We can debate how cops think all we want, but we’re still outsiders looking in. Thanks to Joel “J-dog” Rosenberg for pointing me toward a cop website/blawg called Officers.com, and specifically knuckle-dragging copper, its remarkably civil and thoughtful, even though it reflects such widely disparate understandings of the role of a police officer in society.
Great stuff.
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It’s an interesting site; ditto for the comments. His previous piece — see http://www.officer.com/interactive/2007/09/14/stgeorge/ — brought a fair number of knuckledraggers out.
I had a little correspondence with Dees around that time. He seemed to me to be, in private email, pretty much the same guy he is in his public postings: a generally nice guy, but remarkably unreflective almost to the point of comedy as to how his own orientation and background shapes his perspectives.
Even when his advice to his colleagues is good — and I think his advice was very good in the piece I just linked to — it was informed much more by Here’s how you cover your ass rather than Here’s how you avoid exceeding your very limited authority.
Very well put. And very true. Unreflective is an excellent characterization.
Chilling? His perception of the “don’t tase me, bro” idiot matches mine point for point.
Ultimately, we expect cops to not only stop active lawbreakers, but to preserve the peace, to maintain order, and to enforce rules. We give them the authority to say to us “move from this place”, and if they can convince us that they acted in a reasonable manner to accomplish the mission we gave to them, we generally support their decisions. If this chain breaks down, we have huge trouble here in River City.
In that instance, in a public political rally/meeting/whatever, rules were announced ahead of time. Idiot decided unilaterally to violate the time rule. Cop said, please stop. Idiot said, no. Cop said, let’s walk this way right now. Idiot said, no.
And here’s the important point in that confrontation: do we then expect our cops to shrug and walk away? When a protester blocks my business door, and tells the cops he won’t obey their order to move, should they shrug and leave? When a bicyclist refuses to get off of a roadway, should the cop shrug and leave?
We usually expect the cops, at that point, to enforce their order. So, should five cops grab the person, wrestle them to the ground, and drag them away? In fact, we usually tell them they cannot do this – the lawbreaker tends to get hurt, and the cops are putting themselves at a hugely increased risk if the lawbreaker turns out to be weird and armed, or just weird and strong.
Enter Tasers. With very little chance of lasting hurt, the lawbreaker (after several fair warnings) falls to the ground (screaming, apparently), pees his pants, and begs to be allowed to move.
That’s what Dees described. Chilling? Maybe just like it would be chilling to hear an ER nurse describe how a child has to be held down for stitches, or to hear how someone dispassionately applies statutory factors to someone else’s actions in an attempt to ascertain whether or not they can shoot that said someone else. But, in the context of policing as a job, or nursing as a job, or carrying a weapon in public, “chilling” is too often used when “I’m not used to having to think about those things” would be more accurate.
(Disclosure: I’m not a cop, a nurse, a Taser salesman, or a child getting stitches.)
I like the disclosure, even though you left out firefighter whose brother and second cousin are cops, but I’ll assume that isn’t the case either.
The distinction lies in the focus on the cop’s authority to give orders creating a predicate for the use of force. Tasers are not harmless. They are less-lethal, meaning that they do not cause lasting harm most of the time. They do, on occasion, result in death, but that’s another issue.
What’s chilling is the police mentality that if a citizen does not do as they are told by a cop, that failure to obey is, in itself, justification to use force against them. The citizen has posed no threat of force to the cop or anyone else, but has simply refused to obey the officer. This elevates the words flowing out of an officer’s mouth from one person’s notion of a good idea to governmental justification for the use of force against citizens.
In some instances, the officer’s direction is proper. In some, it isn’t. Just because a cop says something does not make elevate it to the status of “law”, to be performed upon pain of violence. Similarly, even when the cop’s directions are proper, force is not mandated simply because citizens do not jump when told to do so. The use of force should be limited to meet and stop force used against police or others, not as a means to compel non-violent citizens to do as they are told by cops.
And more often than people would like to admit, as demonstrated by the hundreds of videos floating around the internet, police directives are inappropriate and then backed up by the use of force, or police use force immediately as a substitute for using non-violent means, or police use force where there is dispute but no force or threat of force used against them or others.
Force has become the tool of first resort for not complying with a cops directive, and Dees explanation, “I ask him, I tell him, I make him,” is chilling. A shield is not a license to use force at will.
You and Dees seem to be making the same mistake. The issue isn’t whether or not Meyer was being a jerk — he was — but whether or not there was proper justification for making him twitch like a frog. There wasn’t.
If people are going to be allowed to mete out physical punishment to others because the others are jerks, I want first dibs on that gig, because, well, I’m a great guy. Until and unless y’all are willing to write my privileges into law, do let’s not let the servants start deciding whether or not the masters’ social lapses get punished with volts or bullets, shall we?
