1. The fact is...

-We have too many cops.
-They do not get enough training.
-They aren’t paid enough.

All of these things are interconnected. Becoming a cop only requires a Bachelors & minimum 300 hrs of training. They are paid around $30,000- 40,000 a year for their jobs..

2. Any and everybody can pursue a career in law enforcement as the requirements are minimal & it is essential a non-specialist job. Not everyone can handle high stress jobs but we give guns and power to anyone who can “pass” requirements. Simply put, Most cops shouldn’t be.

3. If we reduced # of police we have, elevated the job to that of a specialist alongside more accountability & training, we’d have a much better pool to choose officers from. Raising salaries would also make it no longer an entry level job position unqualified people apply for.

4. I do believe we need to reappropriate funds, we give more money to weaponizing police than we do to those same officer’s families via salary. We will buy riot gear for a cop before we consider new textbooks for a classroom. We, as a country, love power more than people.

5. To be clear, I’m only for raising police salaries provided everything I’ve stated above is done first. We’d 1st have to clean house & rebuild PDs from the ground up. Policing NEEDS to be cleansed.

*Same principles can be applied to Teachers & they should be making way more $.

6. Folks are telling me I’m being generous. Y saying, “require a bachelors”, y’all see my point? ANYBODY can become a cop! The majority of people with guns and badges shouldn’t have such power & should be considered unqualified. We gotta cleanse & radically change qualifications.

7. I’ve gotten a decent amount of feedback stating officers in major cities get paid very well but are as I said, are not required to have much formal education. I think this reenforces my main point. We need to raise the prerequisite standards for those pursuing law enforcement.

8. At the end of the day, we as a society look to policing as being the best tool for social flourishing rather than community & education. So we have officers disconnected from communities policing them & we invest more in riot gear than school supplies & teacher salaries.

9. For those pushing back on salaries quoted in orignal tweet, I was speaking abt introductory salaries, but I wasn’t clear. There is clearly a range. Main point of thread is not cop salaries tho, but the fact that most police are under-qualified to wield the power they have.

10. The fact officers make more only further enhances my point. Why do we pay officers the same as teachers & social workers with PhDs when in some places they aren’t even required to have a BA? We need to reduce # of police & have way higher prerequisite requirements.

11. Prerequisites must include psyche evals with a heavy emphasis on racial bias, narcissism, and other power complexes. Many officers pursue profession b/c of the power a badge gives them over others. We far too easily give people police power & act surprised when they abuse it.