Image: David Couper. Used with permission.
by David Couper
We live in a nation of big values and big ideas. Our Constitution proclaims certain rights to be inalienable – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, not all rights have been applied to all people at all times during our nation’s history. Nevertheless, our values are huge. The enormity of them is often breathtaking if not staggering.
So, I started thinking. What are “reasonable expectations” for those of us who live in this society? They certainly are ideas of justice and equality along with life and liberty. Big ideas to which we say we all aspire.
As a nation, we are a people in interaction – in families, neighborhoods, shopping centers, workplaces and communities. In those interactions, I believe we all share expectations of honesty, competency and courtesy.
This is especially true when we seek services from others whether they are medical practitioners, bankers, electricians or merchants. We expect them to be honest, competent and courteous in their dealings with us. And if they are not, we have a right to voice our disappointment and go somewhere else. A physician who doesn’t listen well, a banker who has investment advice that we find is not in our best interest, an electrician who overbills or never finishes the job, or the merchant who appears disinterested when we ask about a product we are interested in purchasing will not find us willing to do business with them again. Instead, we can find someone else who will meet our needs.
But what about services that are imposed on us? What about services the government has a right and obligation to provide such as construction permits, collection of taxes, how and when we set out our garbage for collection, and requirements to leash and license our pets? And what about those whom the government hires to enforce its rules? Should the expectations change here or are they the same?
Even though we may not have requested the “service,” such as police knocking at our door about a neighbor’s complaint, being stopped for a traffic violation, or being asked questions about a matter in which we have some knowledge, do we still not have a reasonable expectations that even though we did not request the “service” it would, nonetheless, be carried out by folks who are competent, honest and courteous? I think they are the same expectations. And when these expectations are not met in both spheres of our life (services we request versus those which are imposed on us) there is the great possibility of conflict and diminishing respect for the service provider.
As one of those non-requested service providers, I have always thought that there was an implicit duty for me to be competent in my chosen craft of policing, honest in my dealings, and courteous in my interactions with everyone.
I tried to capture that in my new book, “Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds Off About Protest, Racism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s Police.”
So, what prevents police officers from meeting our expectations? We must remember that in our society, almost everything is filtered through the lenses of race and class. What prevents everyone from receiving the same standard of interaction or service are those two factors. Police are generally courteous and do their jobs well when dealing with both equals and superiors and less so when it comes to those who are lower on the American “power scale” — which is always about economic class and/or race.
The conversation I am trying to generate today in America is about ways in which we can develop a standard of policing that assures everyone, witness, victim, or offender, will receive full and competent police services, in an honest manner, and with courtesy.
Is this too much to expect? If it is not, then let’s talk about how that could begin to happen in our nation. In my book, I provide the seven steps that police must take in order for this level of improvement to occur. They are things your community can start doing today.
The steps are:
1. Leaders must envision a bold and breathing future for policing in which justice and equality are practiced values.
2. Communities must select the “best and brightest” candidates to serve as their police officers.
3. Police leaders must not only listen to their communities but also listen to the good ideas the officers in their organizations have about improving the work they do.
4. Police leaders need to train and lead their officers in new ways; leaders train and trainers lead. This means both training and leadership must be adult-oriented and police departments de-militarize and be more collaborative and team-oriented with their employees.
5. Police departments must continuously improve the systems in which they work and all that they do. Staying put is falling behind.
6. Police must be able to evaluate what they do beyond counting the rise and fall of crime numbers. They must be able to answer questions about their competency and effectiveness by proving measurable data.
7. Police then must be able to sustain their improvements and grow with their communities into the future.
Ultimately, it boils down to this: We have a right to have police who are smart, competent, restrained in their use of force, honest, and courteous.
Image: Amazon
This is my 2 cents! What do you think?
David Couper is a retired chief of police. You can read his blog titled Improving Police, find him on Facebook, or read his new book. You can find Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds Off About Protest, Racism, Corruption, and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s Police online.
Related articles:
- Dancing Cops, Community Policing, and the Public Trust (crimedime.com)
- Social Science is Changing How We View Policing (crimedime.com)
- Cops, Criminals, and Corpulence: Weighty Matters in Criminology (crimedime.com)
Valentine Logar
July 17, 2012
I think you are right in your 7 steps. As a victim of a violent crime I watched the justice system for a very long time. I was both impressed and dismayed, I continue to be both. To an alarming extent my dismay grows as class and race becomes the measure of how people are treated within the system.
Just as a side note, the Constitution does not proclaim any rights inalienable that that is the Declaration of Independence.
Tending Weeds
July 17, 2012
Your focus is within departments themselves, and that is absolutely the best place to start, but it should trickle out to the community as well. What can we do as citizens, supporters and adversaries of the police institution?
“Training” the community to understand how the police work and why decisions are made they way they are might help to alleviate some of the “they suck & didn’t do anything” reactions.
Convincing someone somewhere to buck up a few more dollars would go a long way to staff more officers. Why more officers when we already have too many parked out on the road waiting for you to mess up? More officers on staff means more time for victims and witnesses, while still allowing an officer to chase the bad guy, instead of hasting through a report to get to the next call and the next and the next and the next until there have been so many that the details have been lost.
More officers on staff means they can follow up with some victims who may need it. A victim of domestic violence may not be able to prove the punch 20 minutes after it landed, but can 24 hours after. A victim of car-jacking may not have all the details straight, but will later once the fear and adrenaline fade. A victim of a home invasion may not notice the album of autographs is missing, but will once clean-up begins.
But finding more “police who are smart, competent, restrained in their use of force, honest, and courteous” means we have to re-restrict the candidate pool to resources with college degrees, and right now, it seems, people would rather go to college to avoid being shot at.
Louise Behiel
July 19, 2012
I agree with the commenter above – we all have to take responsibility in some way, shape and form. and we have to remember that policing is part of the government bureaucracy…and they have those realities to deal with.
thehurtfactory
July 23, 2012
A second vote for the community to be involved, and pushing this a little. The police are only one part of our world, and we must try, within realistic bounds, to approach any problem holistically. If we can improve communities we can reduce crime, and this will lead to less over-worked police. Clearly governments can directly affect police through policy, but they can indirectly do so in their political approach to managing communities. A fairer world leads to less crime because people can get what they need legitimately.
I would also sound a note of caution about how much evidence and monitoring you ask for. What has crippled policing in this country (UK), as well as education and the blue-collar sector, is over monitoring. The insistence that evidence be produced has meant that only what can be evidenced is being done. Loose example – you can evidence an arrest, but can you evidence ‘made a victim feel more secure’? The human side of a job is unmeasurable in many respects, and so we fail to be human (polite, courteous etc.) because it does not bring in the funding, or tick off a target.
Again we must strive to be holistic and to create happier, more caring communities in which criminal intentions are not nurtured, rather than forcing people who should be developing inter-personal skills into being little more than administrators.