The problem is that the “good cops” are seriously overwhelmed by the bad cops. The problem of bad cops is so bad that it can’t even begin to get fixed without major overhauls of the police and their powers.
According to new research, reassigning police officers with a history of misconduct makes it more likely that their new peers will also misbehave.
www.pbs.org
Without those overhauls, there is no way to end the abusive police tactics and lies. And taking a bad officer, and reassigning him only spreads the abuses. The new peers of that officer, instead of getting him in line, start to act that way too. It is the gang banger thing in our own police departments.
And the problem is not just a bad apple spreading the rot, it is institutional.
Now that misconduct spreads, and worse, it affects the room the barrel full of rotten apples are stored in. Say the cops patrol a neighborhood, and the misconduct, minor according to the police defenders, just a little thing, is occurring. The neighborhood does not call the cops for anything. The cops are the enemy, because if they call the cops, they’re liable to be victims of the misconduct, and sent to jail for planted drugs or whatever.
A little lie goes a long long way. When the departments investigate the complaints, and they find something did happen, they are reluctant to get rid of the problem officer until it is something egregious. The problem with that attitude is that the problem officer will eventually do something egregious and then the rest of the cops are smeared with the brush despite the fact that they did not do the egregious thing, only little minor things.
It is in many ways the Catholic Church with those perverted priests. They did not own up to the actions, and shuffled the priest around, spreading the problem to many different parishes. The problem is that by covering it up, they made a problem a major problem. Then we see the defenders of the cops out here to tell us that the misconduct and abuse is not a problem. This case is a bullshit match setting off the fires of unrest.
In 2019, USA TODAY led a national effort to publish disciplinary records for police officers. George Floyd's death has renewed calls for transparency
www.usatoday.com
85,000 investigations. Roughly ten percent of the cops have been investigated for misconduct. And that is just the ones we know about because many states do not allow that information to be released like California, which means that the numbers are much much higher.
Finally, the police are not protecting us or anyone except perhaps the politicians. There have been two Supreme Court Decisions where the police argued and won that they had no constitutional duty to protect anyone.
We need an overhaul of the entire system. It is failing as it is, and we can’t afford to put another bandaid on the damned thing. We need to start over, and lay down new rules, and procedures, and policies.
No, cops are not perfect. I am one who believes you should forgive an honest mistake. But what we are looking at, is not a bunch of honest mistakes, it is a corrupt system that protects corrupt officers until they become egregiously problematic. Then the system is embarrassed and upset that this officer has smeared the image and reputations of the rest of the fine honest and dedicated cops in the department.
Those fine and upstanding and honest dedicated cops did not act to stop the bad cop before it got to this point. They made sure their union protected him, and the system protected him.
