I’ll be happy to discuss incompetence with you if you like, but you’ll need to read my original piece for the rationale. It’s linked in the post, above.

If it’s intentional it’s not incompetence. It’s … murder.

“Incompetence” is not a legal defense.

It’s also just an opinion.

Want to know something funny about overall pay in the US (and in the world, I would guess)? Poor working conditions have a negative correlation to pay scale. In other words, the more dangerous and dirty the job, the less it tends to pay.

The way I see it, people who want to be cops know what it pays and know the risks going in (the risks are actually quite a bit less than some other jobs. Logging is far more dangerous, for instance, than police work). They also know the intrinsic rewards. If they then actually do their jobs, as they did in your case, that’s a good thing. But I think I’ll hold off on canonizing them.

My father was once a cop. Cops used to come to my house a lot and I’d hear them talk.

I keep away from them.

Why shouldn’t someone who risks his or her life doing a mostly thankless, repetitive, disheartening, life-threatening and absolutely essential job make a good wage? After all, are we paying them for their level of accredited education or are we paying them for the work they do? If JS’s screening ideas were implemented and public service, integrity, competence, diligence and self-sacrifice became the norm for law enforcement officials, I would gladly vote them even more money and better benefits.

Especially those two deputies.

That brings up another point relevant to this case and others like it. Law enforcement applicants in most cities are subjected to a psychological test to determine their mind set when it comes to taking control and following orders without question. The end result of such testing is that the people most likely to be hired are of the same bent as those asking the questions. Because many of them have military backgrounds, this has led to the militarization of local law enforcement. They are taught that they are on a “mission” and nothing short of freedom and liberty are at stake. Because of the type of personality of law enforcement in general, most officers tend to believe in their superiors’ judgement no matter how far fetched. For a good example, just read the reports on the 2004 WTO meeting in Miami. I can understand this in an army for defense but that is also the reason the army was kept from domestic duties.

My experience wth pay systems in large organizations is that base pay, unless it is extremely high or extremely low, has almost no impact on attraction, retention, or performance. The real issues tend to be supply and demand in the labor force.

As for cop pay, Ryan is right. Cops tend to be paid extremely well given the fact that most have high school educations and, if they do have college educations, criminal justice ranks right up there with recreation management on the scale of difficulty.

Ryan:

I wouldn’t go that far, guy. I will say that we voters need to demand that cops undergo thorough psychological testing before hire, be held criminially responsible for negligence, and get stiff jail terms for covering up for the criminal acts of other officers.

That should weed out the bullies and incompetents.