How to solve police brutality

Abolish the police sign on an NYPD car // photo by Peter Burka

The anarcho-capitalist method of replacing government police with private security forces aside, there are several ways to fix the police that have been bandied about in libertarian circles for years now.

In no particular order:

1. End the drug war

The drug war, largely pushed by Republicans, has been one of the major causes of the police shooting innocent people, not to mention the hordes of nonviolent people jailed. Breonna Taylor was killed due to a botched drug raid with bad info. Bounkham Phonesavanh, a baby, was mutilated when the police threw a flash bang into his crib in another botched drug raid. Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were killed by the police in a drug raid where the officer lied to get the warrant for the no knock raid.

When Democrats talk about legalizing drugs, they're just talking about marijuana and in certain select places like Boulder, Colorado, mushrooms. Even few on the far left advocate for much more than that. Don't get me wrong. That's a good start, but it's not good enough. Libertarians are talking about everything. Heroin, meth, ecstasy, cocaine. All of it. I'm not certain what kind of drugs the police were looking for when they killed Taylor, but a drug raid at the suspected main drug house yielded crack cocaine. Phonesavanh was maimed due to a relative's $50 meth deal. Tuttle and Nicholas were killed because they were suspected of dealing heroin (they were not). The tragic stories go on and on.

The Republicans are, of course, the villains in all of this. Their hero, Ronald Reagan, oversaw an administration where the CIA joined forces with the Contras and imported crack cocaine into the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles while at the same time cracking down on drugs. This was a policy that continued into H.W. Bush's administration. If that's not outright evil, I'm not sure what is.

2. End qualified immunity

Qualified immunity is a law that protects police officers from getting sued in civil court over rights violations if the violation wasn't already "clearly established". What this often means is that if the officer wasn't sure that it was a violation, he can't be sued. Let that sink in for a little bit.

That's right. This means if the police officer didn't know he was breaking the law, he cannot be sued in civil court.

The officer that killed George Floyd had numerous complaints of abuse filed against him and nothing was done about them. Perhaps if qualified immunity wasn't a thing, perhaps Floyd's murderer wouldn't have been employed at the time.

What about the rest of us plebs? The law makes no exception for us. If we violate someone else's rights, it is our duty to understand every word of the law. In popular legal parlance, ignorance of the law is no excuse. But if you train and get certified to carry a gun and uphold the law, apparently, then ignorance of the law is an excuse. Because that makes complete sense in the crazy world of politics.

Libertarian congressman Justin Amash (L-MI) wrote a bill following Floyd's death, to end qualified immunity. Several Democrats have signed on to it. After a lengthy wait, a Republican, Tom McClintock (R-CA), finally decided to cosponsor the bill. Where are all of the other "small government" conservatives? The next conservative that claims to be small government deserves to be ridiculed to no end.

That said, I'm not sure what's taking Thomas Massie, the libertarian under the Republican flag, so long to cosponsor this. That he wasn't one of the first cosponsors is disappointing.

3. End police unions

If an architect fails to provide correct waterproofing details and a building's structural member rots, collapses, and kills a few people, the best thing that can happen to that architect is get fired. If the architect intentionally designed a building to fall down, even if on top of some people that he thought was breaking the law, the best thing that can happen to that architect is to go to jail for many years. Hell, I know an architect that was fired because he counted garages as livable square footage and the square footage calculations were inflated by 450 square feet.

This is not the case for police officers, thanks to the police unions. It took five years for the NYPD to fire the officer that murdered Eric Garner with a choke hold over selling loosie cigarettes, with the police union criticizing the move. Thanks to the unions' collective bargaining, the cop that killed Daniel Shaver was temporarily rehired onto the force to collect his pension and subsequently retired at the ripe old age of 28 (that is not a typo) with an annual tax free pension of $31k for doing the valiant deed of murdering someone begging for his life. Likewise, George Floyd's murderer will likely get an annual tax free pension of $50k when he is vested because the unions have negotiated terms where even public employees that break the law still get their pensions. Who pays for these pensions? Taxpayers (at least in part). Daniel Shaver's widow is a taxpayer. George Floyd's family are taxpayers. The system is set up where the family members of their deceased loved one pays for the fat pensions of their murderers.

Unions consistently defend and assist police officers with histories of violence, even those that end fatally for unarmed citizens, to get reinstated to the force they were fired from or get hired on to a different precinct. They also work hard to block any kind of reforms that would place any kind of responsibility on the officers.

This is not justice. This is state sanctioned robbery of the victims of state sanctioned murder.

