They're No Angels
November 10, 2010
Stephen Mauzy
Unquestioning reverence for the police is one of the more unfortunate
inculcations in our formative years. If it were not for the police,
lawlessness and chaos would rule; therefore, we owe our safety, our
civilization, our very lives to the selflessness and dedication of the
police; thus, police are our "heroes." So we were told, and so
we believed.
A similar syllogism positions the police as heroes, and heroes are worthy
of worship. That explains the elegiac melancholy that imbues media
coverage whenever a police officer is martyred in the line of duty: to
kill a cop is one of the most heinous acts one can imagine.
But is the death of a police officer really more tragic than the death of
anyone else unknown to us? We can read the obituaries; we can peruse
every entry, and not one will evoke a scintilla of sentiment. But if a
police officer dies, an involuntary pathos percolates to the surface. The
reaction is not unlike Pavlov's dog involuntarily salivating upon hearing
the bell.
If we were to peer over the manufactured ethos, we would see a
hard-boiled reality that differs significantly from the callow
perception. Personal contacts with the police, if not confrontational,
are at least disagreeable. The following scenario is familiar because it
is universal: We are driving ten miles an hour over the posted interstate
speed limit; weather, traffic, time preference, and common sense dictate
our actions to be reasonable and nonintrusive. Suddenly, our tranquil,
solitary world is shattered by a blast of swirling blue and red light
emanating from a Crown Victoria drafting a few feet off our rear
bumper.
The speed limit is the law, we are told. And because the law is the law,
the diligent police officer is as inflexible as the law he is
commissioned to enforce. All explanations rational or otherwise fall
on the same deaf ears. The policeman remains unmoved, because he can ill
afford to be moved. His municipality, and therefore his salary, depends
on the additional lucre.
So we meekly sit on our hands. We were in the wrong, after all; we are a
nation of laws and good government. Commonsense be damned, even when we
realize that this revenue-through-punishment business model motivates an
adjunct behavior: infringement enhancement. Not only are we fined for
speeding; the police officer snoops around for ancillary digressions a
burned-out license-plate bulb, a cracked windshield, an unbuckled
seatbelt, and, God forbid, the whiff of alcohol. The tally quickly rises
into the hundreds of dollars. The police officer extends the full-fare
ticket. We quietly sign off, not wanting to provoke further
investigation. As we pull away, we find ourselves unsettled by a fog of
ambivalence. This is the law?
Actually, there is no fog. The more right we are in our argument and the
more logically we think, particularly when our actions involve no
trespass against person or property, the more we bristle at submitting to
impertinence and intrusion. We also resent the unsaid truth: regardless
of the level of amenity the police officer effuses from the outset, he
would have injured or even killed us had we not acquiesced to his
demands. Though government sloganeers insist the police are there
"to protect and to serve," protecting and serving are only an
intemperate remark away from "to coerce and to
intimidate."
The apprehension is only marginally less severe when we voluntarily
contact the police to report a personal trespass. The police officer's
same questioning tactic impertinent, curt, or accusing does little to
quell our anxiety, nor does it quell the nagging thought that our
property or conduct violates the letter of the law, thus inviting
unintended scrutiny.
The chummy moralizing only adds to the ambivalence. The public-service
announcement (featuring a crisply uniformed, avuncular B-actor sort)
always favors the proliferation of laws. The law, the police officer
explains in even tones, ensures a more secure and civil society. Of
course, the police officer underplays the requisite fines and arrests
needed to enforce the laws. The strong arm stops us from ejecting
ourselves from moving vehicles, distracting ourselves while driving,
idling our cars on a cold day. The fact that our infractions not only add
to the municipality's revenue stream but add to the ability to further
violate our person and property is an afterthought.
And as for the Brobdingnagian display of zealotry in enforcing these
laws? Sure, it is off-putting to refined sensibilities, but it is merely
an affectation employed to punctuate the police's dedication to
maintaining order. For that reason, an alleged drug dealer's abode must
be violated violently: the front door must be kicked in; the house must
be entered by officers fully armored, armed, and angry; the occupants
must be thrown into chaos. The alleged perpetrator, if not killed, must
be wrestled to the ground and shackled, and made to endure the added
humiliation of spittle and screaming invective. Afterward, the lead
gendarme must pronounce to the cameras, "We are all safer now that
one more criminal has been taken off the street."
Because illegal drugs are the bogeyman of middle-class morality, most
applaud this aggressive imposition of the law. In fact, they wouldn't
mind seeing a little more of it hence, the overwhelming support when
more police officers are promised to be added to the city payrolls.
President Clinton promised to provide "funding" for 100,000 new
cops and the voting majority applauded. Few stop to note that more police
means more laws and stricter enforcement of the current laws. More police
open the door to more coercion and more violence from the police. But
so what? It is always the other guy who is the lawbreaker until it is
you.
Government-funded education, along with, unfortunately, sophistic
parental tutelage, has blinded generations of Americans to the truth: the
police do nothing to ensure civility. Civility is a byproduct of respect
for property. If there is no respect for property, there is no
civility.
Consider the United States, where the citizens, for the most part,
respect property. Respect for property instills an empathy and desirable
ethos: most of us want to own property, and we want others to respect the
property we own. In turn, we respect our neighbor's property. Contrast
this behavior to parts of the world where respect for property is
wanting. Mexico is an easy exemplar: the country is conspicuously marked
by a superfluity of graffiti-desecrated buildings, metal-grill window
coverings, class segregation, and violence and discord. Mexico also
suffers from more intrusive laws (and more capricious enforcement of
those laws) than the United States.
The level of police power also correlates negatively with the police's
respect for property rights. There is the obvious: kicking in doors,
rummaging through personal items, wrecking automobiles. But police also
violate property rights more discreetly and more insidiously: trespassing
on private property, gleaning freebies from business owners, repelling
customers with their very presence.
If we want to maximize social harmony, the power of the police must be
minimized, while the importance of property rights must be maximized.
When that occurs, any ambivalence we feel about the police will
dissipate, because there will no longer be any reason to feel
ambivalent.
[bio] See [AuthorName]'s [AuthorArchive].
http://mises.org/library/theyre-no-angels
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