The very same argument could be made about rating police officers. Also, we shouldn't pretend that scumbags don't exist, they do, as both citizens and police. If you're going to cast doubt on the existence of scumbags in citizens, but not police, you're showing your own prejudice.
The actual problem is that police are above the law. What I mean by that is, unlike citizens they are in a position where they might break a law without any repercussions or abuse their position of power.
The only real way to deal with this would be to police the police in a realistic manner. Bodycam and location data of their every move would need to be available for that. Currently, police can simply turn these off.
Yes, there are scumbags in both ordinary citizens and in police but one of these groups of scumbags already gets "policed". (Disclaimer: I do think that this idea is not the right way to deal with this problem.)
You make a good point. I believe the idea with a rating system of police is that you tie the departments funding to the average rating of your officers. So while officers can abuse their power, if there is a reliable signal of this (reflected by their rating), they get canned to raise the overall rating of the department.
no, police are not above the law. they're only "special" in that they enforce the law, which requires exceptional privileges and responsibilities ordinary citizens don't have. but they're otherwise fully under the same legal jurisdiction as the rest of us.
some police may act as if they're above the law, but that's projection, not foundational.
Hey, i just want to mention that I did not down vote you. Of course you are technically correct, it seems like you took 'above the law' in my comment in the 'literal sense' but it was more of a way to express how common it is for police to abuse their situation and privileges.
no worries, and i understood the intent, but wanted to explicitly counteract the nodding-along effect of platitudes like that.
we all have the propensity to abuse situations and privileges, so police aren't special in that regard. the problem is that we narrowly attribute this universal human quality to just police, blinded by context, because that fits a preconceived narrative and surreptitiously makes each of us feel a little better about ourselves. this happens subconsciously and is a form of the fundamental attribution error we make so often.
that's not to absolve the police of grievances, since they do have extraordinary powers and as a result their misbehaviors have greater impact. certainly we should hold them to a higher standard. but police aren't more corrupt than average (they aren't lesser human beings, as implied).
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