Police Reform

5 min readJun 9, 2020

With the recent turn of events and wave of videos revealing the truths among Police Brutality. I figure I would jump on the idea train and share some of my thoughts. While I am not a police officer and I have not consulted any officers before I typed this piece, I am willing to change my stand if I do hear compelling arguments to any of my following points. From learning about many of the systematic problems among police reform, we would see that many problems stemmed from the Police Union.

Picture was taken from https://www.thelivefeeds.com/new-jersey-announces-law-enforcement-reforms-in-wake-of-protests-against-police-brutality/

A Community Review Board

While the Police Union, like all other labor unions, is vital in protecting the rights of the police, there is a need to have laws preventing police brutality and abuse of power. The community and the police should jointly establish an independent police community review board whose objective is to improve police to community relationships and make sure the police and the police union accountable. The board will have its voting power divided among ⅓ to individuals in the community, ⅓ to organizations such as small businesses and schools, and ⅓ to the police, all proportional to the precinct(s) within the community.

Police License

Like a driver’s license, police officers are subjected to a number of points where they would be deducted based on types and severity of the complaints, where the Review Board would manage the point system. If the officer loses half of all the points available, he/she would be required to take a de-escalation course. If the officer loses 75% of the points, the officer would be subjected to an official review of past conduct, reassigned to desk duty, and s potential investigation. Upon losing all the points, the officer will be suspended without pay until passing a reevaluation process. They will be considered terminated with just cause if they failed to pass such reevaluation within 6 months.

Divestment of policing

The Police Community Review Board will be funded under the budget directed to the specific police department. After fulfilling a minimum number of standards for the police department, the Review Board could redirect the remaining budget to other localized programs under a specific guideline that could help promote community safety such as education, counseling, mental health programs, community centers, etc, especially program targeted at reinvesting to the said community.

A National Registry of Police Licensing

Often times we see the former officer who was fired for misconduct gets rehired elsewhere around the country, by having a licensing system we could further enforce and limit any future misconducts of the said former officer by preventing him/her from gaining the position in law enforcement. [1, 2] A national standard for training and policing standard will also be enforced by a National Police Commission, whose main responsibility is to partner with the CDC and analyze policing effectiveness and crime data across the country, to further improve and reform the quality of law enforcement, thus further setting the stage of police accountability. However, while the national police commission should set the guideline for standard practices, the responsibility for such enforcing practices remains at the local level as different jurisdictions require different types of resolution to better the community. [3]

Regulation for Policing in Action

Bodycam

Law enforcement officers, along with any government officials, should be held at a high standard by civilians. In the case of a bodycam, it must be on at all times. The bodycam will be connected to a mesh network with the officer’s peers as well as the patrol car, this will reduce the possibility of losing video evidence when the camera memory or the network is bad.

Badges and Nametag

Whenever the Law Enforcement office is on duty, he/she must display their badge and Nametag at all times, unless they have a justified cause or in an undercover mission. The reason is so they could be held accountable and be subjected to cross-reference in police misconducts and complaints. If the officer does not have his/her name tag and badge out, the officer will not be considered not on duty and will be subjected to disciplinary review as not showing up for work.

Police Reporting

Every scenario is different and every event is another learning experience. Documenting is not only good for maintaining police accountability, but it is also good for the officer to reflect and learn from his/her experience. It’s especially crucial when the said situation was highly stressful where the officer had to make split-second and/or life-and-death decisions with limited understanding of the circumstance.

Police Insurance

Insurance would be individually applied based on the officer’s past conduct, the similarity between the officer’s background and the area of their precinct. This will also help offload much liability on a jurisdiction's budget.

Community Law Enforcement

We already have some form of such with Neighborhood Watch and considering the average time required for someone to be on the force is 672 hours [4] or about 4 months full time. Meanwhile, the bottleneck is often skills that requires a much longer training time, such as social work and psychology. It’s thus easier for someone who has other qualifying skills such as social workers to be a law enforcement officer than the other way around. By spreading it out into an 8-month training process, psychologists and social worker who becomes a law enforcement officer may be a more versatile and effective officer than the ones we have today.

Conviction and Qualified immunity

Any potential unlawful act committed by the law enforcement officer will be charged at one degree higher than the act stated on the system panel code. That is, if an officer committed a Class A Misdemeanor, the officer will be sentenced under the guideline of Class D Felony. Further, Qualified immunity will only be applied on a case to case base and the burden of proof shall rest on the defender side.