Good post, but I think it's going to be hard to adjust police behavior without regaining civilian control of police departments, which itself requires weakening the power of police unions, and probably repealing or weakening police officer bill of rights legislation. Otherwise it's very difficult to effectively discipline bad actors and change the warrior culture mentality. But I think this is a pretty difficult task politically, especially for a Democratic party eager to dispel the notion that it is anti-police. So I'm somewhat pessimistic that this story has a happy ending.
In my opinion, nobody writes more informatively about policing than Graham at his substack. He has at least one post that addresses the roots of these kinds of problems:
But another takeaway I have after following his substack is that quite a lot more disciplining actually happens than most people have been led to believe. I can't find the specific posts, but Graham had data on the number of complains and disciplinary actions made within the Seattle police department (his former place of employment), and the latter was far more common than I had imagined.
That's not to say there aren't bad actors getting away with things, of course there are. But Defund and anti-police movements don't seem to distinguish between departments. Police unions are much stronger in some states (ironically, they tend to be "Blue" states, politically) and weaker in others. So cops in Atlanta, for example, can be, and are, fired much more easily than they can be in Boston.
He is a regular commentator over at slow boring, a former policemen and does a pretty good job of explaining the intricacies of policing.
One of the thing that these police reform articles fail to mention is the role of prosecuting in addressing police reform.
1. Police already know who the shooters are. For instance, my wife was at the mall in Boise when the shooting started last Monday. She is ok, but it really hit home. The shooter turned out to be a convicted felon from Chicago who was well know to police. In fact he had even posted YouTube videos taunting the police about having a gun. They had even attempted to arrest him, but via some quirk of Idaho Law and possible a mistake, he wasn’t charged.
In Chicago and other cities with high rates of gun violence there is a revolving door of people who get arrested for possession of weapons, but who aren’t prosecuted or get light sentences.
One of the biggest complaints among police in these cities is that even when they arrest people, the charges are pled down or not prosecuted at all. When police do catch shooters it’s very rare for them to have had no previous records.
Of course this gets into the issue of funding for prosecutors and of our high prison rates. It’s hard to both convict more people and to simultaneously reduce the prison population.
Now of course, all the reforms Noah talks about will reduce and prevent crime, lowering the number of shooters, but crime prevention needs to have a carrot and stick approach.
I’m rather skeptical that police detectives will have on solving murders and reducing crime alone. Matt Yglesias had suggested having a second track for Police Detectives separate from patrol officers, but many people pointed out that Police Detectives mostly solve crimes because they know the players from their time as patrol officers. Policing is a relationships game.
I am however very optimistic that more beat police walking around would have an excellent effect on crime. I am currently working in Argentina and you can’t walk a few blocks without seeing police milling around.
The issue is always going to come down to money though. The neighborhoods that need the most police funding are always the ones that have the least amount of resources.
Perhaps policing, like education needs to be one of those things where funding is performed at a higher level. The state or federal level. It occurs to me that this morning s one of those areas where the US is always at a disadvantage. Much of the world, policing and education and social programs are funded at the federal level, whereas in the US, it’s more local, which of course means unequal.
Also… public sector unions are bad. It’s fun to pick on police unions, but that’s because the negative influence is just more visible. Sometimes you hear about teachers unions, but Not m going to wager that any public union is going to have a net negative impact on services.
Note, I support private unions because they give workers leverage against private companies. Public employees are effectively their own bosses, since they also vote. This skews the checks and balances.
One of my takeaways from that substack is that "3 Demilitarize the police" is largely fiction. It paints a picture of cops rolling down the street with tanks and grenades whereas in reality a lot of the "surplus" that makes it into those numbers are simpler things like boots or bulletproof vests.
Rory - glad your wife is OK and I'm sorry you had to go through that. I had an experience related to your point on police already knowing about possible shooters, although not nearly as scary for us. A couple months ago I was woken up by a guy in my neighborhood murdering his family and then engaging in a gun battle with the local police. Similarly to the Boise shooter, this guy had been visited by police many times and had a history of threats and mental illness, but nothing they could arrest him for.
