Public has to do its part, too

THOUSANDS OF times a day NYPD cops make snap judgments — deciding to arrest, summons, detain, search or use force against people. There is rarely an opportunity to examine on the spot police actions, to discover the flaws that are inevitable when you are acting in an information vacuum: the life’s work of the police is half a story, some information, biased or dishonest people giving them a version of the truth as they see it. If you needed to have a full picture of what you were dealing with as a cop before you made a decision, the city itself would crumble.

What is increasingly lost in this conversation about rights is the responsibilities people have in supporting and refraining from hamstringing the police when they are doing the people’s business.

The First Amendment gives legal protection from government overreach, it is not an active encouragement for people to attack or harass police as they protect the right to assemble and be heard.

This might be a good time to initiate a conversation about a nonbinding code of conduct for citizens dealing with the police. Subway passengers voluntarily adhere to an underground code by doing things like stepping aside to let people on and off, and by making seats available to standees and the infirm.

This would in no way involve watering down cherished constitutional rights. Individuals would still be free from government interference when marching and protesting. The First Amendment has never been about exhorting citizens to seek conflict with the police.

While the work of building a freer society goes on untrammeled, this is a good time to have a dialogue about what is owed to the police who make peaceful protests the potent tool they are.