Obligationary sanctioning of killing people

[Sommerswerd]

What about cops that work in inner city areas that have a lot of gang violence? Are they to be fined every time they're involved in a shooting just because they drew the short straw and had to work a crappy post instead of in a nice, safe suburb?

This is a valid point that raises a somewhat separate issue. Most police don't live where they work. Police should have to live in the precinct that they serve. If you live in Cherry Hill, NJ you should be a Cherry Hill police officer, not a Camden police officer. If you want to be on the Camden police or the West Philly police or the BedSty police you should have to live there.

That way there is no "short straw" ... you police your own neighborhood. If there is no room left on the force in the town where you live well then you need to move to an address in a precinct where they need police. People transfer for work all the time. If you don't want to move then find a new job. If you need more police in a particular precinct then you raise the pay to attract more applicants. Market based solution, right? That alone would probably reduce police shootings.

That... and a policy that restricts police from using deadly force except to prevent civilian deaths/injury, and prevents police from using self-defense as a blanket justification for deadly shootings. FWIW, I agree that docking police pay and/or increasing their hours as "punishment" is not a productive approach.

 

[Flying Pig]

The big problem with that is that policemen living where they work means their families living where they work as well. It's been said that they had problems in Manchester and Liverpool because gangsters were able to intimidate policemen and prison officers by threatening their families who lived in the area.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

The big problem with that is that policemen living where they work means their families living where they work as well. It's been said that they had problems in Manchester and Liverpool because gangsters were able to intimidate policemen and prison officers by threatening their families who lived in the area.

That's a good point. In most places I reckon it wouldn't matter, but in the bad parts of the country cops having their family there could end up being a liability. Assuming any cops would move their families there in the first place. Anyone want to volunteer to move your family to Gary, Indiana?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Are you trolling me? Am I actually being trolled right now? In not one but two separate posts now I have clearly stated that cops that shoot people unjustly SHOULD be punished. I simply don't agree with the "punish them now, find out the truth later" approach, I prefer to do things the other way around, the civilized way, of investigating what happened and then punishing them if they committed a crime. I would even be in favor of harsher punishments for cops than for civilians, based on the fact that they are in a position of greater power from the beginning and should therefore have a greater responsibility to exercise their power responsibly. But investigate first, punish second. That's the order that we in the civilized world have agreed upon.

No actually I'm not. I'm pointing out that your approach, which may sound perfectly reasonable, is in practice failing abysmally.

The civilized world has to a great extent resolved that in application of law innocent until proven guilty is an excellent standard, and that the burden of proof, in the words of William Blackstone, should support that it is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that an innocent man wrongly lose his liberty. If the original topic had been 'let us throw every cop that shoots someone directly in jail' I would be right behind you saying 'very bad plan'.

But we are actually talking about workplace standards, not application of law. There is nothing that says 'better a hundred drawers come up short than a single cashier lose their position due to a genuinely unavoidable shortfall'. There should also not be 'better a hundred citizens are shot in cases where there is equivocally a just cause than that one officer lose his job when he genuinely had to shoot someone'.

We have here a workplace culture that pretty much supports 'get into trouble you can shoot your way out'. That culture is producing the results we are getting. While your proposals are certainly commendable, I personally think they will run directly onto the rocks.

An outside agency responsible for investigating is going to immediately hit the reality that two strike felons are very aware of; murder is hard to prove because the key witness is dead. After a police shooting you have a cop saying 'I had to do it' and a corpse. No matter who does the investigating the likelihood of a conclusive finding other than taking the cop's word for it is nearly impossible. So if we apply a burden of proof more applicable to a courtroom than a workplace we will just continue to get what we are getting.

By shifting the focal point to 'a dead citizen is in fact a bad thing, and there will inevitably be consequences' there is a possibility of shifting the culture.

 

[Sommerswerd]

The big problem with that is that policemen living where they work means their families living where they work as well. It's been said that they had problems in Manchester and Liverpool because gangsters were able to intimidate policemen and prison officers by threatening their families who lived in the area.

This point assumes that gangsters don't have cars or bikes to drive to wherever the police live.

That's a good point. In most places I reckon it wouldn't matter, but in the bad parts of the country cops having their family there could end up being a liability. Assuming any cops would move their families there in the first place. Anyone want to volunteer to move your family to Gary, Indiana?

Excellent point. Please note that this plan does not mandate police to move their families to lower class neighborhoods with poorer schools and everything else that goes along with it.

Indeed I anticipate that some officers would rather find a new line of work rather than move to Camden, Gary, Flint etc. Which is perfectly fine, no one should be forced to have "the short straw" as these inner-city neighborhoods were so appropriately described... no one, that is, except the unfortunate people who already live there or are born there I guess, right?

So anyway after the officers quit that would be d@mned before they move their nice family to Gary, Indiana with all those unsavoury undesirables... we will have lots of openings for actual Gary residents to get good high paying jobs as police.

It's a win-win for the city of Gary, because now you have a core of well paid people helping to boost the local economy. On the other hand, for those brave, heroic souls that decide to make the sacrifice of keeping their high paying job with benefits and pension by moving to Gary, well... they are going to work tirelessly to improve the neighborhood and local schools etc, because well... they actually live there now.