Btw, he shot one of the local cops in the chest, and the cop survived because of his "military hardware" bulletproof vest. I bring that up to mention another point I took away from Graham's substack, which is that often pundits and analysts (including some of oah's links above) bring out numbers to illustrate how safe policing is, and therefor they don't need XYZ equipment, training or pay. But these numbers often fail to capture how much danger is avoided by the existing equipment or training. I certainly would demand a pay raise if my job involved taking 'only' light injuries from a shot to the chest while i wore a vest.
I don't think that Noah was suggesting that bulletproof vests are contributing to the psychological barrier between police and the public. I think that most everyone appreciates the risk that police face and favor ways to mitigate that risk. It certainly doesn't create a psychological barrier to me.
Seeing an officer with an assault rifle, on the other hand, does not make me feel like he is there to assist me (not that I have anything against assault rifles).
It's unclear what Noah means. What is military-style dress? What, specifically, are military style weapons? I don't routinely see police officers with assault rifles. Maybe they do more than I realize and I'm just not observant, but I vividly remember seeing police with assault rifles in Mexica and South America so it's something I'm not completely oblivious to. At the risk of being repetitive Graham makes an excellent rebuttal of the militarization argument here: https://grahamfactor.substack.com/p/police-militarization-is-not-a-thing
But in any case - I feel like this is as much an issue of community perception than it is with police department psychology. How would you rate your ability to correctly perceive whether a particular type of weapon is appropriate for the police officers to use to use assist you? We live in a world where mass and other shooters sometimes use assault rifles. If the assistance you need is that one of your neighbors is shooting at their family (my experience) or targeting people in a mall (Rory's experience) then it's certainly appropriate for the officer to have an assault weapon.
Another way to put it is - we expect officers to carry some form of firearm, and he or she could easily use even a small pistol to end someone's life. So what difference does it make if the officer shows up with an assault rifle? I'd prefer a cop with a helpful attitude and an assault rifle over a cop with a bad attitude and a pistol. And it's not my job to determine which one he / she needs to do their job.
In the article linked Graham specifically says that the police "have always been militarized." He also lauds equipping police with the best equipment possible. But he seems to be arguing against militarization mostly as a boogieman term used by certain people. This does not appear to be what Noah is saying at all. Perhaps Noah should have avoided the term.
Noah, specifically call out the psychological impact on "the policed" by police in military garb and accoutrement. I would agree with Graham that police ought to have access to reasonable equipment (including ARs) when they need it. Flaunting it in situations where there is no criminal activity in progress, however, definitely does not engender the spirit of safety. I have seen this on several occasions in Los Angeles (as well as Mexico).
Graham also specifically argues against, "Those who are ideologically committed to the idea that all policing is a bad thing..." Noah does not appear to be one of those people as he is actually arguing for more policing.
I will read some more of Graham before passing judgement. Linking his writing to oppose a fairly non-partisan and common sense position (More and better police and less friction with the public) seems like poor advertising for his blog.
Thanks for the response and it's anytime someone really reads a recommendation, let alone a total stranger.
2 points to clarify:
Yes Graham does say "the police have always been militarized". But the title of the post is "Police militarization is not a thing". The contradiction is explained by the argument that "police militarization" is a vague term encompassing several overlapping definitions, some less true than others. The term conflates aspects that are uncontroversial, (officers being armed with bullet proof vests or being capable of dealing with mass shooters), with potentially legitimate concerns (certain departments are accused of behaving like an occupying military force ) with other concerns that are somewhat irrelevant (police use ranks like sergeant, captain, commander, etc, and to my knowledge always have)
2nd - Neither I, nor Graham nor Noah is opposing "More and better police and less friction with the public". We may have 3 very different ideas on how to get there, but I'm not sure where I gave the impression than any of us are against that. I linked his substack to question the widespread assumption that police forces have become dangerously militarized. That assumption seems widely held among the educated left and I think in many respects it's dangerously mistaken.
I don't recognize Graham from "slow boring." His substack, however, felt too close minded for me to read much. From Graham, "I think if I was to pick a random registered Democrat off the street...he would say [defund police]." Noah's post (above) references a 2021 survey with 15% of democrats want to reduce spending and 84% want to either leave it the same or increase it.
I have no opinion about Graham personally, but his blog feels like he is catering to people uncomfortable with questioning their own assumptions (at least on matters of policing).
