Are all these police forces run autonomously? Are they based upon states or cities? How is the training and disciplining done?
How is it that for years now police shoot so many and nothing seems to change? Are the police in an area are not looking at another and saying that we can do better than them?
The video that Patooka posted answers all of these questions pretty succinctly, but I get that not everyone likes watching video, so here's a summary of the key points:
People have a reasonable concern about police accountability in the US because there have been many "controversial" instances of police killing people, but either the police officers, nor the departments they work for, are held accountable. Oliver names three victims: Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and Tamir Rice, the last of whom was only twelve years old when he was shot.
Oliver cites some police officers and conservative commentators who excuse these incidents as the actions of "bad apples". Oliver rejects this defence on several grounds. Firstly, bad apples "erode trust" in the police. Secondly, it doesn't address the bad laws that police are required to enforce. Thirdly, no-one actually knows how many "bad apples" there are, because law enforcement isn't even keeping track. The most damning critique of this "few bad apples" defence comes from the fact that cases of misconduct are covered up.
Cover-ups come in several forms:
- Police departments are responsible for investigating themselves, and so they have a strong incentive to drag their feet and be gentle on investigated officers.
- Police who report their fellow officers for misconduct are labelled as traitors and their fellow police officers abandon them without support in dangerous situations on the streets.
- Some jurisdictions allow disciplinary records to be destroyed, sometimes after a very short time (e.g. 18 months), erasing evidence of police misconduct.
- Police officers avoid disciplinary action, and prosecution for crimes, by resigning and moving to a department in another county. The officer who shot Tamir Rice was one such "gypsy cop"; he was hired by the Cleveland PD while still under investigation in his previous department, where a supervisor recorded that he was not fit to be a police officer.
- Police are seldom prosecuted, and when they are, they are seldom convicted. Part of the problem is that the prosecutors and police are co-workers. Prosecutors rely on police, and work with them in the same officers, so it's only natural that they're reluctant to prosecute, and if they do prosecute, they sometimes sabotage their own cases. Officers often enjoy a presumption of innocence, both from judges and from juries, because then general public tend to trust police officers.
Lastly, police unions are unwilling to take the initiative to improve the conduct of their members. They oppose the implementation of body cameras.
So to answer your questions:
Are all these police forces run autonomously? Are they based upon states or cities? How is the training and disciplining done?
No police force is autonomous: they work for a city, country, or state. However, as J842P has pointed out, this means that there are almost 18 thousand police departments in the country. This is a massive contrast with our experience in Australia, where a state's police department is responsible for all of the policing that would done by city, county and state police departments in the US.
The consolidated nature of our Australian police departments means that they can consolidate critical resources and responsibilities, such as recruiting, training, communication, records, allocating personnel and other resources, and funding. This means that our state police are consistently selected, trained, resourced and then
held to a high standard that is matched by only the best police departments in the US.
You think our police departments are badly behaved? Most of the police departments in the US are worse, and some are far worse.
How is it that for years now police shoot so many and nothing seems to change? Are the police in an area are not looking at another and saying that we can do better than them?
- Lack of accountability.
- Police unions actively oppose police reforms.
- Police risk their careers, and potentially put their lives in danger, if they speak out against misconduct.
- Some Americans are fine with the way the police conduct themselves, because they themselves are unlikely to be on the receiving end of police brutality.
- Some people believe that police should use brutal tactics to deal with offenders, up to and including shooting them when if it could be avoided.
Lastly, our police in Australia have an easier job than US police do. Firstly, Australians are rarely armed, so traffic stops and emergency dispatches are far less likely to put our police officers in lethal danger. Secondly, Australia isn't plagued with the same social problems found in the US, such as widespread and severe poverty and lack of infrastructure and services, so it's easier to our police to keep the peace.
