Are Police More Damned Trouble Than They're Worth?

Modern police forces have become little more than a new set of predators from which the public needs protection.

In the spring, months before Michael Brown was shot and Ferguson erupted in reaction, whoever writes New York City Police Commissioner William J. Bratton's blog for him posted, "In my long police career I have often drawn inspiration from a great hero of mine, Sir Robert Peel. Peel founded the London Metropolitan Police in 1829." The post listed the nine "Peelian Principles" attributed (probably spuriously) to the founder of modern policing and formulated to combat crime in a rapidly modernizing city. The principles are remarkable both for the high ideals to which they aspire, and the minimal resemblance they bear to the actual forces over which Bratton and his counterparts around the United States actually preside.

Given the grim reality of law enforcement in today's America, it's hard to believe anything like those ideals could ever be met.

The background to the principles is no mystery. Peel and friends wanted to consolidate London's constables, night watchmen, and police forces in the growing city. But "people were suspicious of a large force, possibly armed," the U.K.'s National Archives note. "They feared it could be used to suppress protest and support military dictatorship." People feared this because the army had been used to do exactly that. In addition to the guiding principles, the police were given blue uniforms to distinguish them from military red. They originally weren't even allowed to vote to minimize their influence over government policies.

Interestingly, Bratton's version of the first principle reads, "The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder." But the original version says, "To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment." Maybe New York City's police commissioner drew from an altered-by-repetition version of the principles. Or maybe he just had difficulty seeing modern armored vehicle-riding, assault rifle-toting, police as an alternative to military force.

PeelerPublic DomainThe principles also specify that police "use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient." That doesn't mean cops have to be pacifists. But it's hard to reconcile a preference for persuasion with the over-the-top police occupation of Ferguson, or the promiscuous use of militarized SWAT teams to kick in doors as a matter of routine. Only 7 percent of SWAT uses compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union involved a "hostage, barricade, or active shooter"�79 percent were to serve search warrants.

It's also hard to reconcile a dedication to the "minimum degree of physical force" with the warning to the public in the pages of the Washington Post, penned by Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police Department, that "If you don't want to get shot...just do what I tell you." Dutta and his colleagues apparently don't agree that "to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public," as the principles would have it.

For that matter, willing cooperation requires that the public knows what the police are up to in order to have any sort of opinion on the matter, willing or otherwise. So when police forces actively conceal the use of techniques and technology, such as cellphone-tracking stingray devices, from public scrutiny and judicial oversight, cooperation isn't even being sought.

And when that concealment is not an isolated incident, but involves departments from coast to coast deceiving the public on the advice of the federal government, it's obvious that, at least in this country, Sir Robert Peel's heirs have lost any interest in the idea that they are "only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen."

Modern saturation policing�when cops swarm a neighborhood or randomly throw roadblocks over major roadways�is openly intended as a form of intimidation. The Tennessee Highway Patrol plans "driver's license, sobriety and seatbelt checkpoints, as well as saturation patrols and bar and tavern checks" over Labor Day weekend to scare the public into compliance with a laundry list of rules and regulations. It's probably more effective at making people afraid to leave the house on a holiday lest they trip over lurking troopers. It's also at odds with the idea that "the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action."

It's not that there was ever a golden age of policing. Within a few years of the Metropolitan Police Department's creation, peelers were sent after Chartist political demonstrators (though they did avoid the sabers-swinging tactics that the military brought to such occasions with bloody enthusiasm). Police officers were frequently drunk and corrupt.

It's also unclear that the new police actually reduced crime, with criminal court proceedings continuing at the same pace before and after the creation of the force.

Rumble!Valerian Gribayedoff/Public DomaiWhen the idea of professional policing crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the force Bratton now leads trumped the British example. It managed not just corruption, but an actual riot between two rival departments in 1857. Fifty-three officers were injured before the state militia intervened.

But, all that said, there's a reason for the creation of such institutions as constables, night watchmen, thief-takers, police, and other efforts at keeping the peace. People don't want their property stolen, their persons abused, or their lives taken; they want to deter and punish the predators among us, and they don't always feel up to doing the jobs themselves.

But modern police forces have gone dangerously off-track. They've become little more than a new set of predators from which the public needs protection. That Dutta's column was actually a response to public outrage over police conduct shows how disconnected policing has become from the people it supposedly serves.

Bill Bratton was on to something when his blogger invoked the Peelian Principles. Those nine points, intended to appease a justifiably skeptical audience, were never perfect, and they've always been implemented by flawed human beings. But the ideals to which they aspire are a hell of a lot better than what we have now.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/08/28/are-police-worth-all-the-damned-trouble/print



While it is wrong that it took the fracas in Ferguson to get the nation to notice epidemic police abuse and oppression, rather then nearly six years of it against ordinary citizens with a special focus on conservative and libertarian dissenters to Obama; at least now the nation has noticed.