I read 2 posts. One was the, "Why I'm cynical about police reform," post. The. other, the militarization post, also came across(to me) like a straw man argument against an ideological caricature. Perhaps Graham does actually meet people like this in his daily life. If so, I honestly sympathize.
If someone wants to recommend a post more likely to draw me in, I am willing to give it another shot.
See post below. I am not sure that I agree with everything that Graham says, but at least it offers a detailed explanation of policing nuances that many don't consider. The more information you have, the less likely we are to suffer from the law of unintended consequences.
That is indeed, a well reasoned article. He voiced a couple of positions I would have liked him to clarify but they were all fairly handled. I guess I will keep an eye out for new posts and look for his comments on SB. Thanks for the link...
Police unions are a serious problem. The craziest people have taken control of them, instilled a ”with us or against us” mentality, and now hold many cities hostage. Where I live, the police union held a vote and issued a public statement of “no confidence” against the (democratically elected) mayor.
I believe that unions are a net good for workers, but they can slip into dysfunction and can cause harm when poorly led. Not sure what the solution is here. It may not be a legal change, but a moral change coming from within the police community.
Graham ( a politically very liberal ex-policeman with a very good substack) has a couple of good posts on police militarization that are worth reading.
You mention traffic-stop-centric policing as a problem, but there's scope for more fundamental reform here than just greater emphasis on foot patrols. Traffic stops seem like a pretty major site of overpolicing: police use them as excuses to go fishing for other reasons to detain the stopped person, e.g. outstanding warrants unrelated to traffic enforcement, and many currently legal causes for traffic stops probably don't involve significant threats to public safety-- as an extreme example, take the egregious Minnesota law allowing police to pull someone over for having an air freshener or fuzzy dice hanging from their rear view mirror. So narrowing the scope of when a traffic stop is allowed, using automated camera-based ticketing instead where possible, and having specialized, unarmed traffic officers do the stops that are genuinely necessary rather than police officers, could put a big dent in police violence.
Once unarmed traffic officers are doing the stops, what will compel a DUI or a motorist driving 30 mph over the limit to pull over? But even if those are still handled by traditional officers, I think the same question applies to minor speeding tickets, driving the wrong way down a 1-way and running red lights? I'm sure a lot of people, especially the most law-abiding, will pull over. But I'm guessing people with outstanding warrants, or the intoxicated, etc... may decide to take their chances and jet away.
-- Police kill about 80 motorists per year who are unarmed and nonviolent. That's less than 10 percent of all police killings, but it figures disproportionately in the most egregious cases, and it is very unlikely that the level of enforcement that they brought to bear in those cases saved anywhere near thatany lives. And some armed motorists may nonetheless have posed no threat, as we saw in the Philando Castile case.
-- Moreover, the Times focused only on cases resulting in killings; there are plausibly orders of magnitude more cases of less serious abuses that still contribute to public distrust and resentment of the police.
-- Root causes include the use of traffic ticketing as a municipal revenue generator and the admitted tendency of the cops to "fish" for reasons to pull over motorists they think are suspicious. It should arguably shock the conscience that such reasons so often exist: in a free society the police should arguably not be able to detain you at all for minor regulatory violations that pose no imminent public safety threat, and the fact that they can do so now would be a problem even if it didn't turn deadly so often.
For serious cases if someone refuses to pull over you can call for backup, yes. Minor speeding tickets and red light running are the sort of thing I had in mind with the "automated camera-based ticketing where possible" bit-- i.e. the idea is that you'd rather just take a picture of their license plate in those cases and send them a ticket in the mail instead of bothering to pull them over.
>those vastly expanded police departments are the same ones that became militarized and violent in later decades
I just want to point out that Black Americans' problems with police violence have gone back a lot longer than just the past couple decades.
However, I would also suggest that the nature of police violence against PoC has changed due to militarization and the toxification of police culture: Originally, police regarded themselves as "boys in blue", protectors of the social order, and the problem was mainly that the social order was explicitly racist and demanded police violence against PoC. As that became unfashionable, the police had to start rationalizing just how dangerous the communities of color that they were policing, were.
Sixty years ago, less even, a cop was just as likely to just say he was putting a Black man "back in his place" or some other racist shit, as he was to say "I saw a gun".
