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February 16, 2007

Qui Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

We long ago decided as a society that in order for human beings to live together, the use of violence needed to be restricted. While everyone has the right to defend themselves, the right to initiate violence is restricted to the government. For this to work to the benefit of the citizens, the government has to be strictly limited in how and when it can initiate violence. The people who are given some piece of governmental authority must be held to the highest standards, or else you end up with a system where those who are part of government are held above the common citizens. Kind of like what you see in modern-day America.

It should go without saying, but I'll note here that I have nothing but the highest respect for the people who serve as police officers, as a rule. Police work is in turns boring, tedious, and terribly dangerous, and the people willing to put their lives on the line to deal with the murderers, rapists and other less-than-sterling examples of humanity out there are often real heroes.

But any organization consisting of more than a handful of people will include its share of bad apples, and the way that organization handles those bad apples tells us volumes about it. And as Rogier van Bakel points out here, far too often police officers are held to a far more lenient standard than those they are appointed to protect.

Why shouldn't we give police the benefit of the doubt? After all, they're out there risking their lives for us. When some nut case starts shooting up a mall or a burglar is in our house, we expect the police to go in after them, knowing that doing so may get them killed. Shouldn't they get a little more leeway? While I'm sympathetic to that argument, I have to say no.

We grant our police great powers. And as Stan Lee pointed out many years ago, with great power comes great responsibility. When police officers screw up, people die. Radley Balko has done yeoman work (I suspect that when the history of the early years of blogging is written, Radley is going to be seen to have been one of the most important of all of us by a sizeable margin) documenting the numerous times the police have killed innocent people in the course of their duties. I'm sure the officers involved generally feel pretty awful about what they've done. But the people are still dead, and while remorse is good, putting standards in place to make police a bit more careful is even better.

I don't think the police should have to live in fear of choosing between the worse of two evils: getting shot or going to jail because they shot the wrong person. There are times when a raid goes bad and an accident occurs and it's just bad luck. But far too often we see cases like Kathryn Johnson or Sal Culosi, where innocent people die because of police negligence or misconduct and there is little impulse by the police or the local DA to hold those officers responsible. That is unacceptable, and it needs to stop. If a private citizen would be charged for an action, a police officer should be as well, no questions asked.