Police Officers-Protectors of the Law or Above the Law?

Great Debates
21

Interestingly enough, there was a great article in yesterday’s USA Today about the police force in New Orleans, and how it has been cleaned up and made over from a totally distrusted force into a force that is receiving accolades from all sides.

Seems that in 1994, New Orleans had something like 450 murders, an all-time high. What caused everyone some angst is that it turned out the killings were being done in large part by or on behalf of ‘bad’ cops. The new police chief was installed on the same day such a killing took place, a woman killed for complaining about a ‘bad’ officer.

To correct the situation, the new chief did several things. First, he abolished the internal affairs division and instituted instead of it an external investigative body, which he quartered in a building NOT connected with a police station. He instituted considerable turnover in the corps of officers, among other things requiring officers to have no record of certain criminal offenses (according to the story, something like 35% of the force was forced out through the new limitations). Then, he did the most obvious thing: started treating officers like human beings, increasing their base starting pay and the rate it goes up, and recruiting from top quality candidates instead of just whomever they could suit up.

Murders have declined by over 65% as a result. Local citizens groups consider the force a help, not a hinderance. In short, once again a New Orleans citizen can look at the police badge and think: this is a helper.

Now, I am not by any means willing to believe on the basis of this story that ALL problems in New Orleans are gone. But the story does show us some important themes in having a police force that is a true protector of the peace:

  1. As with ANY employer, it’s who you hire, stupid.

  2. Hiring a force that doesn’t reflect the racial makeup of the citizenry causes distrust ipso facto; any force with a low percentage of minorities in a city with a high percentage should re-think its policies, because something is screwy (a racially neutral system theoretically should reflect the populace from which the candidates are drawn).

  3. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? is always a hard question to answer; it is RARELY a good idea to let those with power police themselves.

  4. The more human you treat officers, the less likely they are to feel a need to act anti-socially.

  5. When you change the focus of the force from a ‘war on crime’ to ‘keeping the peace’, you change the mindset of those with whom the peace is entrusted.
    Would that someone would clean up the Border Patrol…

22

I have a hard time believing
that the choice of mayor changes the officer’s morality. Certainly policy can change actions, but it sure doesn’t change a peaceful man into a murderer. Normally, when a crime happens, it is because the person thinks they can get away with it. I have a hard time believing that the NY cops were all a bunch of swell guys until Giuliani came along.

“Universe Man - He’s got a watch with a minute hand, millenium hand and an eon hand and when they meet it’s a happy land - Powerful man, Universe Man”
-TMBG

23

Thanks for the info on the police guns. I’m not sure of the reasoning behind the idea that a cop with 13 bullets has a serious advantage over a civilian with ten, but hey, what do I know.

I disagree slightly with Spiny Norman. I think cops divide the world not into simply “us-and-them”, but into four classes (the following is based on my admittedly limited experience of the cops I know):

  1. COPS. Brothers. Fellow warriors in the battle against evil. The most important people for whose benefit almost no effort is too much.
  2. VICTIMS. Someone who has been a victim of a crime. Cops really do help people, A LOT, and if you haven’t been a victim count your blessings and be happy the cops will be there for you if you ever DO need them. Most cops, IMO, will generally bend over backwards to help someone they have decided fits into this category (depending on the severity of the crime). I’ve even known a racist cop who I have no doubt would run into a burning building to save a black person because, well, because they’re a Victim, and he’s a cop. This is the second most worthy class of person in a cop’s eyes.
  3. BAD GUYS. The Enemy. To be taken down, no matter what. This is what the job is about; get the bad guys: protect the citizenry. The worst class of person to be.
  4. OTHERS. The general run of drones out cluttering up the street; the general public that doesn’t fit into the other categories. To be ignored or, if necessary, briefly used to aid in helping Victims and catching Bad Guys. (Witnesses, if they make themselves notable, seem to be often shuffled into either category 2 or 3 in the cop’s minds). But cops are indifferent to this class, mostly, which frankly I think is as it should be, since any change would almost certainly be on the side of intrusion into our lives.

This mindset is a bit simplistic (as is, perhaps, my description), but is not really that bad a thing overall. The problem, as I see it, is how the cops assign people to these categories. It is much easier for a woman to position herself with most cops as a Victim than it is for a man. It is MUCH more difficult for blacks to enter the Victim category. It is relatively EASY, however, for a a black man, especially if he is physically imposing, to find himself in the category of Bad Guy, even if he hasn’t done anything per se. And of course there are fine gradations of how people flip between these classes, but the classes themselves seem to stand up pretty well with the things I read in the paper.

This is why, when you become the center of a cop’s attention, you have only two real options: pass that attention on to someone else, or put yourself in the Victim category, even if you’re only a mild Victim. Then be stoic about it (nobody likes a whiner).

