Good Cop, Bad Cop

I used to live next door to a police officer named Greeno. He was a decent guy, good family man, took his job seriously but not too much so, prided himself on the fact that he never shot (or shot at) anyone. He was the first cop I got to know well and it set a high bar. I expected cops to be good guys, nice guys, sensible people. Many of them are just that. More than you might expect, based on what you hear and read.

I also have any number of friends that distrust cops, dislike cops, some even hate hate hate cops. I sympathize. I’ve learned to distrust “cops” in the generic sense, in much the same way many of them distrust the public. I know at least a couple of people who believe that all cops are bad, that they are the unchecked enforcement arm of a corrupt government. An argument can be made for this point of view.

So, here’s the question: what is the alternative?

Is the alternative no cops? No government? Some fairy tale anarchy where everyone looks out for themselves – rugged individualism; survival of the fittest? Well, I certainly wouldn’t be a lawyer if I thought that, because implicit in the whole lawyer gig is the notion of the Rule of Law. And for the law to rule, there must be some general acquiescence to authority of the courts as an arm of government, and the police enforce that authority. Without that, you have two choices – Mad Max on one side; Steve Bannon on the other.

What is the alternative?

Police forces have many problems. Some they bring on themselves. Some not so much. Two examples of problems the police didn’t ask for but get to deal with anyway: mental health and drug addiction. We all know perfectly well that these have become police problems because of our own abysmal failure to provide even the minimum necessary social services required to deal with these issues. Oh, yeah and then there’s this – that simple-minded conviction, based on no historical evidence whatsoever – that families should be the front line against these horrors.

Well, we’ve been there. When schizophrenic Phil was his parents’ problem, they had a solution – lock ol’ Phil up for the rest of his natural life in some bug-infested warehouse for crazies, where well-meaning care givers gouged out part of his brain to make him compliant. But, see, as compassionate human beings (who were tired of footing the bill to feed the nutcases) we got rid of the “Mental Hospitals”. The plan was to replace them with community-based care centers. Thing is, that never happened. Now families let the mentally ill wander the streets, because they can’t stop them, and these disturbed individuals cause all kinds of police problems, large and small – from murder to mugging to pissing in the bushes, sleeping under bridges and begging on on-ramps.

As for drugs, again, history provides an insight. It turns out that the base rate for

addiction in the population is quite stable. Check out the chart (from TheAtlantic.com, October, 2012). The only thing that has changed is that we’ve turned the “War on Drugs” (begun in the Nixon years to combat black radicalism and the white anti-war movement) into a for-profit industry. High among those who profit are the police, and they would be loath to give up the fight. Nevertheless, it’s a battle they should not engage and one they cannot win.

So, part of the solution is to provide human services and decriminalize a lot of what passes as “crime” but is really “sickness”.

Then there’s the stuff cops and their government overlords DO bring on themselves.

Such as? Well, racism, and militarization, and their goddamned code of silence, the latter being the elephant in the room.

I’m not going to dwell on racism today. I’ve written about it elsewhere (here), and it is a fact of life in America beyond what cops bring to the table. I will say that there are certainly racist police, there are entire departments that openly engage in racial profiling, the Klan and white nationalists have infiltrated agencies to some extent – more than they should, less than they claim – in brief, racism is the great stain on our national honor. You’d think that increased diversity in hiring would solve the problem, but, no, not really. We’ll come back to that.

The United States today is at a low ebb, vis-à-vis the crime rate. Crime is at the lowest point (per capita) we’ve seen since the 1950s. Unfortunately, this fact does not fit with the narrative that the liar-in-chief and his lackeys need to sell to consolidate their positions. Thus, crime is rampant, lies are “alternative facts”, the police are the victims. Ergo, the sensible restrictions placed on the sale of military equipment to civilian forces have now been lifted, and all the boys (and girls) in blue get a tommy gun, or a tank, or a bazooka, or whatever. This is bad juju. When you combine a militarized police force holding a grudge with a gutted Posse Comitatus act, there’s no one left to protect the civilians. In case you didn’t notice.

Believe it or not, racism and militarization are not the biggest problems. There’s a contamination in the ranks, it is nearly universal among the police forces, and it infects much of what they do. Yep. The code.

It’s a simple rule. Thou shall not rat out a fellow officer. No matter what nasty, brutish, vicious and/or underhanded shit she did, keep your fucking mouth shut. It doesn’t matter if it’s murder, you cover it up. You don’t Want to Know what will happen if you don’t follow the code.

I get it. Policing is sometimes (often?) a rotten job, wherein officers are confronted with situations that present no good choices. They are sometimes asked to make life-and-death judgment calls with little information or context. Given that, and given that a bad call can end a career (or worse), the solution is simple – police officers, by general agreement, simply do not make bad calls. They exist in an error-free zone, each hastening to protect the other from any allegation of poor judgment, misconduct, or malfeasance. And race plays no role – everyone follows the code.

The psychology of this code is almost insurmountable. For any officer to publicly go against another – regardless of how minor the disagreement – is a near-heroic act. The outspoken officer will be shunned, threatened, attacked, subjected to similar allegations, and – perhaps worst of all – given no support or backup, on the streets or off. Ratting out a fellow officer is at best a career-killer, at worse a death sentence. And why would you do that? You go along, you get along.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: There are, as I suggested above, many good, more-or-less honest, well-meaning police officers who genuinely care for the public they serve. But there are a few Rambos, because, hey, cop-gun-badge-power-priapism, and a few racists, and the odd whack job or two. Here’s the scenario – the good-guy cops are trying to handle the problem, trying to do the right thing, help the little-old-lady-crazy out, when Rambo wanders in, misjudges the situation, flies off the handle, and bingo! Dead lady, guilty Rambo, good guys sworn to silence. Maybe Rambo gets a pass. Maybe not, and the good guys lose their jobs, plus perhaps a little jail time for perjury, all because of The Code.

Alternative to this? There’s quite a bit to be done. Beef up internal affairs. Set standards for honesty and transparency at the highest levels of the force. Don’t assume the officer is always being honest. Give civilian review boards some actual authority (they are strikingly toothless groups, mostly). Extend protections and promotions and genuine support to officers who are willing to tell the truth about the deadwood and troublemakers in the organization. Make police misconduct files available to public inspection (they are generally considered “personnel records” and as such, not accessible). Require ethics training and re-training. Fire a few assholes, for starters.

Cops are not a “necessary evil.” They are in integral part of government, for good or ill. They are the enforcement arm. They serve and protect, in the case of a government that has the interests of the public at heart. They attack and harm and destroy on behalf of despotic and self-serving administrations. Despite all the awful things we hear about things the cops do, many of us been lucky up until now. Tomorrow they may come for me, or you. When they do, you better hope the rule of law is still on your side.