Yes. If it weren't for LEO, we could get rid of liberal, commie Dimocraps all by ourselves.

I think his daddy shoulda smacked his momma for not swallowing him

When I was a juvenile delinquent, there was one young policeman who became my friend and I looked up to him.
One day I saw in the newspaper that he was sentenced to prison for burglary.
We had a lot in common.

My phone took me right to the reply window so I haven't seen the op yet. Let me guess. Rovering started it and somewhere in the thread he either has a cartoon of police with something about getting away with ass whooping John Q or he has a picture with bambam standing with police around him.

You just can't please some folks.

Here's an intelligent chap.

While tempting, it wouldn't even be necessary without the various LEOs to enforce their agenda on and to extort their sustenance from private American citizens they would be powerless and starving.

Those of the left are parasites and government is the proboscis with which they feed.

No but you are...

Ship his sorry arse over there ASAP

You have to admit, if it weren't for LEO, jungle town is where none would go. The blacks would be rolling each other, instead of calling each other "brother".

Well, maybe just have LEO covering the rest of town would get the job done, Getim.

I'd sure like to see them quit and tell Ferguson to go to hell.

do I need to point out the grammatical error? or is that racist?

Hear hear.

Predators that are double or treble in danger because of their privileged legal status and because they bar us from fully effective self-defense from criminal predators.

Preach it!

This says it quite well. Good post.

Hard to think of a stronger affirmation of stupid.

You two better pull apart and come up for air once in a while, else you'll start chappin each other johnsons

Pretty please. I bet the t-shirt maker would me out of business in no time.

Those of you that think of or are trying to deflect the issue of militarized / federalized police and their abuses as a race rather than a rights issue have very short memories or have been utterly duped by Sharpton and company.

The militarized / federalized police have been aimed at American citizens that dared disagree with Obama's creeping tyranny for nearly six years, and not that long ago it was aging veterans at the very monuments dedicated to them that were being ruffed up and arrested for daring to exercise their rights to protest big intrusive and abusive government.

You mean the militarized police who were carrying Lever action Winchesters at a time when the Military was issued Trapdoor Springfields? Or tge Militarized police who carried Thompsons and Remington autoloaders, when the military carried Garands?

Police militarization is a symptom of a larger problem. The police are simply equipping themselves heavily to make the job they're tasked with as easy as possible. The real problem is the proliferation of freedom crushing laws and expansive police budgets that the modern busybody American people (tacitly) and their elected representatives (directly) have approved. Without those laws and funding, and the busybody [bleep] voters who enable them, we wouldn't have MRAPs on street corners.
My wish is that everyone who says "there oughta be a law" would choke themselves.

The first responce is usually the best!

I agree fully, with the above few changes.

The police are big, intrusive, and abusive government's fingers at our throat choking the life and liberty out of us.



"Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." ~ Orson Welles

to the OP, answering your title


in a word...NO


we're lucky to have the good cops that serve their communities honorably

How do you know when cops come into contact with you that they're good guys and not crooked?

He can't see that from his mommy's basement though

you don't, and I've come in contact with great cops and ones that are pure azzholes.

but come to think of it, you could insert any profession in place of cops and the same would be true.

bad cops can't last forever, sure the experience can, if you let it.

but there's a chitload of stuff and people cops deal with everyday that I want no part of and I'm thankful they're there to do their job.

And yes they are but so is government.

Time for an experiment? ID about ten specific areas of ten specific cities. Heavily police the surrounding areas - tough policing - but let those within the test plot go it without any interference. After 6 months, assess what is left. Well, maybe six weeks - or less.

The experiment was conducted, I think it was in 1969.

Montreal Police Strike.

What I don't understand about Ferguson is why the shop owners weren't shooting the looters. They probably only would have had to shoot a half dozen or so to deliver the message loud and clear.

The shop owners with guns didn't get looted, and they didn't even have to shoot anyone. It was the unarmed, those who were unable to stand their ground in the face of evil that got looted.

All it probably would have taken was a half dozen shots.

That's usually the case. Criminals are not stupid. They understand risk vs reward. TV...vs getting shots.....yea, maybe we'll leave the TV.....

Pick any areas city or rural and any group of civilians you choose and in 6 hours without police keeping an eye on them they would be raping, robbing, and killing each other. I am with you in believing we need more police presence to include police being able to enter homes when they like to make sure people are living the way they want them to live.

That's what happened in Montreal....but it was more like 24 hours.

In answer to the question. NO

Hope he gets his wish can't wait for the video.

