Healing the rift between police and the public

[Hawkmoon]

I agree wholeheartedly on the no knock thing. But I havent seen the instant resorting to "command voice" that you describe, not only in any of MY interactions with cops, but in the cops i call friends. I suspect part of that is me not being a fuckface to begin with, and the other part is the relative rarity of that actual tactic compared to folks who complain about it.

It's certainly a problem, i'm just not convinced that it's the problem that folks think it is

It has nothing to do with being a "*expletive deleted* ck face." It has everything to do with cops on power trips. I'm about as law-abiding as anyone you'll ever meet, and I've encountered it numerous times. Two examples that I always remember because they were so egregious:

First: On my way home from a Wal-Mart. My route takes me down a divided, limited access highway for several miles. The highway runs beside a river and the first couple of miles are very serpentine. As I started to turn onto the entrance ramp, I saw that traffic was stopped ... and backed up for as far as the eye could see. There are other routes I could take, so I checked my mirror, saw nobody in back of me, and started to back off the ramp. A state trooper came running down the ramp, yelling and waving his arms. He told me if I backed up he would arrest me. (Not ticket -- "arrest"). I tried to explain that there was no purpose to be served by forcing me to add one more vehicle to the backup, but he insisted -- using "command voice." So I had to go up the ramp and sit in traffic for an hour and a half while they cleaned up the mess made by a truck that had dumped its load all over both southbound lanes. God forbid this cretin could station himself at the bottom of the ramp and wave people off so they wouldn't add to the mess. Nope -- he waited up the ramp and forced everyone to join the traffic jam.

Second: I had a routine question to ask of one of the administrative departments of the state police. A female trooper answered the call. I started to ask my question, and she interrupted me:

FT: Name, social security number, and date of birth.

Me: Huh?

FT: I need your name, social security number and date of birth.

Me: But I'm not calling to make a complaint or report a crime, I just ...

FT: I NEED your name, social security number, and date of birth.

Me: But I'm not calling in any official capacity, I just ...

FT: I NEED YOUR NAME, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, AND DATE OF BIRTH. (Command voice at work)

Me: No, you don't <click>

I called back ten minutes later and got the sergeant in charge of that unit (whom I did not and do not know). He answered my question, we had a friendly chat for about ten minutes, and he never even asked for my name, social security number, or date of birth.

They are teaching this command voice crap in the academies. The theory is, I suppose, that no matter how mindless the command is, if it's repeated often enough and loudly enough it will result in "compliance." And that's what modern policing is all about. It's not about serving and protecting, it's about compliance.

[Fitz]

Im sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the f*kface comment was directed to you. Merely that every instance i've heard of through friends of cops being power trippy was a direct result of my friends being jerks. Apologies. It was not meant as a dig

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Backing up on a ramp can get you jailed here. Thankfully I was a passenger. It was considered reckless driving


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[makattak]

I MIGHT subcribe to your newletter. If you could point to an example of your imaginary system working

In a less sarcastic way, c&sd has it quite right that we ought to use human experience as a guide for policy recommendations and not just use utopian theories. (Which, unfortunately, many anarcho-capitalist ideas are.)

As Balog pointed out, many current systems protect and reward bad actors because there is little accountability to the public at large.  

This is, in turn, an effect of the cause of many of our other problems: centralization of authority.  The further authority is from the governed, the less accountable it is to the governed. So, elected sheriffs tend to be better than hired departments.  (As many here have often said.)

The smaller the county, the more accountable the department.  So, I would say too many of the police are too disconnected from the people, just as a function of department and city/County size. This is, of course, ignoring the departments that hire officers mostly from outside the policed area.

So, best option? More and smaller departments that are directly accountable to the public.

Of course this will not solve every problem, but nothing will.  It is likely to be an improvement.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

After seeing private communities unable to maintain their roads and infra structure , up to and including a dam that would create a serious problem if it failed I am real skeptical about the whole privatization thing. And this is a neighborhood of 1/2 mill houses on 30-50 acre lots. The absence of a way to tax business makes it hard to achieve the cash flow to support infrastructure. Plus you are still stuck with property taxes in a deal like that.

