Seriously

And that creates a big problem. The problem that if we say “these ‘attacks’ don’t apply to good cops. If you’re a good officer ignore it, we are talking about the police that shouldn’t be behind a badge…” well… we need bodies. Not every doctor is the best doctor but we need doctors. It gets complex from there but I see it as a real problem that we do need to better screen both new police hires and existing officers for suitability, but the criteria for that are difficult. There are around 100,000 active commercial pilots in the US and around 700,000-800,000 full time law enforcement officers. Go find 800,000 people who are all the epitome of integrity and have the character and skills and altitudes to serve as “ideal” police and are willing and able to work all around the country and are familiar with the communities and specialties they serve. Homicide and narcotics and beat cops and traffic patrol and traffic enforcement and transit officers and…
There are alot of different…

.. types of job and their days and what skills and other things they need are all a little different at the least. Who is suited for what or wants to do what and so forth. Pay ranges and schedules and all sorts of things. It’s a big ask. And that’s the thing too… the “perfect” officer knows the laws like the back of their hand. Most law enforcement officers are required to know very little about the law and often do know very little. The most basic degree to do their job and often less. Requiring a deep knowledge of law not only raises the bar of knowledge to get in, it raises the intelligence required. Suddenly you need people who with their drive and ability could easily pursue less dangerous and more flexible and lucrative fields. The list goes on, to where “super cop” basically has no life outside the job. Their entire existence revolves around training and learning for their job. They have to be up to date in the law, cultural trends, politics, spend hours at the range, hours…

.. at the gym, hours in hand to hand training classes, have basically a degree in psychology and be up to date on that, they need to understand chemistry and biology and mechanical and technological trends and fundamentals to be able to properly identify crimes involving those things and so forth and so on. It’s alot. They need a lot to be “super cop,” and we need 800,000+ of those people and new ones constantly
To replace the old, and many of them will be handing out tickets or guarding a state fair. It becomes a problem. The reality is we could simply take police down off a pedestal a bit. Deflate the bubble and be realistic- but that isn’t fair to all the above and beyond police officers and a lot of people won’t like it. It’s an ego hit and it is a devaluation that unions and such would t stand. Let me give an example-

All officers are officers. The “meter maid” is an officer. The mounted officer in the park on the bicycle is an officer. But… what do we need from which officers? If we set a certain set of bars for each speciality, what was realistically needed and not, what was realistically expected or not- we could put the people with the ability to do more in jobs that ask more and the people who don’t meet the certifications of confidence wouldn’t “move up.” We’d keep them where they fit. Of course that hurts an idea of advancement. Most people don’t like being told “this is your place. Stay in your place because you belong there.” Individualists tend to bristle at the concept, but this isn’t Disney- if you think you belong somewhere else, do some work and prove it. Don’t say: “who are you to say I can’t do it?” Go get what you need to satisfy people’s desire for some proof you can.

I think we could disarm our police. Guns are a hot topic in America. “You don’t need a gun!” “If we get rid of guns less criminals
Will have them and then you don’t need a gun..” well… ok. Why do police need guns? If we disarm most police, they should be able to do 99% of their daily tasks 99% of the time without it just fine. “They need guns to fight criminals!” Isn’t the popular sentiment that you do not need guns to fight criminals? If we can trust police with guns then I guess that just proves that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The stances of gun control are not compatible with a stance that police should be able to carry guns as an almost default.
There’s alot we could do to try and tailor the role of the the officer so that we could ask and require less of any given officer.

The traditional idea is that police are “super human” figures, a lot of people don’t even understand the distinctions of the functions of police or even what their fundamental directives and purposes are. Thanks largely to film, “serve and protect” became a phrase people applied to all police despite that being the motto of the Los Angeles police department and not some official principle or legal decree of police services.
The individual officer is seen as some absolute authority with jurisdiction and perhaps responsibility to stop any crime and do it while respecting civil rights and social trends. That said- police in general are given a wide range of discretion and the “word” of an officer tends to carry alot of weight because they are an officer.

Let’s look at the high stakes results oriented largely non union corporate world for a moment. Do you think that if a retail employee, has the level of discretion or faith of a low level police employee? Do you think that if someone says: “this customer says your employee used a slur..” that “No I didn’t” is sufficient defense in most cases? That if something went disastrously wrong, the company is going to stand by and say: “our employees don’t do that!” Now- the corporate world could use a little more faith in employees sure. But the word of a police officer will trump the world of almost anyone else if it’s he said she said. Sometimes the word of a police officer will trump video. Can you imagine an employee caught on camera slapping a customer out of nowhere and then being able to argue successfully they were justified and even be backed by their company? Probably not.

The truth is that while the job is hard and it takes a lot to do well and many police are practically if not super human, a lot aren’t. Some are perhaps even barely passing as human by some standards. That image of a pristine and noble profession full of the best of the best conflicts with the reality in cases where someone is just human or I competent for the job or malicious etc. and well… maybe that’s something we need to address. Maybe we need to have some tiered standards and maybe the trust and power given to officers needs to be more closely controlled based upon some more regimented criteria and new tiered standards. Maybe we do need bodies but for those things we just need bodies for we don’t have to have a “blue brotherhood” anymore than a doctor needs to feel an orderly is their “brother.” They don’t let orderlies prescribe drugs because they arent doctors even if they work together.

