I’ve written a number of times about the
deteriorating relationship between the police and the citizens they are
supposed to “protect and serve.” (See “
Good Cop, Bad Cop,” “
The Little Things that Count,” “
Cops and Robbers,” and “
Police State, American Style,”
for example.) Nothing much has changed my conclusions. Indeed, the
situation appears to continue its downward trend. Just try to criticize
cops, and you’re likely to hear back from some apologist who “was a
cop” or “worked with cops” or some such. Any negative incidents are
always the “fault” of the unarmed and outnumbered “civilian” who “must”
have “done something” to instigate the violence or other negative
behavior indulged in by the po-lice.
The problem, of course, is that even relatively decent individuals who
are cops are enforcers for the current American police state. As a
non-police officer, the average citizen has no idea when he is stopped
by a cop whether the guy or gal in that uniform with the gun and club
and cuffs and spray and/or dog is a zealot or someone “just doing his
job.” (While we can draw a moral distinction between the two, it’s a
thin line, indeed, since the results for the hapless sap under police
scrutiny tend to be the same in either case.
I’m not talking here about abuses that are recognized as such and then
punished. What is of concern from a rights-perspective are the myriad
of aberrations of proper behavior that are ignored, rationalized, or —
worse — rewarded. Most people would not excuse a slave owner’s overseer
for beating his boss’s “property” by claiming he was “just doing” his
job. Who would ignore a Nazi’s execution of Jews or his attention to
guard-duty in a concentration camp because it was a “duty” of his job?
But even many among the few who
are aware of the wrongs done by cops give them a pass because they “just enforce the law.”
There is, however, no “pass” from moral responsibility.
Cops — even the “better” ones — routinely violate the rights they are
sworn to defend. Every ticket issued for not wearing a seat belt; every
stop at a “drunk trap” or “drug trap”; every arrest for smoking pot or
making meth; every fine for having “too much” cold medicine; every
hassle of a prostitute or john; every ticket for smoking or for buying
cigarettes online; every no-knock raid; every search warrant executed
without probable cause or specified object of search; every seizure of
gold for making coins without “permission”; every confiscation of a car
or house or cash because someone related to the victim used or sold
illicit drugs; every cuff put on political protestors for venturing
beyond “free” speech zones; every person held in prison without
charges, without lawyers, without due process; every bust of a business
person for failing to follow some “regulation” or “law” limiting
freedom of contract and/or association; every round-up of “illegal”
immigrants; every ousting of a homeowner whose property was stolen by
“eminent domain”; every raid that gets someone for carrying or using or
selling a gun without “permission”; every person figuratively roughed
up for “gouging” customers; every individual taped or fingerprinted
without valid reason; every person detained for not having a passport;
every person prevented from boarding an airplane because he resented
being groped or having to produce “proper” ID; every incident in which
a person is assaulted literally or figuratively thousands of times
every year by cops “doing their jobs” is another nail in the hands of
freedom, another brick in the wall our police state is constructing to
contain and control us.
When cops forget that
they are civilians, too; when they forget
that a uniform does not grant them a right to violate rights; when they
forget the difference between police and soldiers; when they think it
is “us” versus “them”; when they think they do not have to
think
simply because they accepted a job; they are either explicitly or
implicitly defenders of a police state that will eventually get around
to grinding their bones to powder, as well.
No one gets relieved of the responsibility for being rational, for being moral, for being an individual first and foremost.
And no one can escape the eventual consequences of being an enforcer
for what is destructive of not only the social order but of what it
means, in the deepest sense, to be a
human being.
(from
Don't Get Me Started!, 1-18-08)
