Thread by @RobBenjamin

In 2017, the Minneapolis PD was already going down a bad road, with completely inadequate screening of police recruits for the kind of personality and character traits that had already led to PREVIOUS George Floyds.
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apmreports.org/story/2017/12/…

From 2016: This is only one of dozens of programs, articles, and academic studies going back decades that show how poorly we identify in advance the kind of cops who killed George Floyd. It also points to what we need to do.
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pbs.org/wgbh/frontline… via @frontlinepbs

The fact that we know so much about who will make good cops and who will make bad cops, how to pick only those who will make good cops to BECOME cops, and still do it so haphazardly is what makes the killing of George Floyd even more infuriating.
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Preventing anyone like the man who killed Floyd George and the men who stood there and watched from ever getting badges and guns in the first place starts with effective personality screening. This is only one of multiple studies that address that.
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ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/…

Law enforcement professionals themselves have long sought not only effective tools, but consistent standards and practices for police departments to follow in weeding out bad cops in advance. This is from 2007.
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officer.com/home/article/1…

Some studies, like this one from 2004 go into great detail about how to identify bad cops and even try to salvage them. But the record of police departments actually DOING that is spotty at best.
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jurispro.com/files/document…

Even the professional screening services that police departments use to assess candidates are of uneven quality, with contracts often going to the lowest bidder.
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policeone.com/police-jobs-an…

This isn't a big-city problem or a small-town problem, or a suburban problem. It's a universal problem. And it's made worse by the #BlueWallOfSilence that pervades police forces - including their command structures - across the country.
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theconversation.com/why-the-us-mil…

I think we need a national commitment, and national plan of action to eradicate this.

States could and SHOULD reassign specific functions from local police departments up to the state level. Starting with uniform recruiting and screening of local police force candidates.
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Training officers could be required to undergo standardized training themselves for their roles as coaches, mentors, and observers for probationary officers.
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All police officers should be barred from turning off their body cameras, demanding that civilians stop videorecordings of their actions, or otherwise suppressing evidence of their actions. Violators would automatically be fired and decertified for rehiring by any other PD.
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Civil and potential criminal liability for the actions of any police officer, including covering up those actions, should extend all the way up that officer's chain of command, including the highest level.

AND sideways to any fellow officers who fail to report misconduct.
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Complaints and investigations of misconduct should be reassigned from local PD internal affairs departments and District Attorneys to state-level Police Accountability Boards, including mandatory civilian representation.
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Decisions to submit state-level Police Accountability Board findings to grand juries should be reassigned from local District Attorneys to state-level prosecutors.
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I'm suggesting all of these not as an expert in law enforcement or in police psychology, but as a citizen who's seen and heard far too many stories like the death of George Floyd. Stories that all come back to the same root causes. Root causes we have the power to root out.
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@threadreaderapp, please unroll.