While Balko is off investigating his roots, Peter Moskos is filling in at The Agitator.  He offers a curious self-description:

I’m Peter Moskos, a professor of Law and Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. In some ways–as an ivy-league educated egghead, a tax-and-spend liberal, and a former police officer–I couldn’t be more of a miss-match for The Agitator.

While he only worked for two years on the streets of Baltimore as a cop, making it sound more like a research project than a career move, it was enough to become indoctrinated to the culture and mores of the secret blue society.

Self-descriptions notwithstanding, Moskos provides insight into mindset of how he as a cop, and now a guy teaching cops, sees the world.

It what might be end of a long (and glorious?) Baltimore police tradition, two officers were convicted of misdemeanor for picking up two 15-year-old boys and dropping them off far from home, one of them barefoot. The officers were acquitted of far more serious kidnapping charges.

Such shenanigans certain fall under then category of “informal justice,” but it was never clear if it was illegal discipline. Is a long lost walk good punishment all of the time? Certainly not. But might it not be the right punishment some of the time?

He then offers a personal anecdote:

One time I guy in my squad caught two kids throwing and breaking bottle early in the morning. We were a few months out of the academy and the kids were “gigged” with push-ups (ironically that is what we learned in the academy). Was this punishment technically legal? Probably not, but I thought it was one of the smartest thing I ever saw this officer do. A little discretion can go a long way.

The question isn’t whether we agree that the punishment inflicted by the cops, under these situations, was “appropriate,”  Some will. Some won’t. The question is whether you (or I), had we decided to take matters into our own hands with somebody else’s kid, and give them a little bitter medicine for their “shenanigans” would have been applauded by the very same cops who did it themselves.  Or arrested, prosecuted and convicted, including for the charge of kidnapping?

What is it in the cop mentality that makes them believe that their ultra vires choices are more wise, more acceptable, more appropriate, than anyone else’s? 

Consider what might have happened if the two 15-year-old boys had wandered through a tough neighborhood on their way home, been beaten and robbed, or maybe worse.  What if they were struck by a car?  Many 15-year-olds have no identification, and no one would have known who they were.  Their parents would have been clueless as to their whereabouts.  It could have been a tragic disaster.

What about the “gigged” kids?  How bad could push-ups be, right?  Unless one, unbeknownst to the cop, had a heart irregularity and died.  Oops. How long before a story emerged of how the kid had a history of abusing drugs to cover it up?

Given Moskos’ Harvard Ph.D., one would think that his obvious myopia had been worked out of him, that he could see the error of cop-think, the fallacy of its magical belief that police officers possess some greater ability to hand out their personal version of rough justice.  Clearly, this hasn’t happened.

Was this punishment technically legal? Probably not, but I thought it was one of the smartest thing I ever saw this officer do.

It’s quite surprising that Moskos’ point, that every kid who screws up doesn’t need to be put through the official juvenile justice system to teach them a lesson and get them on the straight and narrow, is conflated with the belief that this is best handled by the nearest beat cop.  How about parents?  How about teachers?  How about some recognition that wearing a shield doesn’t make you the arbiter of child-rearing and sound judgment?  They may teach you how to tase at cuffed prisoners who sass you in cop-school, but are you taught that your discretion is now superior to everyone else’s?

We tend to believe that cops are disingenuous in their approach to actions beyond the law, beyond the scope of their authority.  We think they know they’re doing wrong, but they just don’t care because they think their omnipotent.  From Moskos’ post, however, it’s evident that there is a belief that they are really doing a mitzvah, the right thing in setting kids straight without injecting them into a system that no one believes does them any good.

So with shield and gun in hand, the police try to do what they perceive to be the right thing on behalf of our children.  And it would be the same if they happened upon us doing the same, because only cops are imbued with the insight and moral authority to inflict their own brand of “justice”.  They do so with the best of intentions, but still thinking like cops.