“Just because a cop says something does not elevate it to the status of “law”, to be performed upon pain of violence”
Ah, but it does. That’s exactly the point. Watch the RNC in a few weeks. The point will be (correctly) emphasized.
One of the great catch-alls of the legal system is the cops’ power to protect the public welfare and safety, and the rather expansive discretion cops are given to accomplish this.
When a cop looks at a crowd of people on a sidewalk, and then looks up and sees what he THINKS is a hazard hanging overhead, (imagine the cartoonish “piano on a slowly separating crane cable”), the cop CAN say “move away from here, right now”, and a failure to obey that order can and usually will be charged as “failure to obey a lawful order”, or the local equivalent. If a cop tells someone, in a crowded forum in which the cop has been sent to keep the peace, “your time is up, move on”, and you don’t move, you can be arrested and charged. Justification can be either the public order thing, or “I thought the crowd would do him harm if he continually interfered, and so I stopped him.” Such a justification is seldom second-guessed, and, when and if it is, the result is usually to merely dismiss charges against idjit, NOT to rebuke or punish or fire the cop.
(Yes, I know – it has to be a “lawful” order. If the cop can make a case that he reasonably believes that allowing the idjit to continue on would harm the public welfare or the public order – big catch-all there – then the order was “lawful”, because we empower cops to make that initial determination.
If the cop simply says “it was my turn to speak”, or “he was saying nice things about Nader!”, then, no, probably not lawful. Understandable, maybe . . .
But that determination comes later, and is NOT made on the spot, at the public meeting where idjit makes his stand . . . er . . . crawl . . . by anyone. The cop’s order stands until a judge says otherwise.
Don’t mistake this with reasonable-force issues. That’s different, and the cop WILL be second-guessed in those cases. But I’m guessing that tasing in this situation would pass pretty much any reasonableness analysis.)
It’s a cultural curiosity why some people take any sound that emanates from a police officer’s mouth as having the force of law. They are disinclined to question whether the cop has the power to order, instead accepting that an order is an order.
This cultural curiosity has gotten many people and government’s into grave problems, and allowed horrific things to be done in the name of following orders. Some people are just sheep, and are quite happy to be sheep. Others are not.
One of my local badgelickers explains the cultural curiosity simply: you’d better not ever piss off a cop, because, if you do, they have the right to ruin your life, and they will.
Of course, I reject the whole “right” nonsense (err… in the future, you got a problem with me using more accurate albeit far more colorful language on such matters? Your blog; your rules), and I think that quite a few folks have demonstrated that that latter at least often doesn’t happen . . .
. . . but, yeah, I think the local badgelicker is on to something: many people don’t taken any sound that emanates from a police officer’s mouth as having the force of law, but as containing a very, very serious implied threat.
That’s worse.
Now that’s a different issue. The seriousness of the threat is nothing to laugh at, and nobody with half a brain wants to be on the business end of a taser or baton because you pissed a cop off (no matter how wrong the cop may be).
And this points directly to the problem: At the end of the day, does might make right? Do we want cops who use their authority to vindicate their personal pettiness? We surely don’t want to get beaten, but are we good with this?
“Do we want cops who use their authority to vindicate their personal pettiness?”
– – –
Lordy.
Did the cops tasering the idjit at the rally display personal pettiness? Did they act as they did simply to show that they could? I really doubt that.
Do you want the cop to be able to clear the sidewalk without argument when he sees the building leaning that way? Or should you get to have a court hearing first? Or at least a debate with him before you move?
“Badgelicker”? What level of resentment must you have for cops to come up with that?
“They are disinclined to question whether the cop has the power . . . this has gotten many people and governments into grave problems, and allowed horrific things to be done in the name of following orders.”
This is true, and this is why we always get court review of such orders after the fact, and redress and injunctive fixes if called for. But you seem to be arguing that, since someone killed many people in another country 60-some years ago and gave the “I was only . . .” line, we should henceforth guard against that evil by never again following orders. Or at least not the orders you don’t like. Face it, the Constitution may have granted limited powers to government, but it did grant powers.
So if you’re arguing that I’m wrong about the cop’s word having the force of law in the situations I named, cite to some authority for it. Otherwise, you may be leading some believing readers into trouble. If you just don’t like that situation, well, that’s okay, too, but you should say so.
Well, as a matter of fact — not opinion — we simply don’t “always get court review of [cops off-the-cuff] orders after the fact”; “redress and injunctive fixes” are, to be generous hens’ teeth.
But don’t let the facts stand in the way of your opinions; while you don’t have the right to your own facts, you do have the right to your own opinions, ignorant though they are.