Police shootings (repost)
From an old facebook message, ~7/2017. The context was a discussion of the problem of police shootings.
To my mind, a central problem is that the police are not held to the same standards as the rest of society. If a cop shoots someone while on the job, it is virtually certain that he will not be punished, almost regardless of the circumstances. E.g., there could be a video of the cop shooting an unarmed person, and the cop still probably won't be punished. If he is, he will probably be only administratively punished (e.g., suspended or fired), not criminally punished (e.g., with jail time).
But I see no easy way of fixing this. It is not just a matter of some particular government policy. It is a defect in our entire culture. Even if you can get a prosecutor to prosecute one, juries won't convict a cop. I can only guess that's because most people irrationally think that "the authorities" must be in the right, because they're wearing badges.
If I shoot an unarmed man because I falsely thought he had a gun, I think I'm going to be in some serious trouble. Now, I'm not saying what the result should be in such cases; I am just saying that whatever it is, it should be the same regardless of whether I work for the government.
Of course, police are more likely to be in dangerous situations than I am. So I mean controlling for that -- i.e., if a private citizen and a government official are in equally dangerous situations, with equally strong reason for suspecting that another person is a danger to them, then they should be treated equally when they mistakenly kill that other person. That really doesn't seem to be the case.
Activists and the media say the issue is racism on the part of police. That might be so, but this NYT article indicates the data is mixed and insufficient: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/sunday-review/race-and-police-shootings-are-blacks-targeted-more.html
It's not clear if the problem is racism. But I think our message should be that we don't want anyone being wrongly shot, regardless of whether racism plays a role or not.
A possible policy proposal: If a police officer shoots an unarmed person, he loses his job. Comments:
The purpose of this would be to remove from the police force people who are more likely to kill people who shouldn't be killed. This reduces the risk of future mistaken shootings, simply by selection.
Note that this does not presuppose that all such shootings are subjectively unjustified. The purpose of the policy is not punitive but simply to reduce future risk.
Because of this, I think the operative norm is not the presumption of innocence. The operative norm is that to hold this particular job, you should have to demonstrate that you are an especially low-risk, good-judgment person. No one has a right to this job, and the job is risky, so it is fair to have a presumption against the ability to hold the job of police officer.
Compare: suppose an employee of a private company made an error that resulted in killing a customer. That employee would be out of the company that day, regardless of whether the employee's error seemed understandable in the circumstances. They wouldn't require proof that the employee was at fault. Keeping that person on would simply be too much of a risk. If you agree that this makes sense, apply the same logic to the government.
More broadly, this policy could be applied to any case in which there is a pretty good chance that the officer used excessive force. Again, it shouldn't have to be proved that the cop acted wrongly. It's enough to say that the employee poses too high of a risk.
Would this result in police using too little force, i.e., failing to shoot in cases in which they should shoot? Maybe, but in other cases, it would prevent excessive force. In my view, if you could be deterred from killing a person by the thought that if you're wrong, you'll lose your job, then you probably should not in fact kill that person.
Would some police suffer undeserved job losses? Yes. But we should weigh that against the citizens who suffer undeserved death in the status quo. If a cop shoots someone wrongly, that person loses not just his job but his life.