If you have ever been on the board of an hoa or had dealings with  one you have an idea of what privatization would be like.


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[Tallpine]

^^^^ The county is unable to maintain our roads, but technically it's illegal to fix them yourself 

[MicroBalrog]

Or, as a notion, we might accept the fact that not all crime can be solved, and not every aqct of terrorism or horrific crime must result in expanded police authority.

The question is not how to treat our cops.

The attitude - prevailing among the public - that the response to every big-headline news story is to expand police authority or presence, or perhaps to issue police more powerful weapons (and implied authority to use them).

Rather than argue about private vs. public police (my town, where I live now, has private police, and they work reasonably well), the question to be what our attitude to danger is.

If we feel as a society that even the lowest level of crime is unacceptable - because even one murder or child abduction is too much - we will be forever expanding police, either physically (by hiring more of them) or conceptually - by giving them more powers and weapons.

Civil libertarians like to imagine that we can reduce police presence and authority without reducing crime (or, if they're more perceptive, without reducing the sorts of crime that people care most about). Sadly that's probably untrue.

Regardless if you want to have less police abuses, and less horror stories where a person is unfairly arrested/imprisoned for life/shot/anally probed for 12 hours the answer is to:

1. Issue police less authority (legislatively roll back fruit-of-the-poisoned-tree legislation, reduce the authority for non-knock warrants, reduce forfeiture, and some more controversial things too).

2. Legalize as many victimless activities as possible.

3. Reduce the amount of police and the weapons they are permitted to use. Where possible (college campi, schools), abolish police departments entirely, replacing them by armed guards without arrest powers. (This is entirely possible. In Israel, in fact, it's illegal for police to enter the campus of Tel-Aviv University unless either the invitation of the University has been extended, or a life-threatening emergency is going on.)

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

^^^^ The county is unable to maintain our roads, but technically it's illegal to fix them yourself 

Or technically for us to plow our own snow to get out


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[Perd Hapley]

Meh, it's a societal issue. It'll happen when people want it to.

This. C&SD said recently that police are just doing their jobs. I think, in most cases, this is true. They're doing the job the way our culture has told them to do it, using the powers and methods and tools we've granted them. The public has to change their ideas about what they expect from police, and demand that their local authorities change with them.

[dogmush]

Much of the public is changing it's ideas.  See the spread of (as we say) high SPF folks that distrust, and are unhappy with LE, Cato's website, the whole no-knock thing, many folks reaction to Boston PD's bomber overreaction.   Heck, the burgeoning market for body armor. I doubt much of that is going to inner city gangs.

And so far LE's response has been to double down, ask for new laws banning the behavior (See body armor again), try to bully companies in the media (Apple and Google.) and buy more weapons (Because they are 'outgunned').

Perhaps we haven't hit some critical mass to cause LE (and for that matter .gov) to rethink their policies, but it sure seems like many agencies are going to keep on their path despite citizens angst.


Heck, look at the MJ legalization votes around the country.  More and more states are clearly voting that they think that particular drug should be legal.  Regardless of the actual moral, legal and ethical issues. (maybe the legalize folks are stupid, maybe not) If the popular vote says to legalize, where does the fed.gov get off telling the citizens "No"?

[Tallpine]

Civil libertarians like to imagine that we can reduce police presence and authority without reducing crime ...

Is there any evidence that police actually reduce crime 


Wasn't there a situation some years ago in Albuquerque where the police went on strike and crime actually went down dramatically because the crooks were afraid of being shot by citizens?   

Our neighborhood absent any consequences from the law could take care of most any crime problem.  The sheriff is little or no help and in some cases a hindrance 

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

I thought the Albuquerque deal was there was no one taking crime reports when they were on strike


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[Tallpine]

Out here where I live we have very little LE presence and very little crime.

