They were way worse! They’re the quintessential example of what I think a lot of people mean when they say they dont want any cops. What they really seem to want is a clean slate of social anarchy in which to compete and reorder, and if you happen to get cops out of that and they’re worse, who cares

Experimental political theory! We learned so much! Mostly that anarchism is very bad and degenerates immediately into tyranny lol

I think the real answer to how to fix police is really just "institute better regimes of recruitment and training, demilitarize forces and emphasize local beat cops, and alter pay scales to disincentivize false arrests and overtime," but I don't think that's going to impress anyone

Largely because a lot of those solutions involve expanding and further professionalizing police forces, which in turn involves paying them more and dedicating more time to taking policing expertise seriously....which runs against the rhetorical grain of many activist's approach to police reform.

I concede that "fund the police more, actually, but better" is unlikely to be a highly salable proposition. Nevertheless.

I think it depends on what the population you're selling to is. For a lot of less politically activated discourse-soaked general-election voter types, "police should be improved because they're an important part of our civil life, its expensive, they aren't always great right now" is very salable!

Yeah, facetiousness aside, this is actually a pretty easy campaign platform! It just requires candidates to actually pay attention to the funding for police they're asking for, instead of shoveling money at police unions for an endorsement and calling it a day.

Require more and better training, and institute minimal standards for length of time and continuing education, like in every other profession. They’re making 3x as much money as teachers out of the gate, and many only have 6 to 12 weeks of police academy, as opposed to a master’s degree.

Actually take away their LEO licenses, statewide and nationally/make it hard for them to get certified in another state if they use unnecessary force, harass citizens, are corrupt or incompetent, etc.

The National Guard has reasonable Rules on Use of Force (RUF) and Rules of Engagement (ROG) in DC, LA, and everywhere else. They’re specific to the campaign, but the military template includes not using deadly force to protect property and not spraying into crowds.

It should be salable to conservatives (small c, not neo-nazis) But the fetishization of heroes on uniform makes it impossible to even talk about the fact that US cops are really badly trained.

They are better funded than any other city employees. If you compare salary to qualifications cops make way more than most other careers that don’t require degrees, and other public sector employees make way less than people with the same credentials.

That's quite true and I wouldn't argue w it. But it doesn't contradict the arg. that if we're going to reform local+municipal police forces, better and different training, cultural practices, and recruitment will be needed (along with re-defining mission elements), and all those things are expensive

We keep giving cops more money for training and it has not resulted in better cops. If you give them money and impunity you get the same result as if you just give them impunity.

Because the training isn’t different. “Training” isn’t some neutral thing where more is automatically better. Too much cop training is currently this threat/fear framework that has them always armored up & trigger happy. That’s what needs to change, and it won’t be cheaper.

During the 2020 BLM protests, San Jose Police, who had received deescalation / bias training, saw the trainer at a protest. They beat him so hard they exploded one of his testicles. You can do all the training in the world and they’ll just break your nuts if you ask them not to murder Black people.

There is no viable police reform that doesn’t start with radically breaking the power of existing police departments. If you give them bias training they will simply shoot you in the scrotum with rubber bullets. They need prison. They need lawsuits. They need to lose their unions, pensions, homes.

I would add "punish abuse of power, no matter how small, harshly." Let someone driving 90 off with a warning because of who they know or because they make a donation? Felony.

I mean, yes, but that's a question of revising the legal code and our structure of punishments more than reforming police forces. We should still do it, though.

Yeah you don't know shit about anarchy if you are saying it devolves into tyranny. That's so completely ignorant of any anarchist principles. Don't use words if you don't know what they mean.