They aren’t as much of outliers as you might think, and yes, eliminating those outliers is absolutely the goal.
But you seem to be thinking that no good person will want to be subject to accountability and consequences. Nobody is suggesting that a cop be immediately terminated forever for any minor mistake they might make. Not even necessarily for a big mistake. There are different degrees of punishment for different levels of mistakes and violations.
Everyone understands that in the course of their profession, police may need to shoot and kill a suspect. If a cop makes a potentially understandable mistake, even if it leads to the death of another person, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re permanently banned. Track record and reasonableness given the situation are important to consider.
Courts still lean heavily towards giving police the benefit of the doubt and that’s not going to change any time soon. So this fear mongering of “scrutiny means good people won’t be cops” just doesn’t stand up. If they’re as good as you say, they should be okay with following professional standards, upholding the law, and exercising good judgement on a regular basis. And those are not the cops that this type of legislation would be targeting.
But at this moment, we all know there are still too many problem cops, and the mechanisms in place aren’t strong enough to prevent a problem cop with a history from continuing to be a cop. At a certain point, enough is enough.
They aren’t as much of outliers as you might think, and yes, eliminating those outliers is absolutely the goal.
But you seem to be thinking that no good person will want to be subject to accountability and consequences. Nobody is suggesting that a cop be immediately terminated forever for any minor mistake they might make. Not even necessarily for a big mistake. There are different degrees of punishment for different levels of mistakes and violations.
Everyone understands that in the course of their profession, police may need to shoot and kill a suspect. If a cop makes a potentially understandable mistake, even if it leads to the death of another person, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re permanently banned. Track record and reasonableness given the situation are important to consider.
Courts still lean heavily towards giving police the benefit of the doubt and that’s not going to change any time soon. So this fear mongering of “scrutiny means good people won’t be cops” just doesn’t stand up. If they’re as good as you say, they should be okay with following professional standards, upholding the law, and exercising good judgement on a regular basis. And those are not the cops that this type of legislation would be targeting.
But at this moment, we all know there are still too many problem cops, and the mechanisms in place aren’t strong enough to prevent a problem cop with a history from continuing to be a cop. At a certain point, enough is enough.