Across the nation, officers confront their dual role of villain and victim
Reactions to Thursday’s deadly ambush in Dallas swept through roll-call rooms and squad cars in police departments across the country. Contempt for the shooter was universal.
But behind it followed other observations about what it means to be a police officer in 2016, with the attending fears and frustrations, and amid a seemingly growing gulf between the police and the policed.
“We have broken into tribes,” Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, told a class of cadets who graduated Friday. “All of a sudden, it becomes more important who your parents are, what the color of your skin is, than whether you are American.”
“This is not about black lives, or brown lives or blue lives,” he added. “This is about America.”
Police culture all but forbids one officer to publicly criticize or second-guess the actions of others. For that reason, officers interviewed Friday would not comment directly on the videos taken during and immediately after the shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota.
But one fact was clear: When a new video showing what appears to be police misconduct surfaces, it affects officers everywhere.
“One of the worries that cops have is that no cop can control what another cop does, but all cops will be judged by what the other cop does,” Chief Brandon del Pozo of the Burlington Police Department said. “We’ll sit there in the rollcall room, watching police videos all over the country, trying to make sense of what we’re seeing and trying to make sure we’re doing the best job we can.” There is much to watch. “Any time there is a traffic stop made, the cellphones come out,” said George Hofstetter, president of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. “The people taking them out have nothing to do with the incident, but they feel the need to videotape it. It’s like they think, ‘I am not going to stand across the street, I am going to become part of the problem.’”
Del Pozo echoed that thought. “On top of all the legitimate issues in policing,” he said, “street cops worry that there are people looking to foment confrontation to generate the next headline in situations where people just sort of complied before.”
Officers, privately, do not march in lock step after watching videos, a New York detective said.
“There are people that are like, ‘Oh, the cop’s right,’ ” he said. “I’m not one of those people. It is what it is.” But he said he had often perceived a rush to judgment after the release of a video.
Officer Pedro Serrano, a 12-year veteran of the New York Police Department, said that as a Hispanic, he could sympathize with the anger felt by members of minority groups.
“Growing up, I hated the police,” he said. “They abused me for no reason. It’s just because I was in the neighborhood and a person of color.”
At the sametime, he said that he worried that anger at the police could push some people to take things too far.
“I know that they, the people who go over the top with the protesting, I know they don’t see me for who I am. They see my uniform.”