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As creatures possessing free will, humans have always had the capacity to be "good" or "bad," constructive or destructive, virtuous or evil. For most of us, our choices and actions primarily affect those whom we know well: friends, relatives, or coworkers. Of those interactions, our immoral behavior rarely involves a violation of the other persons' rights, i.e., a situation that could properly be deemed "criminal" and subject to legal sanctions.
When such transgressions do occur, whether against acquaintances or strangers, the police are usually the first agents of the State on hand. If I am the aggressor, I will probably not relish the sight of those red-blue-and-white flashing lights. Cops...bleah!
The proper response to my dismay is: tough.
If I am the victim, however, I will undoubtedly experience a sense of relief and gratitude that the criminal will be apprehended and punished. Cops...yeah!
At least, that is the way things should be...
As the State has burgeoned from a background concern, rarely noticed and highly constricted, to an intrusive monster that declares no single aspect of human life beyond its scrutiny and control, many people's view of police has twisted into a grotesque vision. Since this distressing trend shows no signs of retreating, the question of what makes for a "good cop" and how we will be able to differentiate such an individual from the "bad cops" surrounding him will only grow in complexity and importance.
I've been acquainted with police officers most of my life. One of my brothers-in-law was chief-of-police of my home town until he retired. After she graduated college, his daughter decided to continue the family tradition. She serves with her cop-husband in another part of the state. Given my background, I used to view cops in a positive light.
But... Circumstances change.
Enforcers of the law are subject to error as is any human. Instances of honest or malicious mistakes that are corrected and punished appropriately are not at issue here. What mucks up the water these days are "good" cops who really are not.
While not literally true, the old saw about all politics being local applies equally well to the primary tool of those politicians seeking control over their fellow citizens. Though what we read or see on television can have a large impact on our attitudes towards the police, coming face-to-face with the men and women in blue (or black...) can hammer our amorphous beliefs into a solid shape far more powerfully and permanently than can any miscarriage of justice perpetrated against strangers.
Any innocent person who has been the target of official misconduct or harassment is unlikely to experience much sympathy for cops who have abused their trust as upholders of justice. While my modest misfortunes are mere ghosts compared to what some poor souls have suffered, I have been accosted by the police a number of times over the years for no good reason.
The first bad reason came in 1970 when I dared to look out my second-story dormitory room window. As a freshman, I started college during the riots against the Vietnam War. I'd already heard stories of the local cops beating on a pregnant woman; rousting drinkers out of bars; and lobbing tear gas down dorm hallways. None of that concerned me overly much. I had sufficient difficulty merely keeping up with my classes. But when a cop chasing suspects across the darkened courtyard of my dorm sprayed tear gas at those of us gazing curiously out our windows at the commotion, my opinions started to harden.
Leap ahead a number of years. From 1975 to 1997, I drove a '73 Camaro that gradually grew more and more rusty and less and less "presentable." To add to my social "shortcomings," for much of that time I sported relatively long hair and a beard. My problems with the police increased along with the age of me and my car.
Early one summer morning, I was driving diagonally across New Mexico towards Tucson. As a nearly broke graduate student, I'd slept at an interstate rest stop to save money. So I looked and felt my best as I headed home prior to moving back to Iowa. As I passed through a tiny town, a state highway cop drove past me in the opposite direction. After leaving the little burg, I glanced in my mirror and saw the cop following me. A few minutes later, he pulled me over. His "reason"? He "couldn't find" my "license plate number" in the data base...
Well. I was, shall we say, skeptical of his claim. Even if true, I did not realize that such a failure on the State's part constituted probable cause for stopping me. Sternly, the cop scrutinized me in a most...unfriendly...manner. Obviously frustrated, he glanced into my back seat where I had stashed my backpack. He said, "Is that yours?" The smart-mouthed part of me wanted to reply, "No. It belongs to the hitchhiker I killed and dumped in the ditch." Instead, I just said yes. After a few minutes of standing there as he wracked his brain for some other reason to do...whatever...to me, he handed back my license. No apology for his error. No "Have a good day, sir." No explanation why it was okay to stop me for not being in their data base yet okay to let me go though I (presumably) was still not in that data base. Careful to stay below the speed limit, I proceeded. The cop followed me for a mile or so then turned around and left.
A few years later, I was in Iowa driving on I-80 near Des Moines. It was sunset. A highway patrol car pulled up beside me, fell in behind for a time, then flipped on his flashers. My crime? That I wasn't wearing my seat belt. But, of course, I was wearing my seat belt, i.e., my lap belt. (In '73, the Camaro had separate lap and shoulder belts. I never wore the shoulder belt because, unlike today's versions, there was no "give" in the belt; put it on tight enough to do any good, and you were cocooned, unable to move forward, at all, and dangerously constricted should an emergency arise.) While I explained, the cop saw a wooden handle protruding from my ashtray and asked me what it was. Obviously, he thought it was a marijuana pipe or some such. Without a word, I held up my pop bottle opener. After handing me a warning ticket, he left. No apology or even a smile when he discovered I had done nothing wrong.
