Insurance driving police reform.

[dblack]

If you think you and I have the same rights as Bezos, I’ve got a bridge I’ll sell you real cheap.

What rights does Bezos have that you do not?

 

[gipper]

What rights does Bezos have that you do not?

He can get away with murder, let alone not paying taxes.

 

[fncceo]

Yeah we want cops to continue killing people because that prevents crime.

I suppose that would depend on whom they kill.

 

[Anathema]

Ok. How's that a bad thing? Seems like a reasonable check on unreasonable state power

Police shouldn’t be able to be sued for doing their job, regardless of how they do it.

 

[whitehall]

How can we assume "police reform" is happening unless we know what the hell it is? Does "police reform" consist of better training and better leadership or is it about letting the thugs run the streets?

 

[gipper]

Police shouldn’t be able to be sued for doing their job, regardless of how they do it.

You mean like big pharma, big hospitals, and doctors?

 

[fncceo]

You mean like big pharma, big hospitals, and doctors?

I'm not sure why people equate big with evil. I want my pharmaceutical companies to be big.

Big pharmaceutical companies have sufficient funding for research. Modern medicines can cost hundreds of millions to develop. Big companies can hire the best scientists and have the best research facilities. There's a reason why great breakthroughs in modern medicine don't come out of a country doctor's office.

I want my hospitals to be big. A large, well-funded hospital will have all the equipment and specialists required to treat my whatever condition I may develop, no matter how rare.

As for big doctors? Well, I am agnostic to the physical size of my doctor. Short, tall, fat, or thin ... I don't care.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I've been very adamant in opposing the trend to privatize public risk (primarily efforts to force people to get insurance - car insurance, health insurance, gun owner insurance, etc ....). But I don't necessarily have a problem with this issue. If a city wants a band of violent goons for their police, such that it puts them at greater risk of being sued, and subsequently causes their insurance rates to go up. Ok. How's that a bad thing? Seems like a reasonable check on unreasonable state power.

It's a bad thing because then you have insurance companies dictating how police can or can't do their jobs, and that puts the lives of officers at risk.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I’m going to have to get busy writing those history books. Ones that show Deterrence worked every time. If that was the case, World War One and Two would never have happened. But hey, we can look at crime alone. And if Deterrence worked, then Prohibition would still be the law of the land wouldn’t it?

You are arguing that no matter the cost, we must do this. Then how much are you willing to pay in taxes? Because all of this stuff cost a ton of money. Let me guess, nothing. You just want to shift the money from a sector you don’t agree with. Imagining that billions of dollars will appear like magic when you shut down whatever other programs you want to.

California, we could shift the money from Wildfire protections. Let the state burn.

A few million dollars is shifted, and nothing changes, because that few million wouldn’t even be enough to house more criminals, because they don’t have the prisons now to house all they want to.

It isn’t one thing. It’s never one thing. You can’t just say we need more cops and that will solve the problem. Because then you have at most the revolving door you will moan about how criminals are released almost immediately. Why? Because we don’t have enough jail space. So we need more jails to hold the accused crooks. Before their trials. Great. Where will we get the billions we need to build new jails? Then we need more prisons. A fifteen hundred bed prison will cost another half a billion. And it will take a decade to build because we have to deal with lawsuits from all those good conservative people who don’t want a prison in their back yards.

And the Democrats are just as bad there. I know the story of Ted Kennedy and the wind farm. Enough said.

So in a decade or so, we will be able to house another fifteen hundred convicted criminals. What do we do with them otherwise?

And if deterrence was the answer, the idiot Sheriff and his tent city jail would have cut crime dramatically. It never dropped other than a tiny little blip. Albuquerque remained about the same crime wise.

But that is what happens. So if we can’t house everyone we want to, we have to pick and choose.

