ISVARI MOHAN: Policing the police

The police (as a whole) are out of control. In fact, our entire criminal justice system is. 

America, with 5 percent of the world’s population, has 25 percent of its prisoners, and we are not actually that effective in fighting crime. In other words, we have deplorable prisons, too many people in them, high recidivism rates, and unsafe streets. Democrats and Republicans have agreed that this needs to be fixed and we could start by fixing the problem where it starts: bad policing.

At 9:30 a.m. on April 4, Walter Scott, running away from a cop, was shot in the back multiple times and killed, all because of a traffic violation. The police officer, perhaps realizing the gravity of the crime he had committed, apparently planted his Taser on the body, in an attempt to show that Mr. Scott had tried to fight back. Officer Slager is now under arrest without possibility of bail.

One thing we can all agree on is that this is a frightening story. Even traditionally conservative and pro-police news stations like Fox News have been outraged. But the story is not unusual.

In 2014, police harassed a black man in New York City, who calmly and repeatedly said he knew his rights and was not going to answer to questioning. The police unconstitutionally arrested him.

In Philadelphia, two police officers racially abused two pedestrians in a stop-and-frisk, saying that all they do is “weaken the f–ing country.” (Police officers routinely arrest a vastly disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics.)

In Oklahoma, an innocent man was killed as his wife watched, because the cops
suspected him (with no reason) of domestic abuse.

In Oregon, county sheriff’s deputies were caught on camera admitting to corruption in order to protect the cruel rodeo. 

In D.C., Paul Butler, my amazing criminal justice professor at Georgetown, told our class about how he was stopped and followed, because he was black. The police, also black, didn’t believe he actually lived in his own home and said he didn’t fit into the neighborhood.

In Texas, white women were subjected to a body cavity search in the middle of a public highway.

There are videos of white cops beating up black men, black cops beating up white men, male cops kicking female arrestees, and female cops harassing men.

Cops have pulled guns on kids building a tree fort, innocent pit bulls, and white female joggers. They have killed innocent black and white people, and unconstitutionally stopped, searched, and arrested hundreds more. Civil forfeiture (a highly controversial process by which police officers seize and are allowed to keep your stuff) has allowed them to take billions of dollars of cash from individuals who were never charged with a crime.

So this isn’t just a “black issue.” It’s a cop issue: an American cop issue. And what is certain is that there are good cops, that cops are necessary, and that we don’t want to prevent them from doing their job. 

But why are there are such flagrant constitutional violations?

1) Cops lie.

Years ago, two policemen pulled over a car without reasonable suspicion. The driver, a white male, had done nothing. The officers then searched the entire vehicle, without probable cause, including the trunk, the back of the car, and the passenger seat. They also searched him multiple times for over 20 minutes. It was a huge violation of the Fourth Amendment and the man threatened to sue.

The police department later denied that the stop had ever occurred. If it wasn’t for the video taken by a bystander, nothing would have happened.

In 2012, Marcus Jeter, an unarmed man who did not fight arrest, would almost certainly have landed up in jail, if videos hadn’t proven officer misconduct and lying on record.

And I think we can all agree that without the viral videos in Walter Scott’s case, the law, like most of us, would assume the police officer had made the right decision to shoot. 

We should not allow this to happen. We should not blindly trust officers. A former NYC narcotics detective testified in court that planting drugs on innocent people was a common practice in order for officers to reach quotas. It is clear that there are bad cops, like there are bad people. But courts and the public are too quick to side law enforcement.

2) Cops are in positions of power and they, like all other humans, abuse it.

The famous Stanford prison experiment, where people quickly started to psychologically and physically abuse innocent people when given power, have shown that those in authority like to retain it. (The experiment has been used to explain genocide.) 

Disobeying or disrespecting the officer is, in the officer’s mind, one of the worst crimes. 

Cops know that unarmed individuals are likely to be afraid of them and they use that fear to harass them. After all, if they do something wrong, what are you going to do? 

Call the cops? 

Abusing power is human nature and usually has to be controlled by supervision.

Instead of investigating cops’ behavior, however, supervisors repeatedly — and blindly — support their subordinates. Officer Slager’s chief, in Walter Scott’s case, said that Slager and the other members of the force were like his children. While camaraderie is good, blind love is not.

3) There is no deterrence to police misconduct.

If you are a police officer, here’s what could happen after you do something wrong: 1) No one finds out, because it never goes to trial. (Innocent people tend to not sue police officers, because lawyers’ fees cost more than they are going to be awarded.)

2) It goes to trial, but you lie and the jury/ judge believe you. Obviously. You’re the cop, after all, and the other guy’s a criminal!

3) It goes to trial, you don’t lie, but the court still upholds your conduct anyway, because you fit into one of the myriad of exceptions to rules like the warrant requirement. If you don’t, it is quite possible the court turns a blind eye.

4) OK, what you did was really wrong. The “punishment” is that the fruits of the unconstitutional search, seizure, or confession cannot be used against the defendant. Also, nothing happens to you, because you have immunity. 

Very rarely does the police officer actually suffer for any of that misconduct. It usually takes murder, battery, sexual assault, or extreme corruption to even get officers fired. 

In Walter Scott’s case, race promises to be another issue and Mr. Butler has often said that being a black man in today’s society is being a criminal justice expert. It is true that black men are taught, growing up, on how to deal with the frequent police stops they will experience, and that they have every right to be as scared as they are. But I don’t think cops treat black men badly because they’re black men. I think police treat them like they treat any other threat to their authority. However, because black men are so much more frequently seen as a threat, they are so much more frequently the victims of cop misconduct.

So this time I suggest that race not be the issue. Let’s not make this another Ferguson. 

Let’s actually address the real issue. It’s the police, not the color of their skin.
We have to be able to convict officers that grossly violate the Constitution and fire officers that continuously commit more minor violations. We should encourage legislatures to impose bright-line rules that allow police to effectively control crime without disobeying the law. And we should abolish administrative systems that pay officers based on how many arrests they make. We should encourage cops to be good cops, because we need to be able to trust them again.

In 2011, there were four arrests for every hundred residents. Arrests, even if they were wrongful — like for video taping a police officer — still go on permanent record and affect individual’s job or housing applications. We shouldn’t wait until we are the ones unconstitutionally harassed or arrested to change the system.

This issue affects all of us, white or black, young or old, Democrat or Republican. We have to start doing a better job of policing the police.