(When Iowa passed its inane seat belt law, cops were not supposed to use nonuse as a primary reason for pulling you over. Surprise, surprise! Now they can. This fine officer of the law, however, had disrupted my trip even before the change in the law. No negative consequences for his action dogged him, of course.)
During the final years I owned my pseudo-muscle car, local cops frequently trailed me and once pulled me over for the evil crime of not realizing that my license plate light had burned out. Of course, that was not the real reason for embarrassing and inconveniencing me. Just the excuse. I was guilty of being poor, driving a decrepit car with a big engine, having long hair and a beard, and fitting some drug dealer "profile."
It's little wonder I'm a bit leery of the cops.
Over that same span of time, I also learned about Ruby Ridge. About Waco. About Elian Gonzalez. About asset forfeiture. About DARE. About the militarization of the police. About no-knock raids that destroy the property and lives of innocent people. About cops arresting those who dare defend themselves from violent criminals.
When I wanted to buy a weapon, I was fingerprinted and investigated before being "allowed" to complete my purchase. Now, I have to pay an annual fee and carry a photo ID if I want to buy other firearms. The local sheriff also denies my legal right to defend myself because he feels that preserving my life is invalid as a reason to carry a gun. If I carried a lot of money, however...
When I ponder who is more likely to violate my rights these days, I conclude that I have more to fear from cops than I do from criminals. Undoubtedly, many cops have good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Worse, I have no way to tell which specific cop is going to be a "good cop" and which is not.
The vague, generalized fear and distrust engendered by this kind of random harassment is precisely the citizen-mindset the proponents of police state policies want to achieve. (Perhaps not consciously, but the result is the same.) In principle, it is what the Nazis did with concentration camp victims: keep them off-balance, uncertain, unable to plan, subject to indiscriminate punishment -- or death -- for any reason or for no reason.
The application of that technique is obviously more modest right now, here in the United States, but the average person has no means of knowing when a cop will bust him or for what supposed "crime." With the PATRIOT Act, the Drug War, the War on Guns, the War on Immigration, the War on Terror, the War on Alcohol, the War on Parental Rights, the War on Free Speech, the War on Individual Rights; with the Transportation "Security" Administration (TSA) and its outrageous usurpation of air travel safety; with the exploding Nanny State and its innumerable rules, regulations, and laws; with all these options and more at their disposal, cops can always find a "reason" to pull someone over, to arrest him, book him, imprison him regardless of whether or not his action physically harmed others or their property. How can a citizen possibly know who to trust when those who don a uniform and a badge are routinely used to violate our rights?
He can't.
He is expected to cower before any and all representatives of the "law." He is supposed to meekly obey any and all orders. He is never to protest, never to peaceably resist, to speak out against unjust actions, to assert his rights, to question the authority of the State.
Even if few of us have been directly affected by such abominations as the PATRIOT Act, just knowing that the power exists to do great violence to us -- legally -- is chilling, frightening, and stultifying. Similarly with cops. Too many cops have abandoned any sense of "to serve and to protect." Too many cops have subconsciously absorbed the attitude of the TSA: Dominate. Intimate. Control. Too many cops no longer see themselves as civilians, but as part of "us" versus "them."
Behavior that would once have been considered an aberration is now enshrined as policy. What would formerly have been prosecuted and punished is now accepted and rewarded.
Even "good" cops would no doubt claim that they don't make the laws, they merely enforce them. If they are told to confiscate all weapons in private hands, then, by golly, they will have no choice but to comply because "it's the law."
But, of course, there is always a choice. The "just following orders" excuse did not hold sway at the Nuremberg trials. It did not absolve Lt. Calley and his men after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. No one is obligated to obey or to enforce an immoral law. People do so because of ignorance or fear or delight.
Many people will object to the notion of personal responsibility applied in everyday legal situations. They believe that any refusal to obey such questionable orders will destroy the "rule of law."
"Who will decide when to obey a law and when to ignore it?" they cry. "We'll have chaos."
The answer to their question is the same as it always is: individuals will decide. Only individuals exist. Only individuals can weigh the evidence and judge the nature of that evidence. Every person must decide for himself or herself what is proper and what is not. Adding to the dilemma: while incorrect choices will obviously increase the injustice of a situation, even a correct decision may result in unpleasant consequences...for the person willing to assert what he believes is right.
Scores of millions of people have died because they refused to abandon their principles...and because scores of millions of others refused to stand by those ideals. There is no easy out, no sloughing the responsibility onto the shoulders of the "other guy," no escaping the reality that each and every one of us plays a vital role in the separation of powers; that the complex web of checks-and-balances that protects our freedom, our rights from an overweening State must run in all directions -- up, down, sideways -- or it will surely fail...as it is failing today.
The transformation of the proper relationship between law officers and the public is simultaneously sad, frightening, disgusting, and extremely dangerous.
It is going to get far worse before it gets better. More innocent people are going to suffer, are going to have more of their rights violated, are going to go to prison...are going to die.
I have said it before, and I say it again: the U.S. has crossed the line and is now a police state. Yes, it is an infant police state. But infants grow...
