PEG offers an interesting partial solution to the problem of cops juking the stats:
Maybe the Zappos approach could be a solution: Zappos offers newly trained employees $1,000 to quit, because they only want people so dedicated that they would rather keep the job than take the cash. How about we do that with cops?Offer them a bigger amount, say $10K, after they graduate from the Academy? And again after 10 years of service, and again after each 5? Presumably only people who are really dedicated to service would stay on. And police work is one of the most demanding, eroding jobs out there; those who don’t want to do it their whole life should be allowed to cash out.
In fact, I think this would be a good idea for all government jobs. I view public service as a sort of temporary sacerdoce, something the most brilliant should do briefly and with dedication, so that we have a government that is as small as it is well run. Maybe such a system could accomplish that.
I think we, the voters have to shoulder some of the blame--not demanding numbers from them. But it would be a big help to cull the supply side as well.
The brilliant part of that is the congnative dissonance effect; they'll in fact turn down the $1000 mostly out of inertia, then rationalize themselves into believing they really like their new job.
So, do they get their pension, too, or not? Because many big city cops are in it for 20 to vest their pension then "retire" and do private security or something else (a not inconsequential number become lawyers).
If you started vesting pensions at 10 years, you'd probably get a lot more quitting at 10 years. But that's a hell of an investment in training to only have them as bona fide useful officers for about 8 years. Thus, the 20 year vesting.
If the pensions disn't vest, then you'd just be paying guys who would have quit anyway--almost nobody makes it through 10 years and doesn't stick it out one way or another until the pension vests.
Presumably only people who are really dedicated to service would stay on.
Or people who are corrupt and find more profit in continuing to work. The problem with the idea that "we'll pay them less (effectively) so that only the really dedicated and motivated people will work there" is that it can lead to "you've got to be dirty to make a living."
If you wanted to do that, you'd have to radically change the retirement system--teachers, cops, other government employees all face a compensation system that's heavily skewed towards deferred compensation (in the form of pensions), so people who don't make a long-term career out of it are severely penalized. (See this Ed Next piece on the system as it applies to teachers: http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/11130171.html)
This is already done - it's called early retirement. And it takes police officers with the greatest private sector prospects off the force. I'd bet that those are just the police we want to stay on the job.
I'd rather go with the original suggestion of eliminating arrest quotas. Statistics aside, it's not right to assume crimes and criminals before the fact.
I don't think this would work as a pay-off unless you could swing some kind of deal where they could still pressure prostitutes into providing free sexual favors instead of arresting them.
And maybe let them in on some interrogations occasionally.
I mean some things are priceless, for the rest there is Mastercard.
You might be able to justify this for some members of the civil service, but there are a LOT of positions where you want to have people with a LOT of government experience. In regulatory agencies (the ones that make sure that airplanes, nuclear power plants, and drugs are safe), the "lifers" provide a stable regulatory environment that business prefers, and that makes sure that the society doesn't get jerked around. One of the reasons why the civil service was invented was that we used to change the ENTIRE civil service every four years or so, when the administration changed. This caused one job-seeker who was jilted to kill the President Garfield.
Do you really want to have the entire regulatory philosophy of the federal government change every four years? If you are currently anti-Bush, you might say yes, now, but in 4 years, when the "people" get tired of Obama/Clinton II, things might go very much against you.
Oh, and having the "best and brightest" lead/do the work in government is the sort of thing that led to the Vietnam War, and the War on Poverty, which were all glorious successes.
Politicians have been trying to figure out good ways to evaluate civil servants for a long time, and no one has any real good ideas that really work. You have to actually work in the legal/political environment of a civil servant to understand why this is so.
Not a good idea. The problem with this approach is that the same as everywhere buyouts are offered -- the good, ambitious, flexible people who think they could quickly find another job and/or learn new skills take the cash and leave. The deadwood who realize they wouldn't be hired quickly or can't easily learn new skills (or are too lazy to be bothered) -- they all stay.
rxc:
Politicians have been trying to figure out good ways to evaluate civil servants for a long time, and no one has any real good ideas that really work.
At the federal level we used to have a method that improved the quality of bureaucrats hired (the civil service exam) but since no one could figure out how to make a test on which the black average is equal (or higher) than the white average, they were scrapped in the Carter administration. Oh well, guess the federal government doesn't need to have competent employees, after all it's not like anyone is proposing that they regulate more of the economy and replace the health insurance industry.
Seems like we should try to remove economic barriers to moving into or out of police work ... we don't want crummy cops staying in just for a pension, nor do we want to incentivize good cops leaving.
Pension vesting as a linear function of time served, rather than a golden reward at the end of 20 years, is a typical method used in private industry.
The other option is increased competition for the jobs and heightened barriers to entry ... tends to attract only those dedicated souls willing to work hard. Crank up the requirements to get into the programs. Crank up the time it takes to complete the program. Crank up the requirements to get through the program.
Steve,
I used to work for the fed govt, as a first line supervisor, and I think I did real appraisals with my people, discussing what they did right, and what they did wrong, and even asking them what they thought of MY performance and how well I supported their efforts. Unfortunately, this sort of appraisal is not in vogue, because it does not have hard measures of performance.
I had some people who did a lot of little pieces of work over the period of a year, while others were involved in large projects that may have produced results every other year. The bean counters wanted number of projects completed, hours/project, and "quality" or the product. The key values were (1) quantity, (2) quality, (3) timeliness, and (4) degree of supervision. The only one that could be meaningfully measured and compared was timeliness (get it done on schedule).
And, since these appraisals were used by other people to determine who got promoted or moved to other positions, it was important to include written evaluations that made the good performers look like they walked on water.
October was not a fun month...
If we would just pay every profession to quit -- doctors, lawyers, baseball players, garbagemen, bloggers -- we'd end up with an economy composed of such truly motivated individuals with such a love for their professions that we'd surely be the envy of the world.
"The Few, The Proud. . ." is a Marine Corps--not police--slogan.
Oh, and having the "best and brightest" lead/do the work in government is the sort of thing that led to the Vietnam War, and the War on Poverty, which were all glorious successes.
Of course the alternative is a government full of dimwitted Gary Condit/Doug Feith types.