To the original joke- there are around 100,00 commercial pilots and 700,000 law enforcement if you recall. There are actually more than 700,000 PILOTS in the USA and many more if we count drones, just 100,000 commercial. Why? Because flying a drone has risks but you aren’t in the thing. No one is. Flying a glider and a single engine prop plane without passengers and only in good weather and daylight is a different thing. Each level of piloting, each increase in ability and power and responsibility is its own certification. Flying 4 people across a lake is not the same responsibility or skill set as flying 300 people across the Atlantic Ocean. Flying a jet isn’t the same as flying a Cessna bush plane. A single engine Vs. Multi engine, instruments vs. visual etc etc.

With pilots we recognize that just being a pilot doesn’t mean you should be allowed to fly anything anywhere anytime with any number of passengers on blind faith you are “a pilot.” Oh- and a lot of the time in modern aviation, some of all of the process in landing a commercial plane safely is handled by automation. Because we know even the best pilots make mistake and things go wrong so leaving it all up to the person behind the stick is foolish unless it can’t be helped. While the pilot does have ultimate discretion as they are at the controls, they also are monitored and controlled in real time and if their decisions deviate from protocol or control, they need to defend it. If a pilot is command of a decision or at the stick when the plane doesn’t land or someone dies that is very likely the end of their career. Pilots are federally licensed and regulated. Airports don’t get to say: “I know New York requires all these things but this here isn’t New York, so you can fly an airliner..

.. because you did long haul trucking 15 years and flew model planes since you were 10 and that’s good enough!” Not how that works. Police are often barely state regulated. There is no “police license.” You don’t go to college and get a “police degree” that you can walk out the door and go become an officer anywhere, and there isn’t a way to “disbar” a police officer really- short of a felony (which can also be negotiable) whatever any particular department requires is what they require, but you can be kicked off every force in a state and get hired somewhere else. So I mean… there isn’t really one “bar” you have to jump to become an officer, there are different bars all over and those bars can move to let people over or block them. There is a tremendous amount of discretions and personal choice at most levels of the profession based on a trust of the profession as a higher vocation- but few standards to ensure that trust is well placed.

In other words, there needs to be higher bars and those bars need to be set and backed by the sorts of certification and training requirements and other results based accountability seen in other critical fields. There needs to be oversight and less reliance on individual discretion where no state is in place to ensure discretion. You can be arrested or cited because an officer BELIEVES you are breaking some law. They are not required to know, just to believe. That’s why you’re innocent until proven guilty. Understand what that means.

Officer arrive to a noise complaint by your neighbor. You’re playing a game on low volume. In universe A the officer talks to you, to the neighbor. Laughs with you a bit and basically says your neighbor needs to chill and leave. In universe B a different officer comes and you get a ticket.
Scenario 2: you’re driving your car and get pulled over. The officer issues you a ticket for exhaust noise. The limit for exhaust noise is a legally set number with some vague caveats. It doesn’t matter if your exhaust was too loud or not. Can the officer identify 86.6 decibels by ear? Can they tell a difference between 86.6 and 86.9? If the legal limit was 98 decibels and your exhaust was 97.4 decibels- could they tell? 99.999% of officers don’t have and don’t use equipment to measure sound from a complaint, and measuring sound is a tricky thing in the real world and takes some effort and know how as well as some controls and such.

So in the case of noise complaints you’re usually in a he said she said unless it is abundantly and plainly obvious- but when it comes to things like that exhaust ticket, they will likely just send you to an official agency that will measure your sound and either say “it’s fine” or order a legally mandated correction and recertification either case will carry fees and require you to spend time and money and effort just to prove that some random police officer doesn’t have the war of a concert pianist and just prefers law to music.
Are you loitering or standing or waking legally? Did you get a citation or a boot or a tow for being parked for too long? Were you actually not there too long? Better have some good proof- maybe some surveillance footage showing you arrive with a time stamp or some sort of GPS proof.

Oops. Maybe not good enough. Because… if you have film showing you arrive, the officer can say you were parked there earlier and came back and that exceeded the total time allowed. No “resetting the clock” and all that. Now you need to hope you can prove you didn’t park there the whole day. That GPS proof? What integrity does it have? What proof can you offer that you couldn’t have massaged or manufactured or manipulated the data or that it is accurate to the standards required to call an officer of the law a blatant liar? What motive does this officer have to lie? An officer of the law who serves the community couldn’t possibly have just been trying to harass someone or make someone days worse or exercise some grudge or made a mistake and then tried to cover it up etc right?

So maybe not all officers or even most officers should be considered upper human. Maybe we need to consider police as civil servants, maybe the level of trust we put in the profession needs to match better with the level of verification we apply to the field or individual position. Maybe we need to expect less from mass uniformed officers tasked with routine or specific duties and empower them less to exercise discretion or execute tasks beyond their reasonable scope. Maybe we need to look at this the way it is- there are cooks and bar tenders at eateries across America. Some are very bad, some are just kids looking for a job and they like the image or perks and lifestyle. Others are good. Even world class. At some mall someone is a kid reheating frozen deserts or mixing $2 cocktails that has the skills or potential to be a master at the best places in the world.
And we can say similar for police. But- we need someone to sit next to road work and catch speeders or to…

Respond to calls that someone reading a book or having a small dinner is disturbing the peace. We need people to just stand around and remind people there are police and they are being watched and by doing so help remind people to behave and mitigate trouble before or starts. We also need skilled detectives and we need people to deal with dangerous criminals and those who a simple reminder they might get in trouble isn’t enough to stop it. And… those don’t need to be the same people. We don’t need a swat team to patrol the mall and we don’t need a mall cop dealing with hostage situations. So to each their aptitudes and to each altitude the respect and power that might warrant.