Our Standards To Be A Police Officer Are Too Low. Too Many Outlier Police.

[TheMastersNemesis]

We are seeing too many incidents with he police nationally. Seems like there are so many mishaps that should not happen. And there must also be a problem with training or screening.

[drray23]

1. There is definitely a problem with training.

They are totally useless at defusing situations. They dont listen when arriving on the scene. They are trained to take control, use force if necessary and see citizens as the enemy.

[USALiberal]

2. Cops get away with murder......

Jury's tend to let them off.

Cops protect other cops, lie for them.

Being a cop is not that dangerous of a job, and they are usually paranoid and shoot immediately.

It is a mess.

[msongs]

3. there are standards? nt

[Mosby]

11. yeah, a high school diploma.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. Very

Valid Statement,known a few that should have never been allowed near Law Enforcement. Bullies with a Badge.

[MosheFeingold]

5. As an ex-cop

(Many, many years ago, before I went to law school).

I would suggest paying more money. You get what you pay for.

I went from MP to NYC cop and took a pay cut, when you counted combat pay.

[USALiberal]

13. Well a NYC cop STARTS at $42,000, $85,000 after 5 years, not bad. And.....

lots of overtime if you want it. And GREAT retirement.

Additional Benefits
27 Paid vacation days after 5 years of service
Unlimited sick leave with full pay
Selection of medical benefit packages
Prescription, dental, and vision coverage
Annuity fund
Deferred Compensation Plan, 401K and I.R.A.
Optional retirement at one half salary after 22 years of service
Annual $12,000 Variable Supplement Fund (upon retirement)
Excellent promotional opportunities

[MosheFeingold]

20. That's NYC

Let's talk about Houston (or, in general).

Also, $42k is nothing in NYC these days -- if you want a college degreed, professional, person.

[Zoonart]

27. Not just that...

My nephew has a teaching degree, finished in the 90th percentile at the academy and has been waiting on the "List" for a job in one of the local communities in NJ for six years. Meanwhile he is working as a prison guard, a job he hates, but is hanging in.

He can't get placed in a local PD or the State police because they have a policy of taking Veterans first.

While I usually applaud giving vets a leg up, this has caused lots of problems in police departments across the country, because many of these men have un diagnosed PTSD and can have itchy trigger fingers as they have been programed in their deployments to shoot first and ask questions later.

This is, IMHO, is part of the problem.

[True Dough]

29. Good points

Sounds like that could account for some of the incidents we're seeing.

[Zoonart]

31. Yep!

Bri says that by the time he gets placed, he'll have PTSD from working at Rahway prison.

[rainy]

6. What about our standard to be president of the USA?

[Initech]

8. We used to have a great president, remember?

Now yeah that standard has dropped off immensely! The GOP killed it.

[Crunchy Frog]

17. All you need to do is get enough idiots in the right states to vote for you.

There's no shortage of idiots in this country.

[Initech]

7. Part of our problem is white supremacy and white nationalism.

And too many of them have infiltrated our law enforcement system. The FBI warned us about this back in 2003 and we should have listened then. Of course now with Orange Douche in the WH, it may be too late for that. But we can start taking steps to correct it and we should look at that as part of the Dem platform in 2018 and going further into 2020.

[MountCleaners]

21. So many police do not live in the communities they "serve"

And aren't familiar with or comfortable in those communities. I used to live in an economically stressed community that was dealing with an environmental problem, and dealing with the police was depressing. They had zero sympathy for the people in the community. When their shift was over, they go to their comfortable white middle-class neighborhoods. Culturally they were SO white. It was intimidating.

[PufPuf23]

9. People in law enforcement tend to self select and to select others like them.

Many are bullies by nature. People do not last as cops unless they become part of a fraternity that protects others in the fraternity more than the public. Many in LE assume other folks are criminal dirt bags. Many people in LE do not deserve respect. One needs to have a degree of corruption to succeed and sustain a LE job.

[Mosby]

12. thats been my experience

I worked with a lot of wannbe cops in the state corrections system, many but not all tend to have an authoritarian mind set. Very controlling, inflexible thinking process.

[Garrett78]

23. So many of those drawn to law enforcement and the military...

...are the last people who should be in those roles. But this is like the elephant in the room that almost nobody wants to talk about.

[braddy]

10. Lower standards since the 1960s, lowered in one category after another since then.

[FakeNoose]

14. They spend more time on weapons and military-type training

... not enough on community outreach and situational dynamics training.

I think the city police departments need to be more pro-active about firing the ones who aren't a good fit. It's better management policy to weed out the bad ones early.

[mythology]

15. I would argue the issue is larger

Take cops shooting minorities. In repeated psychology tests, everyone is more likely to misidentify an object shown alongside a minority face as a weapon. It's not necessarily that police are more likely to shoot, but that they are carrying guns and in a moment requiring split second thinking, they have the same failures as all of us.

At least one study by Park Correl found cops are less likely to misidentify an object as a weapon than the average citizen. Often we see pictures after the fact, knowing that there wasn't a weapon and overestimate our own ability to make the same determination in the moment without hindsight.

Starting with recognizing that we have biases that we aren't aware of, that we are socially conditioned, such that as an adult we have a hard time unlearning those instincts. Work with kids so they don't learn that black men are scary and they will be less likely to be suspicious of black men as adults.

Yes there is more police can do, but it's so much bigger than that.

[True Dough]

32. Good post

Makes perfect sense.

[maxrandb]

16. So true! We had more common sense, training and skill

when I was just standing a Quarterdeck Watch on a Navy ship as an E3.

Seems like the qualifications to stand Shore Patrol, or Boat Officer during a port visit to Hong Kong requires more training, common sense and intelligence than being a police officer in today's force.

One of the least things we should do is screen all LEO's for Nazi and White Supremacist tattoos and make that a disqualifying factor.

It would be a start.

[MineralMan]

18. People who would be good police officers don't want the job.

And the people who want the job are often poor choices for it.

It's a continuing dilemma.

[MurrayDelph]

19. Part of it needs to be a National Law Enforcement Officer Registry

When I worked as a schoolteacher decades ago, I had to be registered.
When my wife worked as a registered nurse, she had to be registered.

If someone is working as a law-enforcement officer, whether for a municipality, a state or federal agency (read ICE or TSA), or even as a "Courtesy Officer" (as was recently the case when a man was assaulted under the color of authority by private security cop working "on behalf" of an apartment complex, for the crime of sitting in his car while black), they need to be on a national registry, licensed and bonded, so that that the bad ones can't just move up the road when caught being a bad cop.

[ThoughtCriminal]

22. One problem is the type of person attracted to it

Parody, but as is often tue with The Onion...

https://local.theonion.com/insecure-frustrated-bully-with-something-to-prove-cons-1819575405

[john657]

24. Alot of cops are also in the National Guard who have been

deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, then they come back to their jobs as cops and have the military mentality in a combat zone.

[ck4829]

25. Kick

[djg21]

26. Sara Silverman agrees

https://m.

[HipChick]

28. Common denominator - Black people being murdered...Racism..

Black Community has been dealing with this for decades
Let's call it what it is - MURDER
Plain and simple

[WhiskeyGrinder]

30. Getting higher-standard people in a system built on racism and oppression will simply give you a

higher standard of racist and oppressive people in a racist and oppressive system.

[dlk]

33. The Pay is Too Low (Like Everywhere Else)-We Get What We Pay For