The problem is that I've seen what "training" review boards turns into in several cities. It's pretty much pure indoctrination with "The Thin Blue Line" playing in the background filled with quotes like "Cops are held to a higher standard" - demonstrably false and bordering on a lie from one side or the other of the border - and transparent attempts to stack the boards with relatives of police, prosecutors and former police officers. It becomes something akin to a Grand Jury in reverse. All the evidence is provided by the defense.
That's why Satanically Liberal Boston hasn't passed a single thing out of it's review board in, what, eight years. No matter how good officers are someone is going to screw up badly in any group that size in 2800 days. The number zero speaks volumes.
Now, if you want to talk about how it's just a few bad apples and other cops would root out corruption in their ranks, consider
something that appeared today in a decidedly Conservative pro-Law and Order paper, the New York Post. Yes, some were caught. But the NYPD is still closing ranks and making it as difficult as possible for even a normally friendly paper to even find out who the guilty are.
I've noticed the same sort of thing when it comes to videotape. When a "civilian" films a cop it's always,
always "prejudicial" or "out of context". That's why several jurisdictions have passed laws making it illegal for anyone who doesn't carry tin from doing it. But police are encouraged to record interactions which may lead to prosecutions such as catching incriminating statements during interrogation.
By the way, the next time I hear a cop of any sort refer to "police" and "citizens" as two separate things, I've got an S.O.P. If you aren't a civilian, grab a rifle and head over to Baghdad. The Marines are looking for a few good men, and you could probably get a job with the Army. You're as much of a civilian as anyone else as long as you're not wearing green. Adjust the context lenses. Police organizations evolved to a paramilitary structure for a variety of historical reasons. So did the Boy Scouts and the Civil Air Patrol. Get over it.
We can argue forever about particular cases and who is more hostile to whom. But it is ironic. These days police are demanding unfettered power to search, seize, question, confiscate, implement ubiquitous surveillance and even (recent Supreme Court case) overturn Tennessee vs. Garner and shoot
anyone who runs (not just those who pose an immediate danger). But individually and collectively they are positively allergic to any sort of scrutiny by anyone who isn't in the Club and personally loyal to them.
It's a lot like the ideal of knighthood or the samurai. The Warrior is loyal to his Lord and his Brothers, chivalrous to his honorable foes (well, strike that these days), and has a bunch of covenants that say he's the greatest thing since crunchy peanut butter. He is bound to respect his Lord and anyone of that class (e.g. the Chamber of Commerce). But how he treats the peasants is another thing entirely. He can cut them down and walk away without fear. He gets a pass on a lot of the law as long as he's serving his Lord or at least not causing too much of a fuss. And he is of a different caste. It would be as unthinkable for the peasants to judge him as it would be for him not to judge the peasants.
That is very much the attitude here. Police are a separate caste. They are loyal to the government and their Brothers. They not only serve the Law, they embody it. So it would be as ridiculous for "civilians" to judge them as it would be for them
not to judge the peasants. They can kill the peasants without fear of legal problems unless they are actually doing mob hits as in NOLA or NYC. They might have promotions held back, but
they will walk as long as it's vaguely part of the job.
It doesn't matter how good the people chosen to be police officers are, and most of them start off very good indeed. Even saints can fall. An institution which keeps its sins secret and its virtues public will breed corruption, arrogance and a sense of superior entitlement. That's just how human beings behave. As Philip Zimbardo of the
Stanford Prison Experiment said "
You can't be a sweet cucumber in a pickle barrel."
We saw the same thing with civil forfeiture. While seizure has been around for a long time the Reagan era saw a dramatic expansion of the doctrine that police could seize "crime-related" property and keep the proceeds. It was originally supposed to be (according to Ed Meese) to "hit the drug kingpins in the pocketbook."
Amazingly, it didn't stay that way. It was applied to a wide variety of things and ended up hitting the small and weak such as the migrant farm workers much disproportionately. Departments like Orange County took to compiling lists of homes according to market value and confiscating them without ever charging anyone with anything. Those affected did not have to be convicted or even charged. Under a bizarre legal theory it isn't their property. It's property that doesn't really belong to anyone which is accused of being related to crime. The normal legal niceties do not apply. Police use of the money is almost always off-budget. It is not subject to the same accounting and justification that a Department has to provide for the money the government gives it to operate.
There have been efforts to reform this legalized plunder - confiscation only upon conviction, money going into the State's General Fund and so on. Departments tend to fight these like a mother cat defending her kittens. Once again we see resistance to oversight, an institutional desire for power not subject to normal laws and a tendency to close ranks and demand that special privileges be considered Sacred Rights.
The polite word for the practice is tax-farming. The more honest one is banditry. How can people, even good ones, remain uncorrupted by this? The simple answer is that they can't.
The usual police responses are "elect better politicians" and "give us more money for training", "you don't know what it's like to be a police officer" and "if you criticize us you must be anti-cop and anti-government". Every one of these is a way of saying "We are above your judgment. But we have judged that you, personally, are deficient." It demonstrates the root of the problem very neatly.
