Time to demand a nationwide reform of police standards of conduct
Today we've seen two more horrifying stories (http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=928264 and http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002929988), among how many others in recent months and years, of wanton police brutality of the sort that seems to have metastasized across the country.
Look, I have a couple of members of my own extended family who are law enforcement officers, so it certainly is not my desire to see the job of police made more difficult than it already is. But in the security hysteria that has been the legacy of 9/11 (and, I would argue, that has been the terrorists' ultimate victory), we have allowed our domestic police organizations to become increasingly, and excessively, militarized. We permitted the Bush Administration, with help from both parties, to pass the Patriot Act -- the most sweeping assault on our civil liberties since Lincoln suspended habeas corpus (and the biggest boondoggle for profiteering by the security industry). The Department of Homeland [In]Security has showered local police forces with expensive new toys that heretofore would ONLY have been considered for use on a battlefield, or by some rogue, police state. (To those wingnuts who have been breathlessly carrying on about some imagined threat to freedom posed by the Affordable Care Act, if it truly is freedom they are truly concerned about, then THIS is the issue they should be focusing on with laser-like intensity!)
It has long been known that certain jobs or professions, in particular those jobs in which the jobholder is vested by society with an especially high level of trust and authority (be that authority moral, intellectual, spiritual, legal or physical) over others, will attract a higher percentage of persons who seek out the job because they wish to exploit that trust and authority than will jobs that do not vest such authority. Not to say the vast majority aren't decent folks, but merely by virtue of the fact that such positions do grant such trust and authority to those who hold them, there will be a higher than usual number who seek such jobs for the wrong reason. Those who would be spiritually or emotionally abusive or domineering of others will try to secure jobs that vest them with both the community's trust and some level of spiritual or intellectual authority over the person they wish to dominate (jobs such as counselors, or sometimes clergy). Pedophiles will look for positions in which they have access to and authority over their would be victims, as well as a degree of trust from the people who care for those potential victims. And those who get their kicks over sheer physical dominance over persons who are effectively powerless to resist -- that is to say, sadists and bullies -- will look for jobs in things like law enforcement.
IN virtually all of these jobs/professions other than law enforcement, however, it is incumbent upon the gatekeepers of those fields to do their level best to try to spot those who are looking primarily to exploit the authority of the job, and to screen them out of such positions. Education majors who are found to be temperamentally unsuited to a classroom will, if their college's education faculty has any sense of professionalism, be steered into other courses of study. Most of the major Christian denominations (not speaking here of the Roman Catholic Church, in which all bets are off) now have quite rigorous psychological screening processes in place for those who seek to be pastors/priests. Psychotherapists are required, as a condition of remaining psychotherapists, to be in psychotherapy themselves. And if some psychosocial pathology emerges after such folks are in such professions, there are institutions and mechanisms which are expected to investigate, discipline and if need be eliminate such folks from their ranks. Yet, when it comes to law enforcement, while there is a rigorous background check and some level of psychological screening, provided nothing becomes apparent at that time, once they're in, they're in. If psycho/social aberrations appear after an officer is on the force, for the most part, the "blue wall of silence" will shield that officer from accountability for all but the most extreme and egregious forms of misconduct. And even then, the deference many folks instinctively accord to law enforcement can make it difficult to obtain convictions when misconduct is prosecuted.
In our collective capitulation to fear in the wake of 9/11, we extended to law enforcement an even greater degree of unquestioning trust than the already considerable amount they already had. And, like most decisions made in the heat of passion or panic, a decision that seemed to some to make sense at the time was, in the long run, unwise and extremely short-sighted. It is time to demand a nationwide reform of police practices and to institute a uniform, strict standard with respect to standards of professionalism and to the uses, and the circumstances of use, of both coercive and deadly force. In addition, there should be a uniform standard of accountability to those standards. And for the foreseeable future, until the new standards of professionalism and conduct are fully enculturated in law enforcement agencies throughout the country, police officers need to be kept on a very short leash with respect to their use of force against citizens. Police have frankly done a dismal job of policing their own ranks, so it is time for their employers -- that is to say, the rest of us -- to impose new standards of professional accountability within those ranks.
The ratcheting up of tension in citizen/police encounters has been driven almost entirely by law enforcement. When even the most routine encounters are approached with guns blazing and on highest alert, then of course there will be more situations where this hair-trigger mentality leads to an unwarranted and avoidable use of force. Police officers should certainly be permitted to take reasonable steps to ensure their own safety during these encounters, but what definition of "reasonable" is reasonable? I fail to see how escalating maximum intensity even the slightest hint of protest or noncompliance with an officer's order can be construed to be reasonably necessary to protect an officer's personal safety. And I don't accept the notion that police have an inherent right to protect themselves against any conceivable threat in advance, irrespective of how remote that threat might be. There will always be some risk involved in being a police officer. And on occasion, some officers will make the ultimate sacrifice. Sorry, but you signed up for a heightened degree of risk when you became a police officer in the first place.
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