That (fantastic) story was written by Shane Bauer, who also published "American Prison," about his time as an undercover journalist at a for-profit prison in Louisiana.
This is the dark side of unions - protecting their worst members.
I don't know of a good way out of this besides rebooting police unions/police associations and allowing real civilian involvement and at least partial control at the leadership level.
A federal or state prosecution service for police malpractice with teeth I think is the ultimate thing that keeps this shit in line. With separate lines of business, separate people they work with and separate career incentives which are only about locking up criminal police, FBI or even the NSA / CIA, complete with undercover operations.
How about don't have public sector unions at all? - I don't like this idea. I like the protections that unions have brought for workers, I just think public sector unions need a new model.
How about having standards for government employees and firing bad ones? - There should definitely be a process for this, and I'm pretty sure there is, so it's more of a question of the process parameters, and then after firing, what kind of job can that person get? There's a history of bad cops being re-hired as cops or private security in other jurisdictions. (Not just cops, but that's the example here)
Maybe allow multiple police forces to compete and allow people to choose the one that polices their area and thus receive funding. - I don't like this one at all.
Maybe make police carry malpractice insurance and that way bad behavior has a cost, and those harmed are compensated. - Strongly agree with this one.
> Maybe make police carry malpractice insurance and that way bad behavior has a cost, and those harmed are compensated. - Strongly agree with this one.
one of the striking details from the article is how records of police misconduct are protected to the point where even the chief of police can't necessarily look at them! the insurance idea is an interesting one, but it only has a chance of achieving its goal if the insurance company is able to look at these records and set premiums accordingly. if a flat premium is charged, I fear the municipality would just increase salaries to offset the premiums (or even pay them directly).
It's also the officials who sign the collective bargaining agreements with the unions.
(something IMO that tends to be overlooked in most conversations about problematic unions: someone sitting across the table agreed to whatever bullshit rules are protecting or enabling the union)
I wouldn't be surprised if the local officials are genuinely afraid of the officers they "oversee". the article noted that officers ticketed the vehicles of local officials as a persuasion technique. a somewhat petty abuse of power, but possibly just the tip of the iceberg...
There's something wrong at the human level here. Systems that protect the worst of the bunch. Doctors lawyers politicians managers
There's something more primal going on here. Maybe we just protect our tribe and some of those we protect are bad, then those outside the tribe find the worst of them to say the whole tribe is bad.
One thing that gets lost in these articles is they deal in absolute numbers of complaints, not complaints relative to other officers (probably because those numbers are also not public).
I would suspect the base-rate of complaints against police-officers varies greatly from place-to-place and is non-zero pretty much everywhere. If we assume the dozens of complaints against Ferrigno is indicative of a "bad" officer, how does it compare to the base rate? Is there enough signal in the noise for that to be useful for oversight?
In my city the typical number of sustained complaints before the police oversight board is either 0 or 1 in a given year. Since there are 181 sworn officers on the force, it implies that the median number of complaints per officer is zero. A police officer with even one substantiated complaint is a huge red flag.
No, and every city does this differently so we can't really compare. But the total number of complaints in my city (of comparable size to Rochester) is usually something like 10-20 per year, so for one officer to rack up 23 complaints would really be something.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 31.7 ms ] threadhttps://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2018/1027/Ameri...
I don't know of a good way out of this besides rebooting police unions/police associations and allowing real civilian involvement and at least partial control at the leadership level.
How about having standards for government employees and firing bad ones?
Maybe allow multiple police forces to compete and allow people to choose the one that polices their area and thus receive funding.
Maybe make police carry malpractice insurance and that way bad behavior has a cost, and those harmed are compensated.
How about having standards for government employees and firing bad ones? - There should definitely be a process for this, and I'm pretty sure there is, so it's more of a question of the process parameters, and then after firing, what kind of job can that person get? There's a history of bad cops being re-hired as cops or private security in other jurisdictions. (Not just cops, but that's the example here)
Maybe allow multiple police forces to compete and allow people to choose the one that polices their area and thus receive funding. - I don't like this one at all.
Maybe make police carry malpractice insurance and that way bad behavior has a cost, and those harmed are compensated. - Strongly agree with this one.
one of the striking details from the article is how records of police misconduct are protected to the point where even the chief of police can't necessarily look at them! the insurance idea is an interesting one, but it only has a chance of achieving its goal if the insurance company is able to look at these records and set premiums accordingly. if a flat premium is charged, I fear the municipality would just increase salaries to offset the premiums (or even pay them directly).
(something IMO that tends to be overlooked in most conversations about problematic unions: someone sitting across the table agreed to whatever bullshit rules are protecting or enabling the union)
There's something more primal going on here. Maybe we just protect our tribe and some of those we protect are bad, then those outside the tribe find the worst of them to say the whole tribe is bad.
I would suspect the base-rate of complaints against police-officers varies greatly from place-to-place and is non-zero pretty much everywhere. If we assume the dozens of complaints against Ferrigno is indicative of a "bad" officer, how does it compare to the base rate? Is there enough signal in the noise for that to be useful for oversight?