Like most people of my generation, I was brought up to respect and trust the police.
Of course, conservatism is about enduring social orders, and, when absolutely necessary and when nothing else will work, applying judicious force to protect that order against those that would harm, rob or swindle others, within the boundaries of fair, just laws on which there was broad consensus.
But conservatism is also about limited government – the proverbial good government that governs least.
And it says impossible to miss as it is troubling to notice that nearly every day seems to bring another story of grotesque police overreach; of swat teams barging into the wrong house, shooting dogs and handcuffing people and terrorizing children (or, in one recent case, burning and disfiguring them with Military grade flash bang grenades) only to find that it’s the wrong address (and then tearing the place apart to find something, anything illegal to justify the raid, and still leaving the homeowners to pay for the damages; “rogue” cops trampling all over citizens rights.
On the one hand, criticizing the police goes against conservatives’ DNA, in some ways; it is a difficult and necessary job.
On the other hand, or the past 20 years the police have been getting more and more powerful – and, with the blessing of not a few courts that seem to forgotten what the Constitution was for, made the 4th amendment almost as meaningless as the 10th.
And criticizing the heavy handedness of the police doesn’t come without blowback; you can usually count on a few responses almost immediately:
- “You could never do the job” – other than “reading addresses correctly” and knowing the difference between a dangerous dog and family pet barking to protect his family, you’re probably right. That’s why I pay taxes for the police department. As employees. Not feudal lords and masters.
- “Without police, society would be overrun with criminals!” – For starters, it’s a strawman; nobody’s talking about getting rid of the police. Again, I pay taxes, in part, for a police force. As employees, to keep the order – not like medieval knights to whom I, the mere citizen, must bow and scrape.
- “What’s the matter? If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from the police. Maybe you have something to hide…” – I’m not saying that people who say this with a straight, unironic face want a dictatorial police state. I’m just saying that dictatorial police states need lots of people who think this kind of idiocy to have a chance to take root. And in a society is overrun with rules and regulations as ours is, I think it’s fairly safe to say that absolutely no one hasn’t broken some sort of law.
- “You can’t blame the police for wanting to come home alive at the end of the shift” – Absolutely. And watching the way the police sprayed fire at innocent civilians during the manhunt for rogue cop Christopher Dornan in California two years ago, or watching police wound nine people – none of them the perpetrator – chasing a shooter around the Empire State building in New York City, you can’t blame me for wanting to do the same.
AJ Delgado, writing in National Review,
points out the danger in unthinking, knee-jerk support for the police.
He starts with the obligatory disclaimer – although that’s not enough to forestall some of the knee-jerk reactions he gets his comments section:
Let’s get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: Yes, many police officers do heroic works and, yes, many are upstanding individuals who serve the community bravely and capably.
But respecting good police work means being willing to speak out against civil-liberties-breaking thugs who shrug their shoulders after brutalizing citizens.
Read the whole thing.
Delgado points out that, but some statistical measures, police are actually better behaved than they used to be. And in an era where everyone has a cell phone with a video camera, it’s getting harder and harder for police to misbehave.
On the other hand, now that local police forces are running around with SWAT teams decks out in better battle rattle than the local National Guard unit, the stakes are even higher than they used to be.
Read the whole thing.
Having family members and friends in law enforcement, I can offer my observations on these types of incidents. Bottom line; all of them cringe with disgust when one they happen and call it sloppy and/or horseshit police work. They also admit that too many of their colleagues take an “it’s us vs. them” attitude and are alarmed by how quickly officers with under three years on their respective forces take that stance. My two family members, one here in MN and the other one in OH, have had to take lengthy psychological tests before they were accepted, yet, I can’t help but wonder how many police officers across the country are required to have those tests and evaluations, before they get on the street.
No knock warrants are smear upon the Fourth Amendment. The government should not initiate police activity with force against citizens and should have to demonstrate that they are authorized to make a search before initiating the search. Maybe the police should rethink their procedures and serve some of these people while they are outside of the domicile.
I was a prosecuting attorney for a decade. That “cops and perps” mentality used to be acquired after years on the job, now it seems to be taught from the beginning. Everybody who’s a cop is on our side of the Thin Blue Line. There are only two sides, so everybody who’s not on our side must be . . . a perp, and should be treated like one. Dominated. Controlled. Suspected. Tape recorded. You see it in every encounter.
Sadly, that attitude means cops often treat ordinary decent citizens as if they were pants-down trash-talking troublemakers. Not a recipe for good public relations with bankers or bakers or school teachers, much less for spouses. Firemen don’t have that problem. The cops lost the respect of the Black community years ago. When they lose the middle class . . . .
According to many police trainers, such behavior is called “command presence” and developing it is part of the field training process. While it has its place, many trainers neglect to teach when to use it (or not to).
A good prosecuting attorney will not tell the cop what s/he wants to hear, s/he’ll only tell them what they need to hear. This is not common. Over time, a prosecuting will sometimes start to identify with the cop side of the argument and look more towards helping a buddy that providing sound, impartial advice. This sometimes can result in making the crime fit the police report. It should be otherwise …