This is Part One of a two part series on police officer morality in the United States.
(MintPress) – Tyari Jenkins was first stopped by a police officer when he was 12 years old. A scrawny kid of barely five feet, he was IDed, searched and escorted home for identification from his mother by the New York City Police while he was on his way to his friend’s house.
Emani Orr is an eighth grader at P.S./I.S. 323. She was walking to a McDonald’s with her twin brother when a police officer stopped her. She was spared a pat-down because she is a girl. Ashley Fernandez, on the other hand, got stopped daily on her way home from school. Because she wears boy’s fashions, she is regularly IDed. It has reached a point that she carries her backpack with her constantly — just so the police understand she’s a kid.
Anthony Henry, also an eighth grader from P.S./I.S. 323, was walking to school when he was accosted by a gang task force which frisked him, checked his books and backpack, questioned him about his gang affiliation (he has none) and escorted him home to be identified by his mother. At the end of all this, the police officer patted the back of Henry’s head and said, “My bad.”
These are but a few of the countless stories that speak to the unacceptable callousness of New York City’s “stop-and-frisk” program. In 2011, 1 in 5 of those who were stopped were teenagers, and 86 percent of those stopped teenagers were black or Latino. In the same year, more than 120,000 stops were made of black and Latino kids between 14 and 18 years old in New York City. What’s more, is that the population of black and Latino boys aged 14 to 18 years old in New York City is over 177,000. This means that it is almost assured that every black and Latino teenager in New York City will be stopped at least once before he or she graduates under the policy.
This is a clear-cut civil rights violation. Laws and policies that clearly focus on a specific ethnicity violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, police commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office remain committed to the enforcement of this policy. In 2011, 685,724 people were stopped, with 88 percent of those stopped being innocent and only 8 percent being white (as of 2012, New York City has a white population of 34.98 percent, compared to a black population of 26.59 percent and a Hispanic population of 26.98 percent).
In this situation, it would be expected that police officers of high moral conscience would object to the enforcement of this policy. However, it is also expected that police officers would enforce every law, carry out every policy and make unbiased decisions in the implementation of their duty.
But, in considering this, one must address the obvious: Does police culture allow police officers to think and act as individual, moral creatures? Does service to the badge negate a person’s individual conscience?
The problem with blind adherence to the law
In 2010, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnick decided not to enforce a controversial Arizona state immigration law that would have requested and demanded that local law enforcement stop and question anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. “We are not immigration officials. … We fight crime. The State put us in this position,” noted Dupnick in the New York Daily News article. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police has urged the killing of this bill. In defense of his opposition to the law, Sheriff Dupnick told Amy Goodman the following on “Democracy Now!” May 6, 2010:
“…But what that law now does is put us in a position where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t, because on one hand we get sued by people who think we’re illegally profiling, and there’s a clause in the law which I’ve never heard of in any other law — and I’ve been a sheriff here for thirty years — that says any citizen who doesn’t think we are enforcing this law can sue us. And that is just outrageous. It’s an anti-law-enforcement law, in my opinion, puts us in an impossible situation. It puts us in an impossible situation with the Hispanic community. What they’ve done is driven a wedge between us and the Hispanic community. We depend on our community, Hispanics especially, for information, for cooperation in our crime-fighting efforts. What we really need to stop illegal immigration is more federal assistance on securing that border, and we desperately need reform of immigration laws. “
In McLean County, State’s Attorney Ronald Dozier announced on Aug. 22 that his department will not be enforcing the state’s ban on concealed weapons. “I felt like I just wanted to make a statement to the legislature,” said Dozier.
In hiring law enforcement officials, the ability to discern between time to enforce a law and time to move with caution is sought and expected. The ability to be able to clearly read a situation can mean the difference between life and death. However, political concerns, religious objections or moral questions may be the rationale for an officer’s non-adherence to enforce a law. From a legal standpoint, that’s the officer’s prerogative. At the time of an arrest or intervention, the officer must decide if a crime was committed, if property and/or lives were in danger and/or if the situation could escalate to endanger lives and property. It is within the rights of the officer to act on his suspicions as he feels fit.
However, the officer is still liable for his actions or lack thereof. In 2008, a Chicago woman was stopped by police officers for violating curfew, despite the fact she was 20 at the time. The officer assaulted the woman, causing her severe trauma. According to the victim, “She just started punching me in the back of the head, and then she snatched me by my neck and threw me on the ground and started kicking me.” In June 2010, a federal court awarded the woman $785,000 in compensatory and punitive action against the Chicago Police Department.
