It’s impossible to weed out all bad cops, just as it’s impossible to weed out all bad teachers or all bad doctors. But there are some common-sense actions, targeted at officers who have used violence, that any community can take to reduce the numbers of bad cops, and give the good cops the ability to do their jobs.
1. Drug testing. Any cop who has fired a gun or taser at a suspect, or physically struck the suspect in any way, should be immediately tested for illegal drugs (and alcohol, if on duty), and fired without review if found to be using. This is eminently reasonable — how can we rely on officers who break the law to enforce the law? And an awful lot of police corruption stems from bribes, many in-kind, from the drug trade. Ever wonder why so many low-level offenders are rotting in jail while the kingpins live large?
2. Stop the practice of “paid administrative leave”, rewarding violent cops with lengthy paid vacations. If a cop is under investigation for use of violence, he/she should not be paid during the investigation. If they’re not working, why are we paying their salaries and allowing them to accrue promotion and retirement points? (Naturally back pay and benefits should be provided if the officer’s use of force is found to be justified.) Besides saving taxpayer money now lavished on bad actors, this will have the additional benefit of mitigating the current police practice of dragging out internal investigations until the statute of limitations expires or the cop retires! If the union has a problem with this, let them pay the salaries of officer under investigation. Another alternative might be to have cops perform administrative or janitorial services while on leave. Surely there’s phones to answer, filing to be done, and toilets to clean at every cop shop!
3. Any officer who engages in illegal sex trade should be immediately fired. Look at Oakland PD— seems like half the force was banging a teenage prostitute whose mother is a police dispatcher. Yes really! How convenient — just call 911 for your horn-dog emergency. And her “boyfriends” were tipping her off to where they would be conducting prostitution sweeps. As she put it: “Every cop I ‘date’ is a cop who’s not going to bust me.” Again: how can we rely on officers who break the law to enforce the law?
4. Set standards of accountability at the precinct level. Take a page from the No Child Left Behind playbook. A police precinct with a high level of sustained complaints of violence should be dismantled — commanders should be busted down a rank, while the cops are sent to multiple other precincts. Cops from other precincts step in to take their place. This will mitigate the culture of corruption that some precincts develop.
5. Set standards of accountability at the individual level. Police officers’ promotions and salaries should linked to crime reduction. The NCLB act is a clear illustration of how differently our society demands accountability from teachers compared with cops! Try to imagine a No Criminal Left Behind law being passed: officers required to reduce crimes in their precinct to zero within 10 years. No excuses about high-crime areas, lack of resources, lack of community involvement. If schools must have all students reading at grade level in 10 years, despite special-needs challenges, multiple student languages, too-large classes, and lack of institutional and community support, why shouldn’t police departments be held to the same high standards? Police are paid more than teachers. They get free training for a year or so at taxpayer expense, vs the four years (at least!) of required higher education that teachers must pay for themselves.
I posed this thought experiment to some friends once, and one of them pointed out the fatal flaw: while there’s always a new supply of students coming along, if police locked up all the criminals we wouldn’t need as many police. There you have it — cops have an strong incentive to NOT do their jobs, since the more crime means more cops and more opportunity for promotion. So cops grab the nearest poor kid of color and stitch him up. Since public defenders are ridiculously overworked, the kid is advised to plead to a lesser crime to avoid a long prison sentence. They cops look good — they got a conviction, yay! — but the real crook is still on the streets while the taxpayer is paying for the ruined life of the kid in jail.
This has to change. Shouldn’t we taxpayers be demanding more accountability from our police departments?