1. United States
2. Hawaii
3. Letter

One of the issues we should tackle in the next session is police reform. There are multiple systemic problems with law enforcement that need addressing, if we want to make sure our officers are above reproach. First thing is to make it illegal for officers to lie to suspects. This will lessen the amount of false confessions and cut down the amount of innocent people being thrown in prison. It's standard procedure for most developed counting with the US being an exception. Second is to eliminate non-safety-related-stops. We should have our cops focus on people who are actually driving recklessly, instead of if someone is driving with a broken taillight. These procedures are a waste of police department resources, and punishes low income people with prison time and huge fines. These kind of stops are predatory and are not effective. The defender association of Philadelphia has found that from these kinds of pretextual stops have found contraband, illegal substances, or weapons less than 1 percent of the time. Additionally we should change the way we administer penalty fines. That instead of charging a flat rate fee for an infraction, it would be based on a sliding scale based on the perpetrator's tax bracket. For instance, instead of paying $200 for a speeding technique someone living paycheck to paycheck would pay $50 but someone who earns six figures will have to pay $900. This way we don't have to penalize low income workers who make a mistake, but also hold accountable people who are more well off from taking advantage of the system. Of course there are other systemic issues we can handle as well. Legalize Marijuana, eliminate cash-bond except for violent offenders / those who are a threat to themselves or others, stopping the unethical homeless sweeps, make it legal for people to sleep in their car, don't penalize people for sleeping outside and make mental health and racial sensitivity training mandatory for all officers. There is so much to work on, and it won't be easy. But that's all the more reason to do so. Because if we want police officers to be the pillar of our society, then we have to make sure that the practice of policing, the way we enforce our laws, are based on lifting their community up rather than vindictively beating people down.