COMMENTARY By Steven K. Haught, Editor
What can stop a bad cop from using excessive force? A good cop? Their peers and colleagues in uniform?
In the United States, over the past 50 years, we’ve tried just about everything else — from teaching deescalation techniques at the police academy to creating departmental policies that prohibit excessive use of force to establishing review boards to assess cases where police officers are alleged to have gone too far. Nothing has worked.
Even hardcore police apologists probably won’t defend the Minneapolis police officer’s actions. But they are likely to argue there was nothing his fellow officers could have done to stop him since he was the senior officer in command at the scene and that the less experienced officers are trained to follow the lead of a senior ranking officer.
After all, police departments often recruit from the U.S. military, where challenging a superior gets you in hot water. Think of Jack Nicholson playing Marine Col. Nathan Jessup in the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men" — “We follow orders or people die," he said. "It’s that simple.”
It's one of the most divisive topics in our society today: bad cops. To hear some people on the far left, that’s a redundancy: All cops are bad.
Their counterparts on the far right are equally certain that there’s no such thing as a bad cop; anybody who has a bad encounter with a police officer deserves it, whatever it is… whatever the outcome.
Americans have had enough, and are marching for justice in unprecedented numbers all across the country. In small towns and big cities, thousands of people are giving voice to the grief and anger that generations of black Americans have suffered at the hands of the criminal justice system. Young and old, black and white, family and friends have joined together to say… enough.
The unconscionable examples of racism over the last several weeks and months come as America's communities of color have been hit hardest by the coronavirus and catastrophic job losses. This is a perfect storm hitting black Americans.
The vast majority of police officers in America are honorable men and women who risk their lives every day to protect our communities. We need to “dismantle and rebuild” the policing system; we need to purge our police departments of bad cops, we need to remove the violence and the guns as the “go to” tools when police encounter situations they deem easily resolvable by forceful means.
While we may believe the previous statements, American citizens have never been given a choice in how policing is to be delivered to our communities. We have heard words and phrases like… “law and order” and “protect and serve” but in that past 200 years as policing grew into the force it is today… citizens have never been allowed a say in how it was to be done. It’s time for that to change. Americans must get involved in demanding change, and that’s the reason why people have taken to the streets, in an attempt to make their voices heard. Question is… who’s listening?
Other democratic countries around the world do not have policing systems like America. Consider England.
Police in London (England) don’t carry guns. How can they do their jobs without a firearm?
More than 90 percent of London’s police officers carry out their daily duties without a gun. Most rely on other tools to keep the city safe: mace, handcuffs, batons and occasionally stun-guns. This is no accident.
The Metropolitan Police of London as it operates today, was founded in 1829 on the principle of "policing by consent" rather than by force. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.
For the Brits, giving everyday police officers guns sends the wrong message to its citizens, and can actually cause more problems than it solves.
Although there are higher numbers of armed police guarding Parliament, its less than 10% of the total police force, and is essential to protect the royal family and members of the government. These police are more para-military security forces, very well trained to use a firearm.
How do the Brits compare with America when it comes to the use of a firearm in policing? In the most recent measured year (2018), police in all of England and Wales only fired seven bullets. Officers fatally shot just 5 people during that period. It's a world apart from the United States, where cops killed 991 people in 2018… an average of 2.7 per day.
The Metropolitan Police of London carried out some 3,300 actions in 2018 where officers were armed. They didn't fire a single shot at a suspect.
British officials have long believed that intelligence-gathering and stronger links with the community, rather than gun-toting cops, will do more to keep their communities and cities safer than fomenting an atmosphere of fear among citizens by wielding the ultimate tools of force and violence… a gun.
In a free and democratic society, there is going to be a balance between democracy, freedom and openness. The opposite starts with the the absence of “consent” — diminished public trust and systemic racism. The underlying cancer of a police state is when the armed police force picks on a group of people who are deemed to be inferior, of lesser value to society and culture.
In America, the focus of policing is on Black Americans and other racial minorities. People of color are perceived as causing all the problems that require policing and therefore the use of force to maintain law and order is justified. While it may not be said out loud… “beating minority races into submission” is the creed of cops… good or bad.
That is the essence of a police state and none of us want to live in a police state.
Admittedly, there are some bad people whose actions leave cops no choice but to wrestle them to the ground, sometimes painfully so, and in extreme circumstances even shoot, sometimes killing the person.
But as is so evident from the actions of too many, there are bad cops — who bully people and take advantage of their positions, who wantonly use excessive force, even lethal force. What happens to these bad apples? Obviously, they need to be fired, and in many cases prosecuted.
Is that really what happens? The next installment in this series on Policing in America will examine how bad cops often endure the glare of media spotlight and then move on… keeping their jobs or finding another one.
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Steven K. Haught, is the founder and managing director at ENCORE! 2.5™ Strategic Solutions LLC, a sales and strategy consulting practice headquartered in S.E. Pennsylvania. He is an internationally recognized author, writer, speaker and publisher; currently publishes—Global Insights & Trends and Renovations4Living; formerly a newspaper executive/publisher/editor; directed an international sales team for an top-tier software company; founder/director of two non-profits including a humanitarian/educational services organization based in S.E. Asia; He wears the victories and battle scars of many business development campaigns, global product introductions and go-to-market initiatives. He holds an MBA in strategic management and a doctorate in theological studies. You can reach Steven by email at… encore2pt5@gmail.com
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