to go down.
Qualified immunity only attracts bullies, and opportunists. Qualified immunity rewards bad behavior, it does nothing to promote good behavior.
mathiaspoint · 17h ago
I think most intelligent people are going to model out the expected outcome of their career choices at least intuitively. If becoming a cop more likely leads to ruin it will be less attractive to the kinds of people who think ahead.
altruios · 15h ago
a good cop would not be “ruined” by being held accountable to their actions.
Do not excuse evil.
> I think most intelligent people are going to model out the expected outcome of their career choices at least intuitively
And yet we have doctors who face exactly the same risks as is being proposed. Your argument is flawed and 1-dimensional. People choose their careers on many factors.
If we make it so good cops are rewarded (by having cheaper insurance), we have more good cops. That’s a win.
Qualified immunity must go.
s1artibartfast · 13h ago
Qualified immunity needs a new standard, but it is necessary.
It makes no sense to hold police personally liable for doing exactly what they are trained and instructed to do.
We don't hold individual construction workers personally liable if they are following a certified blueprint and the building code.
altruios · 12h ago
You are characterizing police brutality - what we want to curb - as something they are trained to do… this is disingenuous at best. If a police officer kills someone innocent, or enters the wrong house and shoots someone… they absolutely should be held criminally accountable: as they have committed a crime.
Being a police officer shouldn’t excuse you from doing crime, come on.
Again: higher standards. And you should be asking yourself why you are okay with lower standards than “police should at least not be shooting innocent people in their sleep after entering the wrong house”
We really need better training for police: hopefully we at least agree on that…
mathiaspoint · 6h ago
If you had the option of a position with feduciary duty and lower pay would you pick it? Probably not. That's essentially what you're arguing for.
altruios · 1h ago
Who said anything about lower pay?
Higher education would increase their market value. Private insurance would also make their wages higher since the city wouldn't have to have a slush fund to payout for their mistakes.
Higher standards also mean higher pay.
s1artibartfast · 12h ago
I think you are confused as to what qualified immunity is, and the different possible standards.
There is a lot more than police brutality, and brutality isnt protected.
fzeroracer · 3h ago
> Qualified immunity needs a new standard, but it is necessary.
No, it's not. This isn't an argument. Other countries do not have qualified immunity doctrine and there is no shortage of police. The police should be held to a higher standard to everyone else, which is why comparing a construction worker to a police officer is a bad one.
s1artibartfast · 1h ago
name a country where you can successfully sue a cop for doing their job as they were trained, and I will take a look. Most have this as a defense.
altruios · 1h ago
you are mischaracterizing... again.
No one wants to sue a police officer for doing their job.
They want to sue them when they commit crimes. No one should be above the law: especially those that enforce it.
s1artibartfast · 1h ago
no, I dont think I am. Have you considered where we agree?
Im fine with cops being sued for abuse, I dont think they should be personally liable for doing their job as trained.
This means a different qualified immunity standard. Most countries have abundant protections for police operating in good faith as they were trained.
Further, US Qualified immunity doesnt protect police against tort claims assault, battery, negligence, or wrongful death. Those arent constitutional suits. You can sue cops for that just fine.
Im getting the impression that you are using QI as a proxy for a whole host of things you dont like.
liotier · 3h ago
Sousveillance - the first step to taking power to account.
nativeit · 17h ago
I’m ostensibly a proponent of this, certainly of its aims. That said, I’ve never been comfortable with registries. I think they are quite vulnerable to being misused, and frequently tend to become facades to cover a broader lack of more significant actions to address root causes. Institutions, bureaucracies, and most large human enterprises are more than happy to throw an individual (or dozens of them) under the bus to keep the franchise going. Especially if it means they can avoid more meaningful reforms that threaten the status quo.
cadamsdotcom · 15h ago
Transparency is win-win.
My hope is the data informs of a few (even one is too many!) problematic individuals among a giant mass of good folks doing their best every day.
Removing problematic individuals (if politically possible!) radically improves the average quality of policing.
With luck and a few years, trust can rebound.
zippyman55 · 16h ago
I just wish the police would be more comfortable turning their co workers in for infractions. It seems it’s culturally to easy to look the other way.
I don’t expect perfection but I hate gradual dishonesty. Unneeded overtime charges, phony disability, and too many people employed.
TechDebtDevin · 18h ago
I'm all for this, but we need a different type of person to be a cop ultimately. A lot of cops see something like this and just stop doing there job altogether. I frequently ask cops in my city wtf they're doing when parked next to 20 people doing meth and they blame the democratic mayor almost every time.
nativeit · 17h ago
You just sped run to the justification for “defunding the police”.
sickofparadox · 3h ago
What point is there to doing anything if the officers know that the DA won't press charges or that the system will just let them out in a few hours on no-cash bail? 1/3 of all (reported) shoplifting incidents in NYC happen because the justice system there cannot hold ~300 people that are responsible for that huge chunk of stealing. [1]
As a counterpoint to your argument: in many places I've lived the police would refuse to do their job even for things such as property theft that was caught on camera. Or enforce basic road laws for things like speeding or driving without plates. This was especially annoying in Austin where the police would continually blame a lack of budget despite having an insanely bloated budget.
