A police force is a paramilitary organization. There must be a single chain of command that sets standards and demands accountability for meeting them.srothstein wrote:Both of you caught one problem, the other problem is that there is no real disciplinary authority.
A person can be skeptical about law-enforcement authority (as I am) and still see that officers can't deal effectively with critical situations if they have to worry about an appointed board second-guessing them. I am equally skeptical of appointed boards having the power to ruin careers for their own idiosyncratic reasons.
I accept as a fact of life that the police are not going to be perfect. Most of the time the police hierarchy can deal with minor infractions, and the justice system can deal with criminal acts such as brutality, obstruction of justice, and bribery.
That was pretty much the point of starting this thread. Recall all these incidents happened in one week last year.
- Jim