We have had many discussion on this board, on the internet and in real life about police activity and whether good cops should be lumped together with bad cops. But what is a “good cop”? Is it someone who doesn’t actively commit a crime? Is it someone that looks the other way why the bad cop acts? Is it someone who actively covers up the actions of bad cops? Is it someone who speaks up and tries to expose bad cops?
In my opinion, to be a good cop is to act to expose and possibly expel bad cops they know about and support efforts to clean up questionable police practices. What say you?
I believe that most people visualize the Good Cop/Bad Cop scenario when you talk about “Good Cop”. In that scenario the “Good Cop” isn’t actually good, he trying to convince you to spill the beans on yourself or be threatened with the “Bad Cop” taking some ominous sort of action against you. So I think most people see “Good Cop” as just another game that the police play to manipulate suspects.
That said, their are definitely good cops out there, most I would say are good cops. But that doesn’t mean that they actively go after bad cops.
I’m pretty sure the OP points out what I am talking about.
Do they look the other way or refuse to stop actions of bad cops?
Just pointing out what happens when you put good cop in quotes.
Most cops are not good cops by your definition and from my experience most are not good cops because they turn the other way and actively keep quite about bad cop activity. They see themselves as the good guys but employ bad guy behavior in the name of doing the right thing. Which makes them bad guys. Only a few go against the grain and report on bad cops, these are quite few and are actually newsworthy when they do so.
A good cop…
a) Obeys the law
b) Enforces the laws equally, not using different standards when an individual is dressed in a business suit, sporting caucasian-white skin, presents as male, and is driving a Mercedes than when the individual appears to be a young black woman in a tight red dress and high heels. I don’t mean “is equally inclined in both cases to believe the individual may be guilty of corporate embezzlement or sexual solicitation” or whatever, but does not arrest or ticket or stop one person when they would not do so to the other.
c) Same with when the individual is dressed in the uniform of a police officer. Arrests & tickets etc police officers if they are observed to have committed violations of the law.
REALLY good cops:
d) Go in to situations not just looking for who they can catch committing arrestible crimes (etc) and conducting related investigations, but also interacts with the community, defuses altercations without force or threat of force whenever possible, refers observed issues to other agencies and organizations where appropriate.
e) Interacts with all citizens as if giving them the benefit of the doubt, addressing them politely and respectfully. Does not interact in such a way as to convey the message of “I know you’re doing something you shouldn’t be and we’ll get you for it”.
I think a lot of people hear “bad cop” as the same thing as “bad person being a cop”.
My views on policing in the US are no secret here. I have said explicitly that there is no such thing as a good cop. But that’s because I believe me that the job is inherently bad.
I do believe that there are many many good people attempting to be good cops. Hell, I have family members in the force (an Irish American from Chicago, who’da thunk?) and I can testify that they are good people. It is the job that is bad. It appeals to bad people and it corrupts good people.
How much of that is due to the “if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” issue with the profession?
I mean, I’m sure that a lot of cops wouldn’t mind playing Sheriff Andy Taylor, but instead they spend their days driving around individually in a car being shuttled from issue to issue.
So rather than engaging with the community, they’re doing something more along the lines of solving problem tickets almost like an in-person, interpersonal armed help desk tech.
The reason I bring that up is because having worked a little bit of telephone helpdesk support like that in college, it’s REALLY easy to get a disdainful attitude toward the people you work with. You start thinking they’re all idiots, incompetent, etc… because ALL you see is examples of their incompetence and stupidity. And it gets more segregated from there; you start knowing that if your caller sounds like a sorority girl, you start assuming that she’s going to be a total neophyte and not know a thing, but probably be opinionated about it.
I imagine cops are similar- if all they see are the negative incidents, criminals and other stuff in a certain part of town populated by certain people, they’re likely to develop attitudes about it, whether or not they’re based on accurate, representative, etc… information. And probably a certain amount of unwarranted assumptions about the people they don’t see as well.
Yes.
I believe this is a big part of it. Anybody would have a hard time remaining objective under these circumstances.
I drove for Uber/Lyft in Detroit and thought that I would see the city from a cops perspective. Boy was I wrong, while I went into many of the toughest crime ridden areas of the city the people I meet were glad to see me and just wanted to go to work, the grocery store, a family outing or to the doctor and such.
I saw hookers and people that had overdosed on the streets but never had to deal with them. I had three young gangster looking dudes in my car late one night that worried me at first, but all they talked about was getting to the club and hitting on strippers. Not like they were handcuffed in my backseat screaming at me.
I wouldn’t ever want to be cop. Good or bad.
Basically, the best example of a good cop is Pete Malloy of Adam-12.
He treated everyone fairly, showed no racial or other biases towards the citizenry, he didn’t put up with anything less than 100% professionalism out of anyone in the department, he’d never take a bribe, not even a free apple, and if he lost his cool he’d regret it and apologize and expect punishment from his superior. And most of all, he only used violence as a last resort, and never shot anybody that wasn’t already shooting at him.
He could defuse situations without being a bully, but could handle the tough calls without fear.
I’m not sure there was EVER a cop in the entire history of the LAPD like Malloy. Not then, and not now.
Captain Barney Miller & Detectives Dietrich, Harris, Yemana & Fish were good cops. Wojo a little less so.
I wonder if the media is to blame to some extent. For the last several decades, the “good” cop is the lone wolf. He doesn’t care what that pencil pusher commish thinks, sure he breaks the rules, but he gets results dammit!
Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer are the obvious examples, but even Axel Foley fits this mold. I’m sure that a number of people go into law enforcement with these archetypes as a their role model.
Those characters weren’t put forth as good cops. They were bad cops who were “effective” cops. And this is definitely, IMHO, part of the problem. We are all taught, from an early age, that it’s ok to look the other way if the results are what we want.
In that vein, almost every TV cop show has at least one episode where the heroes have to deal with Internal Affairs–the division that investigates complaints about things like excessive force, corruption, harassment of citizens, etc. Invariably the Internal Affairs guys are portrayed as petty, officious bureaucrats, just looking to score points with the politicians by endlessly nitpicking every little thing, basically making it impossible for police officers to do their jobs. They’re desk jockeys who don’t understand what it’s really like out there on the streets.
When our entertainment depicts the people who are charged with assuring police accountability as the bad guys, that doesn’t help.
I tend to agree with AHunter3’s post.
Since we’re mentioning fictional officers, I think Olivia Benson on SVU is an example of a good cop. She’s not afraid to turn in the bad cops and treats the people she interacts with fairly. She doesn’t always gets it right, but if all officers behaved the way she does, the problems we have WRT police brutality wouldn’t exist.