The Final Action

Hello again all my followers this will be one of my last blogs i will be posting to our website. My Co-bloggers and i have be congregating and trying to figure the best way to take action on our police advocacy movement. We have thought about what we actually want to accomplish with what we are doing. We just asked ourselves “ how can we make a change that will only positively affect our community?”. The best thing that was thought up is possibly a state ban on police departments making their workers meet a quota of traffic tickets. That alone sounds like a corrupt tactic that shouldn’t have ever been used in a force that “protects and serves”. The police should be here to Serve the Community, not milk it for X amount of traffic tickets to meet a quota.(source) This is just one example of what happens to our police officers. This is unbelievable and it’s not even the police officers fault, it’s whoever’s in charge of them. We need to have an organization that investigates any police stations or districts that force the workers to meet quotas or punishing them if they dont. At Least here in this article there was justice met with some police officers that were forced to commit such corrupt acts. But the cost of This justice was millions of taxpayer dollars being awarded as settlement. This doesn’t seem like good use of our tax money. So there is a lot of cost when it comes to the police force being corrupt. So we need to make a movement to put an end to all the shady things going on in our justice system. Cade v.

Action Plan: Reporting for Duty

“When you have police officers who abuse citizens, you erode public confidence in law enforcement. That makes the job of good police officers unsafe.”

-Mary Frances Berry, former Chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights

Now, we have spent these past few weeks telling you all about the issues that are currently plaguing police departments around the country. We have told you the benefits that would come from making a change, and the costs of such a change. Now, the police departments can’t shoulder such a cost, such a change on their own. They need help. They need your help. They need the help of you, your mother, father, brother, sister, neighbor, coworker. They spend every penny of their exceedingly low budgets sustaining their typically dated equipment for as long as they can, and paying for officers injured in the line of duty. This is why I propose we form and submit a petition to increase the percentage of city and state tax revenue and budgets that go to the Police. Currently, the police budget is lower than it was in 2002, even though police forces have generally got bigger since until 2012, which is when the budget spiked downward. (source) Due to this, the police force has shrunk, nationwide, by 2.6%, while the population has grown by 17% (source) This proves that the Police need our help, need your help.  Now, with this general increase in population and decrease in officers there is some strange behavior going on. Though there was a general downward movement of reported misconduct, and unreported misconduct,(source) in December that downward movement spiked downwards drastically. Now normally that would be good, except it just as sharply spiked back up, and seems to be going on an upward trend into February of this year. This shows that the need to further increase the transparency of our police departments is urgent. So, please, talk to your neighbors, coworkers, family, and instate a petition with your local governing body to promote a body camera fund for your local police department. You can from then on rest easy knowing that any unjust arrests or behavior by the police will be seen and noted immediately.

-Gino W.

Taking Action and Providing a Solution

In order to create change and suspend the dilemma, I would create a legal bill that changes current police policy The policy would be called ,”People’s Protection Act” it would protect the rights of the common man against unfair police treatment. The bill would be instituting new practices that hold the police accountable for their actions. With this bill, it would make the process to become a police officer much more rigorous and it would  requires a more extensive education to even be a police officer. Smarter officers would do their jobs more efficiently and it would prevent controversial situations from happening. People would also have more rights as well, before getting arrested you will be given the exact law you have broken and if the officer is unable to tell you this then you are free to go. My bill would also require all police officers to wear video recording devices that would be running the entire time while on duty.This would be supported by people feeling that their rights are be violated by the police. This bill would help people from getting their rights violate but, it could prevent potential police officers from joining the force. My law could be stopped in its tracks by different police agencies and government officials. This could be stopped because I could reduce the number of police officers.  I will ask my governor to assist me in getting my bill passed.

-Aaron F.

