Police Officer Reform:
Officer candidates must have much more intense psychological examination, more in-depth background investigation and polygraph examinations. Only the cream of the candidates should be selected to become law enforcement officers.
After completion of a police academy, new officers should start a field training program lasting a full year. Field training officers must be selected from the best officers available in the department. Field supervisors must keep current and aware of a new officer’s progress.
Officers need more training is deescalation tactics, repeated every year. Community policing to improve community – police relations and trust must be taught and practiced at all levels in any agency. All of these changes need to be some of the goals of this new Civil Rights Movement.
The culture of the “Thin Blue Line” must be changed. Officers must be trained to police other officers, just as they police the public they have sworn to serve. They must be held accountable to speak out, step up, and act against officers violating the policies, procedures, and laws that they are responsible for upholding.
Other laws must be enacted or amended restricting qualified immunity for police officers or removing it completely. To those who say this would prevent officers from doing their duty, I say good. Less or no qualified immunity would surely make officers more wary of abusing their authority.
Police Union Reforms:
Laws must be enacted severely restricting the power of police unions. Unions should be banned from negotiating disciplinary action rules, investigations, suspensions, or terminations. It should be incumbent upon the city, county, and/or state to set policies for these areas within the civil service rules for that governmental agency.
We must change laws that, in any way, discriminate based on race, creed, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual preference, etc. Every person must be treated as only one thing – a human being. Nothing less should be acceptable.
Criminal Justice Reform:
The criminal justice system needs real reform. The sentencing laws, states and federal, needs change. Too many African Americans suffer harsher sentences that White Americans. Upon arrest, suspects will not be questioned without their attorney present. No more advising of Miranda would be needed because your right to remain silent and have a lawyer present would be automatic. Any violation would make anything learned by police inadmissible.
We must have transparency in government at every level so the American people can hold government accountable.
Other Reforms:
Our education system, both primary and secondary, must teach the history of racism in America and teach how to stop and deter hatred and racism. Our children must not be taught that racism is acceptable in any form.
We must remove visible symbols of racism. Statues and monuments of the Confederacy must be removed from the public space. Let them be displayed in museum like settings that also teaches that the Confederacy was based on African American slavery. This would place these statues and monuments in a setting more appropriate to show the history of the United States. The Confederacy is dead. Keeping the spirit of it alive, keeps racism alive.
These are ideas for the start to finally ending racism in America. With more study there is the likelihood of other positive ideas getting discovered.
George Floyd, with his dying words of “I can’t breathe”, has called for racial justice. Many of our nation’s Millennials and Gen Z’ers have answered the call, will you?
Just remember, the world is yours. Make it better for all of us.
God’s speed.
Until next time
Thank you for reading this far. If you need to, click on the link to be taken to Part 1.
American Dystopia 