[lal]

Not speaking as a lawyer, not legal advice, etc., I would love it if this weren't the case, at least for cops, but your reply and the several siblings to your reply suggesting this are all unfortunately at least a bit wrong. I disagree with parent and think the more ability we have to discipline police the better it will be for society, but courts have other ideas. When it comes to many public employees, including and especially police, courts including the Supreme Court have regularly held a variety of due process and other constitutional rights, including some of the ones you listed, to exist for internal disciplinary matters.

Many states also have their own stricter codified procedural protections for disciplining public employees, and of course that's before you get into cop union shit, though obviously the whole premise of the argument here is that we would be changing those state/local rules. But that stuff is a whole other can of worms. I'm just saying that even if you change state/local law/rules, even if you abolish cop unions, any police disciplinary body trying to operate this way they would definitely lose a lawsuit from the first cop they disciplined. I've personally seen multiple fucking volunteer firemen win constitutional due process challenges over getting demoted (like, from assistant chief to secondary assistant chief of what is mostly a social club) because they were disciplined without a formal hearing that afforded them procedural due process.

Unlike parent I'm not saying this is good or that to change it would be "unfair", just that what we're describing here -- that is, making it practically possible to discipline cops -- is disallowed under our current system of laws as we understand it. It would take a variety of substantive changes in how we legislatively and judicially structure procedural rights at every level of government from the top down.