The rank and file officers are 'following orders' - and generally not in a Nazi sort of sense.

At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law so early in the game, I would say that conducting no-knock raids for non-violent offences seems pretty Nazi-esque to me.

Actually, no, you're right, I take that back. Even the Kriminalpolizei did not conduct paramilitary raids in which they flashbanged college students suspected of smoking grass.

This is one of the things that really bothers me about this. Whether they are "doing their duty" out of ideological fervor, or just because they have a mortgage, two car payments, a bunch of credit cards and three kids to feed, the result is the same: they shut up and do as they are told. That they do this with varying levels of enthusiasm is somehow supposed to make everything all right?

Most police officers do exercise good judgment most of the time about what is "illegal" and what is actually "crime."

Occasionally, this is true. How often that is true is a point of contention. For every officer that exercises discretion there are at least two others that are willing to bust someone for something trivial (and probably unconstitutional) and are encouraged and rewarded for doing so. There are plenty of zealous drug warriors, gun confiscators and child welfare crusaders out there. Waco might as well have happened during the Bronze Age to the somnambulistic American public, but have we forgotten Katrina so quickly? Was it sound judgment that had those police disarming people? Did they ever find those “snipers” that were terrorizing everyone?

So I do not see this as a police vs. populace issue as much as I see it as a government vs. populace issue.

To me, they are largely synonymous. I see the police as the enforcement arm of the government, i.e. they are the ones that actually impose the will of the government on the populace. Since the populace no longer really sees government officials as representatives, but instead as “leaders”, (and the “leaders” are more than happy to encourage that sort of thinking) it does follow a perverse sort of logic when the “leaders” look at the people as recalcitrant children that need to be corralled and disciplined. Naturally, this attitude will find its way into police TTPs. This whole thing is just like the 2nd Amendment debate, which ultimately hinges around two profoundly different approaches to the roles of government and citizens.

The only thing worse than bad laws are bad policies. Policies begin to carry the force of law with none of the scrutiny. We have given individual officers broad discretion and the ability to apply force when they deem necessary but we have also eroded the ability to question an officers decisions and his application of force.

Most people are largely divorced from their government and don’t subject them to much scrutiny, either (and how much scrutiny does bad law undergo, really?). In some ways, bad policy is preferable, since once something is written into law, it attains a monolithic status that is that much more difficult to undo, whereas bad policy could be changed with some negative media exposure and activism. Our society has become a litigious monstrosity that needs to have every single damned thing imaginable spelled out in legalese because discretion, common sense and personal responsibility are dead and buried. Pardon me if I don’t exactly have much preference for force of law.

The advent of ubiquitous video cameras is an important factor in this ability to question the actions and motives of the police, which is why it is disturbing that some police (falsely) claim that it is illegal to tape them in the performance of their duties. Even if it was illegal, it should not be. Complete transparency is needed.

Probably the most critical factor in questioning the use of force by police is that many citizens have completely wrong ideas about what is and what is not justifiable use of force, and the nuances of the various tactics and equipment involved, since their ideas about this are largely shaped by television and movie fiction. This is another issue that goes back to ideas on the roles of government and citizens. These misconceptions and outright ignorance explains why some people are puzzled and angry that police don’t “just shoot bad guys in the leg”, why people claim that their arrest was illegal because they were never given a Miranda warning, why people think the police are obligated to protect them, why a lot of people seem to think that TASER is a great self defense weapon, and so forth.

The general public, unless they are informed self defense advocates or have a legal background, are often completely misinformed about use of force issues. They have been indoctrinated into thinking that force is the realm of the government, via the military and police and therefore they need not worry about it too much. The government and the police reinforce that notion every chance they get. Government and police administrators have told citizens countless times how ordinary mortals cannot possibly fathom the complexities of deadly force, therefore only the government and their armed enforcers, the police, have the intellect, the authority and the training to wield such power. This is all horsecrap, of course, but enough people believe it, so there you go. Perception is reality. When citizens are confused and disconcerted by military violence, they again base their criticisms from a completely ignorant standpoint, so you get 9/11 conspiracy theories and hysteria about depleted uranium and white phosphorus. It is easy to mislead and influence them because they know so little about the things they are supposedly critiquing.

For the most part, the citizenry lives in blissful ignorance of the real dangers and daily outrages against liberty, instead they are furious about imaginary and manufactured injustice. Most people are simply unaware of any of the excesses of government and the law until they become widely televised (or they fall victim to it themselves). The media tends to broadcast and sensationalize very selectively. Average people don’t think about use of force too much, except when it is unavoidable, and even then, their bias confirmation kicks in when they view a carefully edited video clip out of context. Their concerns are not taken seriously, even if they have valid basis in fact, because statists have ensured that they are largely uninformed. The government/police will be dismissive of the apprehension of the citizens and assure them that they are looking into the problem, and besides, what are you worried about? Are you some kind of drug dealing, gun toting, racist child molester?

The central problem that I see is that by creating extra legal protections for the privileged classes of people is basically a license for abuse. "Department Policy" (either tactical, or administrative) quickly becomes dogma and eventually gospel.

When I’ve talked to some police officers in non-CCW states about a citizen’s right to self defense and carrying of a concealed firearm, many of the responses I get are simultaneously funny, sad and disturbing all at once. I could clearly see by their responses that a good part of their opposition was not based in any rational argument, but actually had more to do with a perceived threat to their authority; their “special-ness”, if you will. This is all the more disconcerting when their poor firearms skills are taken into consideration.

The reason I bring that up is because in many large urban jurisdictions, only the police are allowed to bear arms. It’s another kind of special privilege. Special legal protections for police further reinforces the “us vs them” mentality. It is also a logical result of the idea of the police being government enforcers.

One thing I have been trying to find on the net is any statistical study to see if there is any correlation between police brutality or excessive force and CCW laws i.e. is there any relationship between police having a monopoly on bearing arms and a tendency towards abusive force. I suspect that there is a connection.

WT
http://wordstwice.blogspot.com/