You think Democrats would dare remove the police union? It's unlikely though there is no time better than now. Even if they weren't in the pocket of unions, they have parroted "unions good, corporations bad" for so long that this would be an admission of a fault in their rhetoric. Republicans may be less union friendly but if there was ever a union they would tolerate, it's probably the police union. Again, it is the libertarians that consistently call for the abolition of the police unions, the entities that have done more to keep corrupt and violent cops on the force than any other entity.

4. Make officers purchase their own insurance

Currently, the departments are generally contracted through umbrella insurance policies that protect the department as a whole. This group policy shields the bad police officers from accountability. The officer that has 20 complaints of abusive behavior doesn't have any higher of a premium than the next officer that only receives praise from the community.

Back to Daniel Shaver's killer, the city guaranteed $3 million of funds for his legal defense. The city. Meaning, the taxpayers are on the hook for this. Daniel Shaver's widow is a taxpayer. Imagine that bullshit. Forcing a victim's family to pay for the legal defense of their loved ones' murderer.

Once insurance policies are given to individuals, insurance companies will begin to assess the risk of each individual police officer to gauge what kind of risk they pose. Like car insurance raising the premiums of people causing multiple accidents and caught speeding, officers that repeatedly receive complaints of abuse would get higher premiums as the risk to insure the officer increases with the risk of lawsuits (qualified immunity would have to be repealed to be fully effective). This creates a big financial incentive to the officer who would want to keep their premiums down. Even if the city pays for each officer's premiums, the bad officers would be prohibitively expensive to employ. Since these insurance companies risk their own money, they would also make sure if they change jobs to a different department, previous demerits would follow.

This may actually be something unencumbered Democrats and Republicans might be able to get behind, but it's unlikely the unions would go for it and would threaten to pull political donations from anyone that might go for it.

5. Demilitarize the police

I'm not just talking about their military equipment, more suited to insurgencies in Afghanistan than neighborhood policing. I'm talking more about the tendency for the police to engage in military tactics like no knock raids. No knock raids are the worst idea for local police to engage in. It makes the situation far more dangerous for everyone involved. The suspect, the house inhabitants, and the police alike. What could easily be solved with waiting for the suspect to leave the house or even just a knock on the door, turns into a situation where the police barge in, unannounced and not wearing uniforms, shooting the family pet, possibly shooting other family members, and alarming the inhabitants who think it's a robber to fire back.

There is almost never any reason for a no knock raid in favor of different tactics. Somewhat libertarianish senator Rand Paul has written a bill to eliminate no knock raids, titled the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act. Thankfully, it looks like this bill may actually have enough steam to make good headway if not fully passed.

6. Focus on community outreach instead of aggressive tactics

Studies have shown that it is far more effective to reduce crime by getting the police to focus on community outreach and getting to know the community rather than treating the community as enemies to terrorize. When police officers get to know the community, the community tends to cooperate more with the police. Crime rates typically trend down, clearance rates go up, and the community gets stronger and more peaceful rather than fighting an underground war with the police.

7. Stop sending the police to deal with people with mental issues

The police aren't the best suited at dealing with mental issues. The police are not typically well trained to do so. Often times, people with mental issues will have an episode, 911 will be called, and the dispatcher will send in the police, turning a bad situation into a worse and sometimes fatal one.

My first post on this blog was about an officer shooting Steven Taylor, who was having mental issues at a Warlmart. Tony Timpa was having a schizophrenic ordeal and the police were called in, who subsequently murdered him George Floyd style. In an astoundingly incompetent moment, years ago, the police shot Charles Kinsey, a mental health worker, trying to help his patient, an autistic mid-20s male who escaped the mental facility and was playing with a silver toy on the street which a passing motorist thought might be a gun. As the police accumulated around, Kinsey knew this would create a potential for police violence, and laid down on the ground with his hands up explaining that he was a mental health worker trying to get his patient back to the hospital. A police officer ended up shooting Kinsey in the leg. If you think there couldn't possibly be any more incompetence piled on top of this, the police officer said he was aiming for the autistic kid. Oh, and that officer was a member of the SWAT team. Granted, the 911 caller said there might be a gun involved, but records showed that the police had already determined there was no gun involved prior to the shooting. So why were they still there, with guns drawn?

Conclusion

Some of the above are not without precedence. The entire police force of Camden, New Jersey, was canned in 2013, absolving the entire police union (#3), with the county sheriff taking over. The city rebooted its police force with a focus on community ($6). Many officers in the police department actually marched in the George Floyd protest with their community. The union did eventually return, but its power was restrained. The result was less police abuse of power, lowered crime rates, and increased violent crime clearance rates. Portugal decriminalized all drugs for use and possession back in 2001 with decreased drug abuse and crime rates. There's no reason to think police abuse with the drug raids would not also go down.

This is not an easy goal. There are a lot of forces out there that would prevent much of this being accomplished, mainly the political establishment. But it would reduce a whole lot of police brutality.