Breaking Rank (74 page)

*
Alas, the Japanese seem to have little regard for female warriors in blue; women make up less than 2 percent of the force, carry no firearms, handle a tiny range of low-prestige duties such as traffic direction and parking enforcement, and serving tea to station visitors—and to their male colleagues. I appreciate cultural differences as much as the next guy, but this strikes me as a bit of a blind spot in Japanese “moral judgment.”

CONCLUSION

I
WAS TWENTY-FOUR
,
a new sergeant with my own squad of patrol officers. A white officer from another squad went off on one of my cops, an African-American, calling him “boy.” When I found out about it, I drove Code 2 from East San Diego to headquarters and, in a rage, hammered out a memo. It was “one thing for a black officer to be subjected to community abuse, quite another to be exposed to the blatantly racist attitude of a fellow officer,” I wrote. A department commander responded by labeling me a “social crusader.” He spat out the term as if it had fouled his tongue. But his accusation was accurate, and I would wear the mantle for the rest of my career.

Today, at sixty, both public safety and social justice continue to motivate me. How do we make life safer for that kid in National City who grew up scared of his own shadow? How do we create a safe, sane world for people of all ages? A heartbreaking number of Americans live with emotional and physical violence in their own homes. Many Americans, reacting to predatory street crime, are forced to change the way they live. Many suffer the effects of open-air drug markets, street prostitution, gang violence. Many are mistreated by their own police, some for no other reason than the color of their skin. And many do not receive the full protection and services of law enforcement they pay for.

It's distressing to think about the numbers of beat cops, police chiefs, lawmakers, attorneys general, and presidents who lack passion about safe streets
and
civil liberties. In a democracy, it's these officials'
job
to care about, and to aggressively pursue these complementary goals. Many, of course, do take the responsibility seriously, and they deserve to be recognized for it. But far too many of our officials take home a check for doing the job ineffectively, or improperly.

As suggested throughout
Breaking Rank,
inept crime fighting and police misconduct are largely the product of (1) defective lawmaking, (2) weak or haughty politicians, (3) the police paramilitary structure, and (4) the workplace culture of police agencies. It's the
institution
of policing, not rank-and-file cops, that is in need of an “extreme makeover.”

As a reformist cop, I generated and absorbed a good deal of heat during my career. I've been called a “pinko” for agitating for social justice and civil liberties, and for criticizing police practices publicly. My vision has been labeled “naïve,” the ideas I promote “impractical.” But critics of reform are often, to put it kindly, cynics. And, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “A cynic is one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” Cynics can tell us what a transformative change in public safety will
cost
—in dollars, in organizational instability, in political risks—but they're obstinately blind to the benefits of reform. And to the costs of doing nothing.

Firsthand experience causes me to conclude that most station-house critics of police reform are
bystanders
—the kind of cops who watch passively as fellow officers club and kick a passive traffic violator, or shove a broom handle up a man's rectum. Bystanders don't take risks. They're obsessed with preserving the status quo, covering their tails, hiding behind the blue wall of silence, or the union label. Cynical chiefs and cynical political leaders cannot seem to get beyond the bureaucratic mindset. Change threatens “disruption” of their lives. Or their re-election.

How do reformers confront this resistance? First and foremost, by
listening
to and
respecting
one's opponents. Whether right or wrong, everyone deserves to be heard.

Early on as a police reformer I was a terrible listener. I couldn't understand how my peers could be so stubbornly resistant to my desire for them to change. (Didn't they realize their willingness to change themselves would make me a happier person?)

Tom Murton, who pushed fundamental reforms as the warden of the Arkansas prison farm system, was an early inspiration.
*
I remember a dinner, held in the early 1970s in Murton's honor at the home of Tom Gitchoff, SDSU
professor and longtime friend. A novice reformer at the time, I cornered Murton and asked him how he kept his sanity working in a field with so many “ideological opponents” (I think I used the word
assholes
). He told me he worked hard to practice a philosophy of collaboration and compromise with his enemies—however repulsed he might be by their conduct.

Sometimes it was easy: If Governor Winthrop Rockefeller wanted the prison's barns painted green, Murton would “paint the damn barns green”—even though he was partial to traditional red. On matters of principle, however, he refused to make concessions.

