It doesn't seem so outrageous. I mean, when you move the slider, 20 vacation days for not securing the firearm translates to an enormous fine. Moving the slider all the way to the right the web page reads "4 cases resulting only in a loss of 45 vacation days.". ONLY 45 vacation days. 9 weeks pay is a lot of money, folks.
Okay, losing vacation days does imply a significant lack of paid income. But at every other job when you do something that can or does get someone injured or killed you get fired.
Most jobs don't demand a steady stream of life and death decisions on 12+ hour shifts with terrible pay. The closest would be the medical industry, and typically screwups are disciplined but rarely result in firing.
Most police jobs don't demand that either. I know retied cops who never had to make a life or death decision in their job. (except first-aid situations which happen often but are different than this discussion)
It is useful for police to have a gun (but not required!), and they should know how to use it. However that doesn't mean they should use one off the practice range.
The most stressful decision your median NYPD officer faces every day is whether to double-park in the bike lane or in front of a fire hydrant while getting their Starbucks. An MTA bus driver makes 1000x more life-or-death decisions per shift.
At other jobs, even committing an infraction that didn't injure nor kill anybody but was against company policy is enough to get terminated. It's often a liability issue for the company.
And that's still the case here? This is just one more possible punishment. I'm sure if at tech companies workers were receiving docked vacation they would be raging on HN.
Tech workers and police are extremely different types of workers with extremely different job responsibilities, working agreements/contracts, and level of impact on the groups that oversee them. We are not the same by a country mile.
current job? no.
a job with a strong union? yes.
a startup with a certain kind of work hard/play hard (really just lots of drinking) culture? definitely, there's plenty of stories like this (and worse) in the books.
Do you think the the people who hold the truncheon of the state's monopoly on violence should have a "work hard/play hard" culture, or union protections that absolve them of consequences when they impulsively act violently?
I think people who "hold the truncheon" should be intelligent enough to appreciate humor, yes.
FWIW framing things as if officers' job is to perform violence on behalf of the state is a big part of the problem. The state's monopoly on violence should be in the hands of the courts, and not individual officers doling out punishment. Police officers should be seen as citizens getting paid to do a good job at something that any other citizen could do if so inclined.
> The state's monopoly on violence should be in the hands of the courts, and not individual officers doling out punishment
I would generally agree, but at the end of the day any state prohibition must eventually be enforced by some level of violence or more mildly, coercive force.
One could write several books about the nonviolent crimes US police have killed people enforcing. And this is my point. The arm of the state must be reigned in somewhere.
We're definitely in agreement that the arm of the state must be reigned in somehow. I'm just saying that most violence done by police is not de jure state violence backed up by any legal order, but rather personal decisions on their part for which they should be held personally accountable.
If a civilian broke down the door of a precinct bathroom with a battering ram, what do you think the consequences would be? I'm guessing more than 45 days in jail and they'd probably get fired wherever they're employed.
This is key. People love to play the "what if the roles were reversed!" game when it comes to race and gender, even though those are just aspects of a person. People choose to be cops; we should hold them to an even higher standard than civilians.
Cops make $30k a year at entry, work insane hours and are closer to a blue collar labor force than a bunch of college grads arguing about microservices.
If you want to hold them to a higher standard, you have to pay them to a higher standard.
Sounds like honest work to me, but this is definitely one of those situations that beg the question, "do we need trained paramilitary personnel to accomplish this task?"
In 2015 (latest year I have good data for), there were just shy of 54,000,000 police interactions in the US.
The same year, there were 1,104 recorded police uses of force.
That's 0.00002% of interactions if I did my math correctly. Even if you think the use of force data is a magnitude off, that's about the same risk factor as shark attacks and lightning strikes.
Oh, I think your use of force data is more than one order of magnitude off. Police shot and killed 993 people in 2015 [1]. It's a safe assumption that fatal shootings are the tip of the iceberg in terms of use of force, not the overwhelming majority of cases.
And use of force is only one type of lawbreaking in which cops regularly engage. Buffalo News compiled over 700 instances of sexual misconduct by officers over 10 years [2]. Anecdotally, I see police commit traffic infractions all the time.
None of this is really relevant to my question, though, so I'll pose it again: how much must we pay for police officers to obey the laws they're supposed to enforce?
In the US, the 10th percentile cops earn about 40K a year. Median local cop salary in the US is 65K. And that's the SALARY.
And let me know if ANY cops in the US have ever complained about overtime -- guaranteed overtime and overtime pay rate are often specified in police union contracts and there are tons of articles every year about cops making $100K+ overtime on top of base.
I'm all for taking nonviolent responsibilities away from ("defund") the police, but I'd rather cops got paid $100k to not work so much overtime. Spend some time with their families, come to work rested, maybe they won't be so trigger happy.
Alternatively if a civilian broke down a door in a company party likely the only thing would be that they got a bill for fixing the door, which is way less than 45 days of pay.
Agreeing with the sibling comment, I'd think that getting fired is the most likely outcome. But what about the occupants of the bathroom? Battering the door down is a violent and threatening act. Do you suppose they might have standing to press criminal charges? Or at least a lawsuit?
Did you know that damage over $1000 would be considered felony vandalism in many states? The door alone probably costs over $1000, not to mention damage to the frame. Looking at prison time and a permanent record here, and in some states, lifetime disenfranchisement.
So yeah. Only 45 days pay is pretty sweet. And if it was a civilian vandalizing and terrorizing a precinct, bet your ass they'd prosecute all of these charges and more to the fullest. Given that this is a violent felony, it could trigger a three strikes law if the perp already had a record.
Or fired. Fired is also a very reasonable thing if someone knowingly broke company property for a laugh. Obviously without knowing all the specifics of the case, IDK which is more reasonable but both are certainly plausible.
The article said they lost the days and nothing else happened. Are you saying the article is wrong or heavily misleading?
> In some 89% of the cases made public, reduced vacation time was one of the penalties levied, and in more than 60% of the cases it was the only punishment.
They are taking administrative leave with pay, and in turn losing vacation days.
Aka they're being forced to take vacation days when they haven't planned to use them. They still have time off with pay.
You are misunderstanding the use of "only" here. It is meant to describe which punishments were meted out, not to pass judgement on the severity. Cases where there were other punishments in addition to loss of vacation time are not included.