Arrest Quotas Action Plan

California’s Vehicle Code sections 41600-41603 makes setting arrest quotas by law enforcement units illegal. Under this law police administrators are not allowed to use the number of arrests or citations given by officers as a means of determining pay raises,promotions, benefits or dismissals  for officers. However, this law does not state any punishment for any police departments who violate this law and to this day our local police departments are still issuing quotas to our officers. The purpose of this law was to protect ordinary citizens and police officers from the unfairness that stems from these quotas. This includes speed traps, neighborhood targeting and harassment for citizens. Officers face disciplinary action, social stigma, and even unemployment for disagreeing and going against quotas. We can improve this law by providing clear punishments to police departments who fail to uphold this law. Such disciplinary actions must be serious because these people are the ones working to protect us, and we give them so much of our power and money so they can do their job, so if they screw up, they must be dealt with harshly. The state needs to have timely investigations on our police departments to make sure that they are doing their jobs and not abusing their power. By investigating police departments the state is able to reveal illegal actions and issue punishment to the policemen who did injustice to ordinary citizens. Getting to this point will be hard however. Many people will think that this idea would intrude upon police autonomy and prove to be a detriment to law enforcement. This is a state law and would apply to all counties in California and it would be a daunting task to make all of California comply with law.

Lawrence D.

Our Last Action

Hello again all my followers this will be one of my last blogs i will be posting to our website. My Co-bloggers and i have be congregating and trying to figure the best way to take action on our police advocacy movement. We have thought about what we actually want to accomplish with what we are doing. We just asked ourselves “ how can we make a change that will only positively affect our community?”. The best thing that was thought up is possibly a state ban on police departments making their workers meet a quota of traffic tickets. That alone sounds like a corrupt tactic that shouldn’t have ever been used in a force that “protects and serves”. The police should be here to Serve the Community, not milk it for X amount of traffic tickets to meet a quota.(source) This is just one example of what happens to our police officers. This is unbelievable and it’s not even the police officers fault, it’s whoever’s in charge of them. We need to have an organization that investigates any police stations or districts that force the workers to meet quotas or punishing them if they dont. At Least here in this article there was justice met with some police officers that were forced to commit such corrupt acts. But the cost of This justice was millions of taxpayer dollars being awarded as settlement. This doesn’t seem like good use of our tax money. So there is a lot of cost when it comes to the police force being corrupt. So we need to make a movement to put an end to all the shady things going on in our justice system. Cade v.

Taking Action Against Police Quotas

California Vehicle Code 41602 states that Police Departments are not allowed to set quotas for arrests or citations. However even today police departments are still forcing illegal arrest and citation quotas on policemen. These quotas not only sow distrust between the police and citizens, it also sows distrust among policemen themselves. We need to take action to make our government eliminate police quotas entirely. We will start at the state level in California, where we will spread information to the public about the dishonesty and unfairness associated with police quotas, and we will tell the public about how these quotas are a detriment to our society. As with all change concerning the law it will be hard to make the state enforce the law and it will take a long time, maybe five or six years. We will go on marches, demonstrations and speeches in order to bring attention to our issue. In the counties of California we will petition the city councils for further actions such as investigations on police departments to make sure that they are enforcing California’s law against police quotas. We will have to speak to the governor of California and the state legislature through our collective voice and make our government put harder provisions onto the police. California is the first step towards national abolition of police quotas in our police departments.  In time, maybe in thirty or forty years America will be a paragon of police accountability.

The Laws behind Law Enforcement: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Now, in the last post we discussed police transparency, and in the next post I shall talk to you about the costs of police transparency. Here, in this post, I’d like to talk to you about the legislation that is in place regulating police transparency, and the groups that are at a detriment in the current system and would benefit with a change to the system. Now, some examples of the legislature currently in place are this California bill which limits access for police officers to their body camera footage before they write out an incident report themselves, and this Congressional order which requires police officers to file an official report of any on the job shootings they commit. These laws both make police officers more accountable for their actions, and would likely reduce incidents of misconduct by a large amount. The people most affected by this aforementioned misconduct are largely minority groups, especially black people, and it is a clear violation of their civil rights. They rely on the police for protection as much as anyone else, and are entitled to the same amount of protection under the law as any other citizen.  I think, were we to promote change it would have a positive effect on all the facets of our community. Legally, complaints and cases in general would be able to be solved faster, and with greater reliability, not only relying on officer testimony, when there is footage to back up their statements. Socially, it would alleviate some of the fear minorities have towards police officers, and reduce the risk of peaceful protestors becoming the victims of police brutality. The true economic effect of it will be analyzed slightly more in depth in the next post, but it would likely have more a less a negligible effect by giving companies that produce relatively cheap and reliable body cameras large influxes of money as multiple police departments purchase the cameras from them. Truly the change can only be positive, which is why as many of us need to get behind these changes as possible!

