The murder of George Floyd is only the tip of an iceberg. This iceberg, most of which you do not see, is made up of thousands of hapless detainees being kneed on by police officers. You do not hear about them because most will not die from it; or even if they did, there is no video-graph of it spreading over the internet. Most people have come to realize that even if the murderer of George Floyd is convicted, very little will really change unless we address the thousands of other cases that we never even heard about.
So what exactly should we hope to achieve to prevent another murder like this in the future?
What to Want:
1) An independent prosecutor: 'Internal Investigations' and District Attorneys are notoriously incapable of prosecuting fellow police officer that they interact with and rely on in the normal course of business. That is why we should legislate an independent office at the state level whose primary focus is on investigating and prosecuting misconduct by police officers. This body, with strong Citizen review should not be beholden to the cops in any way.
2) Body cameras and video recording: We need to spend the money to have 'always on' body cameras for all officers and video recording equipment in all police buildings. This footage should definitely be available to police officers for review. But it should automatically be backed up off site under the control of the Independent prosecutor as above.
3) Repeal the 'Qualified Immunity' for police officers: 'Qualified Immunity' is a judicial construct by the Supreme court which makes it very difficult for a victim to sue a police officer for damages unless there is a prior precedent where similar conduct was ruled a violation of the victim's rights. We need federal legislation to have it repealed.
4) Get the Police out of Union contracts: The contracts, usually union contracts, that various jurisdictions enter into with police officers these days, are not in the best interest of the people and justice. We need to hire officers under terms more suitable to the citizenry, even if that means setting up a new police force.
Of course there are economic and political barriers that we need to overcome to achieve our objectives. Hiring a new prosecutor, buying body-cameras and servers is expensive. We need to reduce our resources spent in enforcing morality - the drug war, breaking prostitution rings etc: probably eliminate those laws completely. What other objectives should we try to achieve to prevent another murder, like George Floyd's, from occurring in the future? Leave a comment!
