I sure hope that David is making a joke here!Q: How do we bring give the police force reason to obey the law and not beat the daylights out of minorites, poor, mentally disturbed etc citizens?
A: Every time there is a proven brutality, one position will be cut from the police force. If it is set at say 900, it gets cut to 899. Then ALL of the officers are given a number from 001 to 900, and 3 "power ball" single digit balls are drawn, preferably on TV with lots of fanfare. The number, and then the associated name, of the officer is displayed, and he/she is thereby FIRED and may not be replaced.
Because there are so many illegal & unworkable with this proposal that it certainly ought to be a joke!
First: firing some person at random who has done nothing wrong: violates Civil Service laws, violates general employment laws, violates the city's contract with it's employees, etc.
Second: choosing some person at random does nothing at all to the person guilty of the "proven brutality".
Third: the people most hurt by this will be us citizens, who would have 1 fewer person on the streets to protect us from criminals -- unless David is also proposing some kind of public lottery to remove from our streets one criminal chosen at random, too? That might have some effect!
Perhaps we could instead choose one virgin from Minneapolis at random, and have them publicly sacrificed on the plaza in front of City Hall -- would probably have about the same effect!
Or better yet, take the cop guilty of a "proven brutality" and a randomly chosen criminal guilty of a "proven brutality" to an innocent Minneapolis victim, and let them go one-on-one in a gladiatorial battle. We'd get rid of either a bad cop or a criminal, maybe both. And we could surely fill the Metrodome with spectators at say $25 a seat, and probably sell TV rights for a good price, too. The income might even help the city survive the financial attacks from the Republicans at the State Capitol.
Tim Bonham, Ward 12, Standish-Ericsson
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