I've become more and more cynical as I've gotten older and convinced that the police are largely conditioned to never do their job and just collect a paycheck for free, because then they can leverage their refusal into even more pay. It's corruption and kickbacks all the way through, and it's been a consistent trend in multiple cities.
sickofparadox · 1h ago
Again, why bother to arrest someone if the rest of the system is just going to let them out? In Austin, your leadership decided that it was fine for you to be robbed, because they pursued a policy of not prosecuting property theft. [1] In addition, the Austin city council cancelled three classes of cadets for the APD while cutting the number of approved officers. In one of the fastest growing cities in America, they decided to end the new officer pipeline, ensuring that your PD will have fewer officers to serve the growing population. [2]
You often see a cop parked next to 20 people doing meth?
mc32 · 18h ago
20 might be hyperbola but in SF cops ignore lots of drug use on the streets. They used to care up until the end of the Brown mayorship. Once Newsom and the new wave of progressives took control over the city they began pulling back from enforcement incrementally —it peaked with Breed and is now slightly retrenching but very very slowly.
Willy might have been corrupt but at least he took care of crime meaningfully.
hsbauauvhabzb · 18h ago
Yeah! Lock up the meth heads, that’ll fix crime!
bitlax · 18h ago
It literally does and it's good for the meth heads.
SturgeonsLaw · 16h ago
Yeah, nothing improves their prospects quite like adding a criminal record onto their drug addiction
bitlax · 16h ago
Well you'd be adding a charge and hopefully mitigating the addiction, which is a rational tradeoff. And this is assuming this person doesn't already have a record.
hsbauauvhabzb · 10h ago
I personally would prefer to do 6+ more jail and not have a record. Having a record punishes unnecessarily by destroying a persons future.
bitlax · 3h ago
> Having a record punishes unnecessarily by destroying a persons future.
As opposed to doing drugs in a public park?
mc32 · 18h ago
Slippery slope. They can start tightening things down and make it unacceptable lawfully as well as socially.
Portugal after experimenting with permissiveness is tightening down. We can do it too and save people from perdition.
tiagod · 18h ago
Portugal is not tightening it down based on data, but based on perceptions. A shift to populism reverting previous progressive changes proves nothing.
Also, we didn't experiment with permissiveness, we fixed a heroin crisis that was completely out of control. You have no idea how bad it got before we stopped throwing addicts in jail and started providing them with rehab.
Source: I've lived here all my life.
Levitz · 17h ago
Portugal after having massive success with actually dealing with addictions is backing down because of the budget.
immibis · 17h ago
Policing drug use is a waste of taxpayer money as well as a waste of labour (of both the drug users when they're not doing drugs, and the cops). The results of drug use should be policed, not the use itself; safe environments for occasional drug use should also be created (the free market would do this if it wasn't illegal, and in some places if you know where to look, has already quietly done this).
I have to disclaim I don't know what meth is like, what meth users are like, or what it's like to be on meth, but if 20 people are doing meth and not bothering anyone, and the police officer is keeping watch to ensure they don't bother anyone, that is fine by me. We should treat them like drunk alcoholics, not like murderers (unless they murdered someone).
Separately, we could encourage people to try less harmful drugs than meth. That isn't really possible as long as we give out the same penalties for weed as for meth.
mc32 · 17h ago
While I’m not and would not propose the drastic measures that Singapore or Japan take, but there is much less drug use in those two places among others and they prove that enforcement, if you’re willing to address the problem, can greatly reduce use of illegal drugs.
Meth is very addictive and debilitating. It’s worse than crack. It takes people down. They are no longer able to be productive citizens. They become a burden for families and for society.
Libcat99 · 17h ago
And arresting the users solves none of that. Maybe it hides it from casual observers, but if you actually want to help people, treatment programs and assistance, not cops, are what you need.
mc32 · 17h ago
Obviously you have to go after supply … but both Japan and Singapore successfully tackle outdoor usage. You don’t see people openly using illegal drugs in either place. Obviously if you are able to procure and do your illegal drugs at home the police can’t stop you unless your neighbors rat you out.
ranger_danger · 13h ago
I don't think you can compare East and West cultures like that. I think a big reason the West has so many open drug users is because shame and rule-following are not deeply ingrained parts of the culture. I don't think enforcement is what's doing the grunt of the heavy lifting in the East.
immibis · 16h ago
So does alcohol, but we don't lock people up for using alcohol - only when it becomes a problem for that individual person - and even then we try to avoid locking them up.
BTW, crack cocaine is just cocaine, delivered in a different format. The effects are the same. The disparity in punishment stems from the demographics of the average user of each.
mc32 · 15h ago
Crack was affordable --mostly preppies used coke. Your everyday Joe bought crack. It was bad. I saw what it did to people. But from what I hear about Meth it's just so much worse. People on crack would steal money and they were very flakey but they could still show up to work. Meth addicts just can't function. Alcoholics can function. Now with regard to alcohol, it's such a historically baked-in party of society -we've had it with us for myriads there is no prying it away from folks despite the devastation it brings to its addicts --but that said, it's far from being as bad as Meth.
hsbauauvhabzb · 13h ago
There are plenty of high functioning meth users. Not every meth user smokes their first pipe and instantly ends up on the street covered in scabs.
