Hello and welcome back to Attorney Paz’s rants of a criminal defense attorney. As you probably know, I’ve started a video series on Facebook detailing things that you should know about court and the criminal justice system. Check out my video series and other information by following me on Facebook. For now, we will cover one of my recent videos about why there are so many bad cops out there.
Bad Cops
There are a couple of reasons why I want to talk about this. Mostly, it’s because on the news and social media, it seems like all you see are videos of cops behaving badly. So this whole conversation is prefaced by the fact that I’m a proud cop wife and a proud military wife. And the reason why I’m proud of it is because my husband is a really good cop. The system needs good cops. Everybody in the system serves a purpose. But where bad cops are born is by the policies of local politicians that are negotiating these benefit packages.
Bad Applicants Because of Bad Benefits
So essentially, you are able to solicit quality applicants by offering good benefit packages – good pay, good health care, pensions, things like that. What is happening, and the trend that has been happening over the last ten or so years, is cutting the benefits of the new guys. Union rule 101 is always sell out the new guys at contract negotiation time. So what ends up happening is now after you turn 60, no more health insurance, you have to go on Medicare. Up to half of the costs have to be paid by you for health care. No more pensions, 401(k)s instead.
Who’s applying to these things? Crappy applicants. And that’s why you get people who are trigger happy, people who are shooting civilians when there is no need. People that really shouldn’t have been a cop in the first place, but got hired because they were the best of the bunch, and it’s really the best of the worst.
So the whole thing can be avoided if local politicians at the state level and citywide and townwide stops cutting benefits to these cops. And then you’re attracting more quality applicants, like my husband, who actually served in the military, went to Iraq. These are people that you want to hire but you’re not getting because they’re going to go to another job that has offered them something better. So that’s my rant for today – if you want to stop these police shootings and the hiring of bad cops, maybe you should make it worth their while for good cops to actually apply.
So, that’s my rant for the day. If you have any questions or want to talk about this further, you can contact me at [email protected]
