On Good Cops and Bad Apples

by TheBirdAbout2Fly

There has been much press lately criticizing police conduct, from the Taser-related death of Robert Dzikanski, to the the execution style killing of a man by Bay Area Rapid Transit police in Oakland, to the death of Krystal Taman by an drunk driving off-duty police officer and the subsequent internal investigation.

All this has brought police conduct into the public realm with the usual arguments being made. Some call for more civilian oversight as the solution to curbing police misconduct, while others call for better training for police officers. Some are apologetic for police, arguing that though they make mistakes, they have a tough and dangerous job, and we should cut them some slack. Still others argue that, while there are some bad apples, we should not allow them to taint the image of good officers who joined the force for the right reasons.

I'd like to dig in and unpack these arguments here, and hopefully get some discussion going. I'll start with the latter two arguments first:

It's a tough job, people make mistakes, cut them some slack.

There is no question in my mind that police work is stressful and dangerous, but I think that we should be viewing this question with a wider scope. What is the job? I mean, to put it somewhat provocatively, being a rapist carries with it some risks, such as a counter attack from a potential victim. Should we cut them some slack because of the danger they put themselves in, or how stressful the situation is for them? No, of course not. So, then we can't justify police actions, or even police, based on these criteria, ie. that its a tough and dangerous job. We need to focus on the content of the job itself (and this will hopefully be touched on more through out this post).

It's just a few bad apples.

I don't think that there really is a difference between the “good apples” and the “bad apples”. These are just two sides to the same coin. Who doesn't understand that in the good cop/bad cop scenario, both cops share the same objective? These are two different methods used to acheive the same ends. So, the question, again, is what ends do police officers serve? What is the content of the job?

There is also another dimension to this question, which is that there are police who follow the letter of the law, and rogues who do not. Some of these rogues shunt the law for personal gains (bribes, links with organized crime, etc.), while others shunt the law in order to catch the “bad guys”. Again, this seems to be two sides of the same coin. The law is set up to maintain the current order. Those who break the law in order to maintain the current order are supposedly justified, because the current order is inherently good, though we're not told why. Those who shunt the law for personal gain are considered rare cases and are looked down upon because they are not serving the current power, but using their position to gain personal power. So, it's not so much whether police should break the law, but whose power that ultimately works for.

This discussion sharpens things up a little, I think, in that it brings into question the content of the current order more directly. Why are law-abiding police celebrated, why are some rogues justified, and why are other rogues put at a distance as “bad apples”? Utltimately I think it has to do with how the police serve the current order of things. In the service of the current order, police are justified in breaking the law. Even if the police were to follow the letter of the law, it would do nothing to challenge the current order, because the law serves the current order.

A Question of More Training?

The argument that what is needed is better training standards is generally related to the use of force by police. It's not a question of whether or not police are justified in using force, but rather when the use of force is necessary to acheive the desired results. More or better training would apparently give police the faculties to make better decisions when deploying force. The question, again, is what results are considered desirable, and whose interests do they serve? This, once more, brings us back to the nature of the current order.

Civillian Oversight.

The argument in favour of more civillian oversight of the police is wrapped up in ideology. Given that the job of police is to maintain the current order, civillian oversight of the police necessarily equates the interests of civillians with the interests of the current order, the interests of the system. They are brought forward as the functionaries of the system, where what is needed is for the People to come forward to get past this system.

All these arguments come from a perspective of the current system being the best of all possible worlds. But what Humanity needs is a radical break from the system. This, in my opinion, should be our guiding principle when approaching this question: Are we on the path to getting beyond this system?