The Ideal Cop
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need police or to even lock our doors. So the true ideal cop is no cop. In a far less imperfect world, we would need far fewer police. The need for police is a direct reflection of our imperfection as a society. We are far from all that so let’s take a moment to understand why we have cops and then what we want and expect from our police force.
Common street criminal behavior has two main parents: poverty and psychology and they are often intertwined because being poor can be depressing and cause anxiety, anger and resentment. Being poor in a modern, electro-connected society can add to this by emphasizing the state of the haves and the have nots. On occasion, someone can be born with a defective mind where sociopathic tendencies are baked in, regardless of station in life. But if you spend enough days hungry, enough days cold in the winter or sweltering in the summer, you will tend to look for a way out. If you experience enough injustice you can become hardened and seek street justice or just a square meal.
Poverty-related crime is actually the easiest of criminality to know how to stop before it happens. Simply eliminate poverty and equalize opportunity. Emphasize schools over prisons, upfront love and caring vs. back-end rehabilitation and punishment. This needn’t cost society any more than it already spends, but merely reallocates and re-prioritizes that spending more intelligently. As Frederick Douglass said, “It is easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men.” It’s also cheaper!
But even outside of poverty, criminal minds can be cultivated by cultural influences such as family borne racism, neighborhood culture or mob dynamics. Some of the world’s worst criminals are well-to-do and bear the traits of selfishness, callousness, lack of social awareness and entitlement. These sorts of criminals in fact are far more dangerous because they tend to have more power and influence and their crimes are perpetrated on masses of people at once. They often cause the conditions that perpetuate poverty and ignorance and oppression. Their crimes are performed regularly behind closed doors, but just as often, brazenly in broad daylight, with impunity.
Occasionally, a criminal mind goes into police work, though this is not the norm. Why do people become police? What motivates them? I suspect quite a range of things from being altruistic and caring to being insecure (perhaps bullied as a child), to power tripping, to an innate desire for law and order to simply a way to make a living. Some cops are from law enforcement families so tradition is involved. Some cops are not the brightest bulb on the tree so seek a job that doesn’t require complex math or logic but just following rules. Indeed, many police forces prefer to hire people who don’t do too much thinking for themselves because such people are harder to order around and don’t always do everything by the book. It may be time to look at this unspoken “restriction” and start getting some more astute people in the line of duty and into our communities.
So often when I see one of these egregious incidents of police brutality I am struck by the lack of imagination involved and the poor decision making of the individuals. Also, at times there is a palpable cowardice involved, one that is too easily compensated for with an array of deadly weapons and techniques or with a pack mentality. I can’t help but think a smarter cop would have handled this differently. Don’t get me wrong, I have smart cop friends and I know they deal with the underbelly of society day in and day out. They see it all, from the spousal abuse to the drunk drivers, the suicides, to the wanton violent criminals to the petty thieves and cons and over time they become hardened and start to see the world in two colors, blue and non-blue. This has the basic effect of if you are not a cop, you are a criminal until I say otherwise. Anyone who has parked a minute too long at an airport knows this feeling. You are an American who was attacked on 9–11 too, you are not a terrorist with a car bomb, you are just waiting for your loved one to come out of the airport and paid your taxes (and their salary). But sure enough, they’ll shoo you away like fly as though you were Bin Ladin himself.
We all want to trust cops. We want them to be the best people who can be trusted with the responsibility of deadly force and hopefully never have to use it. We sort of want cops to be part superhero and part psychologist who can disarm and de-escalate situations before they get out of hand. We also want them to be held to the exact same set of standards and laws that they enforce, certainly not above the law. We want them to understand the law. We want them to be upstanding and outstanding. We want them to be honest and honorable. We want them to be brave and tough, confident and calm. Many things go into being a good cop, but above all, is compassion, yes even for purported criminals, who were once children too and have complicated stories that led them to the present moment. We want them to practice innocent until proven guilty. We want them to serve and to protect EVERYONE. Many peace officers already fit the description. They are good cops.
Sure, it gets complicated when weapons are involved and split second decisions must be made but so often we see no such urgency, no such threat to life yet resulting in a citizen’s death or harming—overkill. I know, it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback when I’m not the one who has to drive the streets at night and go into dangerous situations all the time, while I’m sleeping comfortably in my bed. All that gets my utmost respect. However, when we see someone kneeling on a man’s windpipe who is not struggling, not fighting, in fact pleading for his life, have the life crushed out of him, there are NO excuses. This is psycho behavior and anathema to the whole concept of law enforcement. But the fact also remains, we only know of this incident because it was recorded and countless similar incidents have happened out of sight, never to be seen or remembered except by a few, especially in the past. We can’t count on bystanders to be there. We need a real solution, now!
This is a time when we all know something must change. This must not be allowed to continue! First, we need laws enforced equally so when a cop breaks the law, they have absolutely no advantage in being a cop. But that’s already too late! We need to weed out deranged or psychotic cops immediately. We need a zero tolerance policy toward bad cops. We simply can’t have these rogues who have a long record of issues, violent incidents or complaints to wear our uniforms. They are like ticking time bombs. There are too many good cops to let a few bad apples spoil the batch and create deep mistrust of the whole policing enterprise. We don’t need bad cops at all. We’ll find a replacement. Defective.
Finally, the toxicity of a single bad cop incident can not be underestimated. We see that their actions can cause such righteous outrage that it flares up into violent riots and causes far more harm to many, many innocent people, amplifying the violence well beyond the initial act. As the Quran wisely says, when you murder one person, you murder the world. We can’t take a chance on questionable cops with so much at stake. Therefor, the most important police we need right now are the police of the police. We need a detached, cold assessment of police records of behavior and to set new standards, yesterday! Strides have been made and attempts at community policing are in the right direction. We just need to do a quality check on all existing forces and raise our standards for the good of all and for a peaceful society where everyone feels safer. The time is NOW! If we get it right, who knows, maybe some day we will no longer need a significant armed police force. That is when we’ll know we are closer to that ever-elusive More Perfect Union.
