If you have a Chief who looks the other way or advocates for the bully approach-the officers will follow along.

I'm thinking about places like the CIA.

I will be watching the situation in Ferguson carefully.

city in my area. Sometimes , the Chief just gets to friendly with too many folks--and they needed someone without such ties . I wonder if there is real research on this issue.

That's how. Every case of violence against a person of color should be immediately investigated by the FBI and if structural racism is found, federal civil rights charges should be filed against high-level officials in that department, along with the perpetrators.

That is within the authority of the Department of Justice, and should be ordered by the President. Just do it. A number of local Police chiefs going to federal prison for racial issues that are systematic in nature would have a salutary effect on police culture, I guarantee.

.. is that by definition, "civil" suits -- as opposed to criminal -- only can impose a "$ettlement for damage$" to the plaintiffs in dollars (not jail time for the perp) that is then paid out of the local gov't coffers, i.e. at the expense of local tax-payers who would rather see their taxes pay for decent roads, public services, etc. not this bullshit.

This is already widely done, but if effectively let's killer-cops walk free, with the added benefit of getting an extended paid vacation (called "Administrative leave&quot while the investigation is underway.

I have long said that these settlements need to start coming from the police dept budget directly, or from the police retirement funds. Then at least there is some modicum of "penalty" imposed on cops (not on the local jurisdiction.

I also think killer-cops are murderers, plain and simple, and need to go to jail.. when this starts happening, then things are much more likely to change, because there is real accountability, i.e. the perp gets punish, not the local gov't and local taxpayers.

I might have this wrong, or misunderstand what you are proposing. Do civil rights prosecutions result in jail time for those found guilty? This I'm not sure of, and would like to know.

Yes, they can result in jail time. It depends on the charge that is made.

Here's a link:

http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/crm/

Here's another:

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/color_of_law

I was confusing local "civil suits" by plaintiffs (either the victim or their families) as opposed to Federal "civil rights" prosecutions.

Thank you for the link.

I think that a carefully selected group should do the investigations.

it's the only thing they respond to

how was that implemented?

would be to have all settlements for damages paid out to victims and/or their families, come directly out of the police dept.s budget. and/or their retirement funds.

NOT out of the city/county general fund.

Pull all settlements out of the police retirement fund would have the most direct impact of all the solutions I've seen proposed. A real incentive for them to police themselves, with a real penalty for covering up malfeasance.

And it's in these BS stops where problems come in.

They'll stop every black guy in a flashy car (that they don't now) in the hopes of finding a joint so they can seize his car to supplement revenue for the department.

Appealing to their sense of human decency hasn't worked. Maybe fear of swift and harsh justice will get through to their bigoted brains.

now that the spotlight is on police behavior.....

We need to keep the pressure on.

With, btw, oversight from Justice. Right now, it seems the only time IAD finds anything is when a cop steals something.

In strong departments, IAD scares marginal cops straight.

I friend of ours is a retired police captain from a city of 165,000. They do not have these sort of issues. There is a very good relationship between community and police. But, the cops actually fear being called before IAD. It's unpleasant, and findings are acted upon. It's not a Sunday skate before that board, which includes civilians.

If a city of 165k can manage it, it can be managed at both larger and smaller scales

What are IAD's like in large metro police departments.

The city i was talking about was where my wife and i both grew up. We live in a small town 20 miles away now. I've never lived in, or right next to, a major metro. Chicago is 60+ miles away. So, i'm not sure how they do it there or NYC or Dallas or Houston, etc.

But, 165,000 seems like a large enough community that it's not a function of small town cooperation. That's a lot of people and a highly diverse population. So, if it can work there, it should work elsewhere.

It's not like it's Mars. Just another american city.

Starting with Trayvon Martin and lasting until the present day.

The only thing they've done so far is a feel good visit from Eric Holder and placing a department under "supervision."

Here is an example of A Dept of Justice review:

The Dept of Justice concluded a year long investigation into the Cleveland PD last year. This was several months before the Tamir Rice shooting, and yet somehow, they gave a cop that was deemed unfit for duty and was previously fired for incompetence a job. That cop later went on the execute Tamir Rice.

I'm saying that is what needs to be done. Stricter community standards, more IAD effort and Justice to make sure they're doing their job.

I am not implying that this has been done well enough except in isolated instances.

A federal agency that does nothing other than provide police oversight and internal investigation.

In other words, someone to really police the police.

The only thing that really separates us from 3rd world style corruption is ethical oversight. The less of it you have, the closer you get to the 3rd world.

If America weren't a deeply racist country it wouldn't have deeply racist police. QED.

I agree with you.

one of the biggest impediments to that is the textbook propaganda machine.

