THE POLICE ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS
As children, we were taught that the police were our friends. We could go to them, confide in them, if we were lost or in trouble, and they would help.
Although I have been practicing law more than 25 years, I never cease to be amazed at the number of people, accused of a crime, who seem to cling to that childhood belief and who actually believe that they can confide in the police, and that if they just cooperate with the police, the police will help, and protect, them and everything will be just fine. A lot of them actually believe that the police will work for them -- to prove them innocent.
Today, many police departments resemble para-military organizations. They are like "little armies", although in major cities like New York, Chicago, Houston or Los Angeles, they are not very "little" and can rival the manpower of an army combat division!
They tend to be staffed by former military personnel and they operate with the organization, the discipline, the training, and, most importantly, the mentality of an army.
Don't get me wrong. The police are necessary and provide an invaluable public service. We all need them. We all depend upon them. Further, a good, honest, professional, well-trained police officer is worth his, or her, weight in gold and is an invaluable asset to any community.
There are, however, good cops and bad cops just like there are good doctors and bad doctors, good lawyers and bad lawyers. And, even bad cops are not necessarily "bad" every moment of every day.
Unfortunately, some police officers these days seem to share the belief that they are engaged in a "war": a war against crime. They tend to share the view of the soldier; that it is "us against them"; that they are the good guys and that the "enemy" must be defeated, must be destroyed, at all costs; otherwise, civilization, and life as we know it, will be destroyed!
The problem with that approach, of course, is that in a war there is really only one rule, "Win! Do whatever it takes to win!" It suggests that the end justifies the means; that the police are above the law; that the police are the law; that it is alright for them to break the law, or do whatever it takes, to accomplish their mission which is to suppress crime.
One of the great legal scholars, and appellate criminal lawyers, of our time, Alan Dershowitz, created a fire-storm of controversy a couple of years ago by stating the obvious truth that many judges, and prosecutors, police and defense attorneys, know, from first-hand experience, that the police, on occasion, lie.
Does that mean that every cop is a bad cop or that even every bad cop lies about everything every day? Of course not and that is not what Professor Dershowitz was suggesting! Nor am I.
What he was simply acknowledging was that, everyday, in communities across this country, some police officer makes the judgment that some person, who he, or she, believes to be guilty of a crime, is going to "get away with it" if the officer plays by the rules, and obeys the law himself, or herself, and, faced with that prospect, makes a conscious decision to lie, or to plant evidence where none exists, or to hide, or destroy, evidence that, if found, might undermine the case by showing the person to be innocent.
However, there is something more disturbing than the fact that some police officers may lie, or occasionally plant evidence, or suppress favorable evidence. It is that all of that seems to be increasingly alright with the public in these days and times!
As a society, we seem to be approaching a point where we want the police to suppress crime at all costs and increasingly don't much care what they do, or how they do it, so long as they get the job done.
If people were not so afraid, if they were not so angry, perhaps, they would see the danger inherent in that attitude and realize that it's their rights, not just those of "criminals", that are being sacrificed in the "war on crime".