"If you were on a consulting committee to a police force, what would you suggest as a means to address the problem of police officers killing unarmed citizens? Is this a matter of improved training, restricted weapons, stronger consequences following incidents, or something else?"I believe that in order to curb the occurrence of police officers unjustly killing citizens who are not posing a direct threat to anyone, there must be a variety of measures put into place. Everything mentioned above in the reflection question including improved training, restricted weapons, and stronger consequences would help in this case. But above all, what needs to be changes is the mind set of these people.
It seems as if there is a large number of police officers who's position of power has poisoned their minds, making them think that they are above the law. Others have become numb to the horror of killing someone. Mental screening must be done regularly in order to catch these kind of tendencies, so that we have officers with the right mindset keeping us safe from bad people, instead of becoming the bad people themselves.
The NYPD body camera pilot project seems like something that could very easily deter police brutality, because most people act differently when they know they are being watched. In the end, something must be done, as there seems to be an increasing number of instances of wrongful police action.