This four-pointed compass isn’t quite as simple as “us-and-them”, but it is sufficient to create the blue wall of silence and the extension of “perqs” to each other (like freedom from speeding tickets). it is also enough, at times, to get an unarmed man shot 41 times. Okay, it’s surely an exageration to lay that whole scene at the feet of this categorization scheme, but I think it probably helped.

24

Another problem with cops is that they tell themselves that their job is to uphold the law. We ALL tell ourselves this. But in fact, the practicalities of a cop’s job mean that his first duty is to uphold the status quo. USUALLY, 99,999 times out of 100,000, this means upholding the law. But that last time is telling. How many police would disobey an order from a superior to, say, arrest someone who the cop knew had not committed any crime? I don’t mean that they had evidence the superior didn’t, I mean that they knew the superior’s motivation and it was clearly not the pursuit of “upholding the law”.
I’m thinking specifically about a group of people marching to protest something; they are peacefully assembled; no laws have been broken. The order comes down to release the dogs and open the firehoses, turning the peacefully demonstration into a riot. This will then be used to justify the action. It is made clear that a few heads getting broken will not lead to any ramifications. The order is coming from a power structure that simply does not want to be challenged, even though the challenge is protected VERY CLEARLY under the First Amendment, and the cop knows this. This has happened MORE THAN ONCE in American history. The civil rights movement of the 60’s is the most recent and egregious example. before that, did the FBI not pursue suspected communists, not for specific crimes, but for their views? Ever hear of the Homestead Strike? (well, okay, the cops stayed out of that one, but that’s the point - they SHOULDN’T have). Has anyone ever heard that a single cop disobeyed such orders because they weren’t legal? He’d have been laughed off the force! And it’s not like the Civil Rights Amendments are some obscure lawyerly statutes. Cops see their primary job as “keeping the peace”, i.e. squelching anyone deemed too disruptive. That translates in practical terms into maintaining the status quo. (This is not a modern phenomena; it has been true ever since police were invented as an offshoot of the army. A conqueror needed to enforce his will among the populace, and hence was born the “civil guard” or the “city watch”, really just troops from the “lord’s” army. The modern twist is that we might expect the cop’s loyalties to be more to the law than to the power structure.)

Of course, to condemn this characteristic raises the question, Do we want cops interpreting the laws they are charged with enforcing, and refusing to enforce them the way they are directed to by people higher up the chain of command and, presumably, closer to some sort of electoral process? I’m not entirely sure this a fault of the cops themselves. I think it’s an inevitable outcome of the system of a police force. I suspect that cops, the more thoughtful ones anyway, feel this very conflict between doing what they think is right and not overstepping their authority to make such decisions.

25

Democritus:

That’s the thing. This is not a “Dirty 30” case of corruption or something similar. No one asserts that these officers approached Mr. Diallo with a set plan to shoot him. The “conscious decision” to shoot him that the prosecutors refer to came in the moments immediately prior to the shooting. The charge is that they shot at him for no/insufficient reason and that they should have stopped before they did. Underlying that charge is the idea that the police officers had an unfair and factually incorrect pre-conceived notion about Mr. Diallo’s criminality.

I agree with Satan that a mayor and a police commissioner can create a mindset that leads to incidents such as these. When a police force gets convinced that everyone has done something wrong, that every fare jumper is really a killer not yet caught, that a furtive glance or criticism is evidence of a serious crime, shootings like this will occur. The New York City police force has always been tough on perps, sometimes beyond the amount allowed by law. The difference now is that in the minds of too many cops, everyone who is not a cop is a perp.

Livin’ on Tums, vitamin E and Rogaine

26

Me:

kknick34:

That was my point: That gun control laws don’t work.

27

A few observations and most assuredly generalizations about cops in Japan.

I’ve seen them take a lot of shit from drunks. They just stand there and smile and take all of the drunken abuse.

In fact, I did it one night when I was stopped for crossing against the light. He wasn’t smiling, but I read him the riot act for hassling a ‘gaijin’ for no ‘fucking’ reason…yada-yada-yada, I went on and on, went home and got my wife and came back for round two in case something was lost in the language.

Why do they take it? I believe it is a backlash from the pre-WWII when civil liberties were a farce. The cops as representatives of the government dare not play the bully to a drunken salaryman. Society here says the ‘servant’ in civil servant is the key word.

In my ten years here, I went ga-ga in a cops face once. Most of the other drunks that did it probably did it once. The cop here is able to discriminate between the person who is having a bad day and a chronic asshole.

If I had done what I did here in the US, I would have spent the night in jail. The US cop says, “This fucking asshole isn’t gonna give me any shit. He’s clearly drunk in public and I’m going to bust his ass for fucking with me.” The Tokyo cop says," This fucking asshole probably has been taking shit from his boss all day while working himself to death and now he’s in my face. Oh well, sometimes my job sucks. I hope he finishes his tantrum soon and goes home."

