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I'd rather cut overtime pay over cuts to teachers, higher ed, youth programming, the arts, or public health.
Cuts have to come from somewhere. Cutting police overtime is lowhanging fruit.
Keep in mind that to be a police officer in Massachusetts, you only need a high school diploma and a mere 20 weeks of training. How many cops are getting tens of thousands of dollars in overtime a year to direct traffic on road projects?
How many cops are getting tens of thousands of dollars in overtime a year to d̶i̶r̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶f̶f̶i̶c̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶r̶o̶a̶d̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶j̶e̶c̶t̶s̶ do absolutely nothing and hide in their cruiser?
Fixed that for you.
Unfortunately they lobbied for flaggers to recieve prevailing wage so there's no cost savings like other places.
I'd rather cut overtime pay over cuts to teachers, higher ed, youth programming, the arts, or public health.
Cuts have to come from somewhere. Cutting police overtime is lowhanging fruit.
Keep in mind that to be a police officer in Massachusetts, you only need a high school diploma and a mere 20 weeks of training. How many cops are getting tens of thousands of dollars in overtime a year to direct traffic on road projects?
A high school diploma is required to get the job most of them have more than just a high school diploma. They actually give you an incentive to get a bachelors or a masters because then they pay them more money.
It sounds like you think people with just a high school diploma don't deserve to make a good living? Plenty of plumbers and tradesworkers only have a high school degree and they can do quite well financially. Would you like to be out there directing traffic in the rain or freezing cold? Or showing up to someone's house who just shot at their girlfriend in front of their baby? You literally could not pay me to do either of those things...so perhaps that's why they pay these folks fairly well to do it. You might think there are people out there who would be willing to do it for less but in today's society I'm going to say no to that.
On another note, I do often hear people who love to imply that cops are dumb and uneducated and I rarely see this said about any other position in the world. Just shows the disdain people have towards police. I never see anyone say that construction workers, bus drivers or walmart cashiers or dumb. Just cops, lol. There are plenty of jobs out there that don't require 20 weeks of training either.
A high school diploma is required to get the job most of them have more than just a high school diploma. They actually give you an incentive to get a bachelors or a masters because then they pay them more money.
It sounds like you think people with just a high school diploma don't deserve to make a good living? Plenty of plumbers and tradesworkers only have a high school degree and they can do quite well financially. Would you like to be out there directing traffic in the rain or freezing cold? Or showing up to someone's house who just shot at their girlfriend in front of their baby? You literally could not pay me to do either of those things...so perhaps that's why they pay these folks fairly well to do it. You might think there are people out there who would be willing to do it for less but in today's society I'm going to say no to that.
On another note, I do often hear people who love to imply that cops are dumb and uneducated and I rarely see this said about any other position in the world. Just shows the disdain people have towards police. I never see anyone say that construction workers, bus drivers or walmart cashiers or dumb. Just cops, lol. There are plenty of jobs out there that don't require 20 weeks of training either.
You have a real habit for putting words in peoples' mouths, don't you?
I think all people deserve to make a good living. However, we have a real problem with police in this country and part of that can trace back to poor training and recruiting people who scrape the bottom of the barrel. I have experienced the result of poor policing on multiple occasions, and considering that I don't have so much as a speeding ticket and am white, that's pretty incredible. Tradesmen are not expected to make snap life or death decisions on behalf of other people. I think we all deserve better from our armed police force, don't you?
Dumb and uneducated are not synonyms.
Res life staff at any of the local colleges work an average of 60-80 hours a week (live-on, so they're never really away from work) with master's degrees as a baseline. Once every other year, they have to cut a 19 year old kid down from where they hung themselves. They deal with drug overdoses, domestic abuse, and other serious issues on a weekly basis. They also make about 35K a year, and manage to have much better deescalation skills than many police officers.
Police officers make an awful lot of money for relatively little qualifications, especially compared to your tech worker comparison earlier. And despite occasional risk, being a police officer in America is not a particularly unsafe job. It does not even break into the top 20 most dangerous jobs in America: https://www.ishn.com/articles/110496...-us-the-top-20 Be sure to look at the average salaries of those positions.
Police officers should absolutely make a living wage. But they also should be compensated fairly and, like any position, in line with the budget available.
Ok, but you are the one who pointed out that only a high school degree is needed to do the job, not anyone else.
You really think police officers make an 'awful lot of money?' Their base salary is not much at all. The way they can make a decent amount of money to live in the Boston area is when they do OT.
Res life staff at any of the local colleges work an average of 60-80 hours a week (live-on, so they're never really away from work) with master's degrees as a baseline. Once every other year, they have to cut a 19 year old kid down from where they hung themselves. They deal with drug overdoses, domestic abuse, and other serious issues on a weekly basis. They also make about 35K a year, and manage to have much better deescalation skills than many police officers.
That doesn't sound pleasant, but they're not in the ghetto dealing with gangbangers.
I don't think it would be a bad idea to make it a requirement for police to have degrees. People also complain that they dont feel they have adequate training but then they also complain about how much it would cost to give them additional training. Seems like something has to change somewhere but I don't think they can make the base salaries any lower than they already are particularly in the Boston area. I suppose they could make it a rule that no cop can earn more than 110k a year or something? But then what if OT is needed and there's no one to work. Obviously there's a need for the overtime.
