So we need to spend some time talking about the police, about police misbehavior and brutality, and about the hard partisan line taken by some who rant against the cops on Facebook.
Let’s talk policy first, and justice second. As a matter of law and policy, I believe that citizens should be absolutely free to take video of police doing their jobs, I believe that cops themselves should be wired up with body cams, I believe that cops should write tickets for the sake of traffic safety and not for municipal revenue, I am against militarizing our police forces, I am against deploying SWAT teams because of an overdue library book, and no knock raids in the middle of the night at the wrong house are perfectly appalling. When police misbehavior occurs, I am in favor of stiff penalties and hard prosecutors. Nothing that follows is coming from a “cops-can-do-no-wrong” perspective.
With my sanity credentials thus in order, let me divide opponents of police misbehavior into two categories — the partisan and the judicial. The partisan knows what side he is on ten minutes after the story of alleged misbehavior first breaks. The judicial person wants due process, insisting on it, and knows that he cannot possibly have all the facts ten minutes in.
In saying this, I am not isolating any one particular incident — whether it be Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, or somebody’s pool party. Bad behavior should be punished by society, but society should never make a decision to punish anybody — cops or citizens — without calm heads finding out what happened first in a calm room, with the air conditioning set at 68 degrees and soothing carpet on the floor.
Partisans are distinguished by this characteristic — they can’t wait. If something looks bad for the partisan’s enemies, whoever they are, he is calling for a guilty verdict before a trial has been scheduled, or even before anybody is arrested.
But our goal should be a simple one. When something blows up and is in the public eye, we should behave such that a righteous attorney on either side of the relevant and resultant court case wouldn’t mind having us on the jury.
I will now appear to be changing the subject, but it is not so. One of the glories of the American struggle for independence was the fact that John Adams served as the defense attorney for the British soldiers accused in the Boston massacre. As a political visionary, he knew what had to be reformed in our relationship with the Crown. But it did not follow from this that the fifteen seconds of grainy cell phone footage of the massacre told the whole story. It did not follow from his political convictions that these particular British soldiers should be scapegoated simply because it would have been easy to make them look guilty in a trial by newspaper.
We have always had mobs, and I believe that we will always have mobs. The Internet has just meant the possibility of flash mobs — and these flash mobs can now congregate in some physical location for the sake of some stunt, or they can gather online in order to insist that some cop’s head be thrown over the cyber city wall.
Can we have no opinions about such events? Of course we can. We can and should — but there is a world of difference between saying “that cop is evil” and saying “that cop should be indicted and receive the fairest trial we can give him.” You can say the latter, and serve on his jury. You could even say the latter and serve as that cop’s defense attorney.
But if you say the former, the cop is not your real enemy. Your real enemy is justice and civilized behavior. Your enemy is the law of Moses. Your enemy is the Golden Rule.
It is so refreshing to hear a level head comment on this incendiary topic. Amen! Very well said.
Extremely helpful, Douglas. Thank you!
“The partisan knows what side he is on ten minutes after the story of alleged misbehavior first breaks.”
If only they were that concerned with facts; I’d venture most of them take less than a tenth of that amount of time to call for blood.
I agree with you on the whole. But I will say that saying “there should be a fair trial” is a different thing than staying neutral until the final sentencing of the court. In other words, if there is a video of a cop gunning someone down as they run away (after a traffic stop), I don’t think that I need to say “I will withhold judgement”. I think I can say, “that cop by all appearances is a murderer and a criminal – put him behind bars (after a fair trial of course).” Further, I will say that I… Read more »
In fact, given what some cops do even when they know the cameras are rolling, you can just imagine what they might do when the coast is clear.
Well said. I would just add that anyone who has played football knows all the dirty stuff that happens in a dog pile. And our culture loves dog piles. Also, it seems that if you don’t match the desired outrage you are somehow being “unkind” but kindness is not being carried away by emotional rip tides. Thanks for posting this.
Are you willing to apply this same standard to Hillary Clinton or Obama, seeing that they will most likely never go to trial for the mass majority of their perceived “evils”?
You can waive most requirements when it comes to democrats or liberals. After all, everyone knows they’re evil.
We can include an increasing number of party republicans in that list now too. But Wilson’s point remains that lawful prosecution is independent of popular consensus. There must be opportunity for their defense before they are punished for their wickedness and corruption.
Peter Anselmo – That home run swing was a pretty hefty whiff. For one, there is a grand difference between a fresh incident in which all information is new and more is forthcoming through various process of investigation by authorities and media – and, on the other hand, longstanding scandals that have been left alone to stagnate for politically related reasons. This is not at all to say that politically related scandals are exempt from the principles Doug applies here – they are not. Prudence, honesty, and wisdom in withholding judgment for the appropriate time and circumstance ought certainly apply… Read more »
“Doug’s point can’t be reduced to just “waiting for the authorities to act” before ever having an opinion.”
Okay… But that is the specific point Doug made that my question was in regard to.
