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The Police and Society
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20420 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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3 / 1992 |
747 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The symposium in currents in Modern thought this month deals with a subject that came to critical attention with the beating of a motorist in Los Angeles last year. The spectacle of police brutally beating someone without provocation was sickening. Was this merely an aberration or the common experience of minorities and the poor?
The police function would not be necessary if all were law-abiding. It would not require much discussion if only a few were criminally inclined. In a society such as ours, in which the prisons are overflowing, the police play a critical role in maintaining order. Yet the experience of police with those aspects of society with which they come into contact spurs cynicism and is inherently morally corrupting. Civilians may seem to be the lying, cheating, stealing enemy, who can be controlled only by similar tactics. Political officials, who pressure police to overlook the delicts of friends and supporters, are seen as part of corrupt
Society. It becomes us against them, and only the weak can be brought under control.
Of course, the previous generalizations are gross oversimplifications, but there are enough tendencies in those directions to account for many of the unsavory experiences we have with the police. These are called to our attention, to the neglect of efficient, honest, courageous police work by the great majority of the force. On the other hand, it is also true that police departments have never really thought through their relationships to the community at large. Although the police sponsor many community activities, they seem unprepared for spectacular or unusual events. For instance, during the riots of the 1960s, I never understood why the police did not bring in rumored units to dispense food and medicine to those who had the misfortune of living in the vicinity of the rioters. Instead of building bonds between police and civilians, police activities sometimes served to build bonds between civilians and rioters and to reinforce the perception that the police were protecting whites against blacks, even if that perception was unfair.
Although I have always been a firm proponent of appointment by strict individual merit, there is a case for exception with respect to the police. As long as our society is racially divided, crucial activities such as those of the police need to be perceived as racially impartial. Even such matters as the interpretation of behavioral cues may require diverse cultural experience. This has nothing to do with racial role models, which I always regarded
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