>>lpolov+(OP)
In other words, police act like laws don't apply to them because they don't (not in some "that's what it feels like" sense, but as a matter of precedent and court finding). See starting at 3 here https://threader.app/thread/1266053291684827138 , and the linked https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli... .

>>lpolov+(OP)
It's sad to see how little progress has been made on concrete reforms that would meaningfully reduce these problems. Curtailing qualified immunity, and limiting the power of police unions to protect "bad apples" is something with bi-partisan ideological support.

https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/less-government-m...

https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-poli...

https://www.cato.org/blog/why-qualified-immunity

You'd think reforms to qualified immunity--which everyone from the ACLU to Heritage to Cato agrees on--would be on the fast track to legislation, at least in left-leaning states. There is no reason a state like California, where politicians habitually genuflect to social justice, couldn't pass legislation to create causes of action against police officers that aren't subject to the federal constitution's qualified immunity doctrine. None at all. Instead, for some reason the debate is now about whether rioting and property destruction is an acceptable response to police brutality--an extreme position that is not going to carry the day with anyone but a tiny minority.

>>lpolov+(OP)
They have immunity and no requirement to protect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

>>remote+u5
Here's a police recruitment ad (admittedly from more than a decade ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rKA6ROAVk

(Newport Beach Police Department recruiting video, from 2008)

And the problem is just the salary and QI? I don't think so.

>>remote+u5
Meanwhile in reality, some districts disqualify any applicant that can pass an IQ test: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

>>mydong+06
That's the problem. Police don't serve us. "To protect and serve" is literally just a marketing slogan for the LAPD [0]. Police have no duty to protect the public, according to the Supreme Court [1]. Moreover, the origin of police forces in the US was not to protect the public, but to protect the social order and serve private property interests:

> More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to "disorder." What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. [2]

--

[0]: http://www.lapdonline.org/history_of_the_lapd/content_basic_...

[1]: https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...

[2]: https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united...

>>remote+u5
San Jose:

https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=san-jos...

Doubling the total compensation there would mean about 50% of those people would be making 500k+/year. I don't think they're as underpaid as you think they are. Most of those people on that list already make more than me as a non-FAANG Software Engineer in the region.

>>Camero+N7
It comes with additional benefits, as well. Both the official ones, and informal benefits like the ability for oneself and one’s family to get out of traffic tickets. Growing up in a small town I watched one friend (whose father was a cop) get out of tickets regularly in his muscle car. In Arizona, now, members of the ‘police family’ can purchase KOA-789 license plate frames [0] to be afforded the same privilege at scale.

[0] https://azplea.com/plea-news/the-plea-store-is-open-for-busi...

>>mydong+9a
Training currently seems to actively preclude deescalation. This makes me skeptical that anyone currently within the organizations could adequately discern who else within their organization deserves the privilege to be armed.

https://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton...

>>lpolov+(OP)
Related ongoing thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537

>>fireth+q8
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23370056

>>bcrosb+R9
Average salary of police in Minneapolis appears to be about $60k. I don't know why you're just picking the highest salaries to talk about. https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/police-offi...

>>cwhiz+f9
By what metric? https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Po...

>>Dangit+jc
Interesting... It does look like cops's salaries are below average in most states: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Av...

>>cwhiz+Cd
Actually, 0% of them are even at median [1][2]. Here's the first few for comparison:

    State,PDSalary,Median,Difference
    Alabama,"42,383.00","49,396.00","-7,013.00"
    Alaska,"48,418.00","68,400.00","-19,982.00"
    Arizona,"44,987.00","62,311.00","-17,324.00"
    Arkansas,"42,668.00","49,778.00","-7,110.00"
    California,"47,600.00","70,001.00","-22,401.00"
    Colorado,"45,488.00","72,620.00","-27,132.00"
    Connecticut,"48,738.00","73,011.00","-24,273.00"
    Delaware,"45,549.00","65,002.00","-19,453.00"
    Florida,"40,904.00","54,401.00","-13,497.00"
    Georgia,"43,399.00","56,000.00","-12,601.00"

You can find the rest here: https://pastebin.com/wYcLzt6g

[1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Po...

[2] https://dqydj.com/average-income-by-state-median-top-percent...

>>corrys+9e
Below median and average in all states, actually. The data here only shows median but I did it for average as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23374398

>>asjw+x9
Do you consider "below median in all 50 states" to be "very, very good"?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23374398

>>newacc+Aa
I, myself, have been wondering where the "free speech" crowd is this week. A common theme I see here is outrage about censorship by private companies. In the last 4 years, we've seen Trump railing against the press, encouraging people to assault members of the press, etc. In the last 4 days, we've seen members of the press getting maimed, falsely arrested, and assaulted by the police. This is overt suppression of the press by the government, plain and simple violations of our constitution (and quite relevant to this story). This kind of treatment of the press is something that's been used as a partial justification to invade other countries in my lifetime -- that it's happening in the US with hardly any commentary by the "free speech" advocates is a great disappointment to me.

But the "reactionary" crowd is still here -- looking at their patterns of posting on [1], it looks almost tailored to get the story flagged (accounts got banned, but that page only lasted on the front page for a few good minutes). The truth of the matter is that folks are uncomfortable discussing race, because our community has internalized a lot racism. Discussing our society's painfully visible race inequity is "flamebait" because racists gonna show up and drag the conversation down.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23355964

>>lpolov+(OP)
Related, from earlier today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371537

>>stonog+7z
The timeline looks like this:

http://www.paufler.net/brettrants/161_amendments_graphs.html

I wouldn't consider that indicative of the ease of passing an amendment. Perhaps you do. It appears to require an increasingly-hard-to-get combination of (1) widespread agreement that a problem requiring an amendment exists and (2) widespread agreement on what the nature of the amendment should be.