No one can rewrite history or reinforce old viewpoints like a local school board.


How would you change our society?

because the communities they serve allow it, may even encourage it. That is why movements like BLM are so critical.

it needs a shock to the system.

the forefronts of the brains of lots of racist citizens in this country. The hate was always there, but the obvious public backlash against a black President (the birther nonsense, Kenyan muslim shit, etc.) has encouraged them to be vocal and physical over a feeling that, previously, just hung about in their heads. To them, it must seem that racism is OK in public now.

the ultimate "negro" who is not in his place, has both unleashed and made acceptable (to some) the public airing of racist speech. Relative to the OP, how could this not bleed over to our police, and encourage the deplorable treatment of AAs? The very fact that the murder of unarmed and innocent blacks by leos is met by cries of "but he was a thief," "she was arrogant," etc. tells us that those murders are condoned, probably welcomed, by a segment of our citizens. Until enough of us say "no more" it will not just continue, but escalate.

He interviewed cops from different departments, asking them to describe a time when they were able to defuse a confrontational or potentially violent situation. He asked them for lots of detail about their thought processes during these successful de-escalation events, and from this information he sought to develop curricula for police training.

I don't know he was able to follow through on implementation of the training, but I like the idea of building on the cops' own (albeit rare) examples of doing the right thing.

the officer would need to be motivated to actually change.

whether to remember the "community policing" training he's surely taken, or to respond to the testosterone-fueled camaraderie of his "brothers in arms."

The higher skill of street psychology that a beat cop must use has to somehow outweigh the lower skill of tactical fire-team operations that has become the problem in cities all around the country.

Politicians are scared to death of them and won't stand up to their demands.

Limit the amount of overtime allowed to be accumulated by each officer. Some cops are pulling down two or three times their annual salaries just by piling up overtime.

And get more cops out of cars and back on foot in the neighborhoods they're supposed to be patrolling. They need to be seen as part of the community, as approachable, rather than as an occupying army.

And finally, take away some of their toys. Local police departments do not need tanks, armored personnel carriers, or .50 caliber BMG's.

From voters, activists, civil rights groups, community organizations, churches, the judiciary and legislative branches, lawmakers, other police agencies, watchdog groups, the media, victims and their advocates, VIPs and celebrity critics, writers, columnists, politicos and pundits. Stop the federal government from militarizing the police departments in every one-stop-light town in the country with their overstocked weapons of war; community policing is not a military engagement.

Nothing short of a national, state and local pile-on will force these lawless actors to clean house. Laws governing sentencing, prison reforms, how we deal with drug abuse, mental health, poverty, youth, gender, the flawed grand jury system... everything must be revamped, modernized and updated based on proven science that produces effective results.

like they did in NYC when they "stood down" from policing because New Yorkers
were pissed about them strangling "I can't breath!" Eric Garner to death.

Police Dept.s have become local municipally-financed protection rackets, enabled
by police "unions".

In 20 years, he has written over 25,000 traffic tickets. In all that time, and after 25,000 encounters with the public, he has zero citizen complaints. None. Nada.

He is doing it right, and other officers should learn from his example.

link: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/la-traffic-cop-has-record-number-of-complaints/

Namely "under color of authority", and increase the punishment for crimes committed "under color of authority".

I don't know how it could be done, but make rights violations punishable in a career ending way.

Fuck up, and you will police no more.

... as a high school teacher in under-served-mean-street communities.

It doesn't matter the teaching subject really. Home room, detention, basic words and numbers literacy, raw "health" classes of sexual diseases, condoms, and birth control... lunch litter pickup, or sorting the recycling with the most deviant misfits...

I was frequently a lunch litter pickup deviant in school, and later as an urban school teacher, supervisor of such deviants. I met my wife teaching. Later she was accepted, following her dreams, to graduate school in another state.

The skills required to deal non-violently, without escalation, with over-crowded situations of hungry hormonally challenged teenage students in difficult environments, all are directly transferable to police work.

Ideally cops would be accomplished teachers who only rarely arrested anyone, and then always in the most polite and civilized way possible.

Arresting people for trivial things would make a cop subject of official scorn and derision.

A ticket for a burned out turn signal instead of a friendly fix-it? WTF is wrong with you dude? Two more like this and you'll be fired.

If you can't break up a fight between people bigger than you without a gun, if you can't deal with a teenager questioning your manhood or womanhood, if you can't suffer an occasional bloody nose or black eye or personal insult in the "line of duty," if you ever need a gun to feel secure, then you are simply not qualified to be a cop.

I've never been qualified to be a cop because I hate handguns. I'd probably rather be shot than shoot someone, but always I'd rather not find myself in that situation.