But today's cops (and their professional legal defense complex) will get up on the stand and sit there giving you all kinds of bullshit statistics about reaction times against charging assailants. They'll complain about how they were traumatized by the event. They'll cite all kinds of horror stories they've been trained with, and what the "proper responses" are.
There's a mountain of rationalization to go along with that toxic culture and those military uniforms.
You seem to be using the same types of sweeping generalizations, broad stereotypes and rationalizations against "the police" as you accuse the police of using against PoC.
Please consider the effects of the elimination of cash bail. Criminals are let back on the streets so there is almost no sanction for criminal activity. Homicide is a problem but rampant petty crimes trigger a citizen's sense of injustice, are corrosive to our society, frustrate the police, and can act like a gateway drug for more violent crimes.. Elimination of cash bail has been on the progressive wish list too. Bad idea.
That depends on what replaces it. With cash bail, almost any defendant can get out on the street if they're able to pay a chunk of the bail to a bondsman. A system that change the judge's discretion purely from setting the cash bail level, to a combination of the judge's discretion and a risk score initially for decision among "keep in jail" / "release with an ankle bracelet" / "release to own recognizance", and then had some kind of appeals panel, might well keep some people in who otherwise would get out.
(I will grant though that a lot of the activists against cash bail have completely naïve and unrealistic views about crime, and seem to think we can just abolish all involuntary confinement, as well as police.)
Yes. There should be a graded response although a bondsman can help both in evaluating risk and imposing a cost on being arrested. Placing no cost on arrest makes jail into a turnstile.
Good post, but I think it's going to be hard to adjust police behavior without regaining civilian control of police departments, which itself requires weakening the power of police unions, and probably repealing or weakening police officer bill of rights legislation. Otherwise it's very difficult to effectively discipline bad actors and change the warrior culture mentality. But I think this is a pretty difficult task politically, especially for a Democratic party eager to dispel the notion that it is anti-police. So I'm somewhat pessimistic that this story has a happy ending.
In my opinion, nobody writes more informatively about policing than Graham at his substack. He has at least one post that addresses the roots of these kinds of problems:
https://grahamfactor.substack.com/p/police-accountability-starts-at-the
But another takeaway I have after following his substack is that quite a lot more disciplining actually happens than most people have been led to believe. I can't find the specific posts, but Graham had data on the number of complains and disciplinary actions made within the Seattle police department (his former place of employment), and the latter was far more common than I had imagined.
That's not to say there aren't bad actors getting away with things, of course there are. But Defund and anti-police movements don't seem to distinguish between departments. Police unions are much stronger in some states (ironically, they tend to be "Blue" states, politically) and weaker in others. So cops in Atlanta, for example, can be, and are, fired much more easily than they can be in Boston.
If anyone wants a really good analysis of policing and policing issues, I recommend https://grahamfactor.substack.com/
He is a regular commentator over at slow boring, a former policemen and does a pretty good job of explaining the intricacies of policing.
One of the thing that these police reform articles fail to mention is the role of prosecuting in addressing police reform.
1. Police already know who the shooters are. For instance, my wife was at the mall in Boise when the shooting started last Monday. She is ok, but it really hit home. The shooter turned out to be a convicted felon from Chicago who was well know to police. In fact he had even posted YouTube videos taunting the police about having a gun. They had even attempted to arrest him, but via some quirk of Idaho Law and possible a mistake, he wasn’t charged.
In Chicago and other cities with high rates of gun violence there is a revolving door of people who get arrested for possession of weapons, but who aren’t prosecuted or get light sentences.
One of the biggest complaints among police in these cities is that even when they arrest people, the charges are pled down or not prosecuted at all. When police do catch shooters it’s very rare for them to have had no previous records.
Of course this gets into the issue of funding for prosecutors and of our high prison rates. It’s hard to both convict more people and to simultaneously reduce the prison population.
Now of course, all the reforms Noah talks about will reduce and prevent crime, lowering the number of shooters, but crime prevention needs to have a carrot and stick approach.
I’m rather skeptical that police detectives will have on solving murders and reducing crime alone. Matt Yglesias had suggested having a second track for Police Detectives separate from patrol officers, but many people pointed out that Police Detectives mostly solve crimes because they know the players from their time as patrol officers. Policing is a relationships game.
