Police Militarization and Civil Rights Act (Passed)

[Lumine]

Slot: 4 (General, PPT Administered)

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Senator Yankee, as sponsor you have 24 hours to make your case for this bill.

[Cassius]

Whilst I think there's some merit in the idea of reducing the availability of surplus military gear to the Police (or at least the Police Departments that clearly don't need it), I think the introduction of cameras is a mistake. Requiring by law that the Police film each and every one of their interactions with civilians is bound, in my view, to make them overly cautious when it comes to investigating wrong doing. The Police are, after all, only human, and can't be expected to rigidly follow procedure in every case that they deal with, either due to human error on their part or that of the person whom they are investigating. Basically, the Police need some leeway in the conduct, and if this bill were to be passed in its entirety, that leeway would be considerably reduced.

[bore]

For the record, my own region of the northeast already has this.

[DemPGH]

I'm in full and total support of this. Recording police interactions with civilians, to include arrests, will protect both civilians and police officers. This is a very common sense measure, in my opinion.

[TNF]

What agency are we going to task this with? A general mandate from the Department of Justice seems like it would work best, quite frankly. We don't have a national police force (thank god) and so to make something like this happen, we'll probably need to attach some funding measures toward it to coax Regions that might otherwise not support such a measure into doing so. Perhaps we could make federal subsidies for law enforcement training and research contingent upon adopting the measures described in the bill?

[Cranberry]

We do not have a centralized police system?

But anyway; I don't if this is really such a great idea. I'm in general very much against surveillance, just when it really serves a purpose of security; and as such I am not quite sure if we should survey our police force. Sure, it might help to clarify some cases of litigation and uncertainty, and maybe also have played a part in preventing the things that have occured in for example Ferguson; but on the other hand, such a camera may also lead to policemen always being the one in question, always the one that did wrong. For example, if a policeman has his camera on his chest, and he is hit by someone on the shoulders, maybe from the side, and he does something against it; the camera will notice that the policeman did something, but not that the other guy did something, leading automatically to the policeman being the one to do wrong here.

I guess this is the wrong way to deal with such things. As far as I know, Atlasia has some of the laxest laws and regulations when it comes to what policemen are allowed to do and what they are not. If we tightened those regulations and see that they are rigorously enforced, we maybe would be able to prevent incidents like in Ferguson, and don't have to have a total surveillance state for our policemen. I find such things nearly 1984-style...

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

First off I want to apologize for my absence yesterday, the neighbors got back from work late and I couldn't get on the internet until this afternoon.

I want to first say, in response to Cranberry, that I understand his concerns about privacy. My first reaction was oh lord 1984, here we come. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize, if the police is already on the scene through probably cause/warrants whatever, adding a camera adds no further loss of privacy not already caused by the presence of the officer.

Second of all the camera protects both the officer as well as the citizen. In Palo Alto, complaints against the police were down ~85%. No system is perfect, but in terms of reducing the instances of cops facing false complaints, then this system is preferable to the current system of the officers word against the citizen and vice versa.

If people find a general mandate for the Department of Justice sufficient, then I will be fine with that. I wasn't sure if there was possible and DoIA agency as well that should be involved or note, since it is a program working with local and state police departments. I am also open to discuss the exact funding amounts and duration for the program to be in place.

[DemPGH]

IMO, the surveillance argument needs to be put into context here. If a police officer accosts you, I want that surveilled! Of course, I live in a country that's large enough that there are cases of egregious abuses of power by police, and video documentation helped the victim.

I mean, . . . This can happen. Jaysus!

[bore]

I guess this is similar to the public means public bill, where the federal government is considering implementing something that has already been implemented and paid for in a region.

The problem I see is giving the money to the northeast is redundant seeing as this is already paid for, but not giving it seems to send the message that regions shouldn't bother innovating if they want to save money.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yes I see your point, what would you suggest Senator bore to resolve the problem?

[bore]

The only thing I can think of is far more stringent separation of powers.

[Deus Naturae]

T don't think this bill would give money to Regional governments. To my knowledge, DoD surplus equipment transfers go straight to local police departments, so they're the ones who would be getting the compensation cash, not the Regions, so this bill wouldn't really affect Regional innovation.

Since Northeast PD's already have cameras, we can just not give them new funds, and only distribute funds to non-Northeastern PD's.

[bore]

Then what is to be done with the money the northeast loacl police forces have been given to spend on military surplus?

[Deus Naturae]

Then what is to be done with the money the northeast local police forces have been given to spend on military surplus?

Now that I think about it, I don't think there are any funds at all that we can reallocate. I'm pretty sure the DoD just gives out equipment for free. Or, if it sells it to police departments, the money they use to purchase it doesn't come from the Federal government. I mean, why would the Federal government give local PD's money with which to buy military surplus...from the Federal government?

I'm of the view that the surplus transfers should be ended entirely, but if we want to pay for the police to be equipped with cameras, the money for that will have to come out of the general budget or from the sale of existing equipment.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How much money could be raised from scrapping the surplus and is there any other downside to doing that?

[bore]

Well I'd favour scrapping the military selling kit to the police even if it made a profit, but that will affect what we do with the rest of the bill.

[TNF]

Part of the problem with this debate being engaged in by those who don't believe in an underlying social conflict between classes is the utter lack of understanding why police brutality exists in the first place. I support this bill because it will undoubtedly have some impact, but I really think that if we want to hold the police accountable and make them more, not less, likely to coerce the public, we really have to look into reconstituting the entire social system in which we live. We have not always had police. The development of groups of armed men, separate from the rest of society, is a development springing directly from the division of society into classes that occurred with the transition away from hunter-gathering thousands of years ago. We should not ignore the class nature of policing in addressing these problems.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Of course, no one is talking about the reason why so many police forces have gone over-the-top when it comes to the militarization.

Of course, TNF et al, want to turn this into an issue of class conflict. There is an issue of disconnection to be sure, but my concern is it becomes an issue of one-upmanship between the community and police.

[TNF]

I don't want to turn this into an issue of class conflict. It already is an issue of class conflict. The police exist to protect private property, and thus, to protect the holders of private property, i.e. the capitalist class. They do not exist to keep our streets safe or protect working class citizens. They're hired thugs of the rich and powerful.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

So the police force are thugs?

[TNF]

So the police force are thugs?

I've been fairly candid about that in recent campaign speeches, yes. I am opposed to the institution of the police and regard police as little more than scabs wearing blue uniforms. I believe that we should abolish this separate body of armed men and replace it with community-controlled safety patrols that don't worry about victimless crimes (like whether or not you're texting someone when you're driving, or going a few miles over the speed limit) and that focus on actual criminality. We should arm the public and disarm the police as a stopgap measure until we can fully rid ourselves of the police, in my opinion.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Rightio.

While I don't subscribe to your reasoning, at all. I am generally supportive of most of the elements of this Bill.

[Dr. Cynic]

As Senator Bore already pointed out, my region, the Northeast, already has this and I was part of the Assembly that voted to institute them. I support doing so and I will support this bill.

[Deus Naturae]

Polnut, what have communities done to "one up" the police? If you're going to try and lay any of the blame for police militarization on communities themselves rather than the actual police, you need to provide some actual evidence.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I appreciate this debate about police and why they exist but lets not forget the funding issue.

First is scraping surplus and using the money to pay for this feasible? Only one has responded so far on this matter.

Second, what about the NE, considering the Public Means Public Act, how do we go about distributing the money as this is a similar instance of one region already doing this?