Who Will Guard the Guardians: Dilemmas of Policing

“Policing needs to be seen as a profession to whose ranks people of every class might plausibly aspire.”

There were guys in my New Hampshire mill town high school who went to parties on the weekend not to dance but to fight. Actually, they were happy to fight during the week too if provoked. And however otherwise dull their imagination, they had no difficulty imagining provocations. Some, it seemed to me, fought to make themselves feel like masters of our shabby little universe, others for the sheer pleasure of inflicting pain. I wondered then whether having someone’s broken face on the floor in front of them was anticipatory payback for a future of pumping gas. But then I went on to Princeton where the most frightening guy on campus, a heavy-boned, hatchet-faced star of the wrestling team, was the product of a tony Baltimore preparatory school, who probably envisioned a career in investment banking. If one saw him in the midst of drunken weekend revels, he crossed the street. Class is not a precise predictor of thuggery.

When I think about policing, I think among other things about those guys in whom, whether through nature or nurture, rage has consumed empathy. To the extent that the state is responsive to ordinary people, it assumes the obligation to protect us from them. That is why liberals like myself—no less than conservatives—concede to the state the authority to maintain institutions of repression: police, prosecutors, criminal courts, and prisons. We want deterrence and where deterrence fails: isolation. But here is our first dilemma: Among the people attracted to a profession licensing repression (albeit theoretically for a good end) are those same guys, by no means a majority, but present.

Second dilemma: Policing is one of the most difficult jobs in any society but particularly in one as well-armed, suspicious of government, and divided by color, class, and culture as the United States of America. Policing calls for skills that do not naturally align: physical courage and toughness; empathy; sensitivity to cultural cues; emotional intelligence. And because it is the first-line instrument for enforcing quotidian compliance with the laws and regulations needed to maintain a healthy social order and capitalist economy, there is no profession more important for the preservation of a democratic state and more in need of highly selective recruitment, intense and prolonged preparation, and continuing education. To do their job correctly, police officers need no less (and probably more) preparation and ongoing training than our Navy SEALs and Green Berets, for their mission is more complicated.