Agreed, whatever helps is good. My city has started changing the crosswalk signs to show “Walk” a few seconds before the light goes green. I can’t tell if it’s a good idea, because it made me realize that some drivers will start driving when the see a green light *or* a pedestrian walk signal, without even realizing it…

What novel ideas! Who'd have thunk?

Okay, cool, that seems like a good situation. Do the police in your town behave better than “the norm?” Do they make the news for bad behavior? Honest questions, I’m curious if my theory holds water.

Local governments will have to approve those pay raises (and they should!). But those local governments will be far less happy to pay out police settlements after paying the police more. Tolerance for poor behavior will drop. Legal defense will evaporate. High-level heads will roll, and hiring power-trippers will…

I still can’t agree with the “good pay and benefits” thing. Cities all over the place can’t fill their rosters because there aren’t people willing to apply, and the ones that do end up leaving because they can’t afford to stay. As I said, my city is one of those that can’t hire enough cops to spend their entire personn…

When the pay improves, the number and quality of candidates improves. When the number of quality candidates improves, everyone knows they are replaceable, and will be more inclined to do their job *well.*

I submit that the people we task with keeping us safe should not require “side-hustles” to make ends meet. We owe them that much. And they should owe us right back.

So, if I’m understanding (and I may not be!), the police, *after overtime*, are making ~20-25% below the median income in your town? If that’s correct, that does not sound reasonable or enticing in the slightest. Please not the “if,” and correct me if I'm wrong.

I’m not anti-cop either. I’m anti-bad-cop. And pro-cop-accountability. And if we expect them to be accountable for protecting and serving us, we need to be accountable to them to make failing to do so a very unwise decision. Both in terms of losing a good-paying career and in terms of criminal penalties where…

Make the pay what it ought to be, and you’ll have more smart people coming into the system, eventually replacing the ones who thing “dumb is better.”  You’ll also have people, and local governments, expecting better behavior from the people they just gave fat raises to.  That will encourage the hiring of people smart…

$120k where? Cost of living varies dramatically by location. That’ll get you far in rural NC, but you’ll be broke as a joke in San Francisco.

Accountability is a two-way street.

Seriously. My city just can’t fill it’s roster because the pay is so bad. Make being a cop a financially-rewarding job and you’ll have people competing for those jobs. Better quality people, too.

We need to be paying our police officers more, so that they can afford to hire people who aren’t this goddamn stupid.

The bZ4X is what you did, *Akio!*

I'd watch that challenge on YouTube.

My wife, or her Prius?

Because the cameras you seem to think should be sufficient to detect what is and is not the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle...

I know, right? Everywhere you look, there are signs of how much stupider everything is going to get in short order...

I know, I wish my wife would let me trade her ratty Prius for one.