I am however very optimistic that more beat police walking around would have an excellent effect on crime. I am currently working in Argentina and you can’t walk a few blocks without seeing police milling around.
The issue is always going to come down to money though. The neighborhoods that need the most police funding are always the ones that have the least amount of resources.
Perhaps policing, like education needs to be one of those things where funding is performed at a higher level. The state or federal level. It occurs to me that this morning s one of those areas where the US is always at a disadvantage. Much of the world, policing and education and social programs are funded at the federal level, whereas in the US, it’s more local, which of course means unequal.
Also… public sector unions are bad. It’s fun to pick on police unions, but that’s because the negative influence is just more visible. Sometimes you hear about teachers unions, but Not m going to wager that any public union is going to have a net negative impact on services.
Note, I support private unions because they give workers leverage against private companies. Public employees are effectively their own bosses, since they also vote. This skews the checks and balances.
I also highly recommend https://grahamfactor.substack.com/ to anyone interested in policing.
One of my takeaways from that substack is that "3 Demilitarize the police" is largely fiction. It paints a picture of cops rolling down the street with tanks and grenades whereas in reality a lot of the "surplus" that makes it into those numbers are simpler things like boots or bulletproof vests.
Rory - glad your wife is OK and I'm sorry you had to go through that. I had an experience related to your point on police already knowing about possible shooters, although not nearly as scary for us. A couple months ago I was woken up by a guy in my neighborhood murdering his family and then engaging in a gun battle with the local police. Similarly to the Boise shooter, this guy had been visited by police many times and had a history of threats and mental illness, but nothing they could arrest him for.
Btw, he shot one of the local cops in the chest, and the cop survived because of his "military hardware" bulletproof vest. I bring that up to mention another point I took away from Graham's substack, which is that often pundits and analysts (including some of oah's links above) bring out numbers to illustrate how safe policing is, and therefor they don't need XYZ equipment, training or pay. But these numbers often fail to capture how much danger is avoided by the existing equipment or training. I certainly would demand a pay raise if my job involved taking 'only' light injuries from a shot to the chest while i wore a vest.
People also ignore the non-fatal risks to policing. For every cop shot, there are probably a dozen who got hit or scratched or tackled.
I don't think that Noah was suggesting that bulletproof vests are contributing to the psychological barrier between police and the public. I think that most everyone appreciates the risk that police face and favor ways to mitigate that risk. It certainly doesn't create a psychological barrier to me.
Seeing an officer with an assault rifle, on the other hand, does not make me feel like he is there to assist me (not that I have anything against assault rifles).
It's unclear what Noah means. What is military-style dress? What, specifically, are military style weapons? I don't routinely see police officers with assault rifles. Maybe they do more than I realize and I'm just not observant, but I vividly remember seeing police with assault rifles in Mexica and South America so it's something I'm not completely oblivious to. At the risk of being repetitive Graham makes an excellent rebuttal of the militarization argument here: https://grahamfactor.substack.com/p/police-militarization-is-not-a-thing
But in any case - I feel like this is as much an issue of community perception than it is with police department psychology. How would you rate your ability to correctly perceive whether a particular type of weapon is appropriate for the police officers to use to use assist you? We live in a world where mass and other shooters sometimes use assault rifles. If the assistance you need is that one of your neighbors is shooting at their family (my experience) or targeting people in a mall (Rory's experience) then it's certainly appropriate for the officer to have an assault weapon.
Another way to put it is - we expect officers to carry some form of firearm, and he or she could easily use even a small pistol to end someone's life. So what difference does it make if the officer shows up with an assault rifle? I'd prefer a cop with a helpful attitude and an assault rifle over a cop with a bad attitude and a pistol. And it's not my job to determine which one he / she needs to do their job.
In the article linked Graham specifically says that the police "have always been militarized." He also lauds equipping police with the best equipment possible. But he seems to be arguing against militarization mostly as a boogieman term used by certain people. This does not appear to be what Noah is saying at all. Perhaps Noah should have avoided the term.
Noah, specifically call out the psychological impact on "the policed" by police in military garb and accoutrement. I would agree with Graham that police ought to have access to reasonable equipment (including ARs) when they need it. Flaunting it in situations where there is no criminal activity in progress, however, definitely does not engender the spirit of safety. I have seen this on several occasions in Los Angeles (as well as Mexico).
