The murder of George Floyd has put police brutality in the national spotlight and we have to make certain that we don’t divert our attention from the problem until it gets solved.
I have some ideas that I want to float and see if anyone else wants to add their own suggestions in the comments section.
1. A new President in January. President Biden.
2. It looks like a lot of prosecutors are afraid to prosecute police officers because they believe the rest of the Police Department will never work with them again to prosecute other crimes committed in the community. So we need an Independent Prosecutor assigned solely to reviewing cases of police brutality/misconduct. There should be an Independent Prosecutor in every state. These should be top criminal lawyers who know how to exercise prosecutorial discretion.
3. A psychiatric interview as part of the hiring process. Why does someone want to become a police officer in the first place? Is it because they enjoy beating people up? Are they racist?
4. Assuming a police officer works 40 hours per week on patrol and testifying in court, we should reduce that to 39 hours per week with 1 hour of paid counseling. Counseling is a word that has a negative connotation but it’s basically someone to talk to. The officer can learn how to handle feelings of anger and frustration. If the officer isn’t having any problems, they can tell that to the therapist.
5. It would be nice to see Town Hall meetings with police officers and members of the communities they are patrolling to talk about tensions/frustrations.
6. Lifting people out of poverty so they have fewer or no interactions with the police. We need a living wage.
7. For a certainty, police officers should wear body cameras that are turned on. There should also be cameras in the police cars facing forward and backward with audio.
8. One of the reasons we incarcerate people is to deter others from committing similar crimes. Long prison sentences for police brutality/murder will have a deterrent effect.