Or by the police themselves, as is happening in some jurisdictions now, including right here in San Diego.
I don’t know if i’m interpreting your position accurately, but you seem to be saying that it’s OK as long as the cops can get away with it. Your position seems to be that, as long as cops check for the presence of cameras in order to make sure that they don’t leave themselves and their towns open to lawsuits, there is no real problem with them circumventing constitutional protections as long as they don’t go beyond what you consider to be a reasonable level of violence and rights violations.
No, but I can see how you formed that assessment.
As long as the cops can get away with it, the practice will be widespread. Sort of like the non-cop world, really.
I’m hypothesizing that this sort of extra-legal practice has occurred routinely in the US for as long as there have been cops. It’s been limited though by the fact that bodily harm can lead to investigation. But a slap in the face or a punch to the stomach? No, probably not. Hell, if the perp receives a black eye, it can be explained away with a charge of resisting arrest. I think our friend Officer Glans made that pretty clear. Thank you officer.
So we have a settled institution, a way of doing things that has persisted for over a dozen decades. Camera phones make changes inevitable. But before we topple the apple-cart I’d like to know a little more about what will replace it, and the consequences thereof. It used to be said the both liberals and conservatives support change: it’s just that conservatives like to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, and act with deliberation. I’m a conservative in that sense.
I speculate the eventual resolution will involve embracing technology and mounting cams on cops and dashboards. Plus some erosion of privacy: it’s not mentioned in the constitution you know. At any rate, I’d like to see a few of these scenarios gamed out by qualified experts.
I was under the impression that not violating the constitutional rights of citizens was *already *supposed to be part of the dotted i’s and crossed t’s of our law enforcement system.
Why should you require any deliberation or proof of efficacy in order to support what should have been standard practice all along? You say that the current system has been in place for decades, and that you’d like to know a little more about “what will replace it.” Well, what will replace it, ideally, is a system where both police and citizens have to obey the law, and are held accountable if they don’t. I’m not sure why that requires any extensive investigation, or even much deliberation, for that matter.
It’s not that hard. Cops chase thugs and occasionally catch them. Cops use a number of tried and tested techniques, some of them illegal. Presumably effective measures to ban such techniques will have consequences, among them reduced ability to catch thugs.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reform these 100+ year police habits and traditions. It means we should look before we leap.
Interestingly, we haven’t learned the names of the cops who accompanied former Officer Glans during his encounter with the serial woods visitors. Apparently there were 2 deputies one of whom, you know, searched the car. Without a warrant or permission of its owner. No worries though: the investigation is allegedly continuing.
Also, Glans has a part time job with the South Glens Falls PD. They have not commented on his employment status.
That’s just fucking crazy, and is a completely unacceptable standard.
On the one hand, these policing controversy threads are making me sad. On the other, it’s clear that we need to have a lot more discussion in order to educate people and change what people will accept.
My only guess is that right now, we’re a big fucking panicky nation, and have come to tolerate the loss of liberties in favor of security at pretty much every level and in every context.
It’s not a standard: it’s a description. US hockey players don’t lose their cool during most games either, though some get into “fights”. In leagues where such nonsense is penalized, it disappears.
Again, I’m not describing anything new as I see it. Indeed, I suspect the cops were more aggressive during the 1800s and 1930s, judging from worker strike literature. The trend has been for greater police professionalism, not less. See: Serpico.
I tried poking around for info on the net: I found a mediocre article entitled, “Law Enforcement and the Rule of Law: Is there A Tradeoff?” by David H. Bayley of the State University of New York at Albany. Anyway, the DoJ apparently surveyed a number of officers during the 1990s asking them whether, “always following the rules is not compatible with getting the job done”, 43% agreed with that statement. And I say a few of the ones who didn’t may have been lying: if you have experience lying in court I don’t know why you’d feel like you should be candid with a telephone interviewer.
The author was pro-rule of law, but he didn’t make any serious effort to distinguish between different illegal police practices.
Surely research has produced surprises in the past, but in this case I’m just not seeing it. How is it at all plausible that heightened scrutiny of police actions for civil rights abuses will have a significant effect on their ability to catch bad guys etc. Maybe there will be cases here and there, but what systematic and large-enough-to-worry-about problem could it cause?
I’d like to go back to this statement of your thesis, MfM, if you don’t mind the interjection.
Here’s the thing about settled institutional behaviors; they don’t normally exist singly. In other words, within long established trades or occupations, there are coexisting and often competing behaviors among the practitioners.
The rough treatment technique employed by Officer Glans* is surely quite popular. Intimidation can be an effortlessly rote procedure as it comes naturally to certain types of individuals, it can be moderated to suit the officer’s sense of the situation, it’s historically had plausible deniability (less and less with the advent of the camera/video phone), and it requires little or no creativity.
But even in the 1880’s through 1930’s, there have been cops who did their jobs effectively and commendably, apprehending criminals and preventing illegalities without ever behaving like assholes. Surely there have been at least appreciable percentages of these better cops through every era of uniformed police, in every jurisdiction which has had them. Hell, I’m sure there were Roman soldiers in occupied lands with kinder and more creative approaches than their fellows.
So I don’t really buy ‘unintended consequences’ as an important concern regarding efforts to curb civil rights violations.