Now, the obvious answer is to figure out how to choose. You want them all locked up. We can’t. We don’t have the facilities. So who gets locked up? Murderers? Kidnappers? Rapists, Armed Robbers? Drug Dealers? All felons, and all serious criminals. Now, we get down to the misdemeanors. Well shit, we don’t have much space left for them. I guess we could turn a couple drug dealers and armed robbers loose.

You are treating this like that idiotic joke. We can keep twice the canaries in the truck if we keep half of them flying.

You don’t answer the question. Where do we keep these criminals you are determined to lock up? You don’t answer the question because all you want to focus on is the first phase. The cops on the street. The cops don’t want deterrence.

A city in California wanted to discuss their police policies and practices. They hired an expert. I know the fellow. He has 30 years experience in Prisons, including being a warden of a prison. The city had riots about every day in jail. He helped them get those down. Riots are bad for the prisoners, and worse for the guards. Because the guards get hurt, or killed, or are taken hostage.

Then it was policing. My friend got the cops to open a sub station in a strip mall which was high crime. Sure enough, crime dropped. And the cops hated it. They hated hanging around, they detested walking the beat in the surrounding neighborhood. They wanted to chase people, and catch people. So the substation was shut down after a year, and crime skyrocketed again.

Tell the cops to go back to walking a beat. They’ll quit.

Around me, the highest paid cops are the State Police and the Port Authority Police. A lot of cops try and get on at the Port Authority. Most of them quit within two years. It’s boring. Nothing but reports and checking ID cards. Accident reports, injury reports, and all that. It’s boring. And they crave the action. You can argue that they are deterring crime, but they don’t want that. They want to chase people.

Those gung-ho cops are the problem. They don’t show restraint when using force, and they get the department sued. They get cases thrown out for abuse and brutality. They get the criminal free. They get bad press for the department, and they get their fellow officers in trouble.

The reforms driven by the Insurance Companies is to get rid of those gung ho types. Get rid of them, and change the policies to reflect a more common sense approach.

St. Ann as I said in the OP, has enacted these reforms reluctantly. They have a lot fewer arrests, but the crime rate remains the same. No uptick in violent crime. None.

Reform means looking at alternatives, and finding ways to do the job better.

The cops who are quitting, are probably those violent cops who get the departments sued. The ones who won’t learn and won’t do the job the way it is supposed to be done.

The cops that are quitting are the ones that want to do the job, but are handcuffed by their superiors from doing it. Did you see what's going on in Illinois? Watch the crime rate dramatically increase next year.



As for CA, they can start by not welcoming illegals to their state, and providing them with free healthcare to boot. Talk about something that costs billions. Yes, let them get sick and die, and use those funds to erect new jails and prisons. Let's start looking out for our people first.

True story: Years ago a new store opened up around the corner from me. It was a middle-east family. I support small business and worked for small business all of my life. After some drunk got in there and stole some cigarettes off the counter, I was walking into the store as the police were leaving. The clerk told me what happened.

He said his grandmother wrote him and asked how his new life in America was going, so he sent her our local paper which had a police blotter in it. She wrote back with great concern. She said we have more theft in our little suburb in one week than the entire middle-east does in a years time. I asked him if that was true and he concurred.

He said where he's from, if a man is caught stealing, off comes his hand, and not in a hosptial either. Caught stealing again, off comes the other hand. There is no third time.
I'm not suggesting that we do that here, but only making the point that a strong enough deterrent does work every time it's tried. We haven't had strong enough deterrents in this country in generations. Want to see a strong enough deterrent? Watch the classic movie Cool Hand Luke. If our prisons were ran like that, crime would drastically decrease.

 

[fncceo]

The cops that are quitting are the ones that want to do the job, but are handcuffed by their superiors from doing it.

It's always been that way. Police departments evolve. You can't be in a conversation with old sergeants without hearing, "Back in my day ... we used to ...".

But, since policing has existed, there has always been a superior telling the cop how to do his job.

 

[whitehall]

Police reform? By early 2022 there was a 43% increase of Police Officers who were shot by felonious criminals. If a segment of society needs to be reformed it might be the judicial system.

