Quote:
Originally Posted by SackAttack
I don't give a shit if it "creates more division."
If law enforcement are supposed to be the best among us, hold them to a higher fucking standard. Make sure that those who wear a badge and gun ARE the best among us.
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It's getting harder and harder to recruit police officers. The pickings are getting slimmer and slimmer in my state. There's lots of talk of making the application process simpler and disqualifying fewer applicants. There is a downside to a growing anti-cop culture. Who applies for these jobs in 2017? A lot of people who have no other job prospects, and some people who are so committed to public service that they'll overlook the backlash. But when we insist on grouping police together as collectively evil, there's a lot fewer of the latter and a lot more of the former. The police academies do their best to figure out who belongs to each group, but it's not like there's this huge pool of people to draw from, and there's only so much you can do to predict how someone will act in a stressful situation. People would surprised how little training is actually available for your random rural police officer in the U.S. In my state they learn on the job and have real-world experience before they even get to the basic state academy law training. I'm still in awe of the people who take on this responsibility and do it well though. It's those people I think about when I get defensive about the blanket criticisms of police as a whole. It's a hard job and the people who excel at it are, I think, pretty amazing.
So how do you get "the best among us" - let's say for starters, college educated people without criminal records - to be police officers? If we've decided that the current active police officers aren't good enough, how do we get people who currently are not police officers to take their place and do a better job? We do fire a lot of officers in my state, but it's not like there's all these qualified people sitting on the sidelines who desperately wanted to become officers but didn't make the cut.