In 2010, an Orlando man received a broken neck when an officer slammed him to the ground in a cross-arm headlock. The man was tapping the officer’s arm for help because he thought his car was being towed illegally. The brutality victim was 83 at the time. In 2006, the Los Angeles Police department ignored the pleas of an arrested woman that her handcuffs were too tight. She ended up receiving nerve damage to her wrists. She was awarded $160,000 in compensation four years later.
In 2004, police officers responded to a 1,000 person strong party in an apartment complex on the campus of UC Davis. The officers reporting to the scene used pepper balls to disperse the crowd, causing serious skin irritation. One student caught a pepper ball to the eye, causing permanent damage and the loss of his athletic scholarship.
In July, a federal court ruled that the police officer was liable for excessive use of force. On the same campus in November of 2011, protestors with the Occupy movement were doused with pepper spray. A review of the actions taken by the police states that, “Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.”
This leaves officers the dubious choice of hiding behind their badges or sticking their neck on the line in light of contentious or dubious orders. While Americans tend to think of police officers as devoted public servants, they are also fathers, mothers, husbands and wives who worry about paying the mortgage, keeping the electricity on and feeding their kids. Ultimately, the expectations of life have been known to influence discretion.
Sometimes, it’s easier to follow orders and keep quiet. In doing this, good men and women deny their conscience and act outside their own set values and beliefs, all in the name of the badge.
But sometimes this vigilance to the letter of the law may serve a higher purpose. Tod Burke is a professor of criminal justice and the associate dean for the College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences at Radford University. A former Maryland police officer and the co-author of “Foundations of Criminal Justice,” Dr. Burke took a moment to talk to MintPress about the nature of discretion in police work.
In discussions about the philosophy of police work, the concept of “keeping the peace” — enforcing the law to the extent needed to maintain the general peace while allowing smaller infractions that are not obviously detrimental “slide” — was brought up; to which Dr. Burke adamantly disagreed with. Overlooked crimes can, potentially, escalate to greater, more consequential offenses. In criminology, the broken windows paradox is a concept that illustrates the dangers of allowing small offenses to go unchallenged. As stated in the March 1982 article from the Atlantic Monthly, where the theory was first debuted:
“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.”
Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford researcher, conducted an experiment in 1969 concerning this concept. Zimbardo abandoned two automobiles without license plates and an opened hood in two separate locales — one in a Bronx neighborhood, the other in Palo Alto, Calif. The car abandoned in the Bronx neighborhood was vandalized within minutes of being abandoned, while the Palo Alto car sat, undisturbed, for more than a week. The Bronx car was first hit by a family — a father, mother and their young son — who took the radiator and the battery.
Within 24 hours, the car was denuded of everything of value, and after that, the windows were smashed in, the upholstery was ripped out, parts were damaged and the car’s hull was used by the neighborhood’s kids as a playset. In Palo Alto, after a week of undisturbed idling, Zimbardo intentionally smashed the windows in with a sledgehammer. After this, others willingly joined in on the assault. Zimbardo noticed that in both situations, the “vandals” were not thugs, but well-dressed, clean-cut, everyday whites.
Zimbardo theorized that the Bronx car was vandalized so quickly because of the state of the neighborhood it was sitting in. With so much abandonment of property and vandalism rampant in the neighborhood, the neighborhood gave off an “I don’t care” aura that encouraged the neighborhood to act accordingly with the abandoned car. In Palo Alto — which is one of the richest communities in America — that vibe does not exist, so the car was safe.
However, when someone was seen attacking the car, it justified the urges of others to attack it, too. In allowing small problems to “slide,” the mentality of the community falls toward the acceptance of such things. This increases the tolerance for larger violations to be accepted, and so on. By focusing on all of the discretions in a neighborhood — large and small — you are serving to protect the neighborhood from its own dark impulses.
By fixing the window quickly, vandals are less likely to break another window. By stopping the small crimes, you are preventing bigger crimes from happening, so goes the theory. This is a core tenet of community-based policing.
But, ultimately, the police officer is solely responsible for his or her action while undertaking the duty of the badge. Dr. Burke best stated it this way,
“The police officer is a moral agent. What he/she brings into law enforcement will absolutely affect his/her performance on the street. What we have to understand is that police officers have discretion. Their discretion may certainly be influenced upon their moral and ethical values and vice-versa.”
If this is the case, then how can the police be made responsible for their own actions?
In part two of this series, we will look at police harassment, what we can do to reclaim trust in the police, the cost of bad policing and the “code of silence.”