Congress Debates Police Reform-What Things Should they Look At?

Police reform is needed and ensuring that legitimate complaints are followed up on and investigated is an important part of this change. This isn't about bashing the police who as individuals have put themselves in dangerous situations everyday. It is about strengthening good police officers, improving the system so it follows American values, providing (fair, equitable, and wise justice), as well as reducing the costs of a poor system that relies heavily on prison time vs human enhancement.

Again...this isn't a Democrat vs. Republican issue and those that make it out to be this are trying to use these reforms for their own political agendas. There is nothing in either of those philosophies that want biased or unfair treatment of people. There may be individual people that promote poor values but that has nothing to do with their general philosophies.

If I were looking at police reform I would look at...

1. Holding Bad Actors Accountable: Ensuring legitimate complaints are investigated and followed up on.

2. Changing Metrics: It isn't about tickets and arrests it is about protecting the public and helping others.

3. Support Good Officers: Those officers that have the right values and beliefs should be supported when they do what is right and help hold other officers accountable.

4. Use Prison for Last Resort: When dealing with violent offenders prison may be necessary. When dealing with family problems and mental health we should consider other alternatives to return them back to productive status.

5. Improve Recruitment: Improve recruitment of different types of people, people with good values, those that will support the honorable image of policing.

6. Move away from Militarization: Militarized police officers are going to talk and act in ways that indicate they are dealing with a foreign enemy on a battlefield. The people are not a foreign enemy.

7. Citizen Oversite: There should be strong internal and external review capacity. There should also be some citizen oversite.

8. Make Sure Reforms Don't Damage Policing Abilities: We still need police and we still need them to be able to do their jobs when cunning criminals damage other people. Reforms should be about changing the nature and sole of policing but not changing the ability to catch bad people.