I would pattern admission to the profession of police officer after the admission to the profession of law. I would make the job of police officer into a real profession and not just a job for people who want to have a gun and be important.
The states, each state, should establish a sort of licensing system and bar association for police officers. Every police officer should be required to finish four years of college plus two or three years of additional education for their profession. They should study social work, psychology, anatomy and other courses as the other professionals who have positions of responsibility and the need to be able to work with people. In addition, they should be required to have excellent communication skills including the ability to speak clearly and express themselves well enough, intelligently enough to be understood and obeyed. They should have to undergo and pass regular psychological examinations whether they have problems in their work or not. THEY SHOULD BE EXPERTS ON ANGER MANAGEMENT AND DEALING WITH ANGRY PEOPLE.
They should be organized and organize themselves into a professional organization resembling a state bar association, charge fees to belong and impose universally applicable ethical rules and regulations that are appropriate for the law enforcement professional organization.
They should be required to pass a challenging examination that includes questions about anger management, psychology, crowd control. In addition, they should be required to pass an annual physical examination that includes maintaining a healthy weight and being physically fit. The examination should test not just their strength but also their speed, their reaction time, their flexibility and agility. And it should be an annual test with standards set that are age-appropriate.
Complaints about an officer's work should be presented to an independent review board that includes attorneys, judges, retired police officers and ordinary citizens. At least one half of gthe board should consist of elected representatives of the public at large. All complaints about the work of a police officer, all commendations, all personnel records should be available to the public.
A lot of people do not realize that attorneys are held to fairly high ethical standards and that they may be penalized in various ways for violating those high standards.
Police officers should also be held to very high standards that are not just left up to local authorities to establish and enforce.
Above all, except in dire emergencies, no person who is not a licensed police officer and who does not meet the agreed-to requirements in terms of performance, education, test scores, health, weight, agility, etc. and above all psychological well being should be allowed to carry a gun and act under the authority of law. No drive along police officers.
Finally, every police officer should be required to attend a week of anger management training each year. That training should include some hours specifically dealing with the situations and experiences of police officers and maybe half of the hours in groups that include people who have been ordered by the court to attend anger management classes. This might seem unrealistic, but I think we could see in that video that one of the causes of police violence and killings is the fact that police officers do not mix with the public much in their off duty hours. They bond with each other and tend to see themselves as a sort of "race" apart from the rest of the public. That is very dangerous. They need to understand how the world looks to people who are not police officers.
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