On policing in America

I've talked about how policing in America is para-militaristic, and why they should be treated as an occupation force rather than a friendly paid neighborhood watch. The following is a half-developing and a work-in-progress about how we got here, and where it can go from here. And later, a proposal.

The last seventy years have seen a process of transformation that was gradual and first, and has been accelerating as of late. The physical and blue-collar jobs that defined America of the 1800's and early 1900's gave way to white-collar desk jobs. In parallel, the increase of a globalized supply chain sped up by technology lead to a specialization of jobs. You could no longer just walk into a job, be trained for two weeks, and get on it. Even typists, who in essence had to only 'push fingers' had to have trained, and be good at what they did. It got increasingly difficult to bootstrap yourself from nothing.

During the Reagan years and later came the weakening of labor unions and collective bargaining. Globalization had a part to play in it, though as Germany's robust employee-oriented culture shows, it was mostly due to the policies set at the federal and state levels. With the collective bargaining culture gone, employers could more easily set their requirements for employees, and the minimum standards for employees crept up. This was mostly good: folks were getting educated, being trained, and becoming more mobile than ever in terms of jobs. The work culture became more dynamic.

There were a few industries that were immune from the pressures of a globalized workforce, that could preserve the wages for employees while not letting the training requirements creep up. The police force. It was the only remaining institution where a nobody could walk into a building, and walk out in two months with an amazing pay, a powerful union, and a license -- a very open one, we know now -- to kill.

A minor digression here: the fact that the other unions are weak and the police unions are not have lead to this interesting side effect -- the police can basically lord over anything now, due to their collective bargaining abilities over everyone, including the public. Imagine if the innocent men murdered by the police were members of powerful unions themselves, the fear of repercussions might have added a moment of thought before the trigger was pulled -- or the leg was pressed into a dying man's neck. There is no one to protect you, unless you're a cop, then you can murder civilians in cold blood with no repercussions. End digression.

The rest of America has become skill-oriented. A hairdresser needs a long and complex training process to get into a practice. Bachelor's degree are no longer sufficient for most low-paying white-collar jobs. The same is not true of the police.

The government(s) have looked at the police force as a sort of a jobs program, for those who can't do anything else. It is known that the programs discourage those with intellectual curiosity and critical thinking. The local police are not well-trained professionals with an understanding of human psychology and experts in community policing as they are in the rest of the developed world, they are unemployed folks who have been given guns. While it's clear why things have been this way, it's unclear why they should remain the same going forward.

And now we come to recommendations. Being a cop should require a college education, with requirements in negotiation, psychology, and conflict management. Police should be treated by the governments funding them not as guns hired to suppress their populace, but as community liaison and welfare folks. Gaining the trust of the general population is of utmost importance in law enforcement, what happens in America is the opposite. Officers involved in more complex and risky endeavors should have greater training in that particular specialization, and an education of the context around policing and community relations. A swat team cannot become the stuff for jokes anymore, they must reach out to become more than thugs with machine guns and grenades and a battering ram. Policing must not remain something for only the hottest of tempers and reddest of bloods, it must be for those most serious about maintaining community bonds and peace. They must not be soldiers, they must become peacekeepers.

But the above undermines the original 'jobs program for the poor' program that the governments see them as. The poor may no longer be able to depend on their only (well...there's the American armed forces but that's a whole different story) way to bootstrap themselves to prosperity. And the solution to that is: Universal Basic Income. Give everyone a living income, so you don't have to employ them into jobs they are ill-suited for, so you don't have them killing innocent civilians. This is a public health issue now, and should be treated as such.