 

[dblack]

He can get away with murder, let alone not paying taxes.

Are you saying he's murdered someone??

 

[gipper]

Are you saying he's murdered someone??

How would I know?

 

[gipper]

I'm not sure why people equate big with evil. I want my pharmaceutical companies to be big.

Big pharmaceutical companies have sufficient funding for research. Modern medicines can cost hundreds of millions to develop. Big companies can hire the best scientists and have the best research facilities. There's a reason why great breakthroughs in modern medicine don't come out of a country doctor's office.

I want my hospitals to be big. A large, well-funded hospital will have all the equipment and specialists required to treat my whatever condition I may develop, no matter how rare.

As for big doctors? Well, I am agnostic to the physical size of my doctor. Short, tall, fat, or thin ... I don't care.

Who equated big with evil?

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

It's always been that way. Police departments evolve. You can't be in a conversation with old sergeants without hearing, "Back in my day ... we used to ...".

But, since policing has existed, there has always been a superior telling the cop how to do his job.

I have no problem with that as we all had a superior that was usually more experienced and actually did our jobs. But today too much politics is involved and the orders come from politicians that never so much have been in a police car before.

My suburb unfortunately turned black and eventually we got a black Mayor. Here they do nothing about noise complaints or littering. I have to clean off my tree lawn every time I mow the lawn and I can't snowblow the sidewalks because I don't know what kind of garbage awaits me and I'm not about to ruin a $1,200 snowblower to find out.

The Mayor knows if police enforced littering and noise laws it would end up with her brothers getting the tickets. They wouldn't pay them or attend court, then the court would issue a warrant for them, and the next police encounter would lead to an arrest. She doesn't want that.

While it's no comparison to other violent crimes, it makes for an uncomfortable environment and good people move out. As for the serious crimes, it puts officers in danger if they have to treat criminals like their next door neighbor kid. Watch that video I posted about what's going on in Illinois starting next year. This is what I mean by politicians calling the shots for police.

 

[SavannahMann]

Police shouldn’t be able to be sued for doing their job, regardless of how they do it.

Ok. What penalties should exist when the police violate the Rights enumerated under the Constitution? Prison? Summary execution?

 

[Anathema]

Ok. What penalties should exist when the police violate the Rights enumerated under the Constitution

I don’t believe in Rights. Definitely not for criminals.

 

[dblack]

How would I know?

You claimed Jeff Bezos has more rights than the rest of us. In particular, you said he "can get away with murder*. Why?

 

[AMart]

For a long time police departments have resisted public pressure and even legislative efforts to drive reform. Now the reform is happening. But not because of public perceptions or pressure from special interest groups. Not because of community organizers or BLM. It is because of money. Specifically. Insurance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/police-misconduct-insurance-settlements-reform/

The name of the game is evolve, adapt, or die. And cities which don’t evolve and adapt. Are losing their cops.

Southern California town disbands police force after 86 years

Southern California town disbands police force after 86 years

www.mercurynews.com

Yes. That is an old news story. But it was mentioned in the article posted above as an early example of insurance driving changes.

The cities and counties have a choice. Change the way you do the policing. Or lose the cops.

The times are changing. And it seems the Police Departments are changing too. Not because of threats to their safety. But to the bottom line.

The St. Ann police department as one example mentioned in the article. Resisted and rejected demands from community activists. Told the police reform crowd to pound sand. Then the Insurance Company told them that the rates were going way up if they didn’t knock it off. The Chief was given a choice. Lose ten officers to afford the insurance. Or change. Change while unpleasant was a lot better than stubbornly losing nearly a quarter of his police force.

It's a small town that got rid of the police force 11 years ago. Mayfood also fired most of their employees. They use LA County now.

 

[dblack]

It's a bad thing because then you have insurance companies dictating how police can or can't do their jobs, and that puts the lives of officers at risk.

They're not dictating anything. They're just offering insurance coverage. Take it or leave it.