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Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

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Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#81

Post by skissane »

sneak wrote: post #55
skissane wrote: post #46

The US has lots of different police forces – city police, county police, state police. Many other countries have more centralised policing with fewer levels. I think, a smaller number of bigger police forces might promote more professionalism, more professional management, oversight by more experienced politicians (state political leaders tend to be more experienced and capable than local political leaders, especiall…

The problem is that there is no organization that is incentivized to uncover or investigate police crimes. All other portions of government have cross-checks to stop people breaking the law. The police don't, and cover for one another. There needs to be an organization that has clear and direct incentive to prosecute abuses by the police, that doesn't have a century+ long tradition of violence, selective enforcement,…

The state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia has a Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) [1], which is a body legally separate from NSW's law enforcement agencies–NSW Police Force, which is the main state police force; NSW Crime Commission, which specialises in organised crime and other serious crime–and which is tasked with investigating law enforcement misconduct. (In Australia, there is no local law enforcement, only state/territorial/federal.) The LECC doesn't prosecute itself, but can investigate cases and refer them to state prosecutors for prosecution. It isn't perfect, but it is better than nothing. Maybe the US could copy the same idea?

(Also, separately from the LECC, there is also an Inspector of the LECC, whose job is to investigate misconduct by the LECC themselves.)

[1] https://www.lecc.nsw.gov.au

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#82

Post by inamberclad »

jimbob45 wrote: post #31
nkrisc wrote: post #5

It sounds kind of crazy on the surface but it makes sense - what else would you do if you completely lost faith in the police force to do its job effectively? It would probably seen easier to disband it and replace it with something else than to try and reform such an organization.

- Bodycams - Mandatory psych evals half-yearly - Anonymous corruption reporting - Reduce/eliminate drug penalties - Eliminate civil forfeiture - Ticketing revenues no longer fund the department - Expanded auditing of violent calls Unfortunately, the greater group of protesters is incapable of understanding nuanced policy or democratic change. I fully expect MN to swing red this election as a result of this.

That's so much of what a metropolitan police force does that that's functionally equivalent to a disbanding, assuming they don't all resign in protest of being held accountable.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#83

Post by catalogia »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #49
babygoat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that.

Many PDs have bodycams as-standard already.

Good cops love bodycams because the video footage exonerates them when something happens. Bad cops hate them.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#84

Post by henriquez »

chowells wrote: post #57
jimbob45 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Bodycams - Mandatory psych evals half-yearly - Anonymous corruption reporting - Reduce/eliminate drug penalties - Eliminate civil forfeiture - Ticketing revenues no longer fund the department - Expanded auditing of violent calls Unfortunately, the greater group of protesters is incapable of understanding nuanced policy or democratic change. I fully expect MN to swing red this election as a result of this.

It sounds to me like you have no idea what's going on in Minneapolis. The city has passed laws to require those things. The police department has sued, stonewalled, and flat out ignored those laws. This is the next logical step - when they won't obey the law, remove them entirely.

A huge part of the problem in Minneapolis is the police union resisting any kind of reform. Unfortunately the most expedient way to get rid of the union is to fire _everyone._ Hopefully other police forces recognize this as a reminder to choose their battles more wisely.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#85

Post by guerrilla »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #64
ceejayoz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hardly seems comparable.

It's directly comparable. It didn't work so well in Ukraine either, which has an educated, Western society. They disbanded and "rebuilt" their police force to step away from Russian influences. Corruption came back, but in the meantime, a lot of operation efficiency was lost. Swapping out a police department is much like swapping out a dev team - you are losing a LOT of tribal knowledge, and you have few guarantees t…

In neither case did they do anything that police abolitionists are asking for.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#86

Post by kart23 »

PaulWaldman wrote: post #61

Is this equivalent to a software rewrite? Let's just throw the whole thing out and start over. Throwing out a system and starting afresh would likey introduce new bugs/systemic failures that aren't currently present. Is addressing and correcting each specific feature/SOP not an option?

So you keep decades old code in production, trying to fix bugs in obsolete languages and architectures?

I would start a new project in a modern language or framework that's relevant for the environment and make my job a lot easier. Sure there's gonna be bugs, but its easier to fix when I actually built the system and documented it well.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#87

Post by inamberclad »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #77
cryptoz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- What happens when the bodycams are off? Is the officer fired and jailed? - What happens when an officer fails the pysch eval? Are they fired? - Who oversees the corruption reporting? How do you know they are not corrupt too? They surely can't be part of the police dept. - Reduce/eliminate drug penalties: The problem is racism where drugs are often used as the excuse. Why is there no racism training in your list? Or…

> What happens when the bodycams are off? Is the officer fired and jailed? If an officer's bodycam is turned off and there is a confrontation, the officer should be assumed guilty in any dispute. It should be the officer's responsibility to ensure their bodycam works, just as it is the officer's responsibility to ensure their gun works.

They aren't even assumed guilty when they're filmed killing someone.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#88

Post by dcposch »

mikekhusid wrote: post #20
TrevorAustin wrote: post #4

"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used solution in American life, even in the private sector. Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...

The Camden thing is going around a lot but to me it seems like they did a reorg and actually ended up hiring more police. https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden/sections/law-and-justic...

They did a more than just a reorg.

Disbanding and replacing a PD eliminates the old police union contracts.

Those lopsided contracts are at the root of the impunity and violence we've seen over the past week.

Many cities have made extraordinary contractual concessions, including:

- Secrecy clauses. Officer Bob might have 31 excessive force complaints against him, but the city is contractually forbidden from making that information public, or in some cases even retaining the records after X months.

- Arbitration for firing. Those clauses can be shockingly strong. The Philadelphia PD fired an officer for having Nazi tattoos. They were forced to reinstate him after arbitration. https://twitter.com/dburbach/status/1269638494466514955

Those clauses and more often add up to police that are effectively unfireable and therefore not under meaningful civilian control. Witness the head of a NYC police union taunting the mayor and openly flaunting the Right to Know Act / announcing that officers will be covering up their badge numbers.

Camden got a start fresh with no pre-existing police contract. For many cities, that's potentially worth a lot.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#90

Post by cryptoz »

corndoge wrote: post #78
cryptoz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- What happens when the bodycams are off? Is the officer fired and jailed? - What happens when an officer fails the pysch eval? Are they fired? - Who oversees the corruption reporting? How do you know they are not corrupt too? They surely can't be part of the police dept. - Reduce/eliminate drug penalties: The problem is racism where drugs are often used as the excuse. Why is there no racism training in your list? Or…

It's not rude, it's a reasonable list of suggestions.

The statement "the greater group of protesters is incapable of understanding nuanced policy or democratic change" is extremely rude. It's also wrong. It definitely violates HN guidelines in at least 3 different ways.

They made a low-effort post of ill-advised, out-of-touch suggestions and ended with lobbing direct insults at huge swaths of people.

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