I also find it hard to believe that many Residential staff life have to cut down a person who has hung themselves. I'm sure they deal with a variety of unpleasantries but not anything worse than a Boston cop who is working in the poorer areas. There seems to be an illusion that Boston cops are just sitting in their patrol cars (as someone above pointed out). I have a Boston cop friend who has been injured several times at domestic calls, found people overdosed with kids left hanging out and even a woman who rolled over on her baby smothering him. Not sure how you can think that these are people we should pay less money to.
The people who stole overtime are another story, but not sure why everyone needs to be punished.
Ok, but you are the one who pointed out that only a high school degree is needed to do the job, not anyone else.
You really think police officers make an 'awful lot of money?' Their base salary is not much at all. The way they can make a decent amount of money to live in the Boston area is when they do OT.
So, you know how people talk about how we need social workers to respond to certain scenes? That's because social workers have (typically) at least 6 years of training in their toolkit to draw on to deescalate a situation and move out of a crisis nonviolently. A police officer has just 20 weeks of training, and when they dig into their tool kit, they find more defensive training (as in defending themselves and their fellow officers) than deescalation and supportive training. They are making legal decisions with less hours of legal education than a first semester 1L in part time night school. A police officer is someone who society places huge responsibility on so yes, I don't think it's obscene for the bare minimum level of training to be several years of specialized education. It should be on the same standard as teachers, nurses, lawyers, therapists, social workers and other professionals whose training gives them outsized responsibility in our society.
You see this play out in data. Based on the most recent data, the US is the 6th in the world for most police killings, coming in under such illustrious comparison points as Syria, Venezuela, and Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ers_by_country While we fall down to number 27 when normalized for population, that's still not where we want to be. Per 100 million people, 34.8 people are killed by police in the US. Mexico is less than that at 30. The highest European country is 16.9, but that's almost unfair because Luxembourg's tiny population means the one person killed by police puts them up to that level. Canada is 9.7. France is 3.8. The rest of Europe falls below that. You don't have people with mentally ill families members being told not to call the police in Europe out of fear that the police officer will protect themselves even at the risk of someone experiencing psychosis' life.
How is living to do double shifts to make bank fraud? It's honest work if they really did double shifts.
I'm pretty sure being a cop is an authority position to those who are breaking the law. In some scenarios it is a service position...like if i call for help or ask for directions. If I get pulled over for drunk driving or I steal something from a store and get caught then I lose some rights until I get bailed out of jail. Why is it so difficult for some people to admit that yes cops do hold some 'power' over people.
The aim is to maximize hours. It's not about doing work but how much time they spend on the clock. It also raises the question of work quality: does anyone really think someone on their 15th hour of duty in a day is as effective as they were in the first 8-10 hours?
An excellent experiment would be to convert police to salaried and see how many offer to do double shifts then, then see how many are willing to do double shifts if asked. I'd bet money the priorities suddenly shift. There are many salaried positions who don't hesitate to work longer hours to get the job done, but I'm skeptical that the police offers doing the heavy overtime would be among them in this situation.
Cops have authority, but are not authorities. A doctor has the authority to compel some things in the name of safety, but doesn't enter the room or the conversation with patients as if they are the judge, jury, and executioner. By contrast, police often start engagements with people -- whether it's a criminal, inquiry, or a traffic accident -- by expecting people to only speak when spoken to and will immediately escalate any situation where they feel they are not being paid sufficient respect or deference by all parties involved. It's like they're trying to come off as intimidating, and that's never a good way to provide a service to a community. One can escalate situations that require it (non-compliant suspect, known violent criminal) without entering every situation as if you are engaging with hostile enemies.
I also strongly suspect some people only enter the police force because they crave control and power over others, and are only too eager to conduct themselves in such a manner. If you are the personality type that loves to command respect and obedience from others, you should be a ... well, nothing. That's not acceptable behavior anywhere; not even the President should act this way.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,936 posts, read 36,962,945 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by charolastra00
So, you know how people talk about how we need social workers to respond to certain scenes? That's because social workers have (typically) at least 6 years of training in their toolkit to draw on to deescalate a situation and move out of a crisis nonviolently. A police officer has just 20 weeks of training, and when they dig into their tool kit, they find more defensive training (as in defending themselves and their fellow officers) than deescalation and supportive training. They are making legal decisions with less hours of legal education than a first semester 1L in part time night school. A police officer is someone who society places huge responsibility on so yes, I don't think it's obscene for the bare minimum level of training to be several years of specialized education. It should be on the same standard as teachers, nurses, lawyers, therapists, social workers and other professionals whose training gives them outsized responsibility in our society.
You see this play out in data. Based on the most recent data, the US is the 6th in the world for most police killings, coming in under such illustrious comparison points as Syria, Venezuela, and Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ers_by_country While we fall down to number 27 when normalized for population, that's still not where we want to be. Per 100 million people, 34.8 people are killed by police in the US. Mexico is less than that at 30. The highest European country is 16.9, but that's almost unfair because Luxembourg's tiny population means the one person killed by police puts them up to that level. Canada is 9.7. France is 3.8. The rest of Europe falls below that. You don't have people with mentally ill families members being told not to call the police in Europe out of fear that the police officer will protect themselves even at the risk of someone experiencing psychosis' life.
Spot on.
As usual, if we followed a more Western European model we would be far better off as a society.
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