I seriously doubt that......link??
Hero, I'll preface my comments that I do give weight to your being a police officer and I consider myself generally a big supporter of police.
Having said that, one general comment - everyone, police and not police, is subject to issues - where police have to follow all kinds of rules and deal with criminals frequently where those rules put them in danger, they can develop a bias of not being fond of some of those rules. It just takes a few cases of the inevitable situation where they know better than the rules, reasonably, to start to erode that.
Conversely, when the public sees the film of police behaving badly, beating someone without justification, shooting someone 100 times without justification, they tend to be more suspicious of all police as a result of the worst few, rather than remembering how few those are.
Then there are institutional pressures - police who rely on each other for their lives and are largely sympathetic to each other not wanting to get each other in trouble, politicians who might not want bad press on something, all kinds of things. Take a policy like stop and frisk - take the same facts, a small percent found with guns, and some will say that's a great success removing hundreds (or thousands?) of guns and saving lives, others a great failure of civil rights and affecting over 90% 'innocent' people. Who's right?
Rachel Maddow reported that the FBI investigates itself in shootings, and in the last 150 investigations, all 150 were found justified. Maybe they were? But what's both more credible and effective in finding they weren't, that or if a more independent group did the investigating?
The argument that an outside force 'doesn't understand' the police is easily solved. There are all kinds of ways to inform the people of the police point of view, such as liaisons and training and experience. Many cities have 'citizen police review boards' that seem to solve a lot of problems nicely despite some opposition from some of the police with those concerns.
There's no perfect system, the independent review likely would have examples of just the thing you're worried about - but would it be better overall? I suspect so.
You see the only problem is these people knew going in what they were going to be paid and I have never known having a low salary is an excuse for police brutality.....This is the newest one I found - I found one for 2003 but that is a little outdated. Looking at a few of the states - most are in the 30's and 40's starting out now-a-days - Arkansas is 32-35K; in Oklahoma they get about 36K; Maryland 44K; Iowa 39K with the max hope of around 57K; ... but if you are curious - you can look up each state individually.
Now that is a completely justified use of force, but as someone looks in from the outside, it LOOKS brutal. It SOUNDS brutal, but what they forget is that sometimes it is NECESSARY to use force in such a manner.
Seems there's a lot of concern about police covering up after an incident. Seems this is possible since the department that would be harmed in such incidents are the same ones investigating it. Maybe some one like the FBI or more likely a state agency should carry out such investigations to remove any conflicts of interest.
Also you didn`t mention that most Police officers have excellent medical benefits that cover the whole family......
You see the only problem is these people knew going in what they were going to be paid and I have never known having a low salary is an excuse for police brutality.....
The real problem isn't just that it looks like a "bad act", but that people don't understand the officer has to be in control of the situation, otherwise it is completely unsafe. Then, you get people who start with the "Oh, by you attempting to apprehend him, you escalated the situation. You could have just talked him down!". These same people who have never once been in any kind of situation where they were charged with protecting anything or dealt with any kind of threat to that something. They get to analyze the situation in a vast amount of time without any threats and make their judgement.
Where I live all such complaints are investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation (NC's version of the FBI). I don't know if that's a state policy or if that's only our AG's policy. But here cops don't investigate other cops. Fern ________
A lot of the rest of society has zero-tolerance rules thrown at them, how about one for police: intentionally falsifying a report, intentionally lying to cover for yourself or another officer is grounds for dismissal & loss of pension, following a hearing presided over by some sort of civilian group as suggested in the OP.
A lot of the rest of society has zero-tolerance rules thrown at them, how about one for police: intentionally falsifying a report, intentionally lying to cover for yourself or another officer is grounds for dismissal & loss of pension, following a hearing presided over by some sort of civilian group as suggested in the OP.
Otherwise, the fear of getting caught lying is little more than worrying about a slap on the wrist.