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5 comments to The Peter Police Principle

• EdinMiami

  August 6, 2009 at 6:42 PM

  I think you are quite possibly on to something. There is “Burn Out” for Officers who can’t “hack” it. However, the job itself is not that hard or stressful in so far as it concerns serving the public. OTOH, the job can be exponentially stressful in dealing with other officers and supervisory personnel. So it is more than reasonable to argue that those who enjoy the work of servicing the community are, at some point, shown the door. Which would only leave those who enjoy the job for the power, for authority, or for personal enrichment.

  But how to break the cycle?….

• Packratt

  August 6, 2009 at 7:35 PM

  EdinMiami,

  How to solve it? Well, that’s an interesting question when you’re looking at an organization that responds to problem-makers by promoting them out of where they can get into trouble. It creates an organization that is permeated with corruption as those promoted, in turn, promote others like them and they climb through the ranks to become leaders of whole departments.

  When that happens, who do you trust not to be corrupted? Internally, you can’t solve it since it’s so deeply-rooted. Take out a few who openly act out, fine, but you’re still left with others who have that mindset, but who wait it out until another department head comes along… if they don’t force that to happen earlier.

  The only real solution is to move disciplinary and investigatory authority outside of the organization. While that has happened, partially, in some places, those independent oversight agencies are still dependent on police leadership to discipline, can be completely ignored, have little to no investigative authority, and tend to be filled with police officers who worked at very same organization they are charged to oversee.

  Oversight has to be completely independent and empowered to work, it needs to be free from interference from the police agency itself and from civic leadership who tend to favor cover-ups over true accountability due to fear of civil liabilities if they admit there are problems.

  Do you see that happening soon without a groundswell of popular support for that kind of initiative? Especially in the face of state laws that forbid something like that from coming into effect without the express permission of police unions who are dead set against the idea?

  Probably not soon, and probably not without something so egregiously wrong that it sparks a national level of outrage sufficient enough to push national and state lawmakers into demanding changes too.

  In any case… it’s a complicated problem, it’s not something that can be solved with a simple answer I’m afraid.

  Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it!

• Who

  August 6, 2009 at 11:48 PM

  One other thing that can be done is to encourage victims of police misconduct to bring lawsuits against the individual officer(s) who acted inappropriately or brutally, rather than suing the department or municipality. If the individual officers know they are subject to being personally sued and will face paying the judgement/settlement out of their own pockets instead of being paid by the taxpayers, this kind of behavior will cease, PDK.

  I also endorse your idea of external investigatory agencies with teeth and the authority to use them.

• Packratt

  August 7, 2009 at 1:24 AM

  Who,

  While I definitely agree in theory on the idea that holding individual officers accountable via civil liability might help reduce police misconduct… the problem is in the reality of it, just as it is in my suggestion about independent oversight.

  The first problem is that there are few police misconduct victims out there who can afford to pay a lawyer upfront to take on a civil rights case, it’s quite the expensive endeavor. That being the case, there aren’t many lawyers out there who would take on a case on a contingency basis while knowing that the person they are looking to sue won’t be able to pay that much… and how much that entity pays directly affects how much the lawyer is paid.

  Even despite that rather high hurdle, the other problem lies in the issue of qualified immunity. When police departments refuse to issue findings of willful misconduct and specifically say that a police officer acted outside the scope of their authority then that officer is granted immunity from civil liability. When civil rights suits are filed, the first thing the lawyers hired by the city to defend their police officers will do is tell the court to dismiss individual officers from the suit under qualified immunity statutes… and the courts almost always do.

  Of course, the other problem is that the city and police unions, with lots more money than you or I have, always fund the police officer’s defense and they have lawyers who specialize in police misconduct defense at their beck and call. So, their risk in taking on a case is a lot lower than your or my risks in forking over our life savings to a lawyer in hopes of winning a case when, well, the reality is that most civil rights cases don’t end well, especially against individual cops.

  Now, I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea, it’s a good one… but it’s not practical until some fundamental changes are made to the civil justice system and the laws that govern police liability… just like my idea isn’t going to happen until some fundamental changes to laws that allow police unions to refuse to accept contracts that alter disciplinary rules and unless there is a lot of pressure on politicians to push for improved police accountability at the risk of increased civil liabilities for government.

  The key, I think, is a matter of building a broader base of support for the idea of improving police accountability and pushing for changes a bit higher up than just the local level. But that’s just my opinion of course.

  Thanks for the comment!

• EdinMiami

  August 7, 2009 at 7:48 AM

  (solving)

  Obviously, I think sites like this help to get the word out, which is part of the answer. Hopefully, others will step up and actually use the information to begin organizing citizens. So that is one strategy for change.

  The other one is monetary penalties through civil courts. This is my preferred method. People may not fully understand police misconduct (and all of it’s underlying issues), or politics; but everyone understands that it costs them money when their city or county is paying out monies for civil suits.

  Of course, there is always the outside chance that the national media will inadvertently hit on a story that eventually changes the dialogue. I know it’s a long shot but even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in awhile. :)

Injustice Everywhere

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