From Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over police work to their county sheriff, a neighboring town or state police.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    honestly, It might be prudent to take the police force to a larger, broader agency from a hiring standpoint.

    I mean, when a cop fucks up and gets fired, they just go to a near by agency and apply there. If there was one agency in the state, even if that agency had a few hundred precincts, then that couldn’t happen nearly as easily.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The solution to bad cops getting hired elsewhere is truly simple, and as American as apple pie.

      Make them carry insurance.

      Bad cops with strikes on their record have to pay higher and higher and eventually cost prohibitively higher rates for them to hold the title/badge/weapons.

      Also, profit. Off of your tax dollars. As American as apple pie.

      • Alto@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        And to require the police to live in the areas that they police again. They shouldn’t be able to ruin a community just to clock out and go home 3 towns over.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I know it is an edge case but what would you do about areas that have police but effectively no residents? Teterboro NJ, City of Industry California, etc.

      • snooggums@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        The solution is to put them in jail for abusing their power and barring them from having future police jobs.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        precisely. They don’t even need to pay for their premiums, as long as it’s individual insurance. most cops today would be uninsurable, though.

    • ShoeboxKiller@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It would make more sense to have a licensing body or multiple that are all connected, use the same processes and can strip a license.

      Doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers all over the US already have licensing requirements, ongoing training requirements etc.

      Edit to add: I live in Minnesota and Philando Castile was shot and killed by a Saint Anthony police officer in Falcon Heights. Falcon Heights used neighboring Saint Anthony’s department for their city as well. Outsourcing to another agency/department doesn’t address root cause of policing issues.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I also like the idea of liability insurance. Maybe make the agency pay for it. but it’s managed by a 3rd party. If they become a liability, the insurance would drop them like a sack of smashed asshole, because that costs them money.

        I’m just saying, maybe it’s not such a bad thing.

      • Cylusthevirus@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It’d probably be a state level entity that offers endorsements to other states. That’s how it is for nurses, anyway. In other news, nurses have more legal hoops to jump through than cops. Someone explain that.

        • ShoeboxKiller@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Sometimes even this isn’t enough though. Minnesota requires peace officers to be licensed and to maintain that license with ongoing continuing education. Without steps to strip that license based on conduct then it is essentially toothless.

  • spider
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    1 year ago

    Marion, Kansas should do that.

    This stunt by their police department might cost taxpayers a fortune.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Our sheriff is a corrupt piece of shit and apathetic people keep voting him in anyway. So this wouldn’t help here.

    • Maeve@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      My small town’s sheriff is a corrupt, and people vote him in because they know him.

  • Sentrovasi@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The part about sheriffs scares me as someone not well-versed in American affairs because I read previously that some sheriffs don’t believe that federal laws should apply to them and that could be good, I guess? But could also be really bad.