 

[Flying Pig]

This point assumes that gangsters don't have cars or bikes to drive to wherever the police live. Excellent point. Please note that this plan does not mandate police to move their families to lower class neighborhoods with poorer schools and everything else that goes along with it.

It's much more a question of contacts - they have to find out where they live, for starters.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It's much more a question of contacts - they have to find out where they live, for starters.

This point assumes that gangsters don't have internet, can't read phonebooks, etc... They have their names on their badges

 

[Flying Pig]

Yes, but anybody with half a brain who works in law enforcement isn't in the phonebook and doesn't have their address publically visible, for precisely that reason. You don't particularly want to book somebody in the afternoon and have him banging on your door at midnight to complain about it.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah Charlie, I was following that [deleted] cop home like you said, but he crossed the city limits so I stopped. Guess we can't do anything about him after all.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Yes, but anybody with half a brain who works in law enforcement isn't in the phonebook and doesn't have their address publically visible, for precisely that reason. You don't particularly want to book somebody in the afternoon and have him banging on your door at midnight to complain about it.

That also assumes that their spouses and teenagers can be trusted to have the same discretion, on the internet and social media which of course, they can't.

But that is besides the point, we can go back and forth endlessly. According to the article I linked, 60% of NYC police live in NYC. That includes 77% of the Black NYC police and 76% of the Hispanic NYC police living in the city.

So while I understand your point and the rhetorical sense it makes, I think it just does not stand up to the facts. Police can live in the city where they work. It works just fine. Most of the police working in the largest city in the country live there already.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That also assumes that their spouses and teenagers can be trusted to have the same discretion, on the internet and social media which of course, they can't.

But that is besides the point, we can go back and forth endlessly. According to the article I linked, 60% of NYC police live in NYC. That includes 77% of the Black NYC police and 76% of the Hispanic NYC police living in the city.

So while I understand your point and the rhetorical sense it makes, I think it just does not stand up to the facts. Police can live in the city where they work. It works just fine. Most of the police working in the largest city in the country live there already.

It should be noted that it is probably easier in the largest city rather than harder. An NYPD officer can live 'in the city' and be very far from where he works, in terms of the number of people between here and there. In a city of twenty thousand residents that's not going to be true. Their home is fairly likely to be right on their beat.

 

[CKS]

Yes, but anybody with half a brain who works in law enforcement isn't in the phonebook and doesn't have their address publically visible

Good luck with that in the USA. For a while I paid money to AT&T for an unlisted number. AT&T made sure that every other phone book around had my number. (I know that they were the ones, because it was listed with their misspelling of my name, rather than the misspellings from other groups who sell my information.)

 

[reddishrecue]

NYC has been covered in ice recently though. An airplane had run off the runway again just like that airplane that had run off the runway in Turkey.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It should be noted that it is probably easier in the largest city rather than harder. An NYPD officer can live 'in the city' and be very far from where he works, in terms of the number of people between here and there. In a city of twenty thousand residents that's not going to be true. Their home is fairly likely to be right on their beat.

Actually, remember that NYC is very dense. The "largest" cities in the US, in terms of land area are Anchorage AK, and Jacksonville FL. NYC is first in population, with almost triple the population of the #2 (Los Angeles) but it is not even top 10 in terms of land area. So there is less of an issue with officers living far away from where they work. I would still favor requiring residence within the precinct anyway.

I am thinking that a police officer working in a city of 20,000 (which is not really a city at all, but is more like a medium sized suburban town) would be far less worried about the local gangsters hunting his family down because "he lives where he works." He would probably be more worried about the local Boosters or PTA hunting him down to buy baked goods.

 

[Flying Pig]

That also assumes that their spouses and teenagers can be trusted to have the same discretion, on the internet and social media which of course, they can't.

But that is besides the point, we can go back and forth endlessly. According to the article I linked, 60% of NYC police live in NYC. That includes 77% of the Black NYC police and 76% of the Hispanic NYC police living in the city.

So while I understand your point and the rhetorical sense it makes, I think it just does not stand up to the facts. Police can live in the city where they work. It works just fine. Most of the police working in the largest city in the country live there already.

As has been pointed out, New York is big. It's like policing Peckham with officers from Chelsea and claiming that they represent the local community!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Note that I did say 'in terms of the number of people between here and there'. Distance is not really a strong contributor to anonymity, but a crowd is.

 

[Sommerswerd]

As has been pointed out, New York is big. It's like policing Peckham with officers from Chelsea and claiming that they represent the local community!

Note that I also said residency requirements should go by precinct.

But it would still be better to have Gary, Camden, Flint etc residents policing their own cities as opposed to officers from the surrounding suburbs.

And at that point we are talking peas rather than steak. If you accept the idea that police should come from their local community whether that be the city/town/village, or individual precinct then we agree.

 

[Flying Pig]

And then we're back to the problem that they live in the same area as the people they spend all day irritating.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

And then we're back to the problem that they live in the same area as the people they spend all day irritating.

I think the point is to give them some incentive to be less irritating.

 

[Flying Pig]

Valid up to a point, but part of the job is being irritating to certain people. Nobody ever said 'of course I'd had too many to drink and was being rather noisy, thank you for letting me know', or 'ah yes, I can see that I deserve a ticket for driving like that', or anything in that manner.