T. Greg DoucetteVerified account

I'm not a historian or political science guru – I tag in Prof. @KevinMKruse for those things – but my assumption is that ethnonationalists / neo-Nazis / etc join police because of the unchecked power police have these days to terrorize minorities 2/ @SailorBrendan

So reduce that power – and hold police accountable for abusing it – and you reduce the allure to those folks pretty quick And on that front, the to-do list is quite long 3/ @SailorBrendan

Abolish qualified immunity QI is a doctrine created from scratch by judges. It was never enacted into law by a legislature or signed by an executive; judges created it on their own And it protects police from being held accountable for their bad judgment 4/ @SailorBrendan

Qualified immunity means a policeman cannot be sued civilly for violating your rights – killing you, brutalizing you, etc – unless that right was "clearly established" at the time of the violation What does "clearly established" mean? Whatever a judge wants 5/ @SailorBrendan

For example, police in California were sued b/c they stole $100K+ in rare coins while executing a search warrant They received QI – the case was dismissed – because "stealing during a search" was not "clearly established" as illegal 6/ @SailorBrendanhttps://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1108477962599522305 …

In practice, almost nothing at all is ever "clearly established" If a police officer chokes someone to death for sport, you'd say "killing for sport is illegal!" Then a judge'd say "just killing them with his shin, not with his knee" 7/ @SailorBrendanhttps://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1107298113964904448 …

And because qualified immunity is what's called an immunity "from suit," it means those cases get dismissed early and never make it to discovery or trial Meaning facts almost never come out to define what will be "clearly established" in the future 8/ @SailorBrendan

[Probably should have mentioned it earlier in the thread, but the vast majority of what you're going to see on this list requires legislative action at some level and a willing executive to implement it. So none of this will happen soon without voting.] 10/ @SailorBrendan

Require police for carry malpractice insurance We require it for doctors, pharmacists, and other professions where you could be killed by incompetence or malice. Police should be know different 11/ @SailorBrendan

Requiring police to carry insurance serves two goals at the same time: (A) it protects taxpayers from having to shell out $$$$$$$$ in settlement money and (B) insurance rates for individual officers will rise based on how bad they are 12/ @SailorBrendan

If you're like the mongrel-with-a-badge who murdered #GeorgeFloyd – with several prior brutality incidents on your record – the cost for a city to insure you eventually hits a point where you're not worth the expense, and become unemployable as a cop 13/ @SailorBrendan

Use pay incentives to get a better breed of police officer Did you know most states only require cops to have a high school diploma? And the police academy is typically only 6-8 weeks long? You end up with a lot of young bad cops who become old bad cops 15/ @SailorBrendan

Police should have at least a 4-year college degree. Not b/c those degrees are particularly relevant to the job, but b/c the life experience from being in college for that timespan – being around people who aren't like you, navigating conflict, etc – matters 16/ @SailorBrendan

But if a state won't require that baseline legislatively, departments can accomplish the same goal by offering a pay bump (similar to what many localities do for teachers with advanced degrees) 17/ @SailorBrendan

Incentivize community policing Same concept as pay bumps for degrees, but in this case offered to police who actually live in the neighborhoods they patrol 18/ @SailorBrendan

Police officers are less likely to escalate and kill people when it's their neighbors that they're dealing with 19/ @SailorBrendan

Make "Brady lists" public record Every District Attorney's Office in the country knows which cops on which police forces are documented liars who can't be trusted to provide sworn testimony in court They end up on what are dubbed "Brady lists" 20/ @SailorBrendan

The name is a reference to the Brady v Maryland case by the Supreme Court, which ruled the Government has to turn over all evidence that tends to exonerate someone accused of a crime Here, though, it's a misnomer: most Brady lists aren't disclosed at all 21/ @SailorBrendan

They're not given to defense attorneys, and they're never ever ever ever (ever) given to the public When California recently enacted new laws to make this info known, police unions went apesh*t and sued to block the laws from taking effect 22/ @SailorBrendan

I'd argue *all* records of police misconduct should be publicly accessible. But if that's a bridge too far, at the very list it should include officers who are too dishonest to be trusted in court 23/ @SailorBrendan

Abolish cities' sweetheart deals with police unions Your head would spin at some of the sh*t police get away with because it's *written into their contracts that they can* @deray, @samswey, @ClintSmithIII, and several others have written about this often 24/ @SailorBrendan

The ability to hop / skip / jump from department to department as officers are fired Elaborate termination procedures that block their firing in the first place, or enable them to easily get reinstated with back pay The list goes on 25/ @SailorBrendan

Require de-escalation in Use of Force policies alongside public, transparent training on de-escalation Police these days operate like paramilitary units, complete with military gear and recruitment videos that promote a "domestic warfare" mindset 27/ @SailorBrendan

Except the military has rules of engagement, a Uniform Code of Military Justice, and courts martial that will punish you severely for misconduct Police have qualified immunity, a "Blue Lives Matter" PR apparatus, and oodles of case law to protect them 28/ @SailorBrendan

Cities and states can modify guidelines on when and how police can use force, and when they can escalate That needs to be flipped on its head, to promote de-escalation and the preservation of life as the overriding concern 29/ @SailorBrendan

End "tail-light policing" entirely A large number of police brutality incidents – and the corresponding court cases that have eroded Fourth Amendment rights – come from traffic stops 31/ @SailorBrendan