Let me add that the cops here definately know the meaning of payback, but you have to cross a very wide line to get there…IMHO.

Also, ambulances move slowly through the streets with someone shouting, “Excuse us please, we are driving to the hospital. It is an emergency. We are very sorry to inconvenience you. Excuse us please!”

I mention that because, as for cops, I am reminded of the movies where cops rush through crowds pushing people out of the way and shouting, “Get the fuck out of the way!! Move goddamit!!”

I think cops go from public service mentality to marshal law mentality very quickly in the US.

Well, what works in Japan isn’t going to work out in America, of course. Japanese society gives up quite a few liberties in order to get to that harmonious place they are so well known for.

I’ll take the US. When I return, I hope I can find a town where the cop takes me home instead of to jail when he catches me walking home because I was to drunk to drive.

28

I realize that. I’m sorry, it wasn’t “murder”. But it sure as shit wasn’t self defense either.

[quote]
I agree with Satan that a mayor and a police commissioner can create a mindset that leads to incidents such as these. When a police force gets convinced that everyone has done something wrong, that every fare jumper is really a killer not yet caught, that a furtive glance or criticism is evidence of a serious crime, shootings like this will occur. [/quote

Manny, when they get convinced? So, they are all a bunch of robots? Is this going to turn into a “Is the mayor omnipotent or do we have free will?” thread? I don’t see how you can believe that the mayor is going out and brainwashing all these people so they are not able to make a rational, ethical choice?

“Universe Man - He’s got a watch with a minute hand, millenium hand and an eon hand and when they meet it’s a happy land - Powerful man, Universe Man”
-TMBG

29

Actually, Dem, this statement may go hand in hand with this one:

The point being, yea, they don’t want intelligent people that act on free will, they want thug mentality, drone mentality.

But still no excuse for four trained police officers to shoot an unarmed man who was simply walking home 41 times. I don’t care how dumb they are.

If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
-Albert Einstein

30

Actually, they don’t. I don’t think intelligence really plays a role in free will. Do people with different IQs have different amounts of free will? No. They can still make the ethical decision not to fire off a whole clip into someone.

Also, I wasn’t refering to the officer’s intelligence at all with that statement, I was reffering to the allegation that the officers had somehow changed between offices. How much does intelligence play in ethics and morals? I don’t know. But I have seen men with pretty damn low IQs but damn tough moral fibre.

“Universe Man - He’s got a watch with a minute hand, millenium hand and an eon hand and when they meet it’s a happy land - Powerful man, Universe Man”
-TMBG

31

True, of course, and my statement was a thought to ponder, not a solid fact.

Perhaps it requires familiarity with the city, but I see the point Satan and manny were making. It certainly does not excuse these individuals from their actions, but it sheds some light on the higher authorities (politically speaking) that come into play.

If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
-Albert Einstein

32

Certainly I see their point. It doesn’t require familiarity with the city, just read DSYoung’s post about New Orleans. That post demonstrates very well how policy can change the officers actions.

What I have a problem with is how “For years, NYC cops were really good guys.”, and now they are homicidal freaks just because of a change of policy or the mayor’s propaganda.

Which is what this seems to state:

“Universe Man - He’s got a watch with a minute hand, millenium hand and an eon hand and when they meet it’s a happy land - Powerful man, Universe Man”
-TMBG

33

That’s the funny thing about Seattle-area cops. I think most of them are too apathetic to be truly corrupt. My favorite was when I called the police when my car was broken into at work a while back. Officer Friendly’s response? “What do you expect me to do about it?” Uh, anything?

Down in Federal Way (between Seattle and Tacoma) they have the worst crystal meth problem on the west coast. We don’t hear of many busts; we see a lot of reports of police/hazmat folks going in after a neighbor reports a funny smell after the tenants vacate. What are they doing instead? They spend a whole lot of time at the local strip bar, ensuring the 4-foot contact rule (dancers can’t be within 4 feet of patrons) is enforced.

Heck, the Seattle Police Chief resigned after the Seattle riots. I still don’t know why. No protester was killed. The ‘real’ protesters (Union folks, organized rights groups, environmental types) were out of the area before the thugs started tearing the hell out of downtown anyway. They deserve what they got. They were lucky they didn’t get what they trained the National Guard for in prep for the Rodney King trial backlash–we were to mount bayonets and pretty much assault the crowd under a fog of tear gas, while MP’s cleaned up stragglers. No one in my unit was looking forward to that. Shit, it’s Pioneer Square, not Tienamen <sp> Square!!

But, I guess I’m happy out here with police that do nothing, rather than police that kill innocent people, plant evidence, and other fun stuff. Best these guys can do is steal evidence from crime scenes, and that’s okay by me.

-sb

They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.

34

APB9999: That “4-category cop way of thinking” description ROCKS. Fits the observed data, even.

MAN, I love this board.

Norman