fiksal wrote: ↑Sun, 26. Jul 20, 15:21
Colors work as part of an image of police. Of course their actions speak louder.
Still, military looking, camo wearing police is not a good attire.
The different color of Vietnamese polices is so people can easily distinct them, and tell who they are dealing with and which jurisdiction, this is EXTREMELY important to keep them under control. And the effect of color on first impression and psyche are well documented, and that doesn't just apply to the police. The CSGT (traffic) wear the brightest color, the CSNN (public order) wear the the most eye pleasing color and the CSCD (para-military police) wear black.
And I wonder why even try to compare military camo combat suit to civilian color uniform?
Most military units wear green but I somehow doubt because they want to look friendly, if the forest is pink I bet their combat suit would be pink as well, and that won't be because they're showing support for breast cancer
As to individual police officers being overstretched and inadequately trained, prepared and equipped to meet every possible role that is asked of them, you only need to watch the police documentaries of almost any developed country to realise that that is most probably the case. It is certainly true of many officers in the UK.
Perhaps a better question is why the police who know and are uncomfortable with what is being done by other officers do not feel able to influence the situation for the better. These officers will certainly exist and probably be in the majority. I'm sure they would give reasons that include, but are not restricted to, peer pressure, unwritten and unofficial behavioural codes, and the agendas of the various tasking authorities.
One just have to answer these simple questions to see the point I was making:
- What would likely happen if a company make its executive, treasury, accountant to be the same person?
- What if the lawmakers are also the one control monetary policy and printing money? (Japan used to be like that)
- What if a country has one position that write, pass, and execute the law?
One answer: trouble. People tend to think about corruption as the reason the police run rampant and get away with thing, and that's probably part of it. But the objective fact is even without corruption, it will still be very hard to oversight the police action unless they do something extreme caught on camera. The simple reason is their operational directive are so vast that it's fairly easy for make excuse, deflect responsibility for their action. That's part of the reason why it's very hard to build a case here against a police officer in front of the court, and relying on internal review is obviously a lost cause.
That's why I believe a simple separation of duty will go a long way to 'fix' the problem. There is too much focus on the "qualities of a person" in these argument, and even though people sometime mention "the system", I don't think they're fully appreciate it. You can't expect every person will be good, and a good system will act as failsafe for 'bad people"
. In fact, a system without failsafe will encourage bad behavior, or even turn good people bad (think about the concept of crime of opportunity). I often said the greatest strength of American government is in its divide and balance of power. Think about it, it's not always we're blessed with 'good quality' politician, but the system we have prevent the bad apples from doing a lot of damage. One may cynically and ask " are you saying we're doing great!?!?", obviously not. But just look at countries like Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela, Russia ...etc... where such failsafe doesn't exist (or only cosmetically).
Here is a simple example: in Vietnam CSGT has the most presence on the street for obvious reason. But their jurisdiction is strictly limited to traffic, meaning they only have the power to stop someone if they violate traffic law. They can't stop a car because "I suspect it was carrying drug", well even if it does it's not their business. Sure, they will break a fight if it happens infront of them, but they can't harash street vendors or making random arrest because again, they have no power to do that. (Instead that power lie with the CSNN units, which would have both more intermediate knowledge of the community and specifically trained for the task). And because the only reason they have to stop someone is traffic violation, search and frisk is also out of question. There WERE cases some bad CSGT randomly stopped and groped people, but they immediately get caught (gang up by people actually) because just about everyone on the street know a policeman in that color uniform has absolutely no authority to do so.
Now think about incidents reported in this thread and media, and you can see how something as simple as the above will help stop a majority of them from happening! At the root, the major factor of the current problem is the assumptions "I'm the police, I have the power to do everything" and "they are the police, they can do anything". That what needs to be fixed.
In fact, you may have come across a glimpse of this in the US when police try to enforce immigrant control, which is absolutely not under their authority. Meaning they can't search your car or asking for citizenship verification without court warrant. And if you cite the law, you will often manage to get them to back off. But it take a well-informed citizen to know that, most people here just assume 'that's something the police can do'.
Now imagine we can make it so something like that become common knowledge, it will go great length to limit police abuse.
The less jurisdiction a specific police have, the clearer their duty is, the more they can focus on it, and the easier you can hold them accountable. Political correctness and morality grand standing be damn, we should strike for a good system if only it's prudent to do so. Creating a bad system and counting on people being good is a recipe for disappointment, instead create a system that will prevent people to go bad.
