QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

Anybody who thinks I bash the police here at Real Art because of my anti-authoritarian attitudes and bad experiences throughout my life with cops is probably right. However, my personal motivation doesn't make wrong my assertion that there's something seriously wrong with police culture in the United States. Indeed, the newspapers are filled with countless stories about police misconduct, abuse, and corruption every day. Of course, one might prefer the old "isolated incident" explanation of cop corruption to my more systemic understanding of the phenomenon. Perhaps one should take this opportunity to reappraise that point of view, because, finally, an authoritative voice of agreement has fallen into my lap.

From AlterNet, an interview with Seattle's former Chief of Police, Norm Stamper:

Seattle Confidential

[AlterNet] What is it about male cops that makes them more dangerous or inclined to violence than other American men?

[Stamper] For many police officers, they are their professional identity. That's who I was that first year. It's who we are, not just what we do. So if anyone threatens my identity as a cop, I become potentially dangerous.

When I became a cop, there were no women patrol officers. It was a very, very machismo culture. To say it was male-dominated is to understate it. It was exclusively a boys' club, and there was a lot of boys’ behavior going on -- sexism, misogyny, sexual harassment both in the workplace and on the streets, predatory behavior on the part of male police officers and a lot of drinking and carousing and the like. That's a quick snapshot of the culture, and I was a part of [it].

Police officers are granted authority. It goes with the turf; you can't be a cop without exercising authority. Jerome Skulnick talks about [this] in a book called Justice Without Trial -- he describes a police officer's "working personality."

Young men who've been given authority -- a badge, a gun -- and allowed to stop and cite and arrest and question and fight and shoot their fellow citizens, run a grave risk of having that power go directly to their heads, or other parts of their anatomy.

But because Stamper is a 34-year veteran of policing, he's able to offer something that I haven't, solutions:

I would call an end to the war on drugs -- yesterday. I would take the police out of the business of popping people for the possession of small quantities of drugs, and I would devote much of that attention and money to prevention, education and treatment.

Number two would be the selective and intelligent demilitarization of America's police forces. The thing is, we pretty much behave in accordance to the cultural values and norms of our institutions. If I belong to a paramilitary bureaucratic organization that puts the community at arm's length, then guess what? I'm going to be the soldier bureaucrat.

So I would demilitarize and, as much as is logical to do so, de-bureaucratize American's police departments. They need to be much more community-friendly. They need to be the people's police.

The third thing would be embracing an authentic definition of community policing. I'm not minimizing the role of police. I'm not saying -- as I mentioned in another chapter -- to disarm [cops] and take them out of uniform. But the community can exact major changes in their police force if there's shared thinking to that end. In other words, "Wait a minute, this police department belongs to me."

Click here for the rest.

You see? I'm not simply picking on cops, although that aspect of these Quis Custodiet posts is great fun. There really is a huge problem that appears to be built into the system, and there are alternatives to what we have now--it's not simply a question of cops or no cops, not simply a question of how much I hate guys with guns and badges.

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