A letter to the Editor in the New York Times on the Sean Bell verdict has generated some interesting commentary over at PrawfsBlawg. The salient portion stated:
If this situation is to change, we must compel police officers to hold our interests and our lives above their own. They must accept the threat of harm as part of their jobs and their oaths. And they must demonstrate restraint even at the expense of their lives. Our society is served only when they take bullets for us, not we for them.
Cops take a bullet for us? That got Adam Kolber seriously juiced up. prompting this defense of police officers:
True, police officers do accept increased risks of harm when they take their jobs. And, of course, their specialized training and ability to assess situations may even affect the way that the law is applied to them in some situations. But I don’t think it is fair to ask a police officer to value the life of someone else more than his or her own. A police officer is not obligated to jump into the line of fire to save a civilian. In any event, it’s hard to know how one would “compel police officers” to act differently under conditions where they believe that their lives are imminently in danger.
It’s not at all clear what Adam expect of cops. He may be saying that they aren’t required to commit suicide to save a civilian, but that doesn’t tell us what risks they are supposed to assume. Of course, the notion of risk may be different to a 2002 Stanford Law grad. I’ve seen a little more.
But then, another lawprof, Rick Hill, jumped into the fray, A calmer, more experienced voice? Not exactly:
But there is perhaps a deeper incoherence in the letter writer’s demand: The difficulty is that police officers can endanger lives through inaction – “restraint” — just as much as through action.
Uh oh. Rick’s not only in the game, but he’s swinging for the fence. I didn’t even know that incoherence came in depths. But Rick’s going for broke by attacking this outrageous letter writer who promotes the radical concept of “restraint”!
Adam is quite correct that it is preposterous to ask cops to take a bullet for civilians: No police force has ever been so saintly – certainly not for the pittance that NYC pays its Finest (starting salary being about 25k). But even if we could somehow induce cops to show a Christ-like inclination to turn the other cheek, should we do so? I would think that such sanctity might very likely cost more civilian lives than it would save.
Well, that begs a questions (aside from the source of his facile assumption).
How much would we have to pay cops if we expect them to do more than stand around looking cool in their new blue uniform? How much to take a risk? How much for a knife? A gun? A weapon of mass destruction?
But the secondary point, going a lot further than Adam even considered, is whether we really want cops to show restraint in killing civilians because it “might very likely cost more” lives than it would save. Sorry. This being a lawprof and lawprofs being the types of guys to base their ridiculous notions on something, can you spell this out for me a little better Rick?
So if cops stopped shooting and killing innocent people, it would likely mean that more innocent people would die than would be saved?
No, ya moron, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that if cops are reluctant to pull the trigger when the think it’s necessary, the bad guys will still be alive to go kill civilians. And they will kill more civilians than the cops will kill by shooting first and asking questions later.
But isn’t it a little different when criminals shoot and kill innocent people than when cop shoot and kill innocent people. I mean, after all, they are the cops and we did pay for the bullets. And does the idea that the job of a police officer may someday involve putting him or herself at risk in order to “serve and protect?” Or are those words incoherent as well?
Or maybe we need to get some new people teaching law school who aren’t dedicated to the proposition that it’s worth a few civilian lives as long as we protect our cops.
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Since police will never be perfect, we will have to implicitly accept some level of innocent death—either of civilians or cops–as a consequence of having police forces.
That said, I think there’s plenty of room for changing the system before we have to start worrying about trading off cop v.s. civilian lives. There are ways to improve everyone’s safety.
To start with, every one of these situations I’ve ever heard of starts when the police initiate the violence. This stands to reason, because when someone attacks the police out of the blue, there’s little reason to question the police response. This means that many of these incidents can be prevented by changes to police procedures.
I’ve noticed that a lot of these accidental civilian deaths arise when police sacrifice safety in an attempt to obtain evidence. Raids on suspected drug houses are the classic example: They’d be much safer if the cops weren’t trying to surprise the occupants before they could destroy evidence.
In the Bell case, a lot of people have asked why the cops waited until Bell got in his car before trying to arrest him. I assume it’s because they wanted to search the car, which would be easier if he was in it.
I think police procedures should preserve safety of everyone’s lives at the expense of evidence gathering. If that makes crimefighting less efficient, hire more cops.
Also, a lot of these incidents seem to involve civilians—even if they are criminals themselves—thinking they are being attacked by criminals rather than cops. One obvious improvement would be to require that uniformed officers in marked cars must lead arrests. (Masked undercover cops—which I can barely believe we have in this country—should stay away until the scene is secure.)
It’s no excuse that there aren’t enough uniformed officers to assist all the plainclothes teams. Hire more cops.
We certainly shouldn’t be sacrificing lives to protect the department’s budget.
I somewhat agree with what being said in the other comment. Most of police mens prefers to sacrifice the lives of civilian people in order to have accurate evidences. Sometimes they no longer cares of who are to saved or not.Sometimes they just let go of the things that they forgot to remember their duties and responsibilities as a police.Personal interest ruin their so called “heroic deeds”.They must think as early as now…Their serving the people not their own.If they find hard time to do that then there’s no way for them to serve their countrymen.Better stop pretending!
criean
Now we’re capitalizing the F in finest?
Yeah, yeah. It’s their “nickname”, like the firemen are New York’s Bravest and the Sanitation Workers are New York’s Smelliest. Just tradition.
I recall reading that slightly more than half of line-of-duty police deaths were caused by auto accidents. I also recall the Washington State Police saying that half of the time when a cop is shot, it’s with his/her own gun.
Sooo…Unarmed foot patrols would cut their losses by about 75% and make the rest of us MUCH safer, eh?
No, I get that. By now, “finest” and “bravest” have made it into the national lexicon as referring to NYPD and NYFD. I didn’t know it was capitalized, that’s all.
I think you are seriously onto something. What if we just paid ’em to stay home?