BTW, the exact quote that you have used repeatedly was uttered by Charleton Heston to Orson Welles in the movie A Touch of Evil, directed by Welles, but written by someone else entirely.

It was: "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state."

In context, it was said by good cop Heston in response to bad cop Welles, after learning Welles, who planted evidence to get an arrest, claimed the job was too tough already.

Heston's precursor to that was that the job is supposed to be tough if it is to be done proper.

It's more of a rally cry for cops not to take the easy way out.


I'm sure that most folks reading both lines notice the subtle differences in the message conveyed by the juxtaposition of the wording, and I suspect that the version you're using was changed in context by an agendized zealot.


However, it is possible that during one of Welles' many commentaries on his work, he may have rephrased the statement, quite possibly and probably accompanied with his opinion that the greatest weakness of America is rhetoric - of which you are overwhelmingly full of.

I have suspected Welles meant "bullshit" when he said "rhetoric", just to be polite. But either way, he's got you pegged.

Catchy pic to bolster my point:




or this:




Awwww. It's a puppy....

TF.

Or could it be that some of us recognize that you can on the one hand say that there are disturbing trends in LE these days while at the same time appreciating (even more!!) the good ones we do have?

Exceptions don't disprove rules. Just because there are (many!!) excellent officers of the law out there does not mean we aren't witnessing a sea change in the industry that is extraordinarily disturbing for those who love individual liberty and the rule of law vs "might makes right".

Furthermore, LEs here on this site (the majority of whom seem to me to be exceptional) need not take it personally. I am a banker, but don't take it personally when the very legitimate concerns are raised here about the unfortunate direction my industry is heading. Indeed I bear witness to it every day and do what I can to slow the trend, so I don't take it as an attack when someone here criticizes bankers.

Very well said indeed.

Congrats on one of the most non-sensical, circular posts ever. A bunch of nothing.

This is a serious question: how many here actually read the article rather than reacting to the title?

Seriously... Show of hands...

Hardly circular. And as to the intent of the screenwriter of A Touch of Evil, hardly nonsensical.

Me.

Does that really count since the cops on strike interfered with the police who were on duty that were trying to prevent anything from happening? All the more so considering Canadian firearms laws?

Good post.....not a lot I would argue.

That said, I doubt most of the LEOs here take much personally. I would Damn near guarantee that nothing that Sherp/Rovering/etc. posts even bumps the needle.

I see a lot of statements such as "we need to corral the goats", etc. Unless the poster is from the jurisdiction that writes my check, I personally don't care what their opinion are relative to my job performance. Similarly, I'm still trying to figure out how my agency is "militarized" when we have nothing in our cruisers or on our belts that isn't available to anyone in the State of NH.

When the folks in my AO, hell I'll stretch as far as the folks in NH, want changes I'll listen. I'm not likely to modify my performance based on some cartoons and anonymous postings.

George

The only thing new in police activity is everyone with a video device recording it. What could once simply be dismissed as malcontents making false claims against a good officer now gets stickier. You could take any complaint that got shot down 40 years ago and use it to narrate the videos made today. We need to get back to that simpler time from decades past so we can once again have police officers being perceived as being beyond reproach.

Why would you take anything I say personally which indicates a negative? I argue on behalf of police and share the same views officers here and on sites like officer.com express.

And I wouldn't expect you to, nor want you to.

You do probably recognize, however, that this is a trend, and one being lead by the Feds using their purse strings not by voters at a local level? The fact that your force hasn't seen the effects of these trends can only comfort you for a limited time, yes?

I'm genuinely interested to hear your thoughts on the actual meat of the article. It seems that the hyperbolic headline captured all the attention rather than the substance of the argument contained therein.

Wow. So when that guy previously cited in this thread got caught choking out a handcuffed, subservient suspect it was the fault of the camera because without it he could have acted like a barbarian and then denied it effectively?

Could it be that police were once revered and respected because they were, on the whole, worthy of such by their participation in rather than management of the communities they served? Could it be that at one time those bad officers were occasionally held to the higher standard that their badge necessitates?

As if yer sig line didn't say enough about your love of the soon to arrive police state, that right there is proof positive.

Ps- interesting to that you say in that last line, "perceived as" rather than suggesting as one ought that perhaps bad apples ought to have the full weight of the law used to punish them when those pesky cameras are used to substantiate the claims of malcontents. Says an awful lot, that.

Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment.

Keep in mind someone apparently found it quote worthy.

Yes, the issue is the camera.

