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The Cop Mind
by David Brooks
Dec. 8, 2014
Like a lot of people in
journalism, I began my career, briefly, as a police reporter. As the Michael
Brown and Eric Garner cases have unfolded, I’ve found myself thinking back to
those days. Nothing excuses specific acts of police brutality, especially in
the Garner case, but not enough attention is being paid to the emotional and
psychological challenges of being a cop.
Early on, I learned that
there is an amazing variety of police officers, even compared to other
professions. Most cops are conscientious, and some, especially among
detectives, are brilliant.
They spend much of their time
in the chaotic and depressing nether-reaches of society: busting up domestic
violence disputes, dealing with drunks and drug addicts, coming upon fatal car
crashes, managing conflicts large and small.
They ride an emotional and
biochemical roller coaster. They experience moments of intense action and
alertness, followed by emotional crashes marked by exhaustion, and isolation.
They become hypervigilant. Surrounded by crime all day, some come to perceive
that society is more threatening than it really is.
To cope, they emotionally
armor up. Many of the cops I was around developed a cynical, dehumanizing and
hard-edged sense of humor that was an attempt to insulate themselves from the
pain of seeing a dead child or the extinguished life of a young girl they
arrived too late to save.
Many of us see cops as
relatively invulnerable as they patrol the streets. The cops themselves do not
perceive their situation that way. As criminologist George Kelling wrote in
City Journal in 1993, “It is a common myth that police officers approach
conflicts with a feeling of power — after all, they are armed, they represent
the state, they are specially trained and backed by an ‘army.’ In reality, an
officer’s gun is almost always a liability ... because a suspect may grab it in
a scuffle. Officers are usually at a disadvantage because they have to intervene
in unfamiliar terrain, on someone else’s territory. They worry that bystanders
might become involved, either by helping somebody the officer has to confront
or, after the fact, by second-guessing an officer’s conduct.”
Even though most situations
are not dangerous, danger is always an out-of-the-blue possibility, often in
the back of the mind.
In many places, a
self-supporting and insular police culture develops: In this culture no one
understands police work except fellow officers; the training in the academy is
useless; to do the job you’ve got to bend the rules and understand the law of
the jungle; the world is divided into two sorts of people — cops and a — holes.
This is a life of both
boredom and stress. Life expectancy for cops is lower than for the general
population. Cops suffer disproportionately from peptic ulcers, back disorders
and heart disease. In one study, suicide rates were three times higher among
cops than among other municipal workers. Other studies have found that
somewhere between 7 percent and 19 percent of cops suffer from post-traumatic
stress disorder. The effect is especially harsh on those who have been involved
in shootings. Two-thirds of the officers who have been involved in shootings
suffer moderate or severe emotional problems. Seventy percent leave the police
force within seven years of the incident.
Most cops know they walk a
dangerous line, between necessary and excessive force. According to a 2000
National Institute of Justice study, more than 90 percent of the police officers
surveyed said that it is wrong to respond to verbal abuse with force.
Nonetheless, 15 percent of the cops surveyed were aware that officers in their
own department sometimes or often did so.
And through the years,
departments have worked to humanize the profession. Over all, police use of
force is on the decline, along with the crime rate generally. According to the
Department of Justice, the number of incidents in which force was used or
threatened declined from 664,000 in 2002 to 574,000 in 2008. Community policing
has helped bind police forces closer to the citizenry.
A blind spot is race. Only 1
in 20 white officers believe that blacks and other minorities receive unequal
treatment from the police. But 57 percent of black officers are convinced the
treatment of minorities is unfair.
But at the core of profession
lies the central problem of political philosophy. How does the state preserve
order through coercion? When should you use overwhelming force to master
lawbreaking? When is it wiser to step back and use patience and understanding
to defuse a situation? How do you make this decision instantaneously, when
testosterone is flowing, when fear is in the air, when someone is disrespecting
you and you feel indignation rising in the gut?
Racist police brutality has
to be punished. But respect has to be paid. Police serve by walking that
hazardous line where civilization meets disorder.
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