Normal law enforcement (In America) always works in a hierarchy. Local police dept or sheriff’s dept have their hierarchy culminating in the police chief (and mayor) or the sheriff. State police hierarchy ends with their top cop (and governor) and the federal police agencies (FBI, ATF, etc) have their head guy who serves under the president. In theory, the 3 groups should police each other, but in reality, I’ve seen local cops usually let state cops be in charge, and state cops usually let federal cops be in charge. So there isn’t much checking and balancing.
The uber-cop idea got me thinking about free-agents in law enforcement. And I came up with this preliminary idea. The new country has two law enforcement groups that are completely separate from each other, and are created to be able to police each other.
First is the police, and they are a somewhat normal govt agency that has a hierarchy. They employ officers that are paid for each hour they work. There is an upper limit to how many hours they work per week (maybe 36 or 32 hours, enough for three 12 hr shifts or four 8 hr shifts). Technically they will all be part-time; they must have a 2nd source of regular income. This is because someone who derives 100% of income from 1 job can easily be forced by that job to commit extremely unethical acts. The only common way they can get away from commiting the unethical act is to immediately quit their job, hence the 2nd source of income.
The 2nd law enforcement group is the Citizen Defenders and they will be the free-agents because they will have no hierarchy and no bosses. There will be mandatory service of 6 months in this group for all citizens of the country at 24 years old. This service will be easy to get out of if the person wants to claim to be a conscientious objector to violence or some other acceptable excuse, but that excuse will be publicly available information. So there will be a strong social pressure for the 24 year old to complete their 6 month service.
There will be two routes the young person can choose. Option A, become a gun carrying law enforcement officer. Option B, become a support person. I imagine many men will choose option A, and many women will choose option B, but technically they are free to choose either route. The way these options are setup is to enable the Citizen Defenders to operate as a self-organizing militia style defense force if the country is attacked
(This description is for option A, I haven’t thought thru the support role yet) The 6 month service period will be entirely a training period to learn everything needed to become a law enforcement officer: learning all the countries laws, firearm operation, arrest procedures, etc.
After they are done with their 6 months training, they can apply to be employed by the police dept if they want. If they are employed by the police, they can never return to the Citizen Defenders. No revolving door; they can only be an active or reserve officer for the police.
In the community, the police will be the ones to quickly respond (5 min or less) to a request for help and do the things that police normally do: crime scene investigation, riot control, etc. The Citizen Defenders will be alerted if there is a help request near them and can choose to respond to the incident, or not. If they indicate they are responding, they will be paid for the time they are on the scene. Their primary job when responding to a police scene will be to police the police; make sure no citizen’s rights are being violated, make sure a crime scene is handled properly, and also to just keep the general peace. They will have a body camera recording as well as a firearm mounted camera recording.
It will be against the law for anyone to give orders to a Citizen Defender. The police cannot tell a Citizen Defender to help him do his police work. The Citizen Defender chooses his own actions based on his expert knowledge of the law, and if he violates any laws, he is held accountable just as anyone else would be. At the end of the incident, all video recorded at the incident will be automatically wirelessly uploaded to a server and it can be reviewed if any accusations are made.
The Citizen Defenders will have a training, logistics and certification dept. This dept is NOT a headquarters group as there is no head authority figure and no one issues any orders to any Citizen Defender. The training, logistics, and certification dept will handle initial training as well as once every two years re-up training to keep people actively certified. If a Citizen Defender commits a crime, their certification as a law enforcer can be suspended temporarily or revoked permanently.
(Edit add-in) The 6 month Citizen Defender training period is NOT a military boot camp. It is just a 5 day-a-week schooling period. There will be no yelling. Military boot camp is mostly to get recruits to follow orders without thinking. The CD training period is to create individuals that can think and make decisions for themselves. At the end, they will have a high expertise in the laws of their country and will feel empowered to take part in defending their communities. Isn’t that the type of person you want living next-door to you?
Hopefully this Citizen Defender concept and its mandatory 6 month training period can become a big part of the social “glue” that holds the new country together!
(Extra- for firearm nerds) The Police and Citizen Defenders will use a short rifle system instead of a pistol, as other police usually use. It will be a short barreled rifle with a folding stock that can be single-point mounted on their front plate carrier. All their non-lethal options will be mounted on the rifle so that non-lethal can be utilized and then deadly fire can quickly follow if non-lethal doesn’t stop the threat. The rifle will have an under barrel launcher for bean-bag projectile and the first round in the magazine can be a rubber bullet. So they can hit an advancing threat with a high velocity bean-bag, then a rubber bullet, and then deadly fire after that if need be. A taser or pepper ball launcher might be added to the rifle or the overall kit.
