KEEP THE PEACE

“The police aren’t there to create disorder. The police are there to preserve disorder.”
-Mayor Daley

I've considered being a cop in the past. Not that I have the physical ability to do so; you really do have to be in good shape to get into the police force, if not necessarily stay in. I just have thought a lot about the job and what it requires, why police do what they do and how it must affect them.

One thing I've noticed about the job, the rhetoric, and the activity of cops that I would have the most problem with is something that never seems to go commented on. Its not the "marriage destroying career" aspect - I know several cops and none of them have marriage problems beyond the norm. Its not the "burnt out rebel who must break all the rules to catch the bad guy while his superior screams at him" cliche, which is pure Hollywood nonsense. No, its about the basic purpose and meaning of the job police officers have to do.

See, I understand the job of a cop to be to enforce the law. They are the physical extension of the law, they are the bodies that go out and make sure people don't break laws. That's why the job is called "law enforcement." But if you ask any cop, anywhere, what their job is, they will say "keep the peace." Consider the usual police slogan Serve and Protect emblazoned on LA police cars. Nothing about the law.

I don't mean police are meant to be arbiters of justice, that's what the courts are for. Police don't determine guilt or innocence, they catch people breaking the law and let the system handle that. Once they leave for court, the cop's job is done (except for testimony). I mean cops are supposed to enforce the law. There's a big distinction between that and keeping the peace. Let me illustrate this idea with a few recent events in Canada.

Courtesy Mark Steyn at National Review Online, we have this tale from the G8 summit in a Toronto suburb:

For the G20 summit, the Toronto coppers ordered up a ton of new body armor, weaponry, gas masks, etc - and then stood around in their state-of-the-art riot gear watching as a bunch of middle-class "anarchists" trashed the city. Streetcars were left abandoned, and even police cruisers were seized, vandalized and burned.

This wasn't the first time he watched as police stood aside to let lawbreakers and thugs do their thing. Steyn mentions an Ann Coulter speaking event which ended up in violence and destruction as police stood by and watched. An Ottowa Finance Minister was attacked during the rally, and he noted “The police, I’m told, were urged not to intervene, lest pictures of demonstrators being hauled off by the cops show up all over YouTube.” Mark Steyn quips:

True. You might haul off a Muslim or a lesbian and find yourself in “human rights” hell.

There is something to be said for police concern over being filmed, which is leading some to unwise and illegal actions such as when Kathy Shaidle's husband was ordered to stop filming an arrest on a streetcorner. Cops being filmed are just being set up for some sort of legal attack and the movies might seem to indicate some violence or improper behavior even if it never happened. Cops don't like their cases being thrown out of court, and nobody likes having people standing around filming them work; the job is stressful enough.

Yet there's another aspect to this. The cops at the G20 summit riots didn't do much despite having advance warning, proper gear, and presence in numbers. They watched anti-capitalist thugs burn cars, break windows, and generally run about like tantrum-throwing 3 year olds. A few people were arrested but apparently by policy they didn't take action.

Why not? Filming is one thing but it isn't enough. They didn't want to get involved because it would endanger them and they believed the public at large. Moving against rioters means people get hurt, gas might cause problems for someone not involved. Heads get cracked. Police get hurt. It doesn't matter that they're breaking the law, it disturbs the peace more to wade in and stop them than to stand around and let them get it out of their system.

See, when keeping the peace defines your job, you let people break the law as long as they aren't disturbing others while doing so. If you are focused more on keeping peace than enforcing law, then you let people go you catch if they seem likely to stay calm. I don't think cops intend to do it that way, but the job ends up more a job than a calling for many police, and in the end you stop trying so hard to catch the bad guys and work more at keeping things calm and normal.

Maybe that's inevitable, maybe that's the only way you can actually do the job, and stay sane, at least. There's no way you can possibly catch every bad guy. And the laws are often so crazy that you can't really enforce them all or you'd have to line up 9 people out of 10. I've been told that you cannot cross town without breaking a traffic law. If police were really zealous about stopping every criminal they'd have half the city pulled over at any given time.

I just think the basic philosophy behind being a cop makes a difference about your approach and sometimes it can lead to some real problems in what you do and why.