Redrawing the thin blue line

Like politics, police work is one of those careers that appeals precisely to the sort of people who shouldn’t be allowed to pursue it. The scientific literature shows that a lot of criminals at one time aspired to being cops, and that the “police mentality” is a real thing: Psychometric tests have determined that police work tends to attract those who are significantly more conservative, cynical and authoritarian than others of similar socio-economic status.

Compared to others within their demographic, cops tend to give more illiberal answers when asked about immigration, interracial and same-sex marriage, and the death penalty.

This oughtn’t be too surprising; in our country, cop-shop culture is more locker room than Montessori School. Despite the lip service we pay to them, we don’t value police work very highly. The compensation for officers isn’t great, compared to other countries, and the level of training required to enter the profession is laughably low. (On average, U.S. police officers receive 19 weeks of training; in Europe it’s closer to three years.) It’s not a career that’s terribly attractive to people who have a lot of options: you don’t get rich kids or National Merit Scholars applying to the academy. And police departments can only pick and choose from the pool of applicants they get.

I don’t know that Timothy Loehmann, the Cleveland policeman who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death in November 2014, is anything like a typical cop. (Most cops never shoot anyone, and it’s important to remember a lot of them refrain from shooting people they’d be legally justified to shoot. Many go a whole career without having to fire a weapon at anything other than a range target.) But when Loehmann applied for a position as a police officer in Independence, Ohio in 2012, he wrote on his application that he was motivated by the prospect of having a “stable job.”

You can understand why—Loehmann had been unemployed for five years before he got that job. He lasted five months —four of which he spent in the police academy. After a couple of emotional meltdowns, the rookie cop quit before he could be fired. As a deputy chief noted in his personnel file, Loehmann’s behavior displayed “a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion, and not following instructions.”

Yet, two years later, Loehmann was hired by the Cleveland Police Department. And he shot a 12-yearold kid who had a pellet gun.

Now, a grand jury has decided not to indict Loehmann. I don’t know if that’s the right decision, but I suspect Loehmann really was scared when he shot Rice. I don’t think he wanted to kill this boy. I don’t know how I would have reacted in a similar situation. That’s not the point. The point is people like Timothy Loehmann shouldn’t be police officers.

Rice was probably about to hand his fake gun to the officers, to show them it was just a toy. They couldn’t know that. But they should have realized no one else in the park was afraid of Rice. They didn’t correctly assess the situation. They made the sort of mistake that police just can’t make.

Loehmann is a terrible cop. But I don’t blame him for looking for work as a police officer. His options were limited; it was the sort of job that was available to him.

I have known more than a few cops over the years, and it’s pretty stupid to generalize about them. And it’s unfair to hold all police officers responsible for the poor decisions or criminal actions of a few. Some of those people who pursue careers in law enforcement are bullies and liars. Some of them are weak-minded and cruel. Some are straight-up racists. Some are corrupt. Some are uncommonly kind. Most of them are decent and take their job seriously. None of them are perfect.

There are a lot of cultural myths that attach to police work, a lot of boilerplate that people like me are supposed to say about their virtue, but a lot of the cops I knew were embarrassed by that sort of gasbaggery. It’s a hard job, and at times a stressful one, but not an especially dangerous one. Still, dealing with potentially lethal situations is part of the job. A police officer can do everything right and still wind up dead.

A police officer can make an honest mistake and kill an innocent.

As our society becomes increasingly surveilled, you only have to search YouTube to find plenty of examples of police misbehavior. And last year, police killed about three people per day in the United States, far more than any other country where the police are overseen by civil authority. (Japanese police haven’t shot anyone since 2012. )

Part of this isn’t the police’s fault; it has to do with the violence inherent in America and its gun culture. Despite the wishful ignorance of some, ubiquitous firearms don’t really make for a safer society. Police in America have to deal with more armed suspects than police in other countries.

Many of those people might have, as the tough guys say, “needed killing.” Most of the police homicides were ruled justified. Some of them register as outrageous violations of the decedent’s civil rights. A few might be outright murder. People are marching in the streets, chanting slogans, demanding justice.

The police claim victimization. That “police lives matter.” They insist on their vulnerability. And some of you might want to take their side.

Fair enough. Having been brought up a certain way, we want to believe certain things. But if we want a professional police force, we have to set standards and supply training, we have to be willing to pay enough to attract better and brighter prospects. We need better educated, more empathetic officers.

Probably most difficult of all, we have to change police culture. Police are not warriors against drugs or anything else. What they ought to be is a reassuring presence in the community, troubleshooters trained in resolving conflicts and de-escalating situations. They need to be protectors, not occupiers, of poor neighborhoods. They need to be better—more patient, calmer and less bumptious—than most of us.

I don’t know how we do that. Cops are like teachers: Everybody talks about how important they are, but we’d rather have lower taxes. So we hire people like Timothy Loehmann. And stash a Ruger in the nightstand. pmartin@arkansasonline.com

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