Graham also specifically argues against, "Those who are ideologically committed to the idea that all policing is a bad thing..." Noah does not appear to be one of those people as he is actually arguing for more policing.
I will read some more of Graham before passing judgement. Linking his writing to oppose a fairly non-partisan and common sense position (More and better police and less friction with the public) seems like poor advertising for his blog.
Thanks for the response and it's anytime someone really reads a recommendation, let alone a total stranger.
2 points to clarify:
Yes Graham does say "the police have always been militarized". But the title of the post is "Police militarization is not a thing". The contradiction is explained by the argument that "police militarization" is a vague term encompassing several overlapping definitions, some less true than others. The term conflates aspects that are uncontroversial, (officers being armed with bullet proof vests or being capable of dealing with mass shooters), with potentially legitimate concerns (certain departments are accused of behaving like an occupying military force ) with other concerns that are somewhat irrelevant (police use ranks like sergeant, captain, commander, etc, and to my knowledge always have)
2nd - Neither I, nor Graham nor Noah is opposing "More and better police and less friction with the public". We may have 3 very different ideas on how to get there, but I'm not sure where I gave the impression than any of us are against that. I linked his substack to question the widespread assumption that police forces have become dangerously militarized. That assumption seems widely held among the educated left and I think in many respects it's dangerously mistaken.
[Honestly trying not to be overly critical here]
I don't recognize Graham from "slow boring." His substack, however, felt too close minded for me to read much. From Graham, "I think if I was to pick a random registered Democrat off the street...he would say [defund police]." Noah's post (above) references a 2021 survey with 15% of democrats want to reduce spending and 84% want to either leave it the same or increase it.
I have no opinion about Graham personally, but his blog feels like he is catering to people uncomfortable with questioning their own assumptions (at least on matters of policing).
I read 2 posts. One was the, "Why I'm cynical about police reform," post. The. other, the militarization post, also came across(to me) like a straw man argument against an ideological caricature. Perhaps Graham does actually meet people like this in his daily life. If so, I honestly sympathize.
If someone wants to recommend a post more likely to draw me in, I am willing to give it another shot.
See post below. I am not sure that I agree with everything that Graham says, but at least it offers a detailed explanation of policing nuances that many don't consider. The more information you have, the less likely we are to suffer from the law of unintended consequences.
https://grahamfactor.substack.com/p/more-policing-less-law-enforcement?r=3gj6y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=
That is indeed, a well reasoned article. He voiced a couple of positions I would have liked him to clarify but they were all fairly handled. I guess I will keep an eye out for new posts and look for his comments on SB. Thanks for the link...
Police unions are a serious problem. The craziest people have taken control of them, instilled a ”with us or against us” mentality, and now hold many cities hostage. Where I live, the police union held a vote and issued a public statement of “no confidence” against the (democratically elected) mayor.
I believe that unions are a net good for workers, but they can slip into dysfunction and can cause harm when poorly led. Not sure what the solution is here. It may not be a legal change, but a moral change coming from within the police community.
Graham ( a politically very liberal ex-policeman with a very good substack) has a couple of good posts on police militarization that are worth reading.
https://grahamfactor.substack.com/p/police-militarization-is-not-a-thing
https://grahamfactor.substack.com/p/yes-policing-is-dangerous
Slogans are always problematic. In my newsletter, I discuss the problems with the slogan Black Lives Matter and then the problem with slogans in general. Please subscribe if you think they are interesting.. https://fracturedrelationships.substack.com/p/slogans-can-get-in-the-way
Excellent!! Just subscribed
You mention traffic-stop-centric policing as a problem, but there's scope for more fundamental reform here than just greater emphasis on foot patrols. Traffic stops seem like a pretty major site of overpolicing: police use them as excuses to go fishing for other reasons to detain the stopped person, e.g. outstanding warrants unrelated to traffic enforcement, and many currently legal causes for traffic stops probably don't involve significant threats to public safety-- as an extreme example, take the egregious Minnesota law allowing police to pull someone over for having an air freshener or fuzzy dice hanging from their rear view mirror. So narrowing the scope of when a traffic stop is allowed, using automated camera-based ticketing instead where possible, and having specialized, unarmed traffic officers do the stops that are genuinely necessary rather than police officers, could put a big dent in police violence.