Edit: not to suggest using meth recreationally is a safe, smart or good thing to do.
throw9394944 · 18h ago
Well, meth people are pretty fragile (no joke). If they die of overdose under your watch, you are in tons of troubles. Any normal person would refuse to deal with such risk.
Maybe meth people should become cops! And we could call Antifa to fight meth cops!
Simon_O_Rourke · 18h ago
There's never a problem so bad that a Californian police officer can't make it worse.
dang · 18h ago
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
They should also be trained better (certainly longer than 1 semester), actually study the law they have to enforce, and pass a bar-like exam: They should be exceptional people.
Instead, we have a system that prunes people that are 'too smart' to be cops (https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...).
Of course this is an idealized concept, related to Deming's point that quality control is a manager problem not a worker problem. An issue within police forces today is that not all the "training" comes from above. Police and the military -- and many other people of course -- are immersed in fascist, fundamentalist propaganda.
Like so many other subjects, we have Left and Right pitted against each other to allow this to be the status quo. It would be technically "simple" to reform the police but it will never be easy because people aren't willing to have the challenging conversations of what's wrong and what needs to change.
Qualified immunity only attracts bullies, and opportunists. Qualified immunity rewards bad behavior, it does nothing to promote good behavior.
Do not excuse evil.
> I think most intelligent people are going to model out the expected outcome of their career choices at least intuitively
And yet we have doctors who face exactly the same risks as is being proposed. Your argument is flawed and 1-dimensional. People choose their careers on many factors.
If we make it so good cops are rewarded (by having cheaper insurance), we have more good cops. That’s a win.
Qualified immunity must go.
It makes no sense to hold police personally liable for doing exactly what they are trained and instructed to do.
We don't hold individual construction workers personally liable if they are following a certified blueprint and the building code.
Being a police officer shouldn’t excuse you from doing crime, come on.
Again: higher standards. And you should be asking yourself why you are okay with lower standards than “police should at least not be shooting innocent people in their sleep after entering the wrong house”
We really need better training for police: hopefully we at least agree on that…
Higher education would increase their market value. Private insurance would also make their wages higher since the city wouldn't have to have a slush fund to payout for their mistakes.
Higher standards also mean higher pay.
There is a lot more than police brutality, and brutality isnt protected.
No, it's not. This isn't an argument. Other countries do not have qualified immunity doctrine and there is no shortage of police. The police should be held to a higher standard to everyone else, which is why comparing a construction worker to a police officer is a bad one.
No one wants to sue a police officer for doing their job.
They want to sue them when they commit crimes. No one should be above the law: especially those that enforce it.
Im fine with cops being sued for abuse, I dont think they should be personally liable for doing their job as trained.
This means a different qualified immunity standard. Most countries have abundant protections for police operating in good faith as they were trained.
Further, US Qualified immunity doesnt protect police against tort claims assault, battery, negligence, or wrongful death. Those arent constitutional suits. You can sue cops for that just fine.
Im getting the impression that you are using QI as a proxy for a whole host of things you dont like.
My hope is the data informs of a few (even one is too many!) problematic individuals among a giant mass of good folks doing their best every day.
Removing problematic individuals (if politically possible!) radically improves the average quality of policing.
With luck and a few years, trust can rebound.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre... (https://archive.is/VCKkk)
I've become more and more cynical as I've gotten older and convinced that the police are largely conditioned to never do their job and just collect a paycheck for free, because then they can leverage their refusal into even more pay. It's corruption and kickbacks all the way through, and it's been a consistent trend in multiple cities.
[1] https://www.traviscountytx.gov/images/county_attorney/Docs/L...
[2]https://theaustinbulldog.org/did-austin-defund-the-police-he...
Willy might have been corrupt but at least he took care of crime meaningfully.
As opposed to doing drugs in a public park?
Portugal after experimenting with permissiveness is tightening down. We can do it too and save people from perdition.
Also, we didn't experiment with permissiveness, we fixed a heroin crisis that was completely out of control. You have no idea how bad it got before we stopped throwing addicts in jail and started providing them with rehab.
Source: I've lived here all my life.
I have to disclaim I don't know what meth is like, what meth users are like, or what it's like to be on meth, but if 20 people are doing meth and not bothering anyone, and the police officer is keeping watch to ensure they don't bother anyone, that is fine by me. We should treat them like drunk alcoholics, not like murderers (unless they murdered someone).
Separately, we could encourage people to try less harmful drugs than meth. That isn't really possible as long as we give out the same penalties for weed as for meth.
Meth is very addictive and debilitating. It’s worse than crack. It takes people down. They are no longer able to be productive citizens. They become a burden for families and for society.
BTW, crack cocaine is just cocaine, delivered in a different format. The effects are the same. The disparity in punishment stems from the demographics of the average user of each.
Edit: not to suggest using meth recreationally is a safe, smart or good thing to do.
Maybe meth people should become cops! And we could call Antifa to fight meth cops!