Murton exposed legislators and other state officials who for years had driven their Cadillacs and Lincolns up to the back gate of the Tucker and Cummins prison farms, where they'd toss sides of taxpayer-funded beef into their trunks. He fired guards, and “demoted” trustees who couldn't be trusted to perform competently, or to behave responsibly. He disconnected the “Tucker telephone”—a sinister device (literally a modified telephone) wired to the testicles of uncooperative prisoners, who were then made to endure excruciating “long-distance” calls. And he unearthed the bodies of murdered prisoners whose deaths had previously been attributed to “natural causes.”

Murton understood that when it comes to incompetence, corruption, or brutality you simply don't “collaborate.”

Resistance to even modest changes in law and in the structure and policies of policing is as natural as sun in San Diego or rain in Seattle. But we need to get on with it. How, then, apart from becoming a good listener, do we proceed?

I think where you start depends on where you are. Are you a student of political science, public administration, sociology, criminal justice? An analyst of government's failed approaches to “social control”? A survivor of domestic violence or other crimes? A victim of official abuses, and official excuses? A black mother, frightened that your young boys won't be coming home after a run-in with the local police? A beat cop, bothered by what you've seen, or done, and willing to “break rank” to atone, and to help improve your police department?

Whatever your motives (and it's important to understand them), here
are some basic “dos and don'ts” I've learned during my many years in police work, and in community-police politics.

DO:

Become a student of that which you seek to change.
Learn everything you can about policing. Are the laws your police officers are called upon to enforce sensible? Do they add to, or subtract from, community safety? Are they humane?

What is the stated mission of your police department? Its goals, objectives, and core values? Is the agency organized efficiently, and appropriately, to get the job done? Does it recognize that domestic violence is a precursor to all other forms of violence, and does it place its highest priority on DV prevention and DV law enforcement?

Does your department take advantage of the latest developments in management, technology, and forensic sciences? Is it adequately funded to carry out its mission? Does your community have enough cops? Enough civilian personnel? Who gets chosen to be a police officer? How are candidates selected? How are new cops welcomed into the department—trained, educated,
acculturated
? Who gets promoted? How and why?

What are your local agency's enforcement priorities? How is individual police performance appraised? How is organizational effectiveness evaluated?

How are allegations of poor service or misconduct, including racism, sexism, and homophobia, investigated? Are such investigations timely, and of high quality? Are citizens meaningfully involved in complaint investigation and adjudication? If not, why not?

How are officers disciplined? Are police officers, civilian employees, supervisors, and managers expected to treat one another, and the community, with respect? Does accountability for performance and conduct operate at
all
levels of the organization, from the cop on the beat to the chief in the corner pocket?

Your police department belongs to you and your fellow citizens. You have a right to ask these questions, and your department has a duty to answer them. (If they won't, try the Freedom of Information Act. It'll frustrate police administrators and records personnel, but it works wonders.)

Strengthen your own capabilities.
You are the most critical agent of your vision. Are you
effective
? Do you demonstrate the knowledge, technical and political skills, and interpersonal competence necessary to persuade others? Are you trustworthy? Do you refuse to take yourself too seriously, even as you demonstrate the seriousness of your purpose?

Organize and mobilize.
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground,” wrote Frederick Douglass.
Change is never unopposed.
It rarely happens because it should, even less often because you want it to. Protectors of the status quo outnumber and usually “outrank” you and your fellow agents of change. Further, they are at least as deeply wedded to stasis as you are to transformation.

It's true that an
individual
can make a difference, and I would never denigrate the efforts of courageous, single-minded, “Lone Ranger” reformers. But it's easier, faster, usually much more effective, and frankly a lot more fun when people band together and agitate for positive change.

Show a little respect.
The “rule of reciprocity” says if you treat people with respect, they'll treat you with respect: Give them information, they'll give you information; trust them, they'll trust you. Of course “reciprocity” is rarely a fifty-fifty proposition in the real world, each party exhibiting equal courtesy, openness, generosity. But a diligent, persistent, collective, and
respectful
campaign for change
will
bring about transformation—or at least visible progress.

DO NOT:

Make an ass of yourself.
One of the reasons cops don't listen to their detractors is that detractors often shout so loud they can't be heard. Or they resort to obscenities, name-calling, and/or threats. I recently saw a photo of a demonstrator at an International Monetary Fund conference in Washington, D.C. She was holding aloft a large sign that read, “Ramsey [chief of police]: Clean Up Your Pigpen.” Such rhetoric may satisfy on a visceral level, but it's stupid, and self-defeating.