Once unarmed traffic officers are doing the stops, what will compel a DUI or a motorist driving 30 mph over the limit to pull over? But even if those are still handled by traditional officers, I think the same question applies to minor speeding tickets, driving the wrong way down a 1-way and running red lights? I'm sure a lot of people, especially the most law-abiding, will pull over. But I'm guessing people with outstanding warrants, or the intoxicated, etc... may decide to take their chances and jet away.
Apropos of this discussion the Times has a giant story with a ton of relevant data out today:
Why Many Police Traffic Stops Turn Deadly https://nyti.ms/3jSNIZX
Some takeaways:
-- Police kill about 80 motorists per year who are unarmed and nonviolent. That's less than 10 percent of all police killings, but it figures disproportionately in the most egregious cases, and it is very unlikely that the level of enforcement that they brought to bear in those cases saved anywhere near thatany lives. And some armed motorists may nonetheless have posed no threat, as we saw in the Philando Castile case.
-- Moreover, the Times focused only on cases resulting in killings; there are plausibly orders of magnitude more cases of less serious abuses that still contribute to public distrust and resentment of the police.
-- Root causes include the use of traffic ticketing as a municipal revenue generator and the admitted tendency of the cops to "fish" for reasons to pull over motorists they think are suspicious. It should arguably shock the conscience that such reasons so often exist: in a free society the police should arguably not be able to detain you at all for minor regulatory violations that pose no imminent public safety threat, and the fact that they can do so now would be a problem even if it didn't turn deadly so often.
For serious cases if someone refuses to pull over you can call for backup, yes. Minor speeding tickets and red light running are the sort of thing I had in mind with the "automated camera-based ticketing where possible" bit-- i.e. the idea is that you'd rather just take a picture of their license plate in those cases and send them a ticket in the mail instead of bothering to pull them over.
>those vastly expanded police departments are the same ones that became militarized and violent in later decades
I just want to point out that Black Americans' problems with police violence have gone back a lot longer than just the past couple decades.
However, I would also suggest that the nature of police violence against PoC has changed due to militarization and the toxification of police culture: Originally, police regarded themselves as "boys in blue", protectors of the social order, and the problem was mainly that the social order was explicitly racist and demanded police violence against PoC. As that became unfashionable, the police had to start rationalizing just how dangerous the communities of color that they were policing, were.
Sixty years ago, less even, a cop was just as likely to just say he was putting a Black man "back in his place" or some other racist shit, as he was to say "I saw a gun".
But today's cops (and their professional legal defense complex) will get up on the stand and sit there giving you all kinds of bullshit statistics about reaction times against charging assailants. They'll complain about how they were traumatized by the event. They'll cite all kinds of horror stories they've been trained with, and what the "proper responses" are.
There's a mountain of rationalization to go along with that toxic culture and those military uniforms.
You seem to be using the same types of sweeping generalizations, broad stereotypes and rationalizations against "the police" as you accuse the police of using against PoC.
Please consider the effects of the elimination of cash bail. Criminals are let back on the streets so there is almost no sanction for criminal activity. Homicide is a problem but rampant petty crimes trigger a citizen's sense of injustice, are corrosive to our society, frustrate the police, and can act like a gateway drug for more violent crimes.. Elimination of cash bail has been on the progressive wish list too. Bad idea.
That depends on what replaces it. With cash bail, almost any defendant can get out on the street if they're able to pay a chunk of the bail to a bondsman. A system that change the judge's discretion purely from setting the cash bail level, to a combination of the judge's discretion and a risk score initially for decision among "keep in jail" / "release with an ankle bracelet" / "release to own recognizance", and then had some kind of appeals panel, might well keep some people in who otherwise would get out.
(I will grant though that a lot of the activists against cash bail have completely naïve and unrealistic views about crime, and seem to think we can just abolish all involuntary confinement, as well as police.)
Yes. There should be a graded response although a bondsman can help both in evaluating risk and imposing a cost on being arrested. Placing no cost on arrest makes jail into a turnstile.
End qualified immunity.