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What do you think of an app that lets people review their interactions with police officers?
Assume the obvious issues are worked out in a good faith effort to allow the system to perform the function it was designed for.
We have a problem the system is not solving. I have seen it more than once myself, including the worst behavior I have ever seen from police officers. False charges, witness intimidation, false testimony under oath, the whole dirty bit. Left my friend with two felony assaults on police officers. There is a "bullyboy" culture in police departments all over the country. There's lots of reasons for this and all.parties bear some responsibility.
But the truth of the matter is that most cops are OK. They perform their jobs professionally and courteously. They take abuse no barista ever endured without splitting a single skull. Some are actually pretty cool sometimes.
So if the departments and the cities and their respective lawyers and the police unions and their lobbyist's simply aren't going to allow anything to be done about it on the government side, perhaps it's time for a social media solution.
I think this is actually a great idea and I hope somebody does it. I am lazy and easily distracted.
A well designed system like this could reward cops who do a good job being cops, provide alerts for cops who might ruin your day by writing every ticket you deserve but still not talk to you like you are scum, and flag cops who really need to be dealt with before they kill somebody and piss off a big chunk of the country to the people who are supposed to deal with them.
What do you think?
I wonder how many of them would get on the phone with their lawyer and sue for defamation of character?
Do restaurants do that to yelp reviewers?
I honestly don't know. This is my one and only social media beyond reading forums on something I'm interested in.
Would requiring them to include a QR code on their badges be too much? (Kinda kidding. Shouldn't have anything that dishonors good cops. That's the point, really. But it would make some bullyboys really unhappy)
Here's another thought I had on this: The only way I can come up with so far to address veracity is some kind of location and time verification. It doesn't prevent false reports, but statistically most folks don't interact with cops often (obvious exceptions excepted) so more than one negative interaction more than once in a great while or a psycho cop review for a cop with lots of reviews and five stars might flag it for further verification.
There's lots of issues, especially as a cooperative effort with law enforcement.
All of the parties mentioned above stand to benefit as well.
Because if we figure out a way to weed out the bad apples the system cannot not or will not get rid of, fewer incidents like the ones we've seen too often will occur in the first place, all unions have some version of "conduct unbecoming" so it puts their union brothers up against their own rules in the public eye (I'm a union stagehand. I would not tolerate crap of this level in my union (not that my brothers get up to crap of this level in my union. We just run the gear at their conventions...)
There would be fewer lawsuits.
And most of all, help to repair policing in this country.
When I was a kid, 70's, you felt safer when you saw a cop.
Way too many kids do not feel safer when they see a cop.
Wat too many adults don't feel safer when they see a cop.
Keeping us safe should never make us afraid.
Ever.
We aren't talking about reviews of restaurants on a site like Yelp. You're suggesting that people name names and report police abuses. How far do you think that's going to travel at the police departments that are corrupt to begin with if they let cops like the one that killed George Floyd get away with what his record indicates he has gotten away with?
Do you think policemen like Derek Chauvin will sit quietly while people deride and condemn him on social media? The bottom line here is that the police have authority, people do not. You can post a 'bad review' of a cop that made you pull your pants down to be spanked and all he has to do is deny it and sue you.
Do restaurants do that to yelp reviewers?
There would be fewer lawsuits.
You will never get a market-like outcome from a socialist institution. The whole point of socialism is to eliminate all of the things that make capitalism work so well.
Bad restaurant reviews means fewer customers and lower profits for the restaurant. Cops get paid via coercive taxation, so no matter how bad they perform, a police department will never "go out of business". With nothing to lose why would they care about your bad review?
Furthermore, anything like this would have to be approved by the cop unions, and I can tell you right now, they're against it.
The taxpayers pay for the lawsuits. Again, the idea of socialism is to get rid of everything that makes capitalism work so well.
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