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Gavin Newsom: Cash Incentives for Snitching on Cops

by Robert Maxim
All cops are bad cops; until all cops are willing to blow the whistle on internal, systemic corruption.
Dear Governor Newsom:

This inept system has failed to address the systemic corruption present in all police departments in California. The Blue Wall of Silence offers police the luxury of murdering unarmed individuals whilst invoking plausible deniability. While some officers are patently corrupt and commit illegal acts, the courts offer the automatic presumption of innocence and good will on behalf of the officers. Thus, no objectivity or impartiality is invoked when the State can so easily try cases under the presumption that "the officer has no incentive to lie." Let us go further.

Ask most police officers why they do not expose these systemic unjustices, and one will receive the same myriad of reasons most refuse to become whistleblowers. Retaliation, damaged career prospects, and ousting in the social scene all contribute to the toxic culture police officers must endure to maintain their jobs.

As some are pressured internally to cover up the misdeeds of their contemporaries under the pretext of, "brotherhood," and "unity," it is important to understand that the welfare of the public must never come second to the interests of the individual or organizations. Police interests, which strive to preserve the opacity of the Blue Wall, are in direct conflict with those of the Public at large.

I am proposing a new system which will ensure all officers police themselves. From an employment retaliation standpoint, this specific kind of retalitaion officers are vulnerable to might come in the form of receiving inadequate backup as a response to criminal issues. This is the very basis upon which most "good police," rest their case--it is contrary to their own safety to uphold the ethical duties of the police. As it were, the only ethical code police seem to follow, is to be complicit in the extrajudicial murders--or else one day, run the risk of being murdered themselves.

Governor Newsom, we propose that you immediately begin implementing sweeping changes to California's system of policing. A cost analysis of the status quo might show that my proposition is far cheaper than paying the costs of litigation.

Every branch of police must have an internal whistleblower, whose identity is not known to the public or to the management at that department. This individual must serve as the voice of transparency and accountability. If not all branches of police departments have this, then all branches of police must be lead to believe this exists. Officers who retaliate against those perceived to be a whistleblower are terminated and held to account publically.

It is perhaps cheaper by orders of magnitude to make available to officers cash incentives for snitching on unethical coworkers. The monetary reward is designed to served two purposes. One, is that police who have knowledge of this program will understand that each coworker has a financial incentive to nail them on ethical or criminal violations. Two is, police who have this knowledge undoubtedly would experience a chilling effect when committing future unethical acts. Third, is that the financial incentives offered to police who testify unobstructed against their coworkers are offered some kind of advancement within the department which could offset any potential internal retaliation. Financial incentives would need to be created in such a manner as to avoid "purchasing," the testamony of other officers.

A series of checks and balances exist in our legislature--lest one branch become too powerful. This is how things work in our American society, on paper. In reality, a series of checks and balances must be implemented to balance the power which Government wields on the street, through the police force.

Governor Newsom, the people demand change to our methods of policing. Not only do Black Lives Matter-- but the lives of those who are in a position to protect those lives also matter. When this epidemic of police silence exists unchecked, you inadvertently sign off on this policy by failing to act against it.

by Poster: Original
To be explicitly clear, this is a proposal for legislation to protect police officers from retaliation—in the interest of the individual officer, the public at large, and community relations. Moreover, this can be accomplished without even invading the privacy of each individual officer at work.

This is for officers who strive to perform their jobs ethically, unobstructed by those above them in rank. In any other workplace, or your boss retaliates with you for protected activity, you can immediately file a civil lawsuit and nail them to the cross. For police, speaking up on even a single incident of impropriety can and frequently does lead to the termination of that officer from any meaningful duties. The long administrative process, dealing with a union instead of your lawyer. Constructive dismissal or outright dismissal, the former being far more devastating psychologically. It all leads to a situation like we saw with Mr. George Floyd, peace be upon him. We see Chauvin’s contemporaries deliberately restrain themselves from intervening in Chauvin’s deliberate act murder, and in doing so, they are guilty all the same. They do not deserve leniency. They do not deserve empathy or understanding. Rather, this horrific and blatant truth must be made the cornerstone upon which change is implemented. Because in an ethical workplace, you don’t let your shift manager commit murder simply because he is of a higher pay grade and seniority. The other officers told Chauvin’s he blatantly appeared to be murdering George Floyd, and Chauvin, in my view, becomes contemptuous and asserts his dominance over his other officers. At this point, the other officers should have told Chauvin that they reasonably believed he was killing Floyd, and if Chauvin still kept his knee on that man’s neck, they should have all been pulling their knight sticks out and beating the fuck out of this dude in the face directly, and administer life saving treatment.

Any public relations figure wants transparency and good public relations within their community—they would support efforts to ensure officers are holding one another to account. It strips away the incentive to be complicit in impropriety. We need to acknowledge that the sense of unity officers are supposed to feel in the interest of uniting to protect the public, has been hijacked and employed as a pretext for unaccountability.

Officers face retaliation from their coworkers in the form of life threatening situations. There are a great number of police who strive to do their job professionally. The sense of danger in the community they police is explicitly due to unlawful acts committed under the shied if plausible deniability and depriving the other side of meaningful information.

As history has shown, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even the most conservative of political opinions should appreciate any mechanism which discovers, prosecutes and ejects unethical police from the force, permanently.

Look, the police are a workplace. They are a group of State employees. They are not the military. They do not have to follow orders unquestionably. Even in times of war, committing murder in the name of following orders only gets one hanged in Nuremberg. The police have a moral obligation to put on blast all attempts by their coworkers to engage in unethical behavior. The only reason why we have an epidemic of police brutality in the first place, is because the internal people are afraid to speak out.

The police are designed to uphold the law with ethics and reverence to their community. This above all else. The security of our communities rest on the public being able to actually trust the police— and this will never happen until the people have some semblance of confidence.

RSM
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