USA Today asks if we should punish law enforcement incompetence

[Double Naught Spy]

Here's the problem. We paid these guys for decades, expecting them to be willing to take some risk to save lives. They were put there with that expectation, which meant that other people, who might actually do the job, were not put there. Children died because of these cowards. What do you do when you go years/decades expecting one thing and don't get it, and that incompetence results in deaths? Is it any different from gross negligence causing a death. Say you don't put a cover or sign on an open manhole, and a kid falls in. Gross negligence, no? You pay insurance premiums for a decade and then when you have a claim they say they never really had the money to pay claims. How is that different from refusing to act when needed?

I agree. Then again, the courts have ruled that the cops do not have to protect individuals per se. I think the court rulings are wrong, but there you have it.

As for expectations, the public has a lot of expectations, many of which are unfounded. I hate to say this when it comes to cops, but they do have some free will. They are employees, not super heroes.

I will say this, if we start coming up with laws that convict cops for broad categories such as incompetence and cowardice, you are going to have a harder time find people to take those jobs for the pissant compensation packages that they get. Now, if everyone will just pony up just 25% more in their taxes, maybe we can get police departments that will be able to hire a higher quality person, provide the examinations to help assure that they will perform on the job as demanded, and provide them with the total package of training and gear needed for them to handle situations. Sadly, few folks want to pay more for the protection they desire, but then act all surprised when they didn't get the protection they wanted.

You want cop response times to be more actionable, say 60 seconds instead of 7-15 minutes (national rates in major cities for highest level calls), then a lot of changes will need to be made and those changes are going to cost a HUGE amount of money that nobody wants to pay. Heck it took 4 minutes at Parkland for the SRO to show up and 2 minutes at Santa Fe for the SROs to show and engage and in both cases, the cops were on campus.

For example, Dallas would love to be able to make it in 8 minutes for Priority 1 calls, but they aren't. They are over 9 minutes.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/02/12/dalla...-officers/

Are we going to start fining cops that fail to show up in X amount of time as well?

Don't get me wrong. I am not defending those that don't do their jobs. However, there better be a very explicit plan for punishment if you want to do so for things like "incompetence" and "cowardice" and fully expect any officer charged for incompetence to similarly file a suit against the city for insufficient training, screening, and placement (putting an officer into a job that officer could not fully perform).