Settlements need to be paid out of the cops’ pension fund.
Send more cops to prison.
Neither of which the US is going to do, because here, the cops and law enforcement are a civic religion. Therefore the best most Americans can do is keep their heads down and avoid the bastards as best you can manage.
In Spain when cops fuck up you simply take away their ability to work in law enforcement. It’s really that simple. In US they will just get hired by another city. The problem in US is not that this is hard to solve and requires some clever, hard to write legislation. The problem is that law enforcement always worked for the elites, not the masses and no one in power wants to change it.
The technical solution is: body cam footage is automatically, frequently, uploaded to cloud servers that the department does not control. The department gets read-only access, nobody gets the ability to delete footage for 7 years, and defense attorneys get automatic access to everything remotely related to their case.
Also: planting evidence and sending the falsely accused to prison for 6 months is a misdemeanor punished with suspended sentences and probation? That department owes the falsely accused damages for lost wages and damage to their ability to obtain future employment. That’s actually a “superpower” cops know all too well: if you’ve never been arrested they can seriously screw up your life with absolute impunity just by arresting you - charges never have to be filed, that arrest on your record - however baseless it may be - can hurt you in all sorts of ways, especially employability, for the rest of your life.
The easiest way to get this accomplished politically is to create insurance for them. Have the departments cover the base insurance rate and premium increases from settlements increase that officers insurance which (s)he has to pay out of their pay. If the insurance is unaffordable then you can no longer be a police.
I’d love that, but I don’t think (at least here in the US) that there will ever be a meaningful change to how killer cops are managed legally, especially after there was zero accountability for Uvalde.
There are only two ways to fix this that I see:
Neither of which the US is going to do, because here, the cops and law enforcement are a civic religion. Therefore the best most Americans can do is keep their heads down and avoid the bastards as best you can manage.
In Spain when cops fuck up you simply take away their ability to work in law enforcement. It’s really that simple. In US they will just get hired by another city. The problem in US is not that this is hard to solve and requires some clever, hard to write legislation. The problem is that law enforcement always worked for the elites, not the masses and no one in power wants to change it.
The technical solution is: body cam footage is automatically, frequently, uploaded to cloud servers that the department does not control. The department gets read-only access, nobody gets the ability to delete footage for 7 years, and defense attorneys get automatic access to everything remotely related to their case.
Also: planting evidence and sending the falsely accused to prison for 6 months is a misdemeanor punished with suspended sentences and probation? That department owes the falsely accused damages for lost wages and damage to their ability to obtain future employment. That’s actually a “superpower” cops know all too well: if you’ve never been arrested they can seriously screw up your life with absolute impunity just by arresting you - charges never have to be filed, that arrest on your record - however baseless it may be - can hurt you in all sorts of ways, especially employability, for the rest of your life.
The easiest way to get this accomplished politically is to create insurance for them. Have the departments cover the base insurance rate and premium increases from settlements increase that officers insurance which (s)he has to pay out of their pay. If the insurance is unaffordable then you can no longer be a police.
I’d love that, but I don’t think (at least here in the US) that there will ever be a meaningful change to how killer cops are managed legally, especially after there was zero accountability for Uvalde.
Single events do not define a whole country. We get the changes we fight (vote) for.