*I’m sure I’m not the first to note this, but “Glans” just seems to be the perfect name for the dickhead in the story…
And another: cops in Vancouver, Washington shot the unarmed man that called 911 to report a suspicious car. When they arrived on the scene, they saw a man matching the description of a suspect in a shooting earlier. Since you can never be too careful, they figured it was safer to just shoot the guy first and worry about positive identification and lack of a weapon later.
I can understand the guy wanting to stay anonymous. There are plenty of people ready to blindly defend the cops, and that defense sometimes takes the form of harassing the victim.
Or at least until revealing his identity becomes beneficial to the agency.
But I agree with Serpico. The police are still out of control. But graft among NYC cops is no longer considered acceptable practice.
xenophon41: Nice post, nice points. Judging from my survey though, we have a background rate of bad behavior of at least 50% – and presumably the rule breakers are concentrated in certain jurisdictions. Here’s my problem: you offered no substantiation, probably because you don’t have any reports to back up your statements. Look: I’m guessing you are correct. But in my mind this just underlines the necessity of research on the topic, looking before leaping. (Though honestly, the US isn’t going to do any leaping. They will just grind through lawsuits.)
Frylock: That’s a fair question, and I’ll try to think about it further. Basically though my answer is going to be, it depends upon the specific police practice.
Research on the numbers might be helpful just to establish some sort of baseline, but I can’t help thinking any published results would be doomed to vicious partisan deconstruction and spin. Perhaps approaching the question by analyzing the different policing approaches for strengths, weaknesses and legalities, and then taking a few passes at modelling the best practices which adhere to ethical and legal expectations?
All of which come to think of it has been under constant review by professional law enforcement entities since they’ve existed, and been the subject of more than a little thought experimentation in American literature since that has existed. So I guess I’m saying I don’t know what specific new research really needs to be done.
And really, if police could magically no longer get away with civil rights violations at any significant level, I’m having a hard time believing they couldn’t find effective replacement techniques for any shakedowns, beatdowns and unreasonable searches & seizures we hypothesize they’re performing now.
In any case, as you said before, doesn’t seem that society will have the luxury of “looking before leaping” as technology might have made that jump for us.
I’m surprised that I’m the first to post this, but apparently the New Orleans detectives responsible for investigating sexual assault, didn’t conduct any follow up investigation for 86% of the cases reported to them.
I’d like to delineate various sorts of wrongdoing by law enforcement.
Wrongdoing that is illegal and purely self interested, eg graft.
Systemic and institutional wrongdoing that may or may not be legal. eg Speed traps. eg Excessive court fees combined with excessive warrants issued for minor offenses. Systemic and predatory behavior. eg Many years ago Jim Crow.
Idiosyncratic wrongdoing by a cop who is out of uniform.
Idiosyncratic wrongdoing by a cop misusing his authority. Much like #1.
SIOP: Standard Illegal Operating Procedure.
I’m advocating a carve-out for number 5. Some of those practices should be curbed: maybe all should be. But when police practice goes back 100 years, I’m leary of upturning apple carts without reflection.
Let’s work through one example.
If you resist arrest in NYC, you get pummeled. The idea is that a cop on the beat represents all cops, and they don’t want to undermine each other’s collective authority. They don’t want to play cat and mouse. They want to convey the idea that resisting arrest will bring swift and certain punishment. That said, such punishment shouldn’t be excessive: if a cop punches a perp more than once, the other cops should pull him back. That’s part of the training.
Ok, let’s say somebody flees from the cops for 10 minutes, then at the end of the chase they just escort him to the nearest police station. Would that be so bad?
A: I have no idea. Seriously. I also don’t know what happens when the underworld loses respect for the local constabulary. But this must have happened somewhere. So there should be a way of researching this.
Most policy decisions are below the radar of the mass media, whether at the national or local level. Same for most research. True, the big decisions are subject to coverage. But there are thousands of smaller ones that receive little attention.
Also, it would be tricky for even a wacko pundit to make the sort of argument I’m making. More likely, they would just deny the reality underlying 150 years of policing.
Oh sure. For all I know the research could be a literature review. Or maybe a survey of cops. Or even an expert panel of detectives.
Probably. Methinks it’s better to game these things out in advance though.
Another example might be the routine search of automobiles without warrants. What if this practice was curbed?
This is something that could be figured out. Compare the total numbers of autos searched with and without warrants. Take the autos searched without warrants and calculate
a) the percentage of times an arrest occurred,
and
b) a breakdown of those arrests by seriousness. In other words if they all involve small quantities of drugs… well then we have the basis for some cost/benefit analysis.
Giving up lots of small drug busts for even heroin seems like a reasonable price for buttressing the 4th amendment. But amounts of 1 kilo or more might give me pause.
This would fit quite nicely in either the “Stupid Republican Idea of the Day” or “Stupid Liberal Idea of the Day” threads depending upon who it was attributed to.
Seriously, this is one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever seen posted.
Ookay. But -again- I’m discussing police practices that have been in place in the US for decades. I’m saying that the consequences of reversing them can be studied and the problems anticipated.
Not sure what to say to mhendo and zoid, except to recommend that they join the ACLU. I’ve been a member for years notwithstanding my level of blase. The Rodney King and Ferguson cases outraged me. Longstanding police practices that I am insufficiently informed about do not, at least until I can acquire a better information base.