I just posted this on Facebook; thought I would share it here.

A Proposed Partial Solution

Abuse of power by police is a systemic problem. And, while it impacts people of color disproportionately, it effects all of us. Any rational person would agree that we, as a society, need to address the issue.

According to the police what we are seeing is a few bad apples. If that is so, what are the good apples doing about it? In reality, what can they do about it? In the case of Derek Chauvin, there was apparently not much they could, or would, do. He had 18 prior incidents on his record. Why was he still a cop?

As I see it, this isn't a single issue. It's not just about the "Police Culture." Nor is it just about the unions making it hard to fire bad cops. Nor is it just about civil service making it hard to fire bad cops. It is a complex problem to which all of the above contribute.

Maybe it's time that we take a serious look at civil service laws. What if we modified the law so that a group of an employee's peers could petition for that employee to have their employment terminated? We could obviously require cause, and also make this subject to review by an independent board to prevent abuse of the procedure.

While this would not only apply to police (think bureaucrats and teachers) in the case of police we could choose to have the process run through the union. To make this work we would need to give the union an incentive to cooperate in culling the bad apples. There is currently a bipartisan bill in Congress to eliminate qualified immunity for police. Why not add a clause to it that would make the union partially liable for any civil judgment against an officer?

In short, let's give the police the means and incentive to police their own.

Will this completely solve the problem? I'm not willing to make that claim. But 1,004 people were shot and killed by police in the US in 2019. What if we only cut that number in half? Would that be a bad start?

Please feel free to comment and share.