Tell me what you think is different in the pre-camera versus post camera days? The narratives of events from both eras are the same. In years past the officers involved would have been cleared AND their collars would have received punishment. Now it is simply the officer getting cleared and the collar getting let off the hook and frequently getting a settlement from tax payers which is bad for officer esprit de corps. Here is an example:

http://www.wistv.com/story/23686918...-deputy-attempt-to-arrest-soldier-at-bar


20 years ago(sans video) no one at that bar would have had the gall to go against the wishes of the deputy. He would have been free to make the arrest and do with her as he saw fit. Now that(unfortunately) isn't the case. The responding officers even tried to help him at first by keeping her in cuffs knowing that without some proof the deputies word would hold up in an investigation while everyone else in the bar could easily be discredited. But then comes the slimey civilian wanting to tear the deputy down and shows the cell phone video and the other officers wisely cut their losses and get the deputy and themselves out of there before the modern, video emboldened drunken rabble becomes a cop hating riot focused on harming them.

So just to be clear... It's ok in your eyes to choke out a guy who is kneeling in front of you handcuffed?

Most of what sherp writes is hyperbole. You get that, right?

Sherp is playing with you. He actually agrees with you.

If it is fine with police then it is fine with me. There were numerous officers watching it happen and not interfering with the officer/protecting him from the other civilians so it must have been a good choke out.

I am not agreeing with efw. He hates police. I side with police officers and several of them effectively assisted the choke out by a show of force to keep other civilians from interfering with the choker as he did what he had to do. Obviously the guy was a threat to all of them and they feared what he could do if he was not incapacitated.

No I did not; thanks for the heads up all!

Lol

See, Mac84 saw those other cops in the choke out and he knows that since none of them did anything other than provide security for the officer doing the choking that it was all good and holy. Kind of like the Milwaukee officer who was guarding the door while his partner raped the uppity home owner to keep her inline.

Maybe he was laughing at the coalition of support for the forum's Community Organizer..

Please Lord...let that idiot get better at being a troll.

Any article that brings up Ferguson to attack the police should be ignored.

Yep, just like any article that claims Ladmarald Cates isn't a hero should be ignored.

www.jsonline.com/.../fired-milwaukee-officer-sentenced-to-24-years-in- prison-em69nfg-164270266.html

Since we hold the same views on police and civilians, how do I need to improve my delivery to be more like you and keep you from calling me a troll?

+1

You're like a debate Judoka. Instead of opposing those with whom you disagree, you add your strength to theirs, nudging them all the way to their logical conclusions.

You would have damn little self-defense against gangs that have taken over your neighborhood, urban or rural, because the cops are gone.

I didn't know they lived in Chicago or a similar area where the police had played an active role in disarming them so they were 100% reliant on police protection.

Well some A-hole like you will post a video of a police officer engaging in what would be a crime if done by a civilian along with numerous other officers assisting them. Then you and the other A-holes whine about it. At that point, ltppowell and the other officers are left with no choice but to denigrate you because (as can be shown by the numerous officers assisting) it can't be wrong if the police are doing it. Given that fact, the odds are the officers here have been in on similar events or figure they will in the future and they know they can't be wrong.

Yep.

Yep, for a taste of what it would be like without police controlling gangs, look at LAPD when they shut down the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit. That was a unit comprised totally of heroes that all other police admired, wanted to be, and wanted to assist.

They were so great they even made movies about unit members. Bet TRH is jealous they won't be making movies like that about him.

Check out the gang controlled areas of Mexico where your family dies if you do not cooperate.

What?

Here it's "Comply or Die!"

In Mexico, regular folks go to jail for merely owning a firearm. There's you explanation for that. In a free society, gangbangers are afraid to show their faces for fear of being shot or strung up. Only with the cooperation of the state (ready to prosecute those who exercise social power against criminality) can criminal gangs rule the streets.

And that's how it is here increasingly. I saw people on those Ferguson threads (which I pretty much didn't participate in) asking why store owners didn't shoot the looters. It's simple. They didn't want to go to jail or ride the needle. The state routinely prosecutes folks who defend themselves and their property. There's a pharmacist from Oklahoma City who will attest to that from his prison cell.

You mean the guy who shot the 16 year old once, then went after the other robbers, then came back in and shot the kid five more times? That's not self defense, that's an execution. Even the prosecuter seemed to leam towards the pharmacist being justified, up intil he came back and ahot him five more times

No. The explanation is that in Mexico the cartels control the police and the state in many areas. Part of your response supports that.

Nobody is going to shoot or string up any gang members. Not unless you have a bigger and better gang.

Mexican citizens have a constitutional right to keep arms in their home and in the hunting field.
Many restrictions and much paperwork is required. There are a lot of deer, dove, and duck hunters in Mexico.

And again, where the cartels are in charge it ain't going to happen.
These areas are prime examples of what happens when gangs control cops.