-Gino W

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The Price of Protection: Costs and Benefits of Police Accountability

Many people think that the key to solving our problems with police brutality is to give the police body cameras.  I did some research and tend to agree with that viewpoint in general, the benefits of adding police body cameras would, I feel, be greater than the costs, though the costs are substantial. I feel that adding body cameras to the standard police equipment would reduce the number of incidents involving excessive force, and as a result cut down on complaints by citizens. This is due to the fact that if the officer knows that their actions can be immediately be observed. (source) Proof of actions while on duty would help solve complaints faster, due to the video evidence that can be used in court. This has a second helpful effect on costs, because it is likely the quick resolutions would cut down on trial costs for trying civilian complaints. Also, it would help train new officers, and give an officer’s testimony concrete proof. The costs would be the actual physical cost of the equipment, which are typically between $100 and $500 dollars per camera. and perhaps some minor complaints from officers. Another possible cost would be that informants may come forward less if they knew they were being recorded. It is clearly a popular choice because 2000 people out of 500,000 people in Milwaukee all signed a petition to make their police force wear cameras at all times. (source) The fact that is a such a popular and economical decision is a clear reason it should be implemented, but the already strained budgets of police departments would likely be unable to handle such a heavy investment. This means in order to implement this program it would need widespread community and federal support, and quite the influx of money. This is the main reason it has not been properly implemented yet. So, everybody reading, go talk to your mayor, your senator. Write a petition! Try to get this implemented, as it’ll mean a safer environment for everyone!

FILE – In this Jan. 15, 2014 file photo, a Los Angeles Police officer wears an on-body camera during a demonstration for media in Los Angeles. The fatal police shooting of the unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. has prompted calls for more officers to wear so-called “body cameras,” simple, lapel-mounted gadgets that record the interactions between the public and law enforcement. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

Making a Change:Police should be Friends, not Enemies

Police Discrimination has no advantages but, there are positive and negative ways to combat the problem. There are bills drafted by the United States government that try to legalize racial profiling. This all stemming from the fact the some nationalities attract more police attention than others. After 9/11 the Muslim community was under attack by police officer under racial profiling.  Let’s face it stereotypes are real and racism is alive and well in America. The solution I propose is that every year police officers must attend racism seminars and take test to see if there bias toward any race. It would cost a lot of money but, it would provide the police force with the knowledge they need to their job unbiased. It not fair how the minorities in this county are treated but, this is something that has been around since America’s inception. The Police have the ability to kill someone if their own life is in danger. People say that the police abuse this power and have become legal murders. That why we should make it a top priority the make people or agencies regulate the police department to a further extent. If we could make that happen, we could look at the police as friends and not enemies.

Aaron F.

Behind Closed Doors: A Look at Police Transparency

At the end of the day the police are human, too. They make mistakes, just like anyone else. We at the Committee for Police Embetterment know that, and keep that in mind with every article we write. However, in that same vein, we feel that the police should be held just as responsible for their actions as every other citizen. When a citizen makes a mistake that results in the harm or death of another citizen, they are almost always punished in some way, either monetarily or by serving some sort of sentence. Now we realize that the Police are often forced to commit acts, which is of course, fine. We do not expect officers to throw their lives away, but if they make a mistake of some sort, such as holding a suspect in a grab that does allow them to breathe properly, or accidentally discharging their firearm into a bystander, we fully expect them to be punished equally to any other citizen. Now, I know officers lay their lives down for us citizens every day, which is why this article is not directly criticizing them as individuals, this is critical of the system as a whole. The system will often protect officers whose misconduct resulted in injury, and that is something that cannot be tolerated. What I feel is needed is greater transparency in police actions, which used to be enforced by research by numerous citizens (source) .  The people generally most affected by this are minorities, the poor, or protestors, as they are the most common demographics that police commit misconduct towards (source). There are quite a few regulations in place (source) but quite a few are not strong, and many are not enforced.  This actually the main cause and factor that allows misconduct, the lack of supervision and the lack of supervisors reprimanding officers after their conduct. (source)  We need to make a push to see things that the police don’t let us. Not all content, obviously, since quite a large portion of it is sensitive, but if we can prove that the information we seek is relevant and necessary for us to obtain. Then, perhaps, we can make a change for the better, and get rid of the officers that repeatedly commit misconduct, the “bad apples” of the bunch, so to speak.

-Gino W.