Exactly, but you are over-simplifying Doug’s point so that you can run it through a situational one-size-fits-all analysis (i.e. all non-prosecuted parties must – per se, be treated in equivalent manner) to make Doug appear inconsistent. The principle Doug is applying here is that we must not get ahead of the evidence. The fact that politician x or y hasn’t been arrested, indicted, prosecuted, etc, does not mean we are getting ahead of the evidence when we express an opinion. Therefore, judicious reservation in issuing criticism over a 48-hour hold law enforcement incident will not look exactly like even handedness… Read more »
Thanks to those who answered Peter on my behalf, and well done. I would add one other thing. In these incidents, the thing alleged against the cop is a thing the cop denies with a “not guilty” plea. Hence the need for a trial. But Obama and Hillary are avowedly pro-choice. No need for a trial.
Before Anselmo jumps on this comment, Wilson is using something called hyperbole. He’s not proposing that Obama or Hillary should actually be prosecuted without any sort of trial. Even a guilty plea is something that must be processed through the court. You just don’t need to call witnesses as to guilt, or have a jury deliberate on the guilt question, you can move to mitigating circumstances and sentencing.
Wilson isn’t against anyone forming an opinion or a conclusion about an alleged scoundrel or criminal. Wilson is saying that wisdom means that we ought to research the facts for more than ten minutes before we do so. In some cases it doesn’t take much more than ten minutes.
What Wilson is also saying is that actual lawful prosecution is not constituted from of our popular opinions (no matter how correct they are). Lawful prosecution must be independent of crowd consensus and shouting. This is true even if the Clintons and Obama never come to justice for their crimes.
“What Wilson is also saying is that actual lawful prosecution is not constituted from of our popular opinions (no matter how correct they are).”
This is stating the obvious. I think Wilson takes it one step further in this article though when he suggests that we cannot declare a cop evil unless there has been a fair trial by jury.
And yet, up above in your previous response to me, you said you understood that Wilson was NOT making that point, but merely that he merely needed to be willing to forgo criticism of the Clintons in order to be consistent with that. So you need to be clear about which point you are arguing for.
Perhaps Anselmo needs to take more than ten minutes before convicting Wilson.
Ha! That’s probably the best comment on this thread!
A warning against partisanship is an interesting line for a blog post which doesn’t once mention the reflexive defense of nearly any police misconduct by certain people who perhaps have an overriding fear of black anarchy if the police don’t keep them in line. One must always stand with the tribe.
Can you point us to some of these people?
Nor does he specifically mention the crowd that believes that every local small town officer is secretly itching to get his hands on the kind of equipment that will allow him to keep his boot heels nicely sharpened on the faces of libertarian children — and shooting a few as an example wouldn’t hurt, either.
He calls out all partisans, and doesn’t mention any by name. Finding tribalism in that is only possible if you’re looking so hard you see stuff that isn’t there.
Oh, but he does:
“…the hard partisan line taken by some who rant against the cops on Facebook.”
“The Internet has just meant the possibility of flash mobs — and these
flash mobs can now…gather online in order to insist that some cop’s
head be thrown over the cyber city wall.”
I guess it’s not technically “by name”, so I’ll give you that.
Since social justice is Marxism, grievance will me magnified or manufactured until the revolutionary outcome is achieved. If you think police are corrupt now…
“be” not “me”?
Yeah, type in haste regret at leisure.
Mr. Wilson, would you say that our society has been erring on the side of being too critical of police or on the side of not holding police accountable for their actions? It seems that if the scales are sufficiently out of balance, a little jumping up and down on the neglected side is not completely out of order.
I don’t think “our society” is guilty of either — people in our society are guilty of both. I don’t see that there’s one tendency more than the other as a whole, it really depends who you ask.
Let me reword the question. Which (if either) is the more significant problem: Are police being criticized too much? Are there too many police officers abusing their power and not being held accountable for it? If either of these is much more of a problem than the other, it might be necessary to raise our voices a bit.
My own belief is that when cops are killing hundreds of unarmed people every year and almost never having any of these cases even brought to trial, we have a systemic problem with accountability. In light of that problem, I think it makes sense to demand greater scrutiny of individual cases of apparent wrongdoing, and that this is not inconsistent with insisting that every cop accused or investigated deserves a fair trial.
Amen, Urthman.
‘there is a world of difference between saying “that cop is evil” and saying “that cop should be indicted and receive the fairest trial we can give him.”’ Yes. The first assumes modern policing is morally illegitimate, and the second assumes modern policing is morally legitimate. Pastor Wilson has failed to show that being a police officer is not itself a criminal activity (Or does having a badge exempt one from the Golden Rule?). Also, which party does Pastor Wilson believe actually has the backbone to ask this question? ‘Your enemy is the law of Moses.’ The most effective policy… Read more »
A hearty amen to that post. I do have one issue with it that I think is worth mentioning. We hear a lot about the “militarization of police” these days. It carries with it a lot of baggage and I think we would do well to clear up exactly what we mean when we say that phrase. There is an inevitability of militarization when you have been at war for over a decade and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People seem to get all caught up on equipment that the cops are carrying or wearing or driving and I… Read more »