Let me first preface this with a disclaimer: I'm gonna talk trash about police, but I don't want to imply that all police officers are bad, some are true heroes. Let me also say that society puts FAR TOO MUCH BURDEN ON POLICE, they are tasked with dealing with every problem that slips through the cracks... from poverty and homelessness, to mental illness, to domestic abuse, to drug addiction... it is TOO MUCH for them to handle when the larger system is so fundamentally flawed that these "externalities" are incredibly ubiquitous. That said, it's also not "one bad apple," the INSTITUTION of policing is definitely trash, and the institution is what we are mostly concerned with.
If you're middle-class+, the most likely interaction you've had with the police is reactive... that is a crime took place (ex. a break-in, property theft, etc.) and AFTERWARDS the police came to fill out a report, etc. If you're poor (i.e. you look poor, or are a minority the police don't like), it's likely you were stopped/pulled-over when no crime was taking place and wasn't even likely to. Why does this system never seem to actually CATCH criminals but regularly puts a police presence in positions to harass/fine you?
Let's start with MONEY issues, how are police funded? Some comes from known taxes (i.e. property tax, etc.), but there is an uncounted tax...FINES. Whenever you get a speeding ticket, parking fine, etc., you are being "taxed" again, and sometimes this "revenue stream" is FAR GREATER than the money they get from any other source. There are whole towns/STATES, who desperately rely on these fines just to have functioning budgets... think about that, they MUST FIND people to fine to function... it's not based on the amount of danger presented, or harm to society, or harm to the ecosystem, or "out of control speeding"... it is required for them to exist. So much of the "policing" that is going on is actually fund-raising in the form of fines... so when they say they don't have enough police, what they really mean is they are too busy fining you.
Addendum: Civil Asset ForfeitureWhat is that? That is when they police are allowed to steal anything you have when you are in the process of committing a crime. Your kid sells some pot out of your garage, they can steal your house and vehicle; uncle Joe borrows your car and picks up a prostitute, they can take your car; in fact Civil Asset Forfeiture STEALS more money than the value of all the actual reports of theft in some years.
So bottom line, we need to fund police appropriately for what they need to do, and stop with the fining nonsense. We must eliminate the perverse incentives and make sure money goes into activities that FUNCTIONALLY prevent crime.
Let's move on to "danger" issues, that is, how much danger are police willing to put themselves in? As we've seen with cell phone videos of blacks/protesters being shot... it has nothing to do with danger, it is completely up to the officer how they want to apply this term. A huge group of assault-weapon carrying terrorists groups can march down the street (even threaten to kill politicians and storm capitol buildings), and as long as they wear khakis and are fair-skinned, the "danger" seems to be assessed as low... but get "unruly" during a protest for blacks/environment and all of a sudden you are "reaching for their weapon" and eligible for execution. None of this NEED be the case, if there were clear procedures for what level of lethality of equipment should be brought into certain situations, and the APPLICATION of that force was clearly predetermined and ENFORCED, we could hold officers accountable. Officers should be required to put themselves in harms way, but ONLY when it's necessary and within strict protocols. After such protocols are clearly defined, Qualified Immunity needs to either be abolished or have clear limits, so that abuse cannot be institutionalized. As far as regulation, a third party needs to be involved in "policing the police"; they cannot be allowed to self-police (that applies to the prosecutors they work with also).
I'll just add one more point, and that's the problem of Authoritarianism. We have to CLEARLY define how much privacy we want, what are the bounds of police action, and which tools are available to police. If we want police to catch people BEFORE they commit crimes, they need to have the ability... that could mean officers in the field, patrolling the neighborhood; that could mean cameras on streets, that could mean DNA databases, but it is a slippery slope to authoritarianism and we must decide, as a society, how to balance this.
Note: Recently in the news, a rape victim had her RAPE KIT used to identify her DNA so they could arrest her for an unrelated property crime... meanwhile, rape kits are piling up and are going uninvestigated; sometimes we live in a dystopia Lex Luthor would blush at.
We need to carefully meter out powers to the police and there needs to be checks and balances put in place to ensure they use the power given to them and nothing more.
Right now policing is an industry, not a public service... it protects the property of the wealthy, it oppresses minorities for the majority, and it raises funds for the budgets of elites. Only as a side concern does it do we all WANT, that is to ensure public safety and prevent crime. In order for institutions to do what we want, they have to be DESIGNED to do so and the incentives have to reflect those goals.
