Originally Posted by
tehealadin
This is something that just astounds me. In Scotland we have the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner, an independent body set up to investigate allegations of misconduct by police officers. I know in England and Wales they have something similar. From the best of my knowledge, these bodies are made up mostly of lawyers, I think there is civilian representation too, the point being it is not entirely made up of cops. I genuinely did not know until recently that there wasn't something like this in the US, at least not in all states, and I was genuinely shocked by this.
I am by no means an ACAB person. While I think these people are often legitimately angry and point out very real flaws, I think this position is at best childish, and the gymnastics that are often performed to justify this, often as being literally true (we can see people in here, people I consider intelligent and usually capable of nuanced thought make these claims) are just absurd, and we tend to see them come out with insane ideas like defund the police (even if you disagree with my contention that this is insane, it is certainly not unreasonable to object to this, only a zealot would assert this, sadly the overly emotional reasoning that comes out with the ACAB mean there are more than a few zealots) and even abolish the police (yes, I know it is only a minority that call for this, however they get a worrying amount of cover, if the reasons why this is a terrible idea aren't obvious to you, then I don't know what to say). People get heated and can make suggestions/demands that either tread close to, or flat out dive in head first into the crazy zone.
However there are clearly very simple, straight forward things that can be done, that aren't insane or extremely detrimental to society, and an independent board that investigates police misconduct, that isn't made up of cops, that do not answer to the police, or to police unions and is transparent in its decision making is such a great example of this, I have yet to hear a reasonable objection to this suggestion, and it amazed me that this wasn't already in place. It is a policy that should get the backing of most reasonable people, regardless of which isle they are on. People who want to through their support behind the cops, having a body like this to better ensure decent and lawful behaviour and to help enforce standards in policing should welcome this. This is something that is much harder to abuse, much harder to succumb to corruption than internal investigations as they don't have the same conflict of interests or conflicted loyalties.
Out of the reasonable suggestions I have heard, this ranks among the easiest.