Worst thing that has happened recently is somebody stealing (county) gas/diesel from the tanks at the fire hall.  And the sheriff hasn't caught them yet either 

After the second time, the commissioners finally approved some money for security cameras 

[Hawkmoon]

Backing up on a ramp can get you jailed here. Thankfully I was a passenger. It was considered reckless driving

Understood. It is here, too -- under normal circumstances. This was not an ordinary situation. And it would have been so much more helpful if the trooper had just stationed himself at the bottom of the ramp so he could wave people off, but no ... he preferred to wait near the top of the ramp and then use the "no backing up in traffic" rule to force more and more people to add to the mess.

In contrast, a couple or three years later, about ten miles south on the same highway, I came up on another huge backup. This time, two enterprising local cops decided to be smart and helpful. One blocked the bottom of the entrance ramp so nobody could turn onto it. The other went to the highway end, parked his cruiser, and started directing people to leave the highway by driving the wrong way down the entrance ramp. His partner at the bottom told people which way to turn and how to go around the mess and get back on the highway.

And the latter two didn't even need to use "command voice."  

The comparison between these two incidents is a classic example of situational ethics. The first trooper blindly enforced the law ... and made the situation worse. The two local cops technically had people break the law, but they made the situation better.

Who was right?

[cordex]

The comparison between these two incidents is a classic example of situational ethics. The first trooper blindly enforced the law ... and made the situation worse. The two local cops technically had people break the law, but they made the situation better.

Who was right?

The helpful cops of course, but they weren't making people break the law. In just about any case, if a cop directs traffic then their directions overrule existing street signs, road markings, lights, etc.  In that situation, obeying the signs would be breaking the law. Your point is well taken, though. There is more to just and good law than the letter.

[Perd Hapley]

Out here where I live we have very little LE presence and very little crime.

   Uh, you realize that you live in the middle of nowhere with more horsies than people, right? That might be the explanation. 

[Tallpine]

   Uh, you realize that you live in the middle of nowhere with more horsies than people, right? That might be the explanation. 

And everybody out here has guns and backhoes 

[lee n. field]

The real system that we have sure as hell isn't working 

Which in no way implies that some other system available to us  does.

[Tallpine]

Which in no way implies that some other system available to us  does.

There was a time that there would only be one sheriff or "constable" in an entire district.  People generally looked after themselves and their own property and only called the law to officiate after the culprit was apprehended.

You can say people are "different" now and they sure as heck are which is part of the problem.

Outsourcing personal responsibility never works out.

[KD5NRH]

I thought the Albuquerque deal was there was no one taking crime reports when they were on strike

Well, there certainly wouldn't have been anybody generating "crime" reports for victimless crimes.  That would tend to lower the numbers a lot.  Pretty sure they had some arrangements made to take reports at another level.

[tokugawa]

Pretty good Sheriff's dept here- we are a rural county, going suburban, and the cops are stretched pretty thin. But not much "serious" crime. Of course a local paper just reported we have a 50% rate of CCW's among the adult population......

[Tallpine]

Pretty good Sheriff's dept here- .....

Ours is "mostly harmless" and despite the incompetence and general lack of usefulness have been pretty careful about citizens' rights.

I've open carried in front of our outgoing sheriff and he never said a word about it, and a couple times I have almost had to drag a deputy inside the house to talk on a below zero night.

We got four guys running for sheriff right now 

[roo_ster]

   Uh, you realize that you live in the middle of nowhere with more horsies than people, right? That might be the explanation. 

Without the sheriff's dept, you might see equine gangs knocking down barn doors to get after bales of marijuana alfalfa, running donuts in people's drives, and getting tanked on fermented oats. 

=================

As for the column linked in the OP, +1.  Good luck making it happen without threats of drastic budget cuts and/or violence.

[Tallpine]

Without the sheriff's dept, you might see equine gangs knocking down barn doors to get after bales of marijuana alfalfa, running donuts in people's drives, and getting tanked on fermented oats. 

Funny thing is all that is actually legal since Montana is an open range state 

You are supposed to fence in uncut stallions 

[Jamisjockey]

In DC they call it "mission creep".  You as an agency find ways to expand your duties and your budget will follow.  More budget = more power and you as the department head become more powerful.  Police agencies do it, too.  Federal funds and grants and free toys make it even more possible.